Death by IKEA

IKEA Dietlikon

Have been spending a lot of time worshipping at the shrine of middle-class “lifestyle solutions” that is IKEA. Uuuuuuggghhhhhh

The worst thing is, when you look around the store and feel chuffed that you already have that table! (therefore do not have to buy it now) and those stools! Oh and there’s our chest of drawers… I see they do them  in red now.

The worst thing is when you look around your house and 50-80% of your furniture is IKEA. Or looks like it is.

The worst thing is when you’re trotting back there merrily planning to buy another PAX wardrobe ‘because the last one really fit most of our stuff’ but you had to leave it behind because it was too big to move and it would have fallen apart anyway. Besides, now you need a slightly different PAX to suit/fit your new bedroom.

The worst thing is visiting your new neighbours and seeing that their homes are all decked out in IKEA too.

The worst thing is realising that even the kitchen in the new apartment is probably an IKEA one.

The worst thing is wondering who, how or what is the evil genius that’s gained such a stranglehold on our interior spaces. What does it mean that we’re increasingly living (and working and eating) in places that look roughly THE SAME because it’s just so cheap(ish) and seems to cater to all those storage and organisation needs you didn’t even know you had? And those meatballs, yum!

The worst thing is it’s not even worth buying “real” furniture for stacks more money because modern life = moving around and it’s so much trickier to take it with you and who knows if it will even fit your new home / lifestyle?

The worst thing is IKEA. I’m going back again this weekend.

Things I don’t miss about London

London. Photo: Claire Doble

I said I’d write this at some point after I posted my Things I’ll Miss About London entry but it seemed a little negative. However, since HI’s back in the UK capital for a conference today, and it’s also two weeks (! only 2 weeks?!) since we packed up our house in Tottenham,  it got me thinking about:

What I don’t miss about London…

  • Swimming Pools All the pools in London are sh*t. Sorry to be harsh but it is true. They are small – usually 25 or 33m ( I heard this is so three lengths is 100m?). There are only two (2!) 50m pools in London and one is outdoors, although heated. As a keen swimmer from a country that is lazy with pools as well as the ocean, I really missed being able to swim easily and pleasantly in London. Zurich has 24 pools for roughly 400,00 people and this week I visited and swam at the Oerlikon Hallenbad. It was great. Like an Aussie pool. Hallelujah!. Of course there may be decent pools in London I never checked out because:
  • Commuting How to convey the terror / boredom / thrill? / anxiety / enforced psychopathic detachment of commuting to work with literally hundreds of thousands of other human beings using a straining-at-the-seams transport system in a megalopolis like London? Unless you’ve done it, you cannot comprehend. If you have, you know what I mean. It’s no wonder it’s often said that one of the top 10 things things that make you happier is a shorter commute to work. In the same vein:
  • John Lewis I know, I know. I love it too… or I thought I did. But somehow that whole Oxford Street ugliness thing, the stress, the busy-ness, the horror, the horror. And the competitive shopping vibe – the fact that shopping is kinda regarded as an enjoyable leisure activity for the family? No.
  • Chicken bones on the street. Along with every other bit of crud, litter, fly-tipped matresses, dog mess etcetera. Disgusting. Nobody cares. London is too big for anyone to have civic pride. HI is often saying London became a world power because of dirt (I think it’s from Peter Ackroyd’s London biography – something about the fact Londoners were too busy working/trading to wash and it’s led to their success and resilience). And I get it – it’s a strength too and the advantage of the huge/uncaring thing is that it means people aren’t all up in your sh*t. But it does wear you down. One time I saw a guy empty his catheter into the gutter at the corner of my street. For reals.
  • English Culture People talk about the stiff upper lip, but en masse, I find English culture can be mawkishly sentimental and soft! They love animals, there’s polite passive aggression, crazy class inequalities, Ant & Dec, plinky-plonky music and “every little helps”.  Aw bless, I love them really. And now I have a whole new culture to cringe at.
  • Tottenham. I want to say I miss it, I’d love to say I loved it, but I don’t and I can’t. I tried really hard to convince everyone – mostly myself – that I did. But it sucks. And a lot of this is due to Haringey Council… ugh. On bad days, Tottenham is a stark example of a combination of all the things I’ve outlined above. On good days, you don’t notice so much. I won’t say I didn’t enjoy the challenge and I know some truly wonderful people who live there but I do not miss the area and I don’t know if I ever will. I’m sorry.

He’s Danish… so he speaks English

I am only just beginning to get my head around the babble of language here.

Image

It must be one of the “most foreign” places we could have moved to in that there are four official languages (German, French, Italian and the oral Romansh) as well as the dialect of Schweizerdeutsch (Swiss German). And yet, that also sort of makes it the “least foreign” because there’s such a wash of different words being spoken that English is often the default and no one necessarily expects you to speak the language they do (kinda). Documents and labels and stuff are generally in German, French and Italian, and you often get an English option too.

And you get weird experiences such as the electrician who was recommended to fit our lights – “This guy is good and he’s Danish, so he speaks English.” You have to provide all your own light fittings here – when we moved in, the apartment just had a bunch of wires sprouting from each ceiling. Luckily we knew this ahead of time and shopped up a storm in John Lewis before leaving the UK! As for HI, he was mostly keen to ask the Danish sparky if he knew where in Switzerland you could buy Lurpak (you have to go to Germany, apparently). Priorities.

Meanwhile I had my first German lesson today. I missed the first two weeks of the course because: moving. But it doesn’t seem to matter too much – I had a quick read through the early stuff and maybe I did know a few more basic words than I thought. It’s an ECAP course over six months, two mornings per week so I’ve got plenty of time to catch up.The teacher only speaks German to us, which is fair enough, considering the varied backgrounds of the people attending. But also, eek!

The other students are all women who mostly have children I think (it’s a course designed for mums with young children and ECAP also offers childcare). There’s a huge range of different nationalities — English, Aussie (me!), Singaporean, Sri Lankan, Spanish, French, Italian, African, Middle Eastern, Eastern European…

I hope to make some new friends while I learn. 🙂 Sehr Gut!

The Wood Between Worlds

View from my window at EMA house - where Zurich's two rivers join

Do you remember the Wood Between Worlds that appeared in the somewhat odd prequel to The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe? It was a place of limbo, not good, not bad but somehow terrifying in its lassitude-inducing neutrality. A place to pass through that one could end up being stuck in if not careful. I’ve always tried to move forward but there’s been a lot of uncertainty in the past year or so since this Swiss move was mooted. 

Being caught between two worlds and waiting for decisions to be made, most of which have been out of my hands, is enervating – something well captured in TWBW (The book is called The Magician’s Nephew by the way). But now I am in the final stages – staying in a serviced apartment in Kreis 6, perched high above the spot where Zurich’s two rivers, the Limmat and the Sihl, converge. The imagery is apt, of course.

This week I will finally make a loud and definite splashdown into the pond marked “Zurich”, moving into a proper apartment and commencing a real, full-blooded life in this city. I can’t wait.

That said, I hope I haven’t been riding the uncertainty so long that I’ve got used to the enforced laziness and non-commitment of TWBW halfway point.

***

I wrote that yesterday and today I jumped into a strange new puddle – the Swiss nursery that P will attend three days a week from now. Until I was there, I don’t think I’d quite realised the magnitude of the change we’re imposing on him. I know he’ll be OK but it’s kind of heartbreaking to see him unable to communicate with other kids and being only half understood by the one adult there who speaks English. On the plus side, she dresses like a sort of 80s heavy-metal girlfriend reinterpreted for 2014, which I can only thoroughly approve of.

Oh well… only time will tell.  I’ve just heard our stuff is arriving from the UK tomorrow so I guess this is it.  So, in conclusion to this stage of my life, let me paraphrase Dr Seuss’s Oh The Places You’ll Go (one of P’s favourites):

The Waiting Place is a most useless place... It’s time to escape all that waiting and staying — to find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing. 

Boom Boom.

Moving Day

The cool damp air puffs through my window

I lie awake in my bedroom for the final time

5.18am. Hearing the soft rain outside and the flat fapping of the bunting I’ve used as a makeshift guard, reserving the space for the truck

It’s not enough room. Can I ask the neighbours to move their car? Whose van is that anyway?

The fridge is empty, things are packed.

Mustn’t forget adaptor plugs.

Where did I put those tickets? Oh yes.

I hope the wardrobe will fit.

Don’t let them take the recycling bucket.

5.45am. The heater starts to tick into life

It must be time to move

The Things I’ll Miss About London

Tottenham nails

I’m back in London for two weeks while we pack up for the Big Move.

I’ve been thinking about what I’ll miss about London… as well as some of the stuff I’ll be glad to leave behind.

I will miss:

  • My friends. I’ve got friends here that I’ve known longer than I’ve been in London (7 years) – people I was mates with in Sydney who also moved over here, and it’s really strengthened our friendships and made us close. I’ve also got newer friends, not least the group of mums I met through NCT classes, who I’ve spent time with pretty much every week for the past three years.
  • My house. We’ve transformed this place from a West Indian grandma’s cozy nest — complete with crimson carpets, stripy wallpaper, 80s kitchen and frosted glass and/or net curtains on every window — to a sleek, calm, modern place (but still cozy I hope) with a perfect-for-us kitchen and lovely light all hours of the day.
  • Working. I’ve quit my job at visitlondon.com to move to Switzerland. I miss it already – I miss being able to go somewhere I’m known just as Claire (not as someone’s wife, mother, friend, family member etc) and I miss doing work that means I am accepted and appreciated for my skills, ability and experience.
  • English. I love words, I love the English language. I am really excited about learning German but it will be very strange not to hear my native tongue spoken and see it written as a matter of course. All the crazy permutations of English – the way the London schoolkids on the bus use words, hearing it evolve around me. Reading bad signage and laughing at the mistakes and funny turns of phrase caused by those who aren’t as expert as me. Now I’ll be the one wrangling and mangling words and I’m pretty sure Schweizerdeutsch is not nearly so flexible as the language I’ve always known.
  • Cheap stuff. And knowing where to get it. They say London is expensive. But it’s not, compared to Switzerland. At least, not round here, in the grungy area of North London I reside. Food and groceries are cheaper. Clothes are cheaper, furniture, homewares, etc. etc. It’s not just that though, it’s…
  • The familiarity of crap. There’s plenty of crap here. But at least it’s familiar crap. My crap, I could say. Although a lot of it is actually other people’s dog’s crap and disgusting chicken bones on the footpath which I lay absolutely NO claim to! But, like the aforementioned cheap stuff, at least I know what stuff is, where to get it, how to avoid it, etc. Oh you know what I mean.
  • Nails. I’ve been getting my nails done with acrylic overlays for the past five (!) years. I’m going to have to give them up because it costs CHF60 (£40) in Zurich, compared to £15 here. I will miss the silly nail art I’ve been rocking (Facebook friends can see my nail art pictures here) and I’m afraid it will mean I start biting them again to boot : (

This has turned into rather a long entry. I’ll have to tell you about the stuff I won’t miss in another post!

The Pricetag of a Freitag Bag

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I went to the Freitag store yesterday with P. Pretty much a must-do pilgrimage for anyone visiting Zurich. Man, those bags are expensive!

Freitag bags are a Zurich invention and they have a funky store made from a vertical stack of old shipping containers in Zuri West (the newly hip, ex-industrial, inner-city area of town). I’ve been past the store a few times but this was the first time I entered it. As you can imagine, it’s not exactly a buggy (stroller) friendly building.

We’ve been experimenting with leaving the buggy behind, which is what we did. The transport here is so easy and there’s LOTS of it. So we caught a tram to a park I’d spotted a few days ago on an earlier random tram trip. Then I checked the map and realised I could get a bus across to Hardbrucke/ Zuri West to Freitag. Win.

I’m hoping to get one of the bags as a gift for someone back in London. It seems like a useful, cool, practical thing that is also very “Zurich”. They do cost a lot and I am happy to pay the money, but what if the recipient doesn’t like it? They’re all a bit old and beaten-up looking (which is the point – the bags are made out of recycled truck tarpaulins) but it might not be to everyone’s taste. I find present buying so hard, for pretty much this exact reason. I want to get people something great, but if they don’t love it, I’d rather not spend so much, add to the unwanted tat of the world etc. And, if I’m brutally honest, maybe I’m just worried they won’t know how much I paid and therefore, how much I value them… it’s awful that it feels like money= an expression of worth/value in this instance.

On a positive note, you get an amazing view from the top of Freitag tower, although I didn’t take any pics, d’oh – next time! And it was fun to browse all the different bag designs. Plus I’m sure hefting a 15kg? child the whole way to the top was good exercise.

I came home and looked Freitag up and, grudgingly, can kinda see why they cost so much. I guess, like most Swiss-made things I’ve come across so far, it falls into the “reassuringly expensive” category. If you pay that much, you’re hopefully buying something that’s very good quality, sustainably & locally produced, non-sweatshop etc. And hipster as hell, of course. 

Zurich Reconnaissance Mission

Lake Zurich

Two weeks in Zurich and we’ve found a lovely flat, checked out a nursery for P, got registered (hoping for B permits but it’s all a mystery/ lottery until the thing arrives in the post), set up cable TV/phone/internet to the new flat, opened a bank account (or rather, many bank accounts but all bundled in together… it’s complicated) and will see about enrolling in German lessons on Tuesday. Phew!

I’ve also paid WAY too much for passport photos and dealt with more bureaucratic annoyingness from HI’s work than I even want to talk about. C’est la vie. Or however you say that in German.

On balance though, living in Zurich is going to be amazing. It’s been great to spend these couple of weeks here just stooging around on the trams, familiarising myself with the city and the lake, checking out some parks and playgrounds with P and getting a handle on the supermarkets etc. Mmm supermarkets.

Have developed an unhealthy addiction to Berliners (vanilla creme or jam-filled donuts) and vacuum-packed “instant” rosti .

And I am loving the Swiss efficiency in stuff so far. Ohyes. It’s a good country for anal types. Especially parental – paranals?  ha ha ha

I think I almost believe that we’re really, actually moving here now.