Days 2-5: Adjusting

These last few days we have spent adjusting to our new home. Jack seems to be on a good schedule now, but Luke and I still are having a hard time getting to bed before midnight.

I found some Dr. Pepper at the store which makes my mornings much easier. Plus, the breakfast at the hotel is unlimited croissants and Nutella. Can't think of a better way to start the day!

At some point every day we make our way down to the lake and let Jack throw the rocks in the water
And feed the swans
We also spend a few hours at the park. It's a good time to rest while Jack plays
The baby swings can't swing as high as the one's back home
Here is one of the huge trees that I love
Underneath the tree is an awesome place to play
And to hide
Next to the park is a huge chess set.

Here is our hotel
Here is the inside
Our bedroom
Bathroom. Still not sure what the mini-toilet is... no water shoots up so it can't be a biday
A view from our back window.
One thing that is taking a long time to get used to are the prices here. Specifically the prices at restaurants. We were expecting it to be more expensive, but not this expensive. Below is the menu for a mexican food restaurant a few doors down from our hotel:
$7.50 for chips?!!

Oh, and we stopped by a McDonalds for a "large" (Medium in the U.S) Soda and a medium fry. Go ahead and guess what this cost... I dare you
Before I tell you how much we paid, I have to say that last week when I was still in Colorado I could have bought a soda double the size and the same fry for under $3. But here in Switzerland it was over $7! Yep, $7 for a drink and a fry. At least Jack was able to play in the play area for free:
We spent Monday and Tuesday exploring the city of Neuchatel.
We visited the local market
Made our way up to the "New Castle" aka Neuchatel
Walked across a really old bridge
Jack enjoyed walking up and down all the stairs
We toured the old prison tower. Here are Luke and Jack in one of the cells:
A better view of the cell which is approx. a 5 ft by 5 ft wooden box:
A view of the lake and the city from the top of the prison tower
The lake is in front, and this is the view of the mountains behind us
Some more views of the lake

Tuesday afternoon we made our way to Luke's new work using the public transportation here. It was fairly easy and Luke was able to meet most of his colleagues. We went out to a fondue dinner with one of his new colleagues on Tuesday night. The fondue was awesome! I was worried that it would be the awful tasting cheese, but it was terrific.
Believe it or not we have dinner plans with different people almost every night this week. It's amazing how quickly we are meeting people. Now if only we can find a place to live! Apartment searching starts tomorrow.

Our arrival and first day in Switzerland

Our flight to Switzerland was at 8pm Thursday night, so after Jack woke up from his nap (around 3pm) we headed off to Denver airport. We got to the airport by 5pm thinking we had plenty of time to check our bags, go through security, get a nice dinner, etc. When we went to check our bags they informed us that our tickets had not been purchased. Luke's work had been handling the flights and they had sent us confirmation for our tickets so we assumed that everything was ready to go. But apparently, reserving our seats and paying for our tickets are two separate issues. We made some frantic calls to people at Luke's work but it was already past 5pm. Luke ended up having to call directly to American Express Business Travel and tried to get them to place the order to pay for the tickets. The ladies at the check in kiosk informed us that we had until 7pm to get everything paid for or we would not make our flight. At 6:45 we finally got the go-ahead that everything had been paid for. Thankfully there were no lines at security and we were still able to grab a quick bite to eat, change Jack into his pajamas and get on to the plane.

Once we were on the plane we were able to breathe a sigh of relief. Jack really enjoyed having his own seat and was so excited that it didn't look like he'd be sleeping at all that flight.
But finally around 10 pm I got him to go to sleep... much against his will as you can see he had a pouty face to show he wasn't happy about the situation. As a side note: One thing I hate about these overnight flights is that they take FOREVER to dim the cabin. You would think that everything would be quiet and dark so that people could sleep on the plane, but they spend 2-3 hours serving snacks/dinner/wine/etc. so by the time they dim the cabin it is already 11pm. Jack couldn't sleep with the bright lights in his face so I had to use the facemask.

Jack slept most of the flight. Luke and I, on the other hand, felt the need to catch up on movies that we had missed. We finally saw Avatar, although I have to say that seeing it in 3D on IMAX must be a much different experience from watching it on a 5 inch airplane screen.

We had a layover in London and from there caught our flight to Geneva. This flight was much more difficult even though it was only 2 hours. We were all tired and Jack was cranky so we tried to keep him happy with the chocolate snacks they gave us on the airplane... a very messy plan
We finally got into Geneva around 5pm local time (10am Colorado time). We gathered our bags, rented a car and drove to our hotel in Neuchatel.
Once we got to our hotel we ordered a salad and an entree from the Hotel restaurant. The bill was $50! Luke took the suggestion of the receptionist and ordered the pate (see top right of photo below). I'm pretty sure that was the first (and last) time we will eat raw beef...at least that's what I think it is.
Jack enjoyed the fries though
The complimentary breakfast at the hotel is awesome! Lots of breads, cheeses and meats. Jack discovered the wonderful breakfast spread Nutella:
We spent Saturday afternoon walking around Lake Neuchatel. It is a beautiful lake and much larger than I thought.
This place is so green and lush. There are huge trees everywhere and the branches come down to form a sort of "tree cave" to play in
Of course Jack could spend all day throwing rocks into the water

Jet-lag caught up to us late Saturday afternoon:
We decided to take a drive while Jack napped in the car seat. We drove to Luke's new work and then we drove around the surrounding areas. Here are some pictures from the road:

We stopped once Jack woke up and took a walk through the forest

Here you can see how the forest almost goes right up to the water:
Just outside the forest is the river
As a mom, the first thing I noticed about Switzerland is how many playgrounds there are. It seems you can't walk 100 ft without seeing some sort of playground or play equipment.




Once we got back to Neuchatel we headed out for dinner. It was Saturday night at 7pm, but the streets were empty!

We finally found a small little italian restaurant that was delicious!
Jack loved the tortellini.
They did not speak much English so we were flipping through our translation book throughout dinner trying to converse with them. At one point I ordered a coke and pointed at the soda fountain and this is what she brought me. Can't say I complained though.
All in all we had a very good flight and first day in Switzerland. We have made several observiations in our first days here.

1. Eating out is very expensive. We sort of knew this before we came, but it still is a shock when you pay $50 for a salad and raw beef.

2. We thought that we would blend in with the Swiss people (being blonde hair and blue eyes) but in this part of Switzerland the majority of the people have dark hair and a darker skin tone. There were many more blonde haired people in Colorado Springs. Here, everyone stares at Jack like they can't believe how white his hair is.

3. Anyone that had been to Switzerland told us how clean and immaculate they thought it was. I guess I had the perception that the streets would be sparkling, but we've found that it is not the case. There is a good amount of graffiti along the highway and the beaches seem to be littered with glass bottles. It is still amazingly beautiful, but I don't get the perception that it is immaculate.

4. Spell check does not work for my blog. Since I am a horrible speller, I apologize in advance for all the errors. (When I click the button to spell check, everything shows up as being misspelled since it is checking it in German).

5. The landscape is not filled with Yodlers and cows. Okay, so I didn't think that Switzerland was this way, but Luke did...to some extent. He says this feels more like France than what he thought Switzerland would be like. We are going to drive to Interlaken this weekend to see some cows and yodlers and the Alps just to make sure we are really in Switzerland.

6. The language barrier is huge! It's hard to know beforehand what it would be like living in a city where you don't speak the language... but it is a big obstacle. In just a day we have learned a good amount of phrases to be able to communicate a little bit, but we really need to dive into our French lessons and start learning FAST!

7. Jet lag is a b*tch. None of us (Jack included) could sleep last night. We were all up until 3am and then Luke made us get up at 8am to try and get on a good schedule. Hope tonight is better.

As ready as I'll ever be

We are leaving tomorrow. My confidence level about this whole move is starting to become a little more shaky. Going back to our normal routine, at our house, with all our stuff sounds pretty nice right about now. To make matters worse, Jack and I came down with some sort of bug over the weekend (I think it was food poisoning). Jack was throwing up all Sunday night and I was throwing up all Monday night. We are still feeling a little under the weather. Getting sick is no fun ... getting sick in a hotel is even less fun... and I can't even imagine being that sick on an airplane. I sure hope we are 100% better by tomorrow.

Tonight was our last night in the U.S. We celebrated with our friends at a brewery right by our hotel. Here are some pictures from tonight. We are sure going to miss everyone!

A couple pictures from this past weekend when my parents came down for a visit:

A peek into the forecast for our new home. It rains a lot there, can you tell?

One way ticket

Our tickets to Switzerland have been booked!

It's an odd feeling booking a one-way ticket. Kind of exciting, but also a bit scary. I guess it feels like the day before you get married. You know you are committing to something big and once you walk down that aisle (or get on the airplane) there's no going back. Hopefully none of us will get cold feet walking down the tarmac!

We received our Visa's in the mail today. And in RECORD time! The typical Visa process takes 10 weeks, and I have never heard of someone getting their long-term Visa in less than 2 months. But with Luke's boss in Switzerland pestering the Swiss office, and myself pestering the Los Angeles Swiss Embassy, we got our Visa's in 2 weeks! I'm sure this is some sort of record.

The only thing left for us to do is sell our Saturn Vue. It's still hard to believe that we only have a few days left in Colorado. I'm going to have to hit up all my favorite spots this weekend and then Thursday we get on the airplane and fly to Switzerland.

Our last family picture in Colorado for long time

I want to HOLD it!

One of Jack's new phrases lately is "I want to hold it!" It was really cute when he first started saying it, now it is getting pretty annoying. It's a hard stage to be in because he wants to do everything himself, but he is still really clumsy. So him holding something typically means him spilling something. As annoying as it can be to have drinks/food spilled all over the floor, hearing him say "I want to hoooooolllllld it" still makes us laugh.