Our Haus and Stuff

An explanation of the name of this blog. Xavier's favorite thing to eat is a cheeseburger and french fries. I thought he and I would make our mission when we do our thing together to find the best burger and fry place in the city and I would document it here. So that is the name for now, I am sure it will change.

I am sure, my dear readers, that you will read us talking about how expensive stuff can be here. To give you some perspective since I am on the topic of burgers and fries, a McDonalds quarter pounder with cheese meal is 13 chf, or 13 dollars. That is before supersizing.

Judy requested some info and pics of where we are living.

First off here is a google map link to our place.

We wanted to stick with the Waldorf (or Steiner Schule as they say here) so we only had a few options. We had 4 reasonable choices to start but I quickly eliminated the two outside of the city for transportation reasons. So it came down to Bern and Ittigen. I didn't see anything I liked around the Bern school. Places were either too expensive, too small or required multiple transfers to get to the school. I found a few places in Ittigen, the one I ended up taking is literally across the street from the school. (as you can see by the map)

OK, on to the pictures:

This first one is the fancy digs I stayed in for the first 5 weeks here. Yes, it was as depressing as it looks. For furniture I had a bed and a floor. There was a built in closet, so I didn't have to live out of my suitcase at least, but the lack of comfort was a motivation to find something better. The guy I rented from was pretty cool . It served the need I had, but spending holidays (and birthdays) in a 9x11 room alone was fairly depressing.

And here is the result of furnishing an apartment from Ikea. On Jan 5 I went to ikea and purchased

3 complete beds with bedding

1 dining room table

6 dining room chairs

1 sleeper sofa

2 arm chairs

2 dressers

2 shelf units

various kitchen supplies and other stuff

I tried to use the chair to give some perspective to the ridiculous amounts of cardboard. There are no other packing materials in this pile, all paper, styrofoam and other random trash was disposed of seperately. At the bottom of the pile the boxes are already broken down. After about day 3 of 10 nights of assempbly, I just started throwing boxes on the pile.

Lastly, the dining room and the kitchen. The dining is much bigger than it looks in the photo. The table is currently set up where 8-10 people could sit at it and there is still room galore in the dining room. The kitchen is pretty nice. Granite(ish) countertops, and pretty good appliances. Kim and I are both trying to adjust to cooking with an electric stove, I have screwed up a few things due to lack of heat control.

There will be more photos of the place in the next post. I want the kids to provide there own opinion of their rooms and we are still waiting on some stuff from Ikea for the living room. let me know how the picture sizing is.