Back in Switzerland

It’s good to be back home again, even though this statement is a little bit ambivalent. During the last five years the word “home” took on a new meaning: instead of meaning “country of birth” we learned that home is where we live right now. So, to be more precise we should say we left home to go home. And that’s almost exactly how we felt. It was hard to leave the unique community of Three Hills behind. We met people who became dear; we got to appreciate services like the library and their kids program; Three Hills is small enough to get to know individual persons, but big enough to prevent people from knowing everything about each other (and all the gossip that follows from that); there are Christians in all walks of life; doctors, nurses, and dentist assistants attend the same church, the college professor’s wife cleans your teeth, your fellow students work at the till in IGA or serve you food in a restaurant, etc. And lastly, Three Hills is home to our two kids. So we left home.
But we also came home. We moved into an apartment in the town I grew up in; we meet with long-standing friends again; we are again part of the church where we had been involved for 20 years before we came to Canada; we have a public transport system available where there’s a bus every 5 minutes (and people still run to catch it); etc.
So, everything is familiar, but still strange. After five years on the Prairies I feel like things are just a little bit too close together. The big radio tower, which used to be far away on a hilltop, has mysteriously moved closer. The ride with public transport into the city centre used to be much longer. Now, it seems like such a short distance until you’re in the bustle of Bern. There are houses everywhere, in fact you can drive for hours and never really get out of sight of a town or a village. And there are people all over the place. It’s crowded.
The first few days where like a dream. There was the time shift that made us groggy, and all the Christmas festivities with relatives definitely put us into a different world. The first week and a half just passed without us really noticing a lot. But after that, reality got hold of us pretty fast. We had to figure out how to fit all our groceries into a fridge the size of a Canadian kitchen cupboard (the one above or below the counter), including the freezer, by the way, which has the size of a drawer. Then we had to deal with the fact that you can only buy one-litre milk bottles (where would you put a pint of milk in that fridge anyway), which then means you have to go shopping every other day. But we definitely knew we where in Switzerland, when we wanted to buy meat and realised that the chicken on sale cost about twice as much as the beef in Canada. So here we were, trying to adapt to being home where everything is (supposed to be) familiar.
We live in a three bedroom flat on the forth floor of an apartment building. It is about two-thirds the size of our apartment in Three Hills, so we have to adapt a little bit. The kids have their own bedrooms, now, and we put the “office” in a corner of the master bedroom. The living room is a little small, so we only have a table and a three-seater coach in there.
It’s not too well insulated, therefore we have to make sure our kids do not make too much noise. The first few nights Joelle cried from about 12am to 4am. The next morning we met our downstairs neighbour in the stairwell and, concerned as we were, we asked if she had heard our daughter. She said: “Yes, but at 3:30am I got too tired and fell asleep.” Oops. Fortunately, she has children, too, and therefore some understanding. However, a few days earlier, when the same neighbour (who is also the caretaker) gave us an introduction to the laundry room, she told us, that shutters shouldn’t be opened or closed between 10pm and 8am, since it makes a lot of noise. It was only the night before (the night we arrived in Switzerland) when we had closed them – with difficulties because one of the shutters got stuck and I had to do quite some rattling until it broke free – around 12am. This is Switzerland: Lots of rules - and people actually following them.
The building is right next to the railway line. A Swiss railway line that is, with trains every other minute. From our living room window (or our balcony, which we haven’t used a lot despite the rather warm weather) we can see them pass by and this is quite a show for Niklas. He already knows most of the different train compositions and sometimes it is rather hard to eat breakfast with all the excitement outside. Fortunately, our windows are insulated quite well, so there is not a lot of noise from the passing trains.
All in all we are thankful for everything that was provided through God’s grace. The apartment, though small, is exactly what we need. When we arrived, our cupboards were filled with groceries, goodies, gift cards and more – donated by people from our congregation. Most of the rooms were already furnished and we didn’t actually had to move stuff in. And while we are still struggling a little to adapt, while we are still figuring out how to safe money on groceries, while we still arrange and rearrange our apartment, we know that we are blessed by God with all the things we have.

Our apartment building

We live on the top floor 2nd balcony from the left

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The Gerbestrasse

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Radio tower Bantiger: View from our bedroom