Notes from the barely above ground

As I may have hinted at a couple of times before, Switzerland is an expensive place. If you go to a typical store and look for a typical item (say, a trash can or a bag of potatoes), odds are you will have to pay at least 50% more than you would for a similar item in the US. Actually, that isn't exactly true. For certain things (mainly vegetables and fruits), this is definitely true. For household items and similar things, the real problem is finding "graduate-student" quality items; typically the cheapest item a store will carry will be significantly nicer or better than you really want. For example, the first things I needed to buy when I got my first apartment were towels and a floor mat. After a lot of searching, I found a two-pack of white bath towels on sale for 30 CHF and the cheapest floor mat I could find cost 40 CHF. In the US, you could go to your local Target, and probably find two (not particularly great quality) towels for at most $10 each, and I'm sure you could get a floor mat for about $5. This bottom rung of quality is almost impossible to find here. Almost. Fortunately, though, there's always Ikea.

At grad school, all of my furniture was used Ikea garbage (that's pronounced "gahrbahje") that I bought off of a departing post-doc. It was in good shape, clean, and super cheap (I think I paid like $200 for everything in my bedroom). But, as 2Pac (?) once said, when I became a post-doc, I put away childish things. It was time for me to purchase my own, brand new Swedish garbage.

Fortunately, one of my labmates is a former Ikea employee. With his insider knowledge and an Ikea catalog that another labmate had, picking out my furniture and accessories was a piece of cake. Using the same technique I use for choosing wine at a restaurant (always go for the second cheapest bottle), I made a thorough list of everything I would need to buy. Ikea is open "late" (9 PM) on Thursdays and Fridays, so a bunch of us made a field trip two Thursdays ago. Although there was quite a bit of initial skepticism that I would be able to purchase everything on my list (which nearly covered two sides of a piece of paper) in the roughly two hours that we had, shopping was a breeze. By 8:30 PM, I had gotten the rental van from the transportation center and we had filled it with all of my junk. Driving back to Lausanne was a bit touch-and-go (the Ikea is out in the middle of nowhere, between Lausanne and Geneva), but ultimately, though, I made it back and my friends helped me unload everything. Here is a picture of pretty much everything that I bought on that first trip:

Fig. 1: It is both fascinating and mildly depressing that virtually all of my furniture fit inside the back of a mid-sized van.

As you can see, there were a lot of boxes; I think a couple of the big boxes didn't even make it into the picture. My first thought was that assembling the furniture would take about one weekend, max. Two weeks and one return trip to Ikea later, I have finally finished assembling everything I bought. I'm not quite done buying furniture, since I still need to get a futon, but those are extremely easy to find used and since I won't be sleeping on it (much), I will make an exception to my "all-new furniture" rule. Here are some pics of the newly decked out apartment.

Fig. 2: It was difficult to get all the girls to clear the shot, but if they didn't it would be hard to see all of my classy furniture.

Fig. 3: The empty space on the left is for the futon. And, Yes, I did pay money for that carpet. I happen to think it looks cool.

Fig. 4: If you need to disassemble a piece of Ikea furniture and just can't find that little tool, give me a call -- I got you covered.

I have some miscellaneous things to post, but it's getting late -- they'll have to wait for tomorrow.