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08.07.2010

We registered in our community today. The office is run by one person, because it is such a small community. We found out that household waste is not collected, but we have to take it to a central place. Waste that cannot be recycled has to be thrown away in 35l plastic bags which each cost 2.50 CHF! Once a week we can take our bags down the road to the communal collection point at the village's atomic shelter. Because we have a baby, we get 40 bags per year for free for the nappies. Everything that is recyclable has to be taken into a central collection station in a different village - aluminium, PET, PE, glass, paper, green waste, Nescafe coffee pods... Everything has to be separated. No wonder taxes are low, if people have to do all the work themselves! Anyway, it seems to work quite well because people are only charged for the amount of not recycled rubbish they produce.
We also found out that we will have a different house number than we were told... Have to phone the Dutch post again to change the address for forwarding our mail again! As if it mattered - in the first month they forwarded less than 20% of our mail!!

 

05.07.2010

Today the removal company delivered all out stuff from the warehouse and also my little car. There were a few casualties, though. Sarah's bed and two (IKEA) wardrobes were completely broken, most pieces of furniture had some dents or scratches and some of our pottery was broken. But everything was forgotten when we enjoyed the evening on our terrace with the view below, accompanied by the sound of cow bells!

 

 

03.07.2010

We got the keys for our new rental house yesterday. Today we went there to give it a good clean before moving in next Monday. Here are some pictures of the house before we move in with all our clutter!

Back garden with mountain view - we also have a bit more garden on the side

 

Living room and open kitchen
Obviously the kitchen
Master bedroom
Guest room / office / storage room
Mountain view

 

01.07.2010

I had to go to the customs office today with Niall and Sarah for importing our cars. Luckily we succeeded and they approved our cars. So we can apply for Swiss number plates now! Well, as soon as we get some time...

 

27.06.2010

We went to the local zoo and Tropicarium today. Sarah enjoyed the playgrounds more than the animals! In the end she got an electric shock at the bear enclosure - really bad that the electric wires are within reach of 3-year-old children!! But otherwise it was a very nice day.

 

20.06.2010

We spent the day today driving around a bit. We drove along Lac Gruyère and into Fribourg - our future canton capital. In Fribourg we had lunch and walked around the town. Sarah is slowly getting used to walking slopes...We also used the old funicular.
Another good thing about living in the canton of Fribourg is that it is a bilingual canton (French & German). The part where we will be living is clearly French speaking, but at least things like registering the cars etc. should be possible with filling in German forms rather than French ones I hope.

 

 

13.06.2010

Another week has gone by fairly quickly. We have been successful with our application for the house to rent! It is in a really small village in a very small community, but it has a nice view from the terrace and balcony:

  Ours will be the end house on the right

It is a terraced house similar to the one we had in Holland, but this time we will have 4 levels instead of 3! Not ideal with little kids, but we really liked the fact that it is newly built to a very good standard and comes at an affordable price for the size. It will take Nick about 25 minutes to get to work from there.

We are also busy sorting out health insurances. Everybody has to get basic cover, but then there are lots of extras to choose from. It's really expensive and in the end you end up paying contributions to everything additionally. Dental insurances are so expensive that it is probably better to pay for everything yourself rather than getting insurance - unless you have really bad teeth...

We are also tasting all the different kinds of cheeses - what a welcome change after eating mainly Gouda for 6 years! I like Gruyere and Bündner Bergkäse, Sarah likes Tilsiter, Emmentaler and Appenzeller and Nick likes them all I think. But we do miss our good old gouda for cooking with it... Most of the cheeses are made from raw milk, though. Luckily I am not pregnant anymore!

 

06.06.2010

We survived our first week in Switzerland! It has been exhausting looking after Niall and Sarah on my own, they do keep me busy continuously! Luckily Nick's work is only 5 minutes away from the Nestlé flat, so he can be home in time in the evening to help me putting them both to bed. It has been increasingly difficult to settle Niall in the evenings. And he still doesn't really take the dummy. So we are walking around with him in the evenings for hours until he sleeps... Otherwise we are doing fine. On Saturday we went for a big shop at the supermarket. I enjoy the variety in the supermarkets after the more limited choice in the Dutch supermarkets. Especially the bread is better, and what a choice of chocolates!!! But a lot of things are really expensive here, nappies for example.
We also started to look at houses to rent. The second one we looked at we liked and we are going to apply for renting it. It is in the canton of Fribourg, which will make a lot of things (taxes, insurances) cheaper. Plus the rent is more affordable than for houses closer to Lausanne. It is a newly built house with a very small garden but a lot of space inside. Enough space to put up visitors! And it is apparently only 10 minutes away from the skiing slopes...
On Sunday Nick and Sarah went for a day out, to give me a chance to catch up with some sleep after lunch. They went down to the lake and afterwards they went to a local zoo. It was good for Sarah to get out a bit after being stuck in the flat with Niall and me for a week (apart from the daily walk to the local MIGROS supermarket we didn't get out much). See photos in Sarah's photo gallery.

 

31.06.2010

We made it to Switzerland! It was a very exhausting trip. We stayed one night in a hotel in Wesel, one night in Rust and one more night in a hotel in Epalinges near Lausanne. In Rust we changed our booking from a family room to a double and a single, because else Niall would have kept Sarah and Nick up at night, too. It's enough if I don't get much sleep... It was good that we split the trip up in 3 chunks, it would have been too much otherwise with the two little ones.
Now we have a temporary furnished apartment in Epalinges with two bedrooms. Niall is sharing the double room with me and Nick is sleeping in a bunk bed with Sarah ;-). Niall is waking up 2-4 times every night for feeding and it often takes me half an hour to an hour to get him back to sleep. That's why Nick prefers to share a room with Sarah now that he will have to start working again... We have a nice view from our balcony on a cemetery and a forest.

 

 

 

28.06.2010

Good-bye Holland, Switzerland we are coming!!! Yesterday and today our removal company packed all our stuff and we lived in absolute chaos. The removal company moved most of our upstairs stuff out through Sarah's bedroom window on the first floor. Sarah found it all very exciting, while Niall slept through most of the noise... Now the house is empty and we are about to embark on our next big adventure - living in Switzerland! We are bringing a few goodies from Holland with us - beschuit en muisjes, liquorish and appelstroop.
We are going to drive to Wesel tonight and stay there in a hotel.

 

 

 

 

16.05.2010

This weekend Nick's mother, sister and nephews came to visit us. On Saturday we went to the Delftse Hout, walked around the lake and had lunch at a cafe. Sarah enjoyed the playground at the cafe - she is a real little monkey, no fear of falling. Nick hired out a pedal boat and went for a little adventure out on the lake with Joshua, Dominic and Sarah. They had to fight mosquitoes, caterpillars, trees and floating bottles but made it back without major injuries ;-).

  

 

12.05.2010

Today was Nick's last day at work and Sarah's last day at crèche. It is finally sinking in that we will be leaving our old life behind. Sarah had a great good-bye party at crèche. She got a lovely memento book from her friends at crèche and lots of cuddles and kisses. Really moving... Quite a sad day with all these good-byes. But we also had some good news - we sold our house! We finally heard back that the buyers could secure their mortgage, so now everything should go through.
Niall is doing fine. We are still getting used to the dangers of changing nappies of a boy rather than a girl ;-). Every day at least one of us gets wet when changing him. And if you think you are save after having successfully ducked away from one pee - wrong! The other day Niall peed 3 times over Nick in one nappy changing attempt!!

 

11.05.2010

We went to Amsterdam today with Niall to request a German passport for him at the consulate. He will need the passport to enter Switzerland and for his residence permit. In Amsterdam on the way to the consulate we noticed a big container standing outside a house. Somebody was throwing pot plant after pot plant out of the window of the house into the container. When we noticed the policemen guarding the scene, we realized that the pot plants must have been marihuana plants.... Anyway, we managed to get the passport for Niall, after the guy at the consulate first made a mistake and gave us a passport for Niall with a picture of Sarah in it... The picture on the right is Niall's passport picture.
I also had to take Niall for his first quick check-up at the consultatiebureau pediatrician today. Everything seems fine, but she couldn't check his heart, because he had hiccups (for the third time today!). He now weighs 4858g and is 58.5cm tall (at 3.5 weeks)! So he is definitely growing well.

 

09.05.2010

Stefan and Ilka came to meet their new nephew this weekend. And of course they also came to see Sarah. On Saturday they shopped and cooked a delicious meal for us. It will probably be a long time before Sarah and Niall will see their uncle and aunt again. And of course their little cousin who will be born in the summer.
Sarah painted a lovely flower pot for me for mother's day, which Nick and Sarah filled with a pot plant and lots of chocolates. Hmmmm, can't stop eating chocolate at the moment....

 

30.04.2010

Koninginnedag (Queensday)!!! We went to the local celebrations with boot sale and live music. Probably the last time we are celebrating monarchy ;-)
Niall is doing very well, feeding much better and quite frequently. Also at night, though...

 

28.04.2010

Niall hasn't been feeding so well in the last days and only really started feeding much better yesterday. On the other hand he has been sleeping very well, but with his increased hunger now he also wakes up more often to be fed...
I took him to the consultatiebureau today - the place where doctors and nurses look after the growth and development of young children. I had him weighed and measured. He has almost regained his birth weight and I am sure that now that he is feeding much better he will also start putting on weight quickly. The nurse also measured his height - he is 55cm long!!! She had to look twice because she couldn't believe he was so tall. I understand now why I got so much more kicks in the ribs with him in my belly compared to Sarah (she was 52cm when she was 1 month old!). This also explains why the clothes for 0-3 months old babies are already getting a bit too small...

 

25.04.2010

We enjoyed the nice weather today and took Niall out for his first walk in the pram. I have recovered so well from the birth that I could join, too. Sarah tried out her new buggy-board which is attached to Niall's pram.

 

23.04.2010

Great news!!! On Saturday, 17.04.2010, our son

Niall Jacob

was born at 3.45 am!!! We are very happy about the arrival of the latest member of our little family. Niall can be pronounced in different ways, but we pronounce it like Neal/Neil (for the German speakers: pronounced just like the river Nil in Egypt). He weighed 4050g (8lbs 14oz) at birth and seems to be perfectly healthy. He was one day earlier than his due date and took about 8 hours to enter this world. He was born with his face facing the ceiling rather than the bed, which made it more difficult. It's called 'sterrenkijker' in Dutch or 'Sternengucker' in German. I had to undergo surgery in theatre immediately after the birth to repair the damage, but the surgeon seems to have done a great job. I also lost a lot of blood, but luckily did not need a blood transfusion. We only had to stay one more night in hospital and went home Sunday afternoon. We are very well looked after at home by a maternity nurse ('kraamzorg') who comes every day for several hours for the first week to look after mother and son and help with the household chores. We are all doing fine. I am recovering very quickly, Niall is almost back on his birth weight and we have even got some decent amounts of sleep most nights.

Sarah is very excited about her little brother. Sarah's Oma stayed with us so she could look after Sarah while we went to hospital. Luckily labour only started right after Sarah went to bed and by the time she got up in the morning, daddy was already back from hospital. We try and keep her routine as much as possible, so she continues going to crèche Monday to Thursday. She got a special jacket at crèche with 'I am now a big sister' and 'Ich bin jetzt eine grosse Schwester' and 'Ik ben nu een grote zuster' written on it. On Thursday Sarah treated everybody in her group to 'beschuit met muisjes' (see picture) - a kind of cracker / Zwieback spread with margarine and sprinkled with blue and white sugar coated aniseeds. This is what people here eat typically if a new baby is born. Otherwise Sarah is very interested in her little brother and copies a lot of what we do with her doll.

We will make a separate photo gallery for Niall and fill it with some nice pictures whenever we have some time. So keep on checking our homepage for updates!

 

08.04.2010

Yesterday we have been to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam - something we just had to do before moving away! The museum has been undergoing building work for some years now, so they limited the exhibition to the masterpieces in the meantime - perfect for us! We enjoyed seeing all these famous pictures from the Dutch masters. We particularly liked the Vermeer paintings (first three pictures below), but of course we also admired all the Rembrandt paintings.

Today we celebrated Nick's birthday a little bit.

    Vermeer

Rembrandt

 

04.04.2010

Happy Easter! Luckily we did our Easter egg hunt yesterday, because the weather was really bad today. Today we went to the christening of Nick's god-daughter, about 1.5h driving away. We took my hospital bag - just in case... Two more weeks to go to the due date!

I have been really enjoying my maternity leave these last weeks. But I was also very busy catching up with all the preparations for the baby and for the move to Switzerland. We still have a long to-do list, though. At least we seem to have been very luckily with finding buyers for the house very quickly (if everything goes fine). It only took two days and we had an offer. Saves me from cleaning and tidying up the house continuously for potential buyers!

Sarah is enjoying all the baby stuff we got out again; she is dressing up her doll in baby clothes and putting her elephant to sleep in the Moses basket or the pram... And she is proudly showing off my belly at crèche to her friends (who all already have siblings anyway and are not too impressed ;-) ).
In February we went to the aquarium in Den Haag / Schevingen, because Sarah likes seeing 'Nemo' and turtles. At the first nice weekend this year in March we went to the zoo in Rotterdam, to make use of our season ticket, probably for the last time...

Pictures can be found as always in the photo gallery!

 

08.02.2010

Today was finally the big day of my PhD defence! A big thank you to all the people who came to watch me suffer! It was not so bad in the end, though. I had a great committee. Even my professor could come in the end, although he is ill. I had to give a brief presentation  and then I was questioned for one hour by the committee. I passed and received my PhD diploma! We celebrated with a party in the evening. I received a lot of great presents - thank you all! I am sad that this part of my life is over know, because I really had a fantastic time with great colleagues. At the same time it is a great relieve to be finished and not having to work in the evenings and weekends anymore. I also had my 5th and last paper accepted for publication today! So I am really done now and can start thinking about the next big event - the birth of Sarah's sibling...

  
The auditorium is filling up                         Before the defence

  
Signing of the diploma                               Picture with committee, beadle and paranimphs

  
Congratulations from the supervisor             Party & presents!

Sarah also came for the party - and stayed until the end!

 

31.01.2010

We went to Germany this weekend to celebrate my father's 60th birthday. There was still a lot of snow, so we could take Sarah out for her first sledge ride. She was not terribly impressed... But she did enjoy the party! And of course seeing her Oma, Opa, uncle and aunt.

 

24.01.2010

Now some real NEWS! We have decided to move to Switzerland! Nick has been offered a job at Nestle in Lausanne and we decided to take this opportunity. As long as Sarah is not at school, yet, we can embark on another adventure! We will be moving end of May, a few weeks after the new baby will be born... What a busy year, though - PhD defence, birth, move, new job for Nick! That's more than enough for one year! And we all have to learn French! Language number 4 for Sarah... We are looking forward to the mountains, the lake, the nature and the climate. We will move into a temporary furnished flat for the first months and then try and find a house or flat to rent somewhere outside Lausanne when we are there. We are hoping that Sarah will get a space in the crèche for 2 days a week, so she can learn some French before starting preschool in January next year.
At the same time we are also sad about leaving Holland, which has been our home for 6 years. Holland is a very good and convenient country to live in. Certainly better than Germany or England in many aspects. It is for example the best place for children's wellbeing (see UNICEF report on child well-being in rich countries) and also very well organised. It was easy for us to combine working and family in any way we wanted. The latter will not be so easy in Switzerland. Still, what we always missed here is nature/landscape and space, both of which we hope to have more of in Switzerland!

 

13.01.2010

Happy birthday Sarah! And more presents! Quite confusing - who brought these presents now? Sinterklaas, Kerstman, Weihnachtsmann or Father Christmas?!? Or maybe Santa Clause?!? And of course Sarah had a little birthday cake with three candles to blow out and a birthday party at the crèche with all her friends. She got to wear a crown and hand out her party bags.

 

01.01.2010

Happy New Year to all of you!
Sarah has luckily recovered a bit from the Christmas excitement.
Yesterday some teenager threw some fireworks into the recycling bins just outside our house and one of them started burning. The fire brigade had to come and extinguish the fire! Sarah found that fascinating to watch from our bedroom window. New Year's Eve we spent mainly waiting for the noise to be over so we could finally get to sleep - still catching up with missed sleep from the last nights of Sarah waking up a lot... But we did admire the fireworks through the living room window.
Today Sarah an I baked some cake, because Oma and Opa are coming!

    © Katja & Nick, last updated June 2010