A "typique" Swiss day

Today we decided to pretend we were real Swiss on a typical Saturday. Or, at least, we decided to pretend we were the people that are pictured in the postcards on all of the regional Swiss tourist offices and have a Swiss-image tourist impression of a "typical Swiss day."

Well, scratch that, because we started the day with a typical American breakfast of buttermilk pancakes. I found buttermilk at Coop! Our first real American breakfast! (We even found a meat resembling American bacon!) Okay, let's forget about that and move onto our "typical Swiss day."

The day starts with us driving down to the Pully Centre train station with Laura's passport (and passport photo) in hand so that she can buy her monthly Swiss train pass to make it slightly less expensive to get to work. You dummies -- Swiss train network offices are closed on Saturdays and Sundays. How typically Swiss!

Moving on, we depart Pully Centre without a monthly train pass but with high spirits for a great day.

Leysin. Beautiful? You decide.
 (Picture by Roland Zumbuehl, Arlesheim, courtesy Picswiss)

Pull off the motorway for our first fill-up of gas. $65 (equivalent) and <11 gallons later we pull back onto the motorway. Our destination: Leysin, a small resort town up in the mountains less than an hour's drive away. Our mission: snow tubing, or as they call it here, tobogganing (I know, I know).

Leysin is distinguished more by its proximity to Lausanne, not by its massive skiing or picturesque beauty. Although I feel ridiculous (and perhaps typically Swiss?) for saying that. Had we been snow tubing toboganning at this place anywhere within a day's drive of our home in Minneapolis I would have been awestruck. Now, two weeks in Switzerland and I'm thinking, it's okay, not much of a view....

Before we begin our snow tubing toboganning it's time for lunch. We again decided to do the typical Swiss thing and picnic. Driving through Leysin, though, we're having a hard time finding a place to do this. Had we gone directly to the snow tubing toboganning place we would have found a ridiculously cool snow cave with picnic bench inside just to suit our needs. But, we're not typically Swiss enough to think of this. So we drive around Leysin looking for a park bench. We finally spot one and make a quick maneuver to pull into a little turn-out next to the road. But, looking at the park bench, we reconsider (as it's in the shade), and there's a nice view over the valley directly in front of our car. So we lay our blanket down in front of the car, position Laura and me against the drop-off (another typically Swiss thing: no guard rails in front of death-inducing drops) and sit down to eat. Only after sitting down do we realize that we have parked in the neighborhood dog-business area. We are literally sitting on top of and surrounded by massive quantities of dog poop. I think everyone except Laura had already stepped in it, too. I'll leave the next few minutes of our adventure to your active imaginations, but while it's sort of funny to think back on, it was definitely not fun at the time.

What to say about snow tubing toboganning? The boys had fun. Here are pictures to prove it.

Oh, all right, there is something to say. The Swiss seem to be utterly unafraid of lawsuits. There were no restrictions as to how many tubes you and your friends could link together. The runs were ice-slick fast and heavily banked. The place offered free helmets but didn't insist that anyone wear one, etc. It was fun, but also very not-American.

Raclette cheese pulled out from the raclette grill.
It's not quite ready...

My meal with sides. Note potatoes with
yummy, gooey raclette cheese!

So we return home. What to eat after a day in the mountains? A typical Swiss meal, of course! No, not fondue. This is raclette, a traditional meal from Valais, the neighboring mountainous French-speaking canton. Here's how the meal goes. Pick a bunch of things to lay on a plate. It's really up to you, but typically would include some dry-aged meats, small pickles, pickled onions, maybe some fruit like sliced pears, perhaps some bacon. Then, boil some small potatoes. Put the potatoes on your plate along with whatever you like from the side dishes. Then, take raclette cheese, and put it inside a raclette machine that melts and browns a little bit the cheese. Pull your melted, gooey, yummy cheese out and scape it off over your potatoes (raclette is apparently French for "to scrape"). Pair this with some white Swiss wine and Voila! Oh. My. God. I think I have a new favorite meal. Seriously, like maybe better than prime rib meal. Laura thinks I'm insane. (But she really liked it, too. Still, the best meal? Jared, you're crazy!) I may be crazy, but I know what I like.

Absence of (initial) stress!

UPDATE: Saturday, Jan 8 (next morning)

Stress has returned. Still, last night was fun while it lasted!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

During dinner today, Laura remarked how no one seemed stressed! No snapping. No temper tantrums. But, really, you could just see that all four of us were relaxed and contented at the counter.

Laura started work on Wednesday, and three days in the office was enough, I think, for her to feel like she'll be able to do this. It's manageable, if a lot.

The boys have been playing well together the last few days. I think they're feeling like the apartment is home. They realize that while there are lots of cool (or not so cool) new and different things, there are plenty of things to keep them grounded, too. And, our family is together. They saw the school on Monday, and I think they're looking forward to starting next week and meeting some friends, but right now they're doing great just being friends.

For me, the apartment is still not settled, but it's much better than it's been. I've been able to accomplish about 1-1/4 tasks per day with the kids home. I'm looking forward to school starting next week. Give me one day and I think I can get the pictures hung and the cave in order. I need to make a trip to Hornbach (the equivalent of Home Depot), but I'm not trying to bring the kids there while I wander around for hours. But, at least I know where it is!

Hey, I'm not kidding myself. We're going to have a lot more stress, probably some depression, and tough times ahead before we get into a real rhythm here. But, for now we're doing pretty well! It feels good.

Le chat

a.k.a. Ezra

Poor quality photo: Cat's are no good at following directions.

Well, yesterday he arrived. I can't say I'd really been missing him, but on the positive side, I can't say I'm not happy he's here. It does make it seem like we're really home now. The boys, for one, are thrilled that he's here. And, really, that's the whole point.

All the experts, whoever they are, really really recommend that you bring your pets with you on an expat tour, especially if you have kids -- apparently it helps a lot with the transition, providing an attachment to home. This is the reason that Laura's employer covers (most of) the cost of bringing a pet. You couldn't imagine how much it costs to move a pet overseas. In our case, it will end up costing over $3500!

Here's an overview of Ezra's journey:

• Sometime in November: Ezra gets up to date on rabies vaccine. Also, a Feline Leukemia shot. Also, a rice-grain-sized RFID chip injected into his shoulder. This is required for entering Switzerland. Ezra already had an RFID chip in his shoulder, but of course we're from the US, so we use a 9 digit transmitter that is incompatible with the standard 15 digit RFID transmitter that the rest of the world uses. So, now Ezra has two RFID chips in his neck.
• December 21: We put Ezra into the kennel at our vet. It would be nice if he didn't need to be there so long, but our house closes on December 22.
• December 27: Our vet examines Ezra and fills out required entry paperwork that will have to be reviewed and approved by the USDA. This has to happen within 10 days of entering Switzerland. We're supposed to be there, but Laura pre-paid and pre-approved on 12/21 since we're touching down in Geneva about the same time Ezra is being looked at by the vet.
• January 3: Someone picks up Ezra from the vet and kennels him near the airport. Ezra will fly out very early the next morning, before the vet is open. I'm not sure who kenneled him or how much it will cost  (but I'm sure we'll be getting the bill soon).
• January 4: Ezra is picked up from the kennel and then flies from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Houston, then from Houston to Newark. He spends the night at a "kitty hotel" at Newark airport.
• January 5: Ezra flies from Newark to Zurich, landing in the morning on Jan. 6.
• January 6: Some poor soul (who we later find out is a pleasant man named Pasquale) greets Ezra at the Zurich airport, shepherds him through Swiss customs, and loads him in a van for the 2-1/2 drive to Pully. I know how Ezra travels -- not well. 

Ezra's cage, complete with stickers.

We were just finishing lunch when the doorbell rang. The kids shouted with joy, leapt from their stools, and sprinted for the front door. They were extremely happy to see Ezra and very curious about his trip. Do you remember those old Loony Tunes cartoons when Bugs Bunny would streak around the world in 5 seconds and return to the screen with a suitcase covered in stickers and stamps from all the cities he'd been through? Ezra's cage reminded me of those cartoons with its variegated appearance: dotted with bright fluorescent stickers and labels and covered in various types of packing tape. He had some of his old food strapped to the top of the cage, so he's actually been enjoying American cat food before we switch him to the better Swiss stuff. (I mean, it has to be better, right? It costs twice as much as the special natural food we'd been buying him in the US. Like most pets, he probably eats better than we do.)

I did have to repeatedly remind the boys not to bother Ezra as we opened the cage and let him out. He tentatively moved out of the cage, and they dutifully stayed 9 - 12 inches away from him (away, not far away) as he examined every square inch of his new territory three or four times. Finally, after about three hours he came over to us and started rubbing up against us asking for rubs and pets, and since that time he's been the same old cat just as if he'd never left our Minnesota house. Apparently, cats get over the stress of moving quite a bit faster than people do!

*** One last note about the move. It required a lot of coordination and effort (and money) on our part to get him here, but we couldn't have done it without the help of a pet relocation company (another thing I never knew existed three months ago). Petrelocation.com was really great about the move. They coordinated all the flights and drivers, coordinated with our vet, handled much of the paperwork, etc. They did a great job. Maybe too great a job, in my mind. I mean, he is just a cat, right? But, I think petrelocation.com is really a great service, especially for people who see their pets as a true part of the family instead of just as a pet. (I'm kind of "just as a pet" guy, but I may be in a minority in our family on this one. ***

Great Things about Switzerland, Part 1

Toilet Paper!

I have to admit that six days ago I never thought I'd be singing the praises of Swiss toilet paper. In fact, to be honest, I didn't even like Swiss toilet paper when I first used it. However, those of you who have used professional packers/movers will understand that lots of weird things get moved to your new house. I've heard stories of trash cans getting packed...with the trash. Well, we didn't have that happen, but they did ship a half-used roll of toilet paper from our master bathroom. So, finding it cushioned inside wrapping paper, and having finished our first roll of Swiss toilet paper, I decided that we should probably polish it off. And, after using it today after an average bathroom evolution, I can tell you all that US toilet paper is total crap!!!!


Talk to anyone who has worked for P&G or Kimberly-Clark and they will tell you that Americans care about one thing regarding toilet paper: softness. Chemists spend years trying to decode the secret to providing the softest swaddling of American behinds, sourcing virgin fibers from Canadian forests to create 2-ply sheets of the softest, lightest, most ephemeral material one can find. Swiss care nothing about softness -- they're all business. The goal, post-movement, is cleanliness. So, Swiss toilet paper is made up of 3 plies of sturdy, thick paper. To heck with comfort; there's a mission to be accomplished here!

3-Ply toilet paper from Sean Fallon at gizmodo.com

Two weeks ago I was with the Americans. But, after a week spent wielding the sturdy Swiss shield of paper, this afternoon I suddenly found myself approaching the task with morbid trepidation, painfully worried that the US 2-ply softness would not stand up to the task of prohibiting contact between my hand and something that I dare not speak about here (and barely want to contemplate in the bathroom). The US toilet paper did stand up to the job, but I used about three times the volume as I once used in the US, and it's a process I hardly want to repeat tomorrow.

So, as of today, count me as a strong advocate for Swiss toilet paper!

*** Added Swiss toilet paper bonus: By law (I think) European toilet paper has to be made up of at least 50% recycled paper content. The toilet paper we bought was 100% recycled, which is easy to find -- it makes up about half of the shelf space in stores. We usually used recycled TP in the states, but it was very difficult to find. My brother goes to great lengths to seek it out with the personal mantra, "They're not cutting down trees just so I can wipe my @$$." ***

Registering with the Commune of Pully

Tomorrow is a very big day. We will register with our commune: Pully (POO-yee). This is the big event that will allow us to do things like register our car, buy train passes, get a driver's license, open a bank account, get a cell phone, and most important get permission to receive our Permit B -- our Swiss residency permit. Tomorrow morning, we won't actually receive the Permit B, but if we're lucky and assertive enough, we will walk out with a "letter of attestation," which will still allow us to do these things. The actual Permit B will come (hopefully) in a few weeks.

Switzerland is unique because it really is a confederation of individual states (cantons) which are a further confederation of communes (towns or villages, basically). It's really the dream of most of my Republican friends, because the federal government does not have very strong powers. Our registration and residency, for example, is really driven by the commune and the canton. In fact, any significant federal law changes generally require a direct referendum of all of the citizens. Unlike in the US, however, every citizen is required by law to vote. And, apparently, a typical referendum can run into the dozens of pages. So, in any case, while we will have a Swiss residency permit, it is really authorized by the canton of Vaud (Voe) acting on behalf of the commune of Pully.

Tomorrow is also a big day because, assuming we get a letter of attestation, we hope to open our Swiss bank account and then meet with an insurance agent to get insurance. (What insurance? A lot of insurance. That may be a topic for another post.) Opening a Swiss bank account is really nothing like you see in the movies, or maybe it is if you have a few million dollars you want to deposit, which we obviously do not! Credit Suisse is out, because they don't give credit cards to Americans. We have heard that the cantonal bank (BCV) has a quota for the number of Americans they'll allow to open accounts. Perhaps we'll be lucky since we'll be meeting with them on January 4. Or, perhaps we'll go the route of basically all of the expats we know and open with UBS. I don't think they'll be very impressed when we want to open an account with...hmm, maybe $500?

So, I guess we'll close with a little bit about our commune or village of Pully. Pully is basically an inner-ring suburb of Lausanne. We can drive to central Lausanne in about 10 minutes, or be at the Gare de Lausanne (Lausanne train station) with a 2 minute train ride from our nearest train station, Pully-Nord (about a 5 minute walk). Pully has about 16,000 residents, and about a quarter of those are foreign nationals. It's somewhat unique in that it has two train stations: Gare de Pully and Gare de Pully-Nord. The Pully village center is located on the downhill side of Gare de Pully. Everything around here is on a hill sloping down to Lac Leman (Lake Geneva), either a steep hill or a really steep hill. Our apartment is located up on the hillside looking over the town and the lake. It would take us about 5 minutes to walk down to Pully-Nord, another 5-10 minutes to walk down to Pully Center, and another 15 minutes or so to walk down to the lakeshore. Coming back up the hill, you may want to extend those times! I guess we're ending with our apartment. So, if you're lucky and it's a clear day (we've had one of those since we got here), you can look out from our living room over the town of Pully, across Lake Leman, and see the French Alps looming over the horizon. At night you can see the lights of Evian across the water. It's really not a bad place to be....

Eating in Switzerland, Part 1

Swiss grocery stores

(This is the first in a probably unending number of posts on Swiss eating and food-buying. I already know what post #2 and #3 will be. Stay tuned, because #2 will be pretty interesting....)

My dad keeps asking about the neighborhood fromagerie and boucherie, etc. He loves the idea of traipsing out on his own and visiting with the shop owners, sampling some cheese, stopping to talk to a butcher, etc. Dad, I've got good news! I did find the local fromager -- but it's not a cute little shop in a 300 year old house; his shop is in the little concrete-form-construction strip mall attached to the train station. And, really, when it comes to buying food in Switzerland, you're essentially talking about visiting one of the two Swiss grocery chains: Migros (MEE-grow) or Coop (COPE). The only real difference, so far as I can tell so far, is that Coop sells wine and liquor, and Migros doesn't. Oh, and Migros has a medium orange logo and Coop has dark orange and light orange (oooohhh)....

I made two "essentials" runs to the grocery store on my own, but we all went to the grocery for the first time two days ago. I needed help, because I can't buy everything myself. In a sea of different cleaners on the shelf that I can only differentiate by color, I needed someone to be able to read the labels for me and tell me which one can be used on wood floors, for example. I assumed they were the brown-tinged ones that looked kind of the same color as Pine-Sol or Murphy's Oil Wax in the US, but is that a good way to make a choice when our parquet floors are at stake? Especially when we just found out that damage claims when renters move out of apartments in Switzerland can run into the thousands of dollars?!

So, I needed Laura's help. And, when it comes to cleaning products I have control issues, so I couldn't send her out to buy them by herself. That meant the kids were coming, too. So, we plugged "Coop" into the tomtom, looked for the biggest sounding one (Coop Supercentre, Lausanne) and headed off.

*** Sidenote: Why did I need Laura? No, she's no better at reading French than I am, but remember that Switzerland has three official languages. So, while pretty much all of the help at the store only speak French (or at least, only admit to speaking French), all of the products are labeled in German, French and Italian. And, I have a really good  German speaking wife (don't bother asking -- she'll never admit it). ***

Of course, while our main objective on Friday was to go shopping, we didn't end up striking out until late afternoon. And, of course, Swiss supermarkets get really busy in late afternoon/early evening because they close by 7 pm. And, of course, because it was coming up on a holiday weekend, the grocery stores would be closed on Saturday instead of only Sunday (and maybe even Monday), so, well, I don't need to explain. The store was packed. And, 30 minutes in, I'm still trying to decide whether I should buy the Coop brand CFL lightbulb or pay twice as much for the Philips light bulb to get the "rapid start" technology. We haven't even made it to the detergent aisle yet, to say nothing about getting to any of the food.

So, we've been in this packed grocery store for nearly an hour and a half. Laura has gone to the aisle of chocolate (seriously, the grocery stores here have a whole aisle of chocolate bars) and found the one chocolate bar in all of Switzerland that doesn't have nut cross-contamination and pulled out a couple of squares because the kids are starting to completely lose it, and I'm looking for bacon. Do you know how much meat Swiss must eat? Refrigerated case upon refrigerated case of processed meat products: lots and lots of sausage, and unsliced bacon, but how does one slice bacon, anyway? I'm trying to picture myself slicing off thin ribbons of bacon with our extremely expensive Wusthof knives, and I just can't see it. I can hear American accents that are obviously my kids eight aisles over that are on the verge of screaming, and I grab some traditional Vaudoise (our region) sausage that looks sort of like breakfast sausage (we'll find out on Saturday it doesn't taste that way), and scurry off for the last two items on my list: pasta and rice.

And, this is where I begin to understand what the word "foreign" means. I mean, pasta and rice, they're about the same aren't they? Have I completely forgotten, or aren't pasta and rice usually in the same aisle in US grocery stores? Or at least in adjacent aisles? I think of them as really pretty similar foods and meals. Both starches that can serve as either a base of a meal or a as a side. I find the pasta pretty quickly, but I just can't seem to find the rice. So, I start what I think is a pretty reasonable search plan for the rice -- it would be a good idea for a lost person. Start in the last known location, and make concentric circles working your way out. I start at the pasta aisle and start working my way further and further out. You know where this is going. Pasta was in an aisle basically in the center of the store. When I found the rice, it was in the middle of a shelf on the outside side wall of the grocery. Did I cover the entire grocery store before I found the rice? No, but I did cover a good 80+%....

So, we were finally done. By some miraculous turn of events we happened upon a cashier with no line and were able to begin the process of unloading our overflowing 1/3 US-size shopping cart of food. We had also miraculously remembered our own bags, and the check-out process went very smoothly, even though we have to bag our own groceries (Ah, I'm from Minneapolis! I've shopped at Cub and Rainbow! I can do this!). But, the conveyor moves about 3 times faster than in Minnesota. And, all of the packages are very fragile. And nearly-supersonic-speed food items are alternately crushing our groceries or my hands as I'm trying to set a world-record pace for bag stuffing. And the line behind the cashier is rapidly growing and many Swiss eyes are rolling in our general direction. And our really not very adequate shopping list (as of Sunday most of the food is already gone) came to over $400.

But, success! We're done! We escaped in less than two hours! The boys, although annoying many patrons, have not killed each other!

And, we have many (I hope much briefer) stories and excitement that we will be able to share later:

- Shopping carts and how you get them (boys were entranced by this)
- Parking spaces (you're not in the USA anymore)
- Swiss people love Swiss food (and Swiss everything), aka, how a 7 million person country can have one of the highest standards of living in the world
- Labeling your own produce
- Speaking of produce, mm yum, do they ever have good produce here!
- Swiss liquor prices (urg) but also Swiss wine and Champagne prices (yay!)
- Etc.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Or, How to Move to Switzerland in 3 Simple Steps

Yesterday our container was pulled off of the COSCO PANAMA in Rotterdam, Netherlands, so I thought now would be a good time to review just how our stuff is getting to Switzerland. This is really complicated, but also super cool. At least, if you're a geek like me....

Sea Shipment:

A few weeks ago, movers came to our house and loaded nearly everything we have into a standard 40' shipping container. Have you ever wondered what's on those containers you see traveling down the road?  They actually carry just about everything, from batteries to shelf-stable foods to paper to washing machines to computers -- pretty much anything that will fit in a 20' or 40' container and isn't time sensitive (air shipment) goes by container. The days of freighters being packed up with all sorts of different cargo by hand and forklift are essentially over. Containers ("boxes" in the industry parlance) modularize everything so that container ships can be unloaded and loaded in less than a day. Container ships spend pretty much all their time on the high seas moving from port to port; any wasted time is tying up a lot of capital. Anyway, a miniscule number of containers are carrying household goods like ours, and the next paragraphs outline the movement of our container.

• Monday, 11/15: Movers pack up nearly everything in boxes. Stuff that doesn't fit in boxes is wrapped in lots of paper and stretch wrap plastic. They are extremely careful with packing and padding everything that's going on an intercontinental move.
• Tuesday, 11/16: Everything is loaded into the container. It's like putting together a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with everything nestled together so that it won't move on the crane lifts or on the sea-crossing of the North Atlantic during winter. We don't fill the container, so they build a bulkhead across the back of our stuff to hold it in place.

• Wednesday, 11/17: A crane lifts our container off the truck dolly and places it on a train in St. Paul, MN. Destination: Port of Virginia, Norfolk, VA
• ???: Train arrives at Port of Virginia. Crane lifts container and places it in a stack of containers to wait for the arrival of COSCO PANAMA

• 12/1: Crane lifts container and places on COSCO PANAMA, a medium-size container ship that plies the North Atlantic on a continuous circuit between Europe and North America. COSCO PANAMA departs Norfolk.
• 12/2-12/3: COSCO PANAMA visits Charleston, SC.
• 12/3 - 12/12: COSCO PANAMA crosses North Atlantic at an average speed of a little over 20 mph.
• 12/12 - 12/13: COSCO PANAMA visits Antwerp, Belgium, less than 25 miles from Rotterdam. Why isn't our stuff offloaded here?

• 12/14 - 12/15: COSCO PANAMA visits Bremerhaven, Germany, the port city for Bremen, Germany. In another life I visited this port with the US Navy on board USS STARK (FFG-31). Hard to believe that was 12 years ago!
• 12/16: COSCO PANAMA arrives in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and our container is unloaded by crane. Within the next 1-2 days, our container should be processed through Swiss customs. It's unlikely to be opened if the paperwork is in order.
• ??? Sometime in the next few days a crane will lift our container onto a truck dolly, and the container will be trucked to the vicinity of Lausanne, Switzerland.*
• Week of 12/27: We will arrive in Switzerland, and the container will be driven to our apartment in Pully to unload. This is probably the first time the doors have been opened since the container left our house on 11/16 (see Swiss customs bullet above).

* Wait, why is our container trucked in Europe? I thought they used trains for everything over there? Au contraire, mon ami! Europe is huge for passenger trains. Counter-intuitively, only about 10% of European freight moves by rail (it's higher in Switzerland, but that's a subject for a different post). US freight rail shipment is much, much higher than Europe. (Actually, over 50%, but that's counting by weight and the numbers get skewed higher because of how much coal is shipped by rail to be used in our power plants.)

Air shipment:


Okay, if I haven't lost you by now, here's a super brief overview of the other 5% of our stuff. Last Friday, most of the rest of our stuff got put into boxes and put in a large crate that will fly to Switzerland (probably Zurich?). It departs the US on 12/20 and arrives in Switzerland on 12/22. Why do this? Sea shipment takes 4-6 weeks door-to-door. We kept some of the things we'd need longer at home for the air shipment, which takes about 2 weeks, including customs. Everything else that we're using after last Friday is going with us in 6 suitcases which we'll check onto our plane on 12/26. (We hope it fits!)

Hey, what about automobiles?

Yes, trains were covered on the sea shipment, planes on the air shipment, but we haven't gotten to automobiles yet. We neglected to cover one of the most important pieces of our cargo: our cat! Ezra will be boarded at our vet starting 12/22 when we close on our house. Then, on 1/4/2011, a man will come in a car to pick up his crate at the vet and drive him to the MSP airport. From there, Ezra will be put on the first of three planes to fly from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Houston, from Houston to Newark, and from Newark to Zurich. (If that sounds a little circuitous, it is, but over the past few months I've learned to stop asking why.) At the Zurich airport, Ezra will be cleaned, fed, and hopefully de-stressed. Then someone will put his crate in a car and drive him the three hours from Zurich right to our apartment in Pully. I feel for the driver, because Ezra does not like driving. Sound complicated? It is, and expensive! All told, moving Ezra will cost about $3500, which will make him a very expensive cat. Luckily, Laura's work will cover much of the cost. Having the cat move with us will be a good thing for the boys and family to ease the transition into Switzerland.

Whew! That was complicated. Thanks for staying with me if you made it this far! I haven't even begun to mention the paperwork. Switzerland requires a lot of it, and multiple copies and approvals. Have I mentioned that all paperwork must be filled out in blue ink? Learned that the hard way....