Monthly Archives: August 2013

Switzerland

Sleeping in the Mountains

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With Street Parade coming up and summer coming to a close, Kay and I wanted to get out of Zürich for the weekend and spend a night in the Alps, so last Saturday morning we hopped on the train with our coffee and my bagged refrigerator oats at 6:30am and rode 2 hours towards Dallenwil to start an Alpine trail.

Mmm Mmm, baggie food. It was actually blueberry and goji berry refrigerator oats and it was tasty, despite looking like a bag of barf.

The train was also packed at 6:30am because we weren’t the only ones escaping Street Parade. Streets filled with smoke, thousands of people dancing in sweaty, embarrassing getups, trash, puke, foot and train traffic? No thanks. I’ll take the Alps over that any day.

I was gutted to find out that I forgot my walking sticks though. My magical walking sticks. It made hiking seem very, very slow… for me. Not for Kay, who was always about 500m or more ahead.

We had lots of cows on our trails, which meant watching out for fresh cow pies. But the cows were so cute and friendly!

Swiss cows are used to wanderers walking through their grounds and some of them even come over for pets. Apparently they like being scratched behind the ears… and they like licking salt off you too!

Mmmm, salty hikers!

It became a bit cloudy the more we were hiking, which is great for walking, but when we got to the top of our hills it was quite chilly after all the rain during the week.

And those blasted clouds started following us up on the hill and surrounding us in cloud every time we got to a peak damnit!

Still, it’s hard not to admire the beauty around you as you are walking.

When we got to the end of the pre-alpine trail, the alpine trail started up and it was actually fairly steep and scary. Sometimes on one side there would just be a big, rolling hill, but I kept my eyes on the path and kept going.

We also saw for the first time a sheep dog, which barked at us for 20 minutes while we took a bathroom break and tried to decide if the dog would bite us or not. We weren’t anywhere near the sheep, but we had to walk into the sheep dog’s area to pass.

Kay walked along the fence until it became too steep on the one side and the dog barked at him the whole time. I shushed the dog and told him to be quiet and then I crossed over the fence while the dog was by Kay. I was a little scared that he would come attack me since he was a very big dog, but almost as soon as I crossed the dog came halfway towards me and then lay down in the middle of the path and was quiet while I walked past him.

In order to travel light, Kay wanted me to try sleeping in a bivi bag for the first time so he could avoid carrying the tent and give us the opportunity to sleep in many places tents could not be set up. This is how we were able to settle on the location below for the night.

Bivi (or bivy) bags are basically water and windproof bags that you put your sleeping bag in for the night. It’s kind of like sleeping out in the open without a tent, except that you still have a sleeping mat and protection from the rain and wind. Sort of.

I say “sort of” because my bivi bag was cheaper material than Kay’s, so as soon as I was in it for the evening it was already forming condensation on the inside. Kay told me to sleep with the bivi bag unzipped, which helped a little… but I woke up in the middle of the night with a snail two inches from my face on the inside of my bivi bag. AHHH.

Whew. Aside from the snail and the sporadic claustrophobia feelings inside the bags, I slept OK. It was a pretty windy spot on the mountain and I got pretty cold at times at night, so at some points I did need to close the hood of my sleeping bag to cover all but my nose… and at other times I thought I would suffocate if I didn’t free my arms a little. But it was worth it to wake up in this setting:

In typical mountain settings, the ground warms up in the morning and the dew starts to evaporate into clouds that rise up and over the mountains. The only bad thing about all the condensation and dew is that all our packs had gotten fairly wet overnight. It was the biggest difference than sleeping in the tent where your pack is safely inside the tent, protected from dew.

But sometimes when I woke up at night with my face poking out of my sleeping bag, I got to see a sky full of stars that I’m not used to seeing in the city. It was magical!

We also had not found a water source before camping for the night and unfortunately, we ran out of water during breakfast the next morning. I had a mild panic attack as we started our 4 hour hike on Sunday with little to no water left in Kay’s pack.

I may have been desperate enough to be picking grass and licking the dew off of it. And leaves…. leaves that tasted strongly of chives. I was thirsty!

The hike the next day was not nearly as fun without my sticks and with such rocky, muddy paths going down the hill.

Below is basically what one of our paths looked like… and I was not impressed in my dehydration! A fellow wanderer told us this was the difference between a “walk” in the mountains and a “hike”. And he was right!

We made it to water eventually and then back home, but we didn’t get quite all the hiking done so Kay wants to head back to this region again for a day hike to get to the last peak with a lookout point over lake Luzern.

How do you feel about camping in the wilderness? Would you ever sleep in a bivi bag?

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Thinking like an architect

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After viewing *almost* all the architecture plans of every neubau project around the Zürich area, I came to realize that sometimes architects make what I believe are some poor choices for floor layouts.

Take these two for example:

Both this and the floor plan below are for three bedroom flats around 150 sq m (1600 sq ft), cost 1-1.2 million CHF. (1.1-1.3 million USD) and NONE of them have been purchased.

Real estate in Switzerland is usually calculated by square meters, whether or not those are useful square meters. While the flats above both have a lot of space, they occupy an unfortunate small corner of a triangular building and as a result, the layouts are not optimal.

Both flats share a massive wall that has no windows, so the space cannot really be utilized for bedrooms. And the second flat has the most unfortunate winding hallway that will do nothing but increase the price of the flat because of it’s area.

Nobody wants to pay over a million for extra hallway space.

While there’s not much I would recommend for changing the second layout, aside from having initially done the apartment below it differently so that it wouldn’t have such an awkward, long entrance hallway, I really think they could have drawn up the first plan to be more useful.

Take a look again:

The problem with the first flat, is that unlike the second one, it does not have any bedrooms bigger than 14 sq m (150 sq ft) so none of the bedrooms make an attractive master bedroom unless you sacrifice an entire room for a walk-in closet, which is pretty wasteful in Europe, although we have seen neighbors in our building do just that because the plan didn’t incorporate enough space for wardrobes in the master bedroom.

I also feel like having an open kitchen with room for a kitchen table is a bit redundant when your dining room area is right next to it. Most people would favor one table or the other and since the dining area is already informal with an open plan, I would just combine them.

But aside from the small bedrooms, the biggest problem I have is with the massive, almost unusable entrance area and the pantry with two doors. The entrance itself is bigger than any of the bedrooms, but would not make an ideal office area because of all the doorways leading into it. Also, who wants an office area where they take their shoes and coat off?

I’m guessing that an additional stairwell in the building was required for evacuation purposes, because there is already a stairwell accessible to this flat through the main entry by the lift, but the architects still designed this pantry in the most inconvinient way possible. If one really must keep access to the door free for evacuation, one could never fully utilize the space in the pantry for storage. They would be limited to one to two shelves with access to the doors and the utility panel.

Here’s one idea that I would do instead:

First, I would have totally changed the entrance hallway to run directly along the windowless wall and to include all entries and the utility box, which is in our own hallway in our floor plan. I would also make built in closets in the hallway for coats and storage.

From there I would make a much bigger master bedroom with access to a bathroom with a huge walk-in shower with no door, double sink and toilet. There would be plenty of space for a couple’s extensive wardrobe.

Then I would make two smaller bedrooms for children, offices or guests. The rooms are large and long enough that you could fit double beds and wardrobes for children or guests, or an office with lots of shelving.

Against the Swiss standard, I would make the “public” bathroom in the flat the bathroom with a bathtub for bathing children or for guests to take baths and then I would make the space where the old small shower used to be the pantry, with an outward facing door to maximize storage room inside which could now run in an L shape along the back wall.

From there I’d make a spacious living room with plenty of seating options and places to put a TV setup.

Next comes the big kitchen with sit in dining. Some people are not a fan of this, but I believe this whole layout is not really conducive for a separate kitchen and these days it seems like formal dining rooms are less and less popular as people want to eat together where the food is made. A door from the living room could be optional to have the option for a closed kitchen if one wanted.

And then finally I would set a space for a big office with room for a guest bed, but this could also be used as a bedroom, guest room, playroom for children or some combination.

So I would turn those 150 sq meters into a four bedroom flat with more useable, enjoyable spaces than before.

If only Allreal had thought of this before they built the place. I’m pretty sure they are going to have to reduce the prices because the flats have been on the market for two years now without selling. And that’s pretty sad (and rare) in Switzerland, where space is limited and real estate comes at a heavy price.

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Reduit

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It was hard to organize the pantry aside from stacking a bunch of stuff in a pile, so it was clear that in order to utilize our 4.4 cubic meter (155 cubic foot) pantry, we would need some shelves, and tall ones.

We headed out on a Saturday for a day full of shopping at IKEA, Obi, Jumbo, Micasa, Coop Bau und Hobby and Migros Do-it. We were hoping to find shelves for the basement as well, but all the ones at Obi were weirdly rusty and all the other stores had really expensive metal shelves. We ended up passing on them because in the same trip we bought a very heavy basic picnic table and four tall bambu plants for the balcony!

Before we picked up the bambu and picnic table at Jumbo, we had to decide about the reduit shelving. We looked over all the options of wall mounting and discussed what was a good idea cost-wise and practically with our cement and brick walls all around. Thinking in the heat of Jumbo (it felt like a furnace!) was overwhelming, but after melting for 30 minutes, we finally decided on some wooden shelves.

Back at home we got to assembling!

It was a little more expensive to buy a corner shelf, but we thought it would be handy, so we bought it anyway. After the fact, I realized that the additional beams required for the corner shelf make it kind of annoying to use, so I sort of wish we’d just bought normal rectangles and put them next to each other.

Anyway, whatever… we bought them. It’s done.

It was a tight fit in the back of the reduit to install the shelves and my back was actually giving me a lot of problems after pulling it on Friday while moving a sofa with Kay.

When the entire shelf was done, I actually had to crawl out through the bottom area before we could scoot the shelf into place in the corner.

Et voilà… organized storage!

I’ve got cleaning products, plastic bags, recycling, brooms, electrical items, towels, etc.

Eventually I would like to move the bath towels out of here, but we found out that my idea for a bed with drawers won’t work because the frames we bought for our Tempur mattresses have motors that don’t work with beds with drawers. (Sadness!)

The only other thing I’m wondering is how I would possibly fit an extra fridge or freezer in this reduit… but I’ll save that project for a later date.

How do you organize your closet spaces?

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Organizing the Flat

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Boy does it take awhile to get settled in a new place!

I think it usually helps if you actually own all the furniture you have before you move (we need to buy a lot of storage shelving and wardrobes) and you know, if your bathroom isn’t rendered inhabitable right after you move in. Still, somewhere between holding up all those awnings (God, my arms!!) I managed to start unpacking.

Since we finished moving earlier than planned, we went ahead and bought two super  tall bookshelves to start organizing our office. The rooms are so tall that we can actually fit two additional shelves on top of the highest Billy model, making the bookshelves about 280cm or 9’18” tall.

Thank goodness I still had all my plastic bins from our built-in-bookshelves in Zürich!

We also had that orange sofa bed up there delivered fairly soon after moving in, but the guy was totally weird and gave us a sofa with the wrong feet, so it didn’t sit properly on the ground. And it was pretty gross so I wanted to strip the covers and wash them pronto, but it took a good week before the room was clear enough to take the cover off.

Down in the basement, we had this:

It honestly doesn’t look much better now because we still don’t have shelves down there, but we threw away the broken bed frame and some boxes and Styrofoam, so that helped a little. Kay will get his bike out of there as soon as he finds his bike lock and stores it in the bike room in the garage.

By the entrance to the cellar is our little wash area with a laundry tower on one side and a sink on the other side.

The cellar is a decent enough size, definitely bigger than what we had in Zürich, and since it’s tall we will eventually be able to utilize shelving to clear everything up, but for now it’s a little chaotic.

We also bought that dehumidifier you see because we spotted a little dampness on our back wall during inspection and we don’t want any mold problems. The building is still so new that the concrete walls are quite moist, so we will leave the dehumidifier on for quite awhile. In fact, before we bought the hose for it to drain directly, we had to empty the 20L container every morning and evening. Without it, it’s roughly 70% humidity down there… and with the dehumidifier it’s keeping it around 45%. Maybe that’s keeping it a bit dry for summer months, but since the walls keep oozing out humidity, we just want to soak that up before problems start.

The home inspector also recommended keeping our things away from the walls for quite awhile. (I forget how long of course) so when we get shelves, we’ll probably set them up in the middle of the room to start with.

Now, here are those weird stubby legs that came with the sofa bed. They are not from the Karlstad series and when attached to the sofa bed, the sofa just sat on the sofa bed parts and not the legs. It was pretty random. We pulled them off and stuck them on our normal 3 seater Karlstad until we buy metal legs for the living room sofas.

The sofa is also noticeably shorter with these legs, but at least with the old square legs we could set the sofa bed on its feet and start taking the covers off to be washed.

So that’s what’s going on with the house at the moment. Baby steps as we acquire more storage room. Our flat in Zürich sure did have a lot built in with the laundry room and the attic storage!

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Breaking our brand new retractable awnings

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During our first days back at work after the move, Kay noticed that from the hours of 6-8pm (you know, when we get home from work) the retractable awnings were doing close to nothing to shade us while we tried to eat on our balcony.

The sun was setting and covering the already sun-baked tiles in a blaze of fiery light. And that perturbed Kay as he tried to eat his dinners and lay in his hammock.

It bothered him so much that in our first full work week in the flat, he brought home tools from work to try and turn the awnings at a lower angle so that they would block out more sun. This involved a lot of lifting (on my part) and cursing on Kay’s part.

It was easy to lower the first side, but he was having trouble making the awnings lay straight. They were lopsided. Kay went to fix the awning on the right and he could not for the life of him get the awning to lower. And this all happened to be during the sunniest time on the balcony.

Meanwhile, my arms were getting incredibly sore and I was increasingly frustrated that we were spending time messing with the awnings and possibly, very expensively, breaking them instead of spending time organizing our very messy new home. We were both really worried that Kay had somehow broken them.

We left them lopsided for the evening and went to bed defeated.

Below you can actually see that the flats above us have awnings that come out and then flip down to really block the sun coming in. They didn’t do them like this on the big terrace level because we obviously have a lot more walking area, but we were a little envious of our smaller-balcony neighbors enjoying a shady dinner.

After a few days and some more calls to the awning business that told Kay this was an “easy fix” he figured out how it worked to fix the awnings. We got one side down as low as we wanted, but by then it was too dark to see if the shade was worth the cost of not being able to walk under the awning anymore.

We waited another day until I took these pictures and you could see that the shade below is a lot more than it was before, where it was almost non-existent. But to Kay, it still wasn’t enough shade and having to duck under the awning in the middle of the balcony was a huge waste of terrace real estate.

So you know what we did? We got back out there and put the awnings back up to their original spots. (Ugh, more lifting… I’m such a weenie!)

I stood there holding the awnings, my arms burning… wondering why we did anything in the first place, but some things you don’t figure out until you try them out.

It took awhile, but we got both awnings level with each other again. They are still great during the daytime, but it’s clear that with our “sunny balcony” we will have to invest in some other sun blocking solution elsewhere on the balcony so that we can enjoy some shadier dinners. And thankfully we didn’t really break the awnings. I don’t want to imagine how much they would have cost to repair or replace.

And you won’t find me complaining about how sunny it is… I’m glad for it! And I’m sure we will appreciate the sun more when the temperatures dip down lower towards the autumn. It will make the balcony more useable during the year than otherwise.

Did you ever have any big “Why did we do that??” moments with house projects?