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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.
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!
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
11.05.2010
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.
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 ;-)
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...
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
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.
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.
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 ;-)
). 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...
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.
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.
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.
Happy New Year to all of you! |
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© Katja & Nick, last updated June 2010 |
Ours will be
the end house on the right
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.
Great news!!! On Saturday, 17.04.2010, our son 
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.
Vermeer
Rembrandt
Sarah
also came for the party - and stayed until the end!
24.01.2010
13.01.2010