On Friday, we said goobye to ye olde temporary housing accommodations at Wasserwerkstrasse 12 and went for the handover of our new rental apartment. It has been cool to be right next to the Limmat and several Badis, but we shall not miss being close to Hospital and having an ambulance siren go off at least once an hour, even through the night. When I took these last 2 pictures, we had already moved our bikes Hans and Helga over to the new place.

These are the photos I took right after the handover was finished. This is an old building (which is code for no elevator/lift), and we have an apartment on the ground floor. It was recently renovated and they did a really good job of retaining a lot of the old charm while updating everything. We have a bathroom with tub/shower and sink (and soon to be washer/dryer) and a separate WC room with the toilet. More than once I have walked in to the wrong room to use the toilet. The last 3 pictures are the master bedroom, living room, guest bedroom/office.

Not long after the handover was complete, Ikea showed up with a ton of boxes. The timing was really good, but it left us with a pile of empty cardboard boxes and a ton of trash. Luckily I found out that cardboard pickup day was on Monday, so I got them all bundled and tied up (with twine) as instructed, and they have already been picked up and disposed of! The bed frame arrived the same day from a different company, so at least we could sleep over.

Bright and early Monday morning (at 7:45am), our air shipment from the US arrived! That’s all of it - 4 Ikea bags and 4 boxes. I opened the first box in search of my Zyrtec, and look who was on top! I had forgotten that I had sent myself the gift of Dr. Pepper! I have missed you!

A few things about this place. The door handles look to be original. They’re beautiful, but they’re not entirely practical. The only one that looks like it has been modernized is the bathroom door, and it still locks with a skeleton key. Next, light fixtures do not come with the apartment. Luckily I knew this and had ordered us some lamps from Ikea. We don’t have a W/D in our unit yet, so there’s a pic of the community W/D in the basement. Apparently these community laundry rooms are usually strictly scheduled, so you have to be careful not to tick off the neighbors by washing at the wrong time. They’re not finished redoing the whole building yet, and the basement will be redone before it’s finished. We also have a storage space in the basement and one in the attic too. I didn’t include a picture of the one in the attic, because it’s about 6 flights up in this “old building” with no lift. But it’s safe to say that we have combined storage space that is probably the same size as our apartment. The backyard hasn’t been touched yet either, but I’m hoping that they will put in a place for us to park our bikes. I included the neighboring building in the photo of the back because it’s being renovated too, and I like that it’s going to be purple.

We keep getting trickles of stuff delivered each day, so there’s no finished product yet. I’ll have to take some photos to post when it gets completed. Here’s what we have so far. I assembled the 3 wardrobes. (2 in our bedroom, 1 in the office), and our couch was delivered today. Also, the refrigerator is broken, and we don’t have a shower head. And that’s our new place!