Inside of our Apartment

I was going to take pictures of the inside of our apartment when it was clean and tidy. However, even with just the two of us, that never seems to be the case.  At least it is mostly tidy and the dust bunnies (which seem to multiply on the wood floor) are invisible in the pictures.  

This is our front entrance...

...and this is inside the front entrance. The layout is a bit odd with the kitchen  and living room both off the entrance way, so we have to walk through the entrance to go between the two rooms. The door you can see in the kitchen leads to the bedroom, but we need the space more than we need the door.

The left side of the kitchen, the fridge is neatly hidden, to the right of the oven (and steamer). Note the tea towel with maple leaves and pot holder with the space needle in the picture. 

The right side of the kitchen, the freezer which helped  us familiarize ourselves with the Swiss medical system is on the left. The kitchen, bathroom, and entry ways all have the same slate floors. 

Living room from the front entrance.  The real wood floor is quite beautiful but dents a bit too easily. 

Living room (and also office - Torrey and I have matching standing desks).

Back hallways, the door leads to the storage units as well as stairs to outside.  The bedroom is to the left, bathroom to the right.   

Bedroom. The flower pots outside are at ground level and on the deck of our upstairs neighbours. Thanks Elin, Mom, and Dad for brining the sheets! Such a novel thing in Switzerland.  

The bedroom again, looking very Ikea-ish. 

Bathroom (and laundry room), the washer and dryer are behind the door .

For more details you need to come and see it yourselves!  

Our Swiss Home

I finally got around to taking pictures of our new place.  But only the outside as my camera battery died and I can't find the adaptor to recharge it. So the inside will have to be a later post.

We live within the City of Zürich in the neighbourhood of Wollishofen. It is a 15 minute bike (or bus) ride for Torrey to get to work. It will take me 25 minutes to up to an hour for me to get to the University via tram, depending on which campus I am going to.  I can also bike.

We live in a newly renovated old house. There are four flats, on the top floor (plus mezzanine, so I have been told) is the owner, then then two fairly large apartments on floors 1 and 0.  We are on -1 (European numbering system the ground floor is 0); ours is smaller than the others because the back of our flat (the front of the house) is storage units for everyone. The house is on a gradual slope so the front of our flat is at ground level but our bedroom and bathroom are half underground. We have our own entrance, a small yard including a patio.

Our street, Drosselstrasse looking north in front our house.

Our house! 

Looking south down Drosselstrasse, it is a fairly quiet one way street.

The main entrance is on the right of the picture, we access our "front" door  by the path on the left of the house.  

This house has some beautiful features, like this stain glass window which is  on the side of the house right by the main entrance (just around the corner from the "16" in the above pictures. 

Path to our flat, just behind the palm tree (and out of the pictures is our bathroom window), the  windows down the path are our living room. 

Our "front" yard, there is a large patio area at the other end of the yard  for our use. The just finished landscaping and it looks quite nice.  There had been weedy flower beds up until a few days ago. 

It is interesting how they did the landscaping, they used a number of fairly large plants. This one  I think is a  Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar (Cedrus atlantica), which is supposed to be slow growing. 

This cluster of 3 cedars (4 if you count the one behind the lamp)  seem  too close together, especially as they grow. But even in the 3 years we plan to be here I don't think they will be that big. 

Our "front" yard. Our entrance is just in front of my bike.  We have been keeping our bikes in our front entrance as we don't have a place to lock them up outside. They said they will be proving something for bikes, we will see what we end up with. 

View from our front door. Between the house and the tree you can sort of see a clock tower which is in "downtown" Wollishofen (the neighbourhood where we live). It chimes to mark the hours as well as the quarter hours, it is about the right distance away, loud enough to hear it but not too loud that it is disruptive.  Zürichsee (Lake Zürich) is just a bit further down the hill from the clock tower.