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.

Take me down to Studio-Cité

As I sort of hinted at in an earlier post, finding an apartment in Lausanne has been a difficult task. When I was planning this little sojourn to Switzerland, I figured that a week or two ought to be ample time to find an apartment, a bank account, a cell phone, etc. I had heard some rumors about the excesses of red tape here, and I knew that there was a housing shortage far away in metropolitan Geneva, but I thought that my prodigious talent at bureaucracy would rule the day and I would be fine. Oh, how naïve I was those many days ago.

Without going through more boring details, the bottom line is that at present I am living in what can only be described as the last available apartment in Lausanne. I got the last available room in the only furnished apartment building in the city that had any vacancy whatsoever. Let me describe it to you.

I live at Avenue de Menthon 16, in the "Studio-Cité" furnished apartment building. It is in the neighborhood known as "La cité," and the building is within eye-sight of the incredible Lausanne Cathedral and the old University building. Until the University moved to a campus outside of the city (which is where I work), this used to be the students' quarter of town. As far as it goes, it's hard to beat the location. Sort of. We'll get to that later.

Once inside the building, the first thing you notice is the smell. It smells like someone has recently spilled a huge ashtray on the floor, and hasn't gotten around to cleaning it up. It's true that as a Californian, I have been socially programmed to be ridiculously sensitive to cigarette smoke, but this building has the worst smell of any I've been in, yet. Since this is in general a temporary residence for the tenants, they tend not to treat it with the same respect they would a more permanent place. People throw butts in the stairway and hallways, and the stench coming out of some people's doors will pretty much knock you over. Here is a picture of the not-at-all depressing hallway which leads from the stairwell to my door (at the very end).

Fig. 1: Not a lot of light at the end of the tunnel.

Once you open the door, a new and even more interesting smell awaits. After some investigation, I think that the smell has two primary sources: first, the wooden eaves. Since I'm on the top floor, the walls and ceiling of my apartment are part of the building support and are thus at least a hundred years old. A hundred years of rain and snow can create some serious rot and and mildew, even in the best of circumstances. The other major source is definitely the bathroom. God knows what's going on in the shower, but since I'm only going to be in this apartment until the 1st of September (I get to switch to another room in the building), the landlady doesn't want to do anything about it. I've tried cleaning it with kitchen spray, and it was unaffected. Here's a picture of my bathroom, try not to look at the rot in the shower.

Fig. 2: Minty!

As with all great achievements, it's the little things that make it really stand out. First, notice where the toilet paper holder is. It's directly in the line of fire for the shower head, if the shower head were put in the bracket on the wall. Of course, the bracket on the wall is missing screws and can't support the weight of the shower head. But that's ok, since the shower head is too large to fit in the bracket anyway and has to be held by hand constantly, thus making it difficult to do simple things like apply soap from the bottle to the lather builder. And of course, the shower curtain doesn't go around the corner and block the toilet paper, so every morning's shower is a little adventure.

I was complaining about this to Serge the other day, and his comment was, "Yeah, that's the French style of designing showers." To which I asked, "well, how do the French deal with the problem of not getting the toilet paper wet?"

"Easy. They don't take showers."

Fig. 3: Not at all creepy.

Some more details: approximately fifty years ago (I'm guessing) someone decided to liven up the place by the addition of cartoon stickers featuring naked kids. Classy.

Fig. 4: At least the linoleum is new.

Continuing our tour, we next go to the living room, or "room" as I like to call it. The furniture is in decent shape, the bed is almost as tall as I am, and there is an honest-to-god china hutch. I guess I could keep my China in it, were it to come to that.

Fig. 5: Mystery meuble in action.

In the back left of the picture, under the bookcase is a piece of furniture whose purpose I am not particularly clear on. I'm posting a close-up (with the active part "deployed") in the hopes that someone knows what this is and how I should use it.

Fig. 6: Not visible: the store that sells exclusively "Warhammer 40K" paraphernalia, around the corner.

Finally, the view out one of my windows. Yes, that's a motorcycle parking lot directly below me. And that building? It's a police station (with squad cars). Of course, around the corner is a hospital (with ambulances). Of the three, the worst is definitely the motorcycles, but between the three I haven't had an uninterrupted night's sleep yet. Oh well, no place is perfect.