Q & A – The Daily Grind

Most of our posts are about our weekend excursions and interesting aspects of our life abroad. But, that’s not really representative of our daily life. That’s because our daily life isn’t nearly as fun to write about. Joe goes to work, Emily and James go to school, and Henry and I stay home and take care of everything else. But, I’ve gotten some questions about our daily life, so here’s a little Q&A. If you have any other questions about Switzerland or life abroad, feel free to send them to us.

How DO you manage without a car? Are you basically house-bound or do you and Henry get out with the bike much? I am certainly not house-bound. Henry and I have gotten very adept at getting around on the bike. Every morning during the few hours that the older kids are at school, I plunk Henry in his trailer and off we go. Without a car and with the limited time we have, we are usually limited to our town. I have about a mile radius in which I live most of my days. But, within that distance is: 3 grocery stores, butcher shop, farm where we get our milk, café with toys for kids, playgrounds, library, music class, choir practice, restaurants, walking trails, the Aare river, train station, and more. There is actually quite a bit to explore in our little town, and I’m getting to know it really well. This morning, for example, we went to the third grocery store, stopped at a bakery (my first time at both of those places), and then went to the farm for milk, potatoes and a sugar beet (not sure what I’m going to do with that last one yet!) It’s pretty cold out, but a lot of people are still biking around here. If I don’t feel like biking, I can turn Henry’s trailer into a stroller and walk. And, if the weather is much worse, there is a bus stop about a block from our house that takes me around town.

Do you have to go grocery shopping almost every day? The main items we need to buy on a regular basis are bread and milk. The bread here is all fresh, bakery bread that lasts about 36 hours before turning rock hard. And the milk we get at the farm is sold in liters, not gallons, and it isn’t pasteurized. So, I do a big grocery trip about twice a week. (“Big” being only whatever I can carry home in the back of the bike trailer.) We go to the farm every other day, and Joe often stops somewhere on his way home from work to pick up some fresh bread or other small items.

You said the kids were watching Spongebob Schweitzmer or something, so does that mean you have a TV, or were they watching online? First, in German, it’s called Spongebob Schwamkopf, which translates as “Spongebob Sponge Head” (“Spongebob Square Pants” has too many syllables in German.) Thanks to the internet and Joe’s savviness with technology, we have a whole collection of ways to watch TV. We have a regular TV that shows Swiss/German programming. The older kids like to watch Nickelodeon in German, but otherwise we really don’t use it. Then, we have several ways of watching English programming, some that are on the TV and some on our computers over the internet. Henry’s current favorite show is Dinosaur Train. Joe bought a special package from Yahoo! Sports so he can watch NFL games, especially the Packers. Sometimes it’s nice to turn on a favorite show and forget that I am in a foreign country for a while.