Rewarding Schemes

I am a collector of reward cards. Not store cards, let's be clear. I'm not completely irresponsible with money. Or rather, I can be, and I know my enemy. But reward cards and loyalty cards, yes please. I love them.

In the UK, my wallet was stuffed full of colourful bits of plastic and paper. The usual high-street reward schemes obviously made the list. My love of overpriced coffees meant I also had one for each of the main chains (10th coffee for free - wheee)! Such is my loyalty to loyalty schemes that I even had several defunct and out-of-date ones hiding behind my EHIC card - for airlines and hotel chains - left over from a previous life of business travel. Even the obscure were given a spot in my collection. I had a card for clocking up free smoothies, one to earn free yoga classes, and even a Nando's card, which still has half a free chicken on it.

On arriving in Switzerland I cleared them all out. My wallet had been so over-full that it was now slack and had a tendency to drop my bank cards onto the floor. Why, I wondered, had I magpied so many? With some, the payback was obvious - a free overpriced coffee is perhaps a trifle, but Every Little Helps in Austerity Britain. With others, I rather unimaginatively used the points to buy Christmas presents and to pay for groceries the week before payday. My favourites were the ones that fed my love of a bargain. Such joy to experience the delicious smugness of claiming my free half chicken, never mind that the chicken itself was usually superfluous to requirements.

But what about the ones that never really earned me anything? The hotel scheme so ungenerous that it would take a lifetime of nights away from home to earn a free stay? The smoothie card at the smoothie shop that was too far away from the office to ever be visited again? Perhaps I have a love for the possible alternate lifestyles that those cards suggest, for the idea of a jet-setting, smoothy-drinking Helen who laughs in the face of coughing up hotel rack-rates and scorns the idea of paying for an extra wheatgrass shot.

My first rather prosaic Swiss acquisitions were for the big supermarket reward schemes. You have to apply for a card using a complicated form that is only available in German, so the arrival of mine in the post was a matter of some pride to me. You hand the card over at the checkout in the normal way, and the points get added to your account in the usual fashion. I'm not sure how or where I can redeem my points yet, but I get a warm and cosy feeling knowing that one day, when my German is good enough, there'll be a tidy little nest egg saved up for me.

Having the requisite bit of plastic also improves the success-rate of supermarket checkout interactions. I can now reply in the affirmative to the formerly dreaded "Kundenkarte?" question, neatly avoiding the risk of an unintelligible reward card sales pitch. Replying in the affirmative to other checkout interrogations is a type of Russian roulette, because I've no hope of understanding what it is I'm being offered, short of saying yes and finding out. The Migros supermarket spent the early spring giving away pointless little plastic bean things called Nanos. No relation the the iPod. Contrary to what the photo below suggests, they are also not in the least bit edible:

The delights of the inedible, non iPod Nanos were lost on me, so I learned to recognise my cue to decline them, after establishing that the children in my au pair friend's family were already awash with the little buggers. More happily, in the week before Easter, the Coop supermarket gave away free bars of milk chocolate with every purchase. Now here was the kind of freebie I could enjoy.

Soon, another cunning ruse to catch me out came along. In early April, I started being asked something by the Coop cashiers after I presented my loyalty card. To begin with I politely declined what I thought was the offer of a bag, mistakenly gesturing to the packable ones that I take everywhere with me. This caused some looks of mild confusion, but as that's a fairly standard response to my attempts at German, I didn't think much of it.

Then there came a day when I was feeling adventurous, (and indeed had forgotten to bring my packable bags with me). I said 'Ja'. And the cashier handed me a strip of small red stamps with pictures of pans on them. I was a bit confused: I certainly couldn't carry the milk home in that! And were these the kind of stamps that hold up queues when paid with in the UK? What was the social etiquette of stamp-paying in Switzerland? Would I be tutted for holding fellow shoppers up, or was it more like the Nandos free-chicken scenario? And if not for stamp-paying, then what the devil *were* they for? Still, they were rather pretty, so I collected them for a week or two without having the foggiest what to do with them.

And then, one day, Greg brought home a little sticker book for them to live in. I devoured the info on the accompanying leaflet, and I think that once our little sticker book is full, I can redeem it for money off Fondue pans and Victorinox kitchen knives. Either that, or I can swap our kitchen knives for money off our groceries. Either way, I'm in.

Fat Bottomed Girl gets back in the saddle

Lately I have found myself clad in unusual, snug-fitting clothing, sweating profusely and grinning like a loon. The more faint-hearted of our readers should be reassured - we have not been exploring the extramarital expat scene, as trailed in an earlier post. Rather, as Queen so aptly put, I Want To Ride My Bicycle... http://youtu.be/2CTPLUcQAjk

This all entirely Greg's fault. Those of you who know us well will know that Greg is a serious cycling aficionado of several years' standing. Such is his passion, that when we received our shipment from the UK, the very first things off the lorry were the bikes. Before I had unpacked enough mugs to make a cup of tea for the delivery men, all four had been anxiously unwrapped and checked over like so many equines emerging from a long journey in a horse box. The most thoroughbred of our livery is now quartered in the dining room. Needless to say, it's not mine. My trusty steed, a cast-off of Greg's adapted for my smaller build, is more of an outdoor beast, quite happy to be tethered to the hitching post behind our apartment building and to share a tarp with its stable mates.

In the UK I had been an occasional cyclist of only limited enthusiasm, more Fat Bottomed Girl than aspiring pro-peletonnette. Inspired by the beautiful scenery, and enticed by promises of a nice flat ride around the lakeshore, I was persuaded to get back on my bike for the first time on a sunny Sunday at the beginning of April.

Flat ride my foot. Within 10 minutes of leaving the house I was angrily struggling up a steep hill out of the city, which seemed to go an interminably long time, amid assurances from the front that it wasn't much further. The descent from the top, on quiet roads with views of pretty villages backed by the lake and mountains went some way to mollify me.

I was exhausted by the time we stopped for lunch with a view of the alps, and then we crossed over the lake on the ferry for a longish, but mercifully flat, slog home. Unfortunately, we live halfway up the Züriberg, so another uphill struggle right at the end of the ride was unavoidable. Grumpy once again, I vowed never to do it again.

However, once I'd got over my sunburn and saddle stiffness, we did do the lake trip a couple more times. When Greg suggested a new route over the top of the Züriberg, I hesitantly agreed. "Grounds for divorce," became my mantra as Greg led me up ever steeper roads, I fell off my (stationary) bike in exhaustion, and resorted to walking up impossible hills and gravel tracks.  Let us draw a veil over the remainder of that ride, and move on.

So the lake ride became our standard route. We tried it both ways round, with and without the original hilly bits, and once, inadvertently and unhappily, with an additional hilly bit. Strangely I found the flatness of the main coast road a bit boring, and my heart yearned for hilltop villages and swooping descents. I still didn't want to climb to reach them, but I could see it was a necessary evil, and a change began to creep over me.

Fast forward to last night. When Greg got home from work for our evening ride, I was already lycra-ed up, with a sports drink at the ready and my bike shoes and helmet in my hands. This despite the weather being a drizzly 15C. We did the lake ride in intermittent rain with strong cross-winds. The first big hill seemed fairly easy, and I took heart. Instead of spending the second half of the ride dreading the final hill, I was rather looking forward to it. My enthusiasm waned a bit as the rain come on stronger, and then we hit some major roadworks. We had to weave in and out of the traffic, on slippery wet roads, in the gathering gloom. I was climbing, I was soaking, I was tired, and I was trapped between the steely death of a 4x4 and the equally steely death of getting a wheel stuck in a tram-track. And I was smiling.

The Grass is Greener

I remember watching a magazine piece on the television when still in my formative years. I think it was in an episode of Blue Peter or Tomorrow's World. Although it may have been another programme altogether. The piece followed a man on a bicycle trailing a white balloon to collect air for pollution testing. This is my first memory of being conscious of what Switzerland might be like. Clean.

And, by comparison, it is.

Zürich is a large city. It is not spotlessly clean. But it is a lot cleaner than most, if not all, other cities I've visited.

Certainly, the swirling cyclones of litter on London's South Bank or the overflowing bins in Leeds city centre on Sunday afternoons (not emptied since before Saturday's shopping hours) are not to be found.

The bins of a park in Zürich will be overflowing after lunchtime on a hot work day. But by evening they will have been emptied. The streets after a parade or festival event will be covered in litter. But before morning it will have disappeared.

It's not that the Swiss are more clean. Just that there is a lot more clearing up after them that goes on. Street sweepers patrol the streets two or three times a week. And that is despite the low taxes for public services and an outsourcing contract covering most (if not all) elements of public cleaning and waste disposal!

There are two exceptions though: cigarette butts and chewing gum. And both are the result of very popular activities in Switzerland.

As well as the cleanliness, the Swiss are renowned for their recycling prowess, often quoted as the world's leading recyclers.

But is this behaviour a result of interest in the longevity of the planet or a distaste for mass consumption? Perhaps it is. But mostly it is because recycling is free and throwing away rubbish is expensive.

Here is where some policy makers elsewhere should take note. Especially those who want to try and weigh everyone's waste at the point of collection.

Take note of the Swiss approach: charge by volume. Here the rubbish sacks are taxed. By the local council. And you can only dispose of rubbish using one. So there are no anti-social neighbours dumping their rubbish in someone else's wheelie bin.

And the bags are heavily levied as well. A 35-litre Zürisacke costs CHF2.20 (if bought in a pack of ten). That's very nearly £1.60 today (probably about £1.70 tomorrow!). And you can put anything you like in them. There's no snooping into people's bins to check whether they are throwing the right things away. If you are stupid enough to pay to throw something away that you could dispose of for free then it's your own problem.

It's not all sweetness and light however. Whilst it may be free to recycle a range of materials, there is, of course, a system. And not an entirely straight forward one.

Let's start with the easy stuff. Street collections.

Every fortnight, on Tuesday morning, bundled paper is collected. And bundled means neatly bundled. Not higgledy-piggledy.
Garden waste is collected once per week during the Spring, Summer and Autumn if you have bought a permit. Less frequently in the Winter.

Cardboard is picked up on Wednesdays, once every four to five weeks, again, neatly bundled. And textiles once in June and once in November.

If you want to get rid of dangerous materials (such as chemicals, paints, etc.,) then you can take them to a collection point on a given day in October. Free up to 20kg of waste.

Next there's the drop-off points. That covers glass and small metal (tins and cans). Sometimes used cooking oil. These are located on the street at regular intervals throughout the city. But you can only use them between the hours of 7am and 7pm Monday to Saturday. Never on a Sunday and certainly not on a Public Holiday. After all, who would want their Freizeit to be spoilt by the sound of smashing glass?

So, what's left? Plastics? Batteries? Electronics?

Well, supermarkets are responsible for providing free facilities to recycle PET, plastic milk cartons and batteries. And light bulbs, small compressed air canisters and water filter cartridges.
They also tend to have bins and recycling points behind the tills so that you can throw away unwanted packaging at their expense.

As for electronics, as elsewhere, these should be returned to an electronics store for safe and suitable disposal.

And that covers most of it. Except for innovative second-hand sales.
And bicycles!
Although at least the water is clean enough to be able to see them!

The perils of dishwasher maintenance

Recent events that have transpired as a result of my limited German vocabulary are as follows:

1. Buying beeswax instead of wood oil to use on our unsealed Oak furniture. All the tins are labelled in German, and have pictures of wood furniture on them, which is surprisingly unhelpful.

2. Buying and putting dishwasher powder in the dishwasher salt compartment. I didn't realise until I had poured in almost the entire bag, when the lemony smell and copious frothing finally alerted me to my error.

3. Bought a chicken with giblets in it rather than without and then roasted it without removing them. Did not realise until Greg disassembled it to make stock, when the reason for the mysterious bleeding from the supposedly cooked bird became clear.

DIY know-how show-how triumph

Since moving in, it has been my great delight to get stuck into some DIY. It's normal for tenants to provide and fit their own light fittings in Switzerland, so we went to IKEA (IKEA here is just like IKEA everywhere else), and we bought some ceiling roses and lampshades. The first one that I fitted, in the living room, went extremely smoothly. It was a simple case of hooking up the ceiling rose, wiring in the wires, and then hanging the shade from the wire.

The second one in the dining room threw up a problem. The wires were poking out of the ceiling as expected, but there was no hook to attach the ceiling rose to. A quick rifle through our Dorling Kindersly 'DIY Know-how with Show-how' book (highly recommended in general) was not especially helpful on the matter, so armed with optimism and a map, (but fatefully not a dictionary), I set off in search of a hardware store to purchase an appropriate hook widget. I found an extremely helpful and good humoured shop assistant whose English was about equal to my German. Much miming and confusion ensued as we rifled through the shelves of light fittings and fixtures in an elaborate process of elimination. Eventually we agreed that I needed one of these:

As eventually explained by the DIY shop lady's English-speaking teenage son, this terrifying beast must be installed so that the entire clamp part is inserted into a slot in the ceiling. It is then expanded to grip the edges of the hole. One must then fill in the entire hole with polyfiller to create a smooth(ish) finish and leave the hook sticking out of the wall.

I rummaged about a bit in our toolkit, found my electric drill and discovered the plaster saw that we bought to repair the huge hole that Greg knocked into the wall of our last flat in London. It is an ugly-looking piece of equipment and not one to wave about carelessly at head height. I scuttled up the step ladder, donned a makeshift mask and safety glasses (I am all about the safety), and then scuttled down again to switch off the electricity before proceeding.

I drilled, hacked and chiselled a hole about 2 inches by half an inch into the ceiling, bringing down about a kilogram of filthy black plaster dust and ceiling matter. There was a moment when I lost my nerve a bit and had to have a sit down and a cup of tea, but then I got stuck back in again and finished the job. I wedged the hook in, slathered on the poly filler, crossed my fingers and went to have a shower (serious amounts of dust went absolutely everywhere). The result was triumphant, if a bit lumpy:

And three weeks later the light fitting is still up :)

The joys of a flat that isn't mouldy

We have been in our new flat for over a month and it is a dream. It's huge, it's very light and airy and it's nicely finished. Nothing is broken or missing or shoddily done. For all of the following reasons, it is nicer to live in than any of our previous flats in London.

1. The structure and fittings are sound. The window frames aren't rotten, the bathroom doesn't leak into the flat below, and the bannisters haven't come off the wall. 
2. The flat is not a biohazard - we don't have wasp, bee, moth or ladybird infestations, it doesn't smell, it isn't damp and the washing machine isn't mouldy. In fact, the washing machine is startlingly clean, thanks to the very particular rules about disassembling and cleaning all its parts at the end of every washing day. 
3. We have actually spoken to some of our neighbours, and none of them seem to be running businesses from their homes. So, in order of ascending annoyance, no drug dealers, car dealers or dog groomers to contend with.
4. We can't see (or hear) the West London flyover from our bedroom window. On a clear day, we can see the Alps from the bus stop on the main road.

I have only found two things that I don't like about it.

Firstly, we have so much space that our modest amount of furniture floats about looking lonely in the middle of the rooms. We got rid of quite a few things before we left the UK, and this has been aggravated by the incompetence of our removal company. In exchange for a shockingly large fee, they distinguished themselves by losing an entire bookcase, the shelves for a second bookcase, and a box of crockery. They also broke our third bookcase, and one of our office storage units. To add insult to injury, they managed to misplace the widgets that hold together our double bed and our futon sofa. So we are sleeping on our mattress on the floor. More widgets are in the post, lost in the interminable confusion caused by all the UK bank holidays.

Secondly, the light in the loo is on a movement sensor and a timer. In this way, it is an interesting barometer of digestive health. If you need to wave at it to switch the light back on, then you know that things are not quite as they should be...

Catching up - April 1st

NB - I wrote the below first impressions of our new flat on April 1st but we didn't get our internet connection sorted until mid April, and then I got a bit distracted by various things and neglected the blog for a bit...

Today is April 1^st, which as far as I can tell (and much to my relief given my limited German) is not a day of pranks and nonsense here in Switzerland, or at least I have so far avoided being the butt of any jokes. We are still in Lent after all. But it is very sunny and warm and extremely spring-like. The city has been coming alive in the last fortnight, and getting itself spruced up for the summer. Verdant swathes of colourful patio furniture have been springing up outside cafes like daffodils and crocuses. What I took to be storage sheds along the riverbanks have suddenly unfolded into bars and riverside swimming pools, with their attendants seemingly emerging from hibernation within, and blinking at the sunshine. And as in spring the first flies and insects start to appear, so the first coach loads of tourists are beginning to roll in.

Today is also our first full day in our new apartment, which we took possession of yesterday, a much anticipated and exciting event. Spending 3 months together in one room of less than 20m² has been a true test of our sapling marriage, but I am pleased to report that a divorce is not on the cards. Our new flat is nearly 4 times that size, and we have been rattling about in it not knowing what to do with all the space, and getting separation anxiety when we can’t see each other.  It’s in a quiet and pretty spot near to the University, far enough up on the hill to the west of the city to be scenic, and not far enough round towards the lake to have a lake view or to be pricey. It does however have a mountain view, in that if I lean right out over the balcony railing and twist my head back around I can see a tiny sliver of tree tops and the tip of the radio antennae on the Zürichberg.

The flat has been extremely well kept and is (currently) unbelievably clean. I think it was professionally cleaned before we moved in, but the previous tenants must also have taken very good care of it, because there are none of the usual signs of long-term occupation. No hint of limescale in the kitchen sink, no spot of mildew on the bathroom grout, not a single mucky mark on the skirting boards or definitely no smudges on the flooring. There is also no dust down the back of any of the radiators – something that I didn’t know was physically possible until now. Those of you who are reading this who are prone to cleanliness will probably be reeling with horror, but the flats that we lived in in London have ranged from generally-a-bit grubby to downright biohazard when we have moved into them.

Carnival

It's carnival season as various communities from Rio to New Orleans to Basel and (less famously) Zürich celebrate the pagan traditions of the change of winter to spring and the Christian traditions of preparing to fast during Lent.

They're a bit strange in the Alemannic folkloric tradition.

Here's an idea of what we happened across in the centre of Zürich yesterday.

For a little more information on the background...

Money, it's a gas

Helen mentioned "a hefty sum of Franken" in her last post so I thought I'd dwell on that subject a little.

In the UK, my paper cash carrying progression started quite young with crinkly blue notes and mild awe at anything with a '0' on it.

As a student, a purple beer voucher was an aspirational concept and my favourite cash machines were those that allowed me to withdraw ten pounds in two notes.

As a working man, the purple beer voucher played a more frequent role in my life but that is the end of the escalation.

The fifty pound note has remained an almost mythical entity.

And so to Switzerland. Where they love their money. And I don't just mean money in a conceptual, sitting in a bank, way. I mean actual physical money. Cash.

To start with we have the CHF10, CHF20 and CHF50 notes. These are easy to work with. The fifty pound note may be almost mythical but these foreign notes are colourful and reminiscent of money from board games. So the CHF50 note is still quite easy to work with. It's worth about £33.50 today so it's not such a big mental stretch as from £20 to £50.


Next though, we have the CHF100 note. This is worth (quick, do the maths) in the region of £67. That's a lot of money for one piece of paper. But when you take into account the cost of things here and the efficiency of the cash machines meeting your withdrawal request with the fewest possible pieces of paper, it's a common note.

Elsewhere on continental Europe I have asked the nearest cash machine for 50 or 100 Euros and received one note. Then, I have taken that single note to perform a small transaction and received scorn for not having anything smaller with which to pay.

Not so in Switzerland. It is perfectly acceptable to pay, for example, for a packet of chewing gum (CHF1.60) with a CHF100 note. No-one will even blink at this. No-one will scowl at you for draining their cash float.

Then there's the CHF200 note. It's a very light way to carry so much money. Efficient? Yes. Mildly unnerving? Also yes.


But we are not finished yet.


Yes, that's right. That is a CHF1000 note. That is one piece of paper with a value equivalent to about £670. That's scary stuff. Imagine leaving that in your pocket when putting your trousers through the wash!

Although that would never happen here. Money is to be respected. To be carefully stowed in a wallet or purse. No decrepit fivers here.

N.B. no money was harmed in the production of this blog post and all participating notes were obtained purely in the process of paying a month's rent in advance in cash (that was a whole month's rent in a mere eight bank notes!!).

(I'm allright Jack, keep your hands off my stack.)

House hunt part 2: The denouement

We have found an apartment to move into on 31st March! Given the horror stories that abound on the expat community message boards about the competition and confusion of house hunting, I was expecting, at the very least, to be asked to swap a kidney in return for a tiny garret above a strip club in the red light district. The expat online community, like any other, does attract a few fruit cakes (see Swinging Switzerland post below), so some exaggeration is probably at play. But still we have been exceedingly fortunate and I can only thank Special Providence for smiling down on me (and mention that if He feels like working on a job for me I might give Catholicism some serious thought).

Our new apartment is in 8006, a quiet and leafy area on the hillside above the Hauptbahnhof and near to the university. It has 3.5 rooms (for the uninitiated this is the London equivalent of a medium sized 2 bed flat) and a balcony, is sunny, quiet and pretty (sonnig, ruhig und schön). We will be on the first floor of an old vierfamilienhaus, (not sure how to spell that), literally, 4 family house, a house originally built as 4 flats for families.

This was the first viewing that I went to, and I was a bit nervous. We put on some smart clothes to make a good impression. At the appointed viewing hour there didn't seem to be much competition (just 2 boys looking together, either students or possibly a couple, I couldn't tell). The flat seemed lovely, nice layout and with a nice kitchen, although it was a bit of a blur. Greg got out his super charming German skills and chatted to the landlords, a middle aged Swiss couple, Herr and Frau L, as they showed us round. I smiled and said "Ja" and "schön" when it seemed most likely to be appropriate. When we left, Frau L asked for our surname when giving us the application form, so it seemed hopeful.

We took the form away, translated it all, filled it in and then wrote a rather pretty personal letter explaining our situation to go with our application (this seemed a bit strange to us, but is recommended to make one's form stand out). We sent it off in the post and crossed our fingers. 2 days later we got a phonecall - Herr L offering us the flat and inviting us to a meeting on Saturday afternoon to transact the official paperwork! The meeting was to be on neutral territory at a nearby cafe (of course). We got ourselves smartened up again, and arrived early with a hefty sum of Frankens for the first month of rent in advance.

Herr and Frau L arrived as the church clock struck 3pm. Seats were taken, coffees ordered, and small take made. This went on for quite some time (in German), mostly between the menfolk. Frau L, clearly in charge of operations, then brought us smartly to business and handed round the paperwork (in German). We discussed the Ts and Cs (in German) and handed over the cashola. We were then 'dismissed' by Herr L. Cue an awkward moment as Greg hears an unfamiliar verb and is not sure what we are instructed to do, and I am confused over the social convention for who should pay for coffee and attempt to query this in my poor German. Laughing and relief all round as translation occurs and we are gently but firmly pushed out of the door, without paying.

After this, it was simply a matter of translating the contract, or at least the additional terms and conditions, eventually giving up on some parts, and signing it anyway - it is a standard proforma from a Swiss tenancy/landlord website so we are pretty sure it is safe. We have agreed, amongst other things, to use the washing machine only on Mondays and Tuesdays, and to open the windows for 5 minutes, four times every day to ensure proper airing (although Frau L has hinted that once per day would be sufficient). So now we just have to find 3 months' rent for our deposit (!) and then we can move in.