An end to all the lies!

No-one tells you what a great liar you have to become the second that you discover you are pregnant. And that it's not just a little white lie that you have to tell -- This is endurance-lying. Lying that lasts weeks, if not months, and feels like forever. Or, if you are some kind of a health freak (ahem ahem) and have decided to 'get your body ready for a potential pregnancy', get ready for the long-haul 6-9 month lying tour.

Everyone seems to have their own way of dealing with the potential suspicions that incessant sobriety can bring. And let me tell you, I had to get my story pretty straight pretty early - a wine, whiskey and blue-cheese lover such as myself was certainly going to be under the spotlight unless I had a good lie up my sleeve.

I stopped drinking at the start of April. That's right, April. A.P.R.I.L. "Really? Has it been that long?" asks the innocent bystander... "YES!" This is when my lying had to begin. It wasn't so hard at first -- I was on a health kick, which is what I told everyone, and I was detoxing my body. So no lying there. It was when those nosey people asked "Why?" that I had to either lie, or tell them to mind their own business. My story went something along the lines of me having bad allergies (true -- everyone knew it -- it was spring, after all) and needing to rid my body of all toxins to combat these effectively. A good lie, huh? Because, in part, it was true. And I had done something similar to this before.

The lie kind of lost its potency after six months though... I mean, surely I was detoxed already? This is where the real lying had to come in: "I just don't really want it any more." PFFFT. Who wouldn't want partake in a nice single-malt Auchentoshan, or have some of that wine that I picked out for the group (seeing as apparently a decent knowledge of wine and actually drinking the stuff are in no way connected)? I then resorted to lying about a variety of illnesses (which isn't hard to feign in the first few weeks!) -- flus, colds, jet lag, flare-ups of my almost-totally-under-control fibromylagia... I cant imagine, though, how my absence at Oktoberfest wasn't the equivalent of me waving an enormous 'I'm pregnant' sign at the world...

Though, maybe everyone knew, and they are all just very polite. It is Switzerland, after all :)

Let's just say that shouting out to the world that WE ARE HAVING A BABY was one of the greatest moments of relief in my life. Yes, Beanie had made it to the twelve week mark, and was therefore well on its way to being a fully formed little person, but also I didn't have to tell any more lies!

Duncan and I both had our moments of weakness... I mentioned to some of my netball girls over lunch one day that we were thinking about having kids sometimes soon (what a way to undo all my hard work!), and Dunc kept bringing up 'babies' and then having to tack on an unsubtle '...one day' onto the end of his sentences. Meanwhile, Beanie was in there, growing away in secret.

On a more serious note:

I know that everyone has their own personal ways of dealing with the seemingly endless lists of food and drink no-nos during pregnancy, and I have no problem at all with each woman doing what they are comfortable with. But I am one of those extremist personalities (apparently, according to a genetic reading I've had done through the company 23-and-me, I have a tendency towards an addictive personality, which is no surprise to me whatsoever, and I think very much goes hand in hand with this kind of behaviour), and I am not going to be drinking/caffeining/hamming/sushiing/bratwursting/soft-cheesing/runny-egging at all for a while. Hell, I've made it seven months so far, what's a while longer? And if Duncan and I are going to be making our own little Von Trapp family, it might definitely be a while... Though, I reserve the right to change my mind should a nice chilled wooded chardonnay be wafted in front of me on a summer's evening...

Lake views and a lost bike

Writing all the in-between scenes is boring. I'm trying to aim for 500 words a day and even that is tough at the moment.

Life updates:

- New apartment has been snagged! It is GORGEOUS! Moving in about three weeks from now... :)

- My beautiful bike was stolen...

It's strange how, after existing for so long with so few material possessions, the things that you do own seem to take on magical properties. That bike went through so much with me. It hurt me, I hurt it. Eventually, with time, we learnt to love each other. The thing, though, is that Dunc went through so much to make that bike perfect for me. So much of his sweat went into it. And only then could my sweat also go into it!

Anyway, I'm being positive, despite the fact that I am now a slave to the public transport system (NO!). A friend said to me that this can perhaps be seen as the closing of a chapter of my life, and the new bike I get will be the opening of another. This co-incides well with moving to a new place that is unfurnished, that we will make our own - evidence of our desire to continue our 'new' lives here in Zurich, and of our want of making it all less temporary. Strange how saying 'less temporary' seems easier to admit to all my friends than 'more permanent'. Hmm...

We've got a big few weeks coming up! I'll keep you informed.

Writing a Novel is Tough

Writing a novel is tough. Oh, don't worry, it's not like this is some kind of a grand revelation for me. It's just that there are parts of the job that are unexpectedly difficult.

Before I go about my whinge, it's of the utmost importance that I let you all know how much I love what I am doing. I had a bit of a whine to a friend here the other day, after eight hours of hard slog resulted in just six-hundred words (and this was eight hours of only writing, not editing, not planning, not brainstorming, not charting...), and they told me, “don't push too hard on something you love, that's an awesome way to get you to come to resent it.” My thoughts on this are that.... well... my current situation with my writing is that it is much more than my hobby. It's my job. And even while working at a job you absolutely love, there are days where you struggle. I know that. When I was teaching, it was the same. So I have to remind myself that one horribly frustrating day every month or so is totally acceptable. I won't grow to resent it - not a chance! I love it! And, for the record, the next day I bashed out about 1800 words in only two hours – who knew that was even possible!

So, parts of this writing business that have been unexpectedly difficult:

1. I get way too much pleasure from editing my work. I could happily spend a year just reworking the writing I have already completed, working on the atmosphere, the style, the imagery, the rhythm of my word choice, etc. This is a sure-fire way to feel very productive, and yet to produce nothing.

2. I HAVE TOO MANY IDEAS! I have to stop thinking. Just write. Otherwise my novel will end up with fifteen protagonists, each with their own flaws, their own journeys, etc. And... well, that's just no good. The organisational skills that go hand-in-hand with attempting to keep track of these ideas, deciding which are relevant, which can serve as sub-plot, and which will just have to wait for novel numbers two, three and four, are simply mind-boggling.

3. Having to consistently answer questions about my writing. I know that if I was not writing a novel myself, and I met a person who was writing a novel, I too would want to know what it was about. But what a ridiculously difficult question this is to answer! Earlier on in the process, I would follow the advice from another friend and answer this question with something along the lines of, “if I truly knew what it was about, I'd have finished it already”. But that doesn't fly anymore. I know what it's about - I just can't describe it effectively without making it sound ridiculously melodramatic, or just plain boring. I need to come up with a one-sentence fall-back answer. Incidentally, one thing that I love is when people ask me about my novel, but they ask very odd questions. Instead of asking what my novel is about, some people have asked me:

• “What's your main character like?”
  

• “Whose writing is similar to yours?”
  

• “Is your novel about relationships?”
  

• "What's the most important symbol in your book?"

• “What do you want people to get out of your novel?”

4. The guilt. I am just so lucky. I wonder, often, what I have done to deserve this incredible opportunity I currently have. I am just having too much fun. It's hard, I work my butt off, but I love it. Sure, all of this shouldn't bring feelings of guilt, but... what if nothing comes of it? Ooo... that's the scariest thing. Let's not think about that, actually.With this guilt comes the need to consistently justify myself. Again, this is unreasonable, but that's just me.

5. The fear that I am wasting this opportunity, that I am not making the most of it, am not working hard enough, am not producing enough. This is a great motivator, actually.

30 Day Photography Challenge

So I've started a 30 Day Photography Challenge. I love photography, but I just never really focus on it. I should... I go through phases, I suppose.

Anyhow, this challenge is going to keep me inspired, I hope!

Day 1: Self Portrait

This was tough. I took a bunch, and it definitely came down to a toss up between two. Both I really liked, one for its vibrancy of colour, one for its shadows and light. Although I like the first colourful one as a photograph of me, I have chosen the second. I think it's a better photograph. But tough!

Day 2: Something I Wore Today

Today I am meant to take a photo of 'something I wore today'. BANAL! I suppose the challenge is to do something that is NOT banal... but I failed. I'm not much of a 'still life' photographer. Hate em, in fact. But in this way, it's good for me.

I tried taking a photo of my dirty shoe against the cobbles.

I tried taking a photo of my big wooden bangle next to a bunch of other round things...

I tried taking a photo of my shirt drying on the balcony...

Hated everything.

So I went with the banal. The boring. Will be happy to ignore this one in future.

Day 3: Clouds

AURGH! Clouds are my favourite thing to photograph! But yesterday was a wholly SHITE day for cloud photography! Nothing remotely interesting - just whispy clouds at best, with no real form or body, and I was looking after my friend's baby for the whole day, so I couldn't go out and explore... it was bloody tough.

So here is my official DAY 3 PHOTOGRAPH (taken at sunset, obviously, at netball training):

Now, just for reference, here are the kind of cloud pictures I like to take (not saying this is perfect, far far far from it, but you get the idea), and, incidentally, I took just five days ago. When the clouds were good. Stupid clouds.

Day 4: Something Green
(can you spot it?)

I had fun with this one. Yes, it's another bloody still-life, but I enjoyed it!

To me, this photo is evidence of my expat life: In Australia, only the rich and famous could afford a load of berries like this! I feel as though it also demonstrates my current health-kick.

I still don't really know if it works to have my hand in the pic...



... EDIT: I'm giving up on this photography challenge. I hate having to take pictures of things I don't want to photograph, simply because it's 'clouds' day, or whatever. I know, I'm a quitter. But even after four days I am in the habit of bringing my camera with me places, which was really the point anyhow...

Chess before coffee?

So Duncan and I have gotten into the weekend ritual of going to the cute little cafe (Bubbles) across the road and playing chess over breakfast. That's right - chess before coffee. Insanity, right? But I love it. These are the kind of things that remind me of the level of our compatibility.

We used to play chess all the time when we were traveling, particularly after we finished the cycling and transferred to trains as our main form of transport. My little notebook, initially filled with statistics such as average speed, total distance, top speed, etc., started to instead be filled with tallies of how many times Dunc had beaten me at chess. Yes, you read right. Not 'who won', but 'how many times Dunc beat me'.

He won a total of nineteen times before, on Christmas Eve (after I had plied him with a lot of that special Danish Christmas beer) I finally beat him. Time to insert another column in my notebook!

Now, it seems we are pretty even. The last three times I have won two times (including this morning!) and the other was a stalemate. Love it! I wonder, though, if I am actually getting better at chess, or if I am just learning how he plays chess...

In other news, I'm about to head to the lake for a swim down near my lovely Finnish friend's place. She's due to give birth in under three weeks! I hope she doesn't go into labour when we are out in the middle! Haha. It's alright - I've been practicing my survival stroke, so I've got it covered. I think I'll bring my waterproof camera to take gorgeous pictures of her belly sticking out of the water as she does backstroke with the mountains behind her.

Ahoy there! It's been a while, yes, I know. But remember, no blog post means major advancements in my novel writing... right? Actually, for the past few months, the major lack in blog posts have been more-so related to major advancements in my German language skills. I'm just a big whirl of languagey goodness in all its forms at the moment.

Why the German language and I are no longer friends:
It's a total bastard of a language. I mean... there are worse, it's true. I can't imagine how frustrated I'd be after a couple of months of learning Mandarin, for example. Or perhaps even French.

But, I mean, REALLY. Surely I can just learn one-for-one translations, develop my vocabulary, and then plough straight in, right? Nup. I have to learn bloody grammar. And yes, it is getting better. In my head, when sorting out what to say to someone and the crazy order in which my words should flow, I'm quite often getting it right. Without trying. It is slowly becoming automatic.

But some things will never be automatic, I fear. Take this example from Mark Twain's incredible essay, entitled 'The Awful German Language':

"The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions... are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. Here is an example: 'The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED." '

I will not continue to quote Mark Twain, though he manages to encapsulate all of my problems so concisely it nauseates me. If you'd like a ridiculously entertaining read on how Awful this German Language is, head here: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

I was studying it intensively, which means a solid 2.5 hours (with homework stacked ontop of that) of classes each day, where you are only able to speak German. Using any English in these classes is sure to earn you a stink-eye. After a little over two months of this, I realised two things:
1. I simply cannot absorb any more information. I need time to mull over this and actually use it without ploughing onto the next ridiculously difficult unit.
2. I had written only 1000 words of my novel.

Hence, I've pulled back. I am now taking the second most intensive option, which is (yes, really) one 1.5hour class, once a week.

The Great Battle (A.K.A. Writing a novel)
BUT, my novel is now coming along great guns! I just love writing it, I love getting so caught up in it that I lose all track of time, I love re-reading my work and being completely engrossed in it, forgetting it was me that wrote it. I love sharing it with a couple of people in the two writing groups I now belong to, and receiving the kind of praise that makes me blush for days afterwards. I love having this fire inside me, where I know that it is just a matter of time until I have it written.

So, yeah, it's going well. :)

Life in General
Switzerland is incredible. Summer is here, which means weekends of grilling with friends, swimming in the lake, cocktails by the river, and lots of terrace cafes, restaurants, bars, etc. It's a good life, this.

We have really gotten into a groove here, so I find it difficult to update people with 'news' - it's just our 'normal life' now. Dunc's work is going really well, we are making lots of friends and continually meeting new people. But Zurich is a small enough city that, even now, we are realising everyone is connected. I met a woman at my writing group, for instance, and we are going to get together next week to play some music. Turns out she runs a business with two other people - one of whom I met days earlier at a baby shower, the other is also in a writing group of mine. And her husband works with Dunc. :) That tends to be how things here happen. Everyone is connected.

It's nice. :)

One Year Later...

Today is April 3rd. Countless times yesterday I found myself staring at the date, knowing that it held some grand significance, aware that I was probably missing a national festival, an important birthday, or other such event. But no, this morning, while sitting here in 'Bubbles' cafe with my second cappuccino, amazed at the number of thin-as-a-rake people that can order and scoff a full English breakfast with seemingly no consequence, I realise that I have now been away from Perth for one year and one day.

The second of April - I spent weeks and weeks last year, petrified, watching as the calendar crept closer and closer to D-Day. I vividly remember a moment of weakness around one week before I left, hysterically telling my work-friend, Clare, that 'I don't even really like camping! And I definitely don't like cycling!' A funny thing to be experiencing on the eve of a year-long round-Europe cycling and camping adventure.

I've been waiting for the right time to divulge my self-discoveries: Discovering what is truly important to me; discovering what really makes me happy (and unhappy); Discovering what it is that makes my relationship with my husband work; Discovering what it is that makes me me, despite where I am, what I am doing and who I am with. And believe me, no one was more surprised by some of these revelations than me.
You're not going to get everything - I have to save some things for just myself. But I will share with you a couple that surprised me:


1. The degree to which my happiness (I use this word in its most Dalai Lamic sense) is related to my self image.

One of the reasons I was looking forward to this trip so much was to 'reset' my self-image. If I had to wear lycra all day every day, and my only out-of-lycra-option was some daggy ill-fitted (but light, quick-drying and functional!) shorts with a thermal top, and if I brought no make-up with me, and my hair was forever helmetted and therefore disastrous, then surely it would be only a matter of time before I would be happy with what I had and with what I was.

This was a terrible plan.

I am not someone to wear a lot of make-up, to get manicures, to wear fancy shoes (or any shoes over $20) or to have a wardrobe full of dresses. But I do tend to put on some mascara before going to the shops, and I do consistently worry about how much my hips are accentuated. And so, take away any possibility of feeling pretty (well, let's not get carried away. Let's just say 'not hideous') and I am truly miserable. I develop complete social phobia and feel that no-one can possibly look my direction without laughing or feeling sympathetic. I mean, I am more than happy in jeans and a black t-shirt, but when this is not even possible, and I must expose my legs, no matter how much of a 'fat day' I am having, and I can't cover those pimples, it is a recipe for hysterics.

I bought myself some jeans. And somehow budgeting this into our 50-dollar-a-day-for-absolutely-everything budget was not an easy task. But for me, it was as necessary as putting a cast on a broken arm. Now I wear what makes me happy. And, inevitably, it seems to be jeans and a black t-shirt.

Cooking dinner in my 'fancy clothes'

2. The importance of food. Not as fuel, but as something that brings joy.

Funny how this and number 1 are so intrinsically linked and yet also so contradictory. I needed to (and still need to) remind myself the only comparison I had was Duncan, who is some kind of ultra-human beast who can conquer anything 'just for fun', and who still thinks that one of the greatest meals of his life was his turkey-spam and strawberry jam sandwich that he made on his hike through the Bungle-Bungles. I, on the other hand, simply cannot fathom the thought of a breakfast of four-day-old rock-hard bread rolls with stolen jam-packets that have burst and half the contents are oozing out. And I always always always wanted to cook a nice dinner. Bread with jam for dinner is not an option, darling. ;)

3. What a clean-freak I am.

I can hear you all laughing from here. Me? A clean freak? I must be joking! I have forever claimed to be the messiest person I know, but something switched inside of me. Seriously switched. I suppose it's the difference between being 'messy' and being 'dirty'. And when you only have such few things to keep clean, and when them being dirty is a serious health hazzard, I am a freak. But Mum, if you could see me with that hand-sanitiser and those baby-wipes, you would have been proud.

I suppose that's about it for now. Back to my Real Writing.

Oh, one last thing - you want to know the secret to a happy relationship when one ridiculously-fit-avid-cyclist decides to take his new unfit-overweight-self-conscious-non-cyclist wife on a six-month life-changing cycling and camping adventure? Just tell each other you love each other all the time. All the time. It can do wonders :)

True love :)

Signs of Integration

Well it has been a while since my last post. I could attribute that to any variety of things (one, namely, is that I wrote a very big and very long post at a cafe, forgetting I wasn't plugged in. Computer runs out of battery. When resuscitated, my very big and very long post was not there), and it has been the cause of quite a bit of introspection.

Why, I ask myself, am I not writing? Well, I am writing. I'm just writing my novel! Which is what I should be doing. Also, I started this blog by discussing my 'new life' in Switzerland, and now I feel like this life is just my life! I am integrating, I am developing my routine, I am just doing what I do. Which is not particularly thrilling to the outside world, I would imagine. I just stopped myself - I was about to point out that not many people have blogs that document their daily life routines, but then I realised that that is entirely a falsehood...

In summary, I suppose I am feeling quite settled and do not really have the need to vent! Which is really a very lovely way to be.

Instead of filling everyone in on my life of the past month-and-a-bit, I'm just going to kick it off right from where I am now.

Current points of interest:

• SWITZERLAND: I met a girl from Belarus the other day, and we went for a lovely walk through Enge Park (pronounced 'Eng-a), which skirts Lake Zurich, and admired all the new blossoms that are poking through as the weather gets a little warmer. We discussed life in Zurich, and the fact that we are both living in Switzerland when it was never something that we had ever dreamt of (she's the wife of a googler too. We are called 'spooglers', and you can consider that the last time I will ever write that word). To both of us, Switzerland is still some kind of a fantasy destination, and by that, I mean one that doesn't really exist. A place that you see photos of, a place that you know is home to the Toblerone Mountain (but that really just emphasises the fantastical element of the place), and definitely not this place. We aren't living here. Surely not. And so, while I now have my daily routines, and I know (intellectually) that I am living in Zurich, it is still very unreal to me that I live in Switzerland. For example, Dunc and I, on a whim, went to a little festival in a neighbouring town that ended up looking like this (can you imagine anything like this in Australia???):
  

• APARTMENT: We have an apartment. It's not ours, as in, we don't own it, but we own it as much as any average person in Zurich will ever own an apartment. Our name is on a lease, we are organising the engraving of our names on the doorbell, we even talked about buying a rug last night. I even have planted some little herbs and popped them in little flower boxes attached to the kitchen. If that isn't 'having our own apartment', I don't know what is. It's one bedroom (with a sofabed) and I very much feel like it's ours. I love that feeling.

• MUSIC: There is an open mic night every Sunday at the Irish Pub situated just a stone's throw from our front door. My incredibly, incredibly beautiful new guitar (did I emphasise that enough? It is incredibly beautiful!) is inspiring me, as is a bunch of the music that my sister gave me when I was in Australia for a short jaunt a couple of weeks ago. Tangent: I recently realised that Dunc now has three bikes, and I have three instruments = a real home :)

• FRIENDS: If ever there was a town to move to where making new friends from scratch is not all that difficult, it seems this is it. It is very rare to meet someone who is actually from Zurich, which means that pretty much everyone sympathises with the feeling of isolation that can come with being a new expat. So there is a lot of support out there, a lot of invitations, and a lot of lovely people that are just sitting there, waiting for me to meet. This is, at times, quite daunting, but mostly very exciting. If I had a photo of the shenanigans that were St Patrick's Day, I would put it here. But I don't, and I think that is probably the best for everyone. :)
  

• NETBALL: (haha, I just pressed 'Ctrl V' by accident and pasted the whole next chapter of my novel here. Too bad people, you're going to have to wait for that one!) Things are choofing along quite nicely in that area of my life! I am going to the two hour training sessions every Wednesday evening and making some good friends there. Hopefully these friendships will be cemented on our trip to Paris this weekend! Ah... I can't believe I just said that! We finally just got some real posts, which was a massive event! As such, photos were taken. Spot the crazily tall, boofy-haired idiot in the back:

• HAIR: Still a disaster. Still don't know what to do with it. But at least I can begin to pin it up now!

So that's it for this post, team. Signing off, from my lovely couch in my lovely apartment, the sun shining in through the window, Laura Marling blasting from the stereo, a glass of white wine to my left, my banjo to my right. Life's pretty shiny right now. :)

Big and Scary Guns

I came across quite a confronting scene this morning soon after I had left the apartment. In fact, I not only came across the confronting scene, but I somehow managed to become a part of it.

It was 9.10am and I had planned to firstly head to Zum Guten Glueck (the Good Luck Cafe) for a latte and a quick re-read of what I had written yesterday, before continuing to venture further into the industrial area of Zurich, where dilapidated buildings, smoke-stacks and unused railway tracks hide a particularly cool little cafe where it is perfectly acceptable to sip one coffee for three hours with notebooks strewn across the table in front of you. My backpack was laden with a variety of material to keep me both occupied and inspired for a day of writing: my laptop, my bulging A4 notebook, my bulging little moleskin notebook, my storyboarding cards (in a variety of colours: grey for the central plot, yellow for subplot, green for setting, blue for imagery, symbolism and motifs, and pink for characterisation), the novel I am currently reading (Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl) and, in case of a complete lack of enthusiasm, a chunky book entitled Living and Working in Switzerland. Throw in a variety of pens (black felt tip, blue roller ball, black biro... believe it or not these make an enormous difference to the style of my writing), some earphones, my ipod and a few cables, and I'm good to go. I jumped on my bike and headed out the gate, wincing as the bumps jarred my poor elbow (stupid snowboarding) and took the back streets for the one kilometre journey to cafe number one.

So what was the confronting sight? I rounded the first corner, jumped into the bike lane and then rounded the second corner onto a thin suburban street. From a distance I saw the flashing lights of the three police cars, though I initially thought it was just more roadworks. As I came closer, I noticed the six policemen that had strategically positioned themselves on the street, dressed fully in black with large white POLIZEI written across the front. Each of them held what appeared to be, to the untrained eye, a machine gun. Slung across their shoulders, the enormous machine hung at a forty-five degree angle across their bodies, and while they weren't pointing it at anything, each of them had one hand on the barrel and another on the trigger.

Now, what is an innocent little passer-by such as myself to do? The only guns I had ever seen up until six months ago were starter pistols, and since then I can now add the gun of the occasional army recruit as he stands on a train platform (though even this has been known to make me incredibly uncomfortable). I suppose I have seen guns sitting in the holsters of Australian police before, but that's just it - they have always been in the holster. They are small enough to be able to fit in a holster!

So I've slowed down, trying to decide what to do. To my left, two big scary policemen with even bigger scarier guns, one standing on the footpath, the other standing ontop of the wall and a few metres down. To my right, two big scary policemen with even bigger scarier guns, one standing ontop of the wall , the other standing on the footpath a few metres down. Directly in front of me... well, you get the idea. Big. Scary. Two of them.

I get off my bike. I prepare to turn around, aware that something big is going down. But then one of them yelled at me. I'm not sure which one, as I had already half turned around by that point. I turned back to face them, suddenly aware of all the possible infringements I might have committed: I haven't gotten my bike registered yet = illegal. Maybe on this street I should be riding on the footpath instead of the road (the rules seem a bit hit and miss when there is no bike path) = illegal. We probably brought in too much alcohol (though I don't really remember) over the border from Germany = illegal. They probably want to throw me out of the country for consuming too much of their beloved cheese. But no, the big scary policeman that is standing in the middle of the road with the even bigger scarier gun is beckoning for me to come forwards. So I do. With piercing eye contact, he speaks a few words of SuisseDeutsch (incomprehensible) and beckons for me to continue down the road. His big scary friend who is positioned around fifteen metres behind him turns around and also beckons for me to continue towards him. So of course I do. And the entire time I am aware that, firstly, these guys are here for a reason. They look like they are surrounding some area for some reason, and now I am smack in the middle of it. Secondly, as a result, I am now entirely surrounded by armed policemen. And to make matters worse, I can no longer hide the fact my bike doesn't have a registration sticker on the back. But I don't think anyone has gotten shot for that before.

I walked quickly between them all, suddenly aware that they are not looking at me at all, but not wanting to stick around to find out what it is that they are looking at. I pass the final policeman and, in my hurry to jump on my bike and get out of there, proceed to instead drop my bike with an enormous clatter. Red faced, heart pounding, I jump on and pedal like a maniac to my Good Luck Cafe, whip out my computer and start writing this.

Today's realisation: I sure am a lucky bugger to have lived such a sheltered life.

Life in the Big Smoke

Well, folks, the contracts have been signed – Dunc starts work at Google on Feb 7. In the meantime, we have been offered a ‘relocation package’ which includes:

• one month in a temporary apartment in Zurich;
• someone to assist us with finding a more permanent place of residence, to help with bank accounts, to demystify health insurance and generally assist with all those ugly things;
• free shipping of all our possessions from Australia, if we so choose (but not free shipping of it all BACK... so not sure what possessions we will choose to relocate...);
• a nice big fat lump sum to ‘assist with the particulars of relocation’, which apparently includes such things as registering with the municipal office, connecting telephones, new seasonal wardrobes, etc. But, no dosh will come our way until March, so until then I’m still following around the lady with the ‘50% Off’ stickers at the supermarket...

Hence, we have now moved (via bicycle, I might add) from our little mountain view studio to a fandangled modern apartment in the very centre of Zurich, temporarily. The little balcony and our view makes me feel a little like we are living in Paris, and I’m loving it.

The view from our dining table out onto the balcony

There are great little cafes everywhere, I’ve signed up for six months of yoga, have an audition for the Female Funk Project Choir on Wednesday and have sent a bunch of emails to other singing groups in the area. Also, shock of all shocks, they have a Zurich Netball Association that I’m hoping to get my teeth into! And an indoor beach volleyball centre! I have a new book to read (Room by Emma Donoghue – it is brilliant so far!), am getting back into the writing groove and have dyed my hair back to ‘dark blonde’. There is the Uetliberg (a mighty mammoth hill) right behind us, but other than that there are no hills whatsoever, so I am riding my bike everywhere, ensuring I wear gloves and tuck my ears into my beanie, as it is freaking freezing! Ah, life in the big smoke.

My little local cafe

Dunc, however, has taken a bit longer to warm up to the move. He was going for 40-50km rides around every second day back in Boll, climbing mountains and adventuring. As soon as we arrived here and realised we could very easily spy on dozens of people across the road in their office blocks and apartments (and we assume vice-versa) he felt a little ‘claustrophobic’. Also, he thought the apartment was trying to kill him – within an hour he had bashed into every possible corner that his shin could reach and had stripped the skin off his toes in some debacle with the wardrobe. Poor chicken!

Meanwhile, it has a bath and an oven and a coffee machine and a dishwasher and two pillows, so it’s quite an upgrade. We keep laughing about how dysfunctional it is, though, with small things like not being able to access the bin while the dishwasher is open, and having the towel rack inside the shower. Also, it actually feels very strange to be sleeping in a big bed after having to be either big or little spoon at all times in order to actually fit. And, true to European sleeping fashion, we each have our own single-sized doona. Many people rave about the brilliance of such a plan, but we are yet to really see the benefits. It makes it feel lonely. I suppose it’s all one step closer to spending the days apart once he starts work.

The kitchen/dining room. We also have a lounge and a separate bedroom and a separate bathroom and a separate toilet! They all have doors!

It is strange how we had become so used to the nuances of a small village. No-one says ‘Good Morning’ or ‘Hello’ when they pass you on the street here. There’s a wide choice of supermarkets – standard, Turkish, Asian, health food stores - all within 300m of our front door. There are groups of friends that all speak English to each other in different accents (Zurich is a bit of an expat hub)which I had never noticed in Bern, let alone boll. One of the television channels even has some shows in English in the evenings!

Today, Dunc has gone snow-boarding with one of our old friends from Perth (who is also here working for google) as well as a couple of other people. Yes, I should have gone too, but I chose instead to spend the day writing. The 5.45am alarm was just a final kicker. And also, to be honest, everyone here knows how to do it already, and if you speak to people about being a beginner, they pummel you with stories of broken bones, torn muscles, dislocations, joint replacements... and if you’re lucky to avoid all that, then just the intense pain you will be in for the first week or so. Sounds inviting. So I figure that until there is a time where we can actually go for a few consecutive days and I may actually get some skerrick of enjoyment out of it, I’ll pass. Bad, huh?

But it's been a day of writing for me, so I've been loving it anyhow :)

Wiedikon - our district - with the snowy Uetliberg in the background