The Adventure Begins...

Well, the Swiss adventure has begun. We're in Switzerland looking for an apartment. It's hard to believe that in a month we'll actually be living in Europe! We've only looked at a couple of places so far, but have quite a few in the next 2 days.

Though we've only been here 5 days, we've already learned some important things:

1. You can get by ok with a vocabulary of "good day", "good night", "thank you", "please" and "do you speak English?"

2. The housing styles and colors are quite different from what we are accustom. So far we've seen lavender (with large lavender lightning bolts on the doors) , bright yellow, maroon, red, pink and many more. We looked at an apartment in the complex to the right.

3. Apartments here are described in terms of pieces (rooms). So we're looking at places 3.5-4.5 pieces (2-3 bedroom). Each room counts and an eating area counts as 0.5.

4. Thinking in military time isn't the easiest thing when you're used AM and PM.

5. Babel Fish is extremely helpful when looking for apartments on a French search engine.

We've also had some adventures with the food and the language. I'm trying hard to avoid anyone's eye for fear that they might speak to me. However, interaction is unavoidable. Fortunately we can interpret with had motions most of the time. However, I did get complimented on my pronunciation of Bonjour the other day - they thought I was a native! Too bad I can't say it the same way two times in a row. Today we discovered American peanutbutter in the grocery store; it tasted wonderful!!

Sunday we took a break from apartment research and visited a castle in Gruyeres - about 35km from Fribourg. We took a walking tour of the castle, had a typical Swiss lunch (including fondue, dried meats, cheese and bread) and then got to see snow! While we were eating lunch it started to snow A LOT. Within about 20 minutes it started to stick and by the time we left, there were a few inches on the car. The picture of us was taken on the ramparts of the castle with the Pre-Alps in the background.