Big news! We got an apartment! It’s the one described in my previous post. Tyler and I pick up the keys tomorrow and can start moving in. Most of our stuff is still on a boat making it’s way to us for we’ll be living bare boned until mid-September. We haven’t shipped any furniture at all so we will be starting from scratch. This weekend we went to Ikea and picked out a few pieces, a mattress store and tried out a few beds and fabulous second hand store where we found a few great pieces we’re hoping are still there when we go back this coming weekend. We’re really excited to be leaving our temporary apartment and start the real settling in phase of our journey.

We found out about the apartment on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday I went on a hike with a fellow “Spooger” (spouse of a Googler) named Tory who just arrived in Zurich last week. Tory is originally from Mill Valley but she and her husband moved here from Berkeley! Naturally we had lots to talk about on our 10 mile hike from Zurich to the top of Pfannenstiel, a small mountain on the Gold Coast of the lake. Here was our approximate route.

The Swiss love to hike and there are countless trails called “wanderwegs” up and down both sides of the lake. Most of these trails are extremely well groomed and paved with gravel so even though it rained all Tuesday night and sprinkled on us all day Wednesday, the trails were still easy to traverse without much mud or strife. On our hike we encountered cows, horses, goats, farms, orchards, a cemetery, a pond with giant breaching fish, waterfalls (both man-made and natural) and we had our lunch one of the cabin/huts built for hikers one finds along the way. It was my first foray into country life and it was all right in our backyard!

In the village of Egg.

Grave of a young boy who died just a few days after his 10th birthday.

Freaky bird face.

Cemetery mausoleum.

Natural rock tombstone.

Mountain pond.