Glacier Express - If you are on short visit

If you are on short visit and do not mind spending a bit more money to see the best of Switzerland, try the Glacier Express.

Fribourg - the student city (story to follow)

Do I need a car?

The answer is no, not really. Unless you have a family of 5 or live in some extremely remote area, it's a necessity to have a car in Switzerland. It's been close to one year since we first arrived here, and we've been depending on public transport all this while. The reliability and efficiency of the system is superb. I don't know any other countries that come close to Switzerland, perhaps the Scandinavian. The only drawback I can think of is that majority of the trains are the old design with floor high above the ground and for parents with stroller, it's a quite a task to lift it in. As for wheelchair bound people, it's interesting ... major train stations usually have a special wheelchair lifter.

Zurich from bird's eyes (story to follow)

Chain the keys to your body (story to follow)

Blue Bag vs Black Bag

You "idiot Auslander"! That's most likely what the locals would say when they see any black garbage bags in the garbage bin. At one point, I was probably labeled the same when we first moved to our apartment in a village near Baden, called Nussbaumen (an area a Swiss colleague once referred to as the "Auslander ghetto"; I wasn't quite sure if he was joking ... thinking about it again now, I think he was dead serious).

Auslander is foreigner in German.

When we first moved from Baden (the city centre) into our first rented apartment in Nussbaumen (a nearby small village), we used the usual black garbage bags bought from the local supermarket. When throwing the first bag of garbage (in our first week there), I saw a few other black bags also, which seemed to indicate nothing to worry about. Second week, second garbage ... and surprisingly on the following day it got returned by a middle aged man; plus he explained I'd thrown it into the bin belonging to the adjacent building, not mine. He then stressed that I'd used a cheap garbage bag when I was supposed to use the "expensive blue bag". How the freaking hell he knew that was my rubbish?? .. So later discovered, he'd rummaged through the rubbish and found an envelope with my name on it. Voila! First lesson of Swiss life. Despite my failed attempt to find the blue bags in the local supermarket, he emphasised that's the only place we I get it from.

The following day I found out from a colleague that the supermarket near my office at which I'd been searching for the blue bags was not "local enough" despite being 8 minutes away by bus, and 25 minutes by foot. It turned out that local essentially meant a supermarket 200 meters away from my apartment (!) and Nussbaumen is a different "gemeinde" (synonymous to village or community or town) to Baden ... although it's also part of Baden in some other context (I think). Nussbaumen has different rules on certain things one of which is garbage management; and the blue garbage bags are only sold in the local supermarkets in my gemeinde! Second lesson of Swiss life.

I thought I learned fast - but not quite! On Monday I received the above notice from the local police asking me to be present at the station on matter pertaining to garbage management.

The conclusion? Can I say .... once you are corrected, you will still be punished??


See here how many people are confused about what is part of Baden, what is not.


(I KNOW, I NEED ANOTHER PICTURE)

Zurich - Our second day in Switzerland (1 July 2006)

Since 1st of July is a public holiday, we decided to take a train up to Zurich. The first thing that struck me when I arrived at the station was the "big fat woman" was still hanging down the ceiling. Apparently it is a famous art work of someone and from my reading somewhere symbolises some god that protects passengers. A very very similar one (or could be exact) can also be found in Luxembourg. And the "fat woman god" is there until today.


Secondly, do you see how much it costs to take a shower in the public toilet at the train station (above)?? CHF 12! which in the currency I'm more used to is equivalent to Malaysian Ringgit 36 which ... can get one 6 big lunches! To pee it only costs you one sixth of that.

But the good news is, to change baby it's free of charge (FOC) and obviously no one will stop you from peeing in the changing room toilet :). If you don't have a baby the only FOC option available is in the train :)