Our First Week in Zug

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, Westin and I have started to further explore this little town of Zug. In our exploration, we discovered that we’re actually closer to Baar – a smaller town than Zug, that’s about a ten minute walk from our apartment. The main area of Zug is about a 20 minute walk. There are markets and train stations in each town. I’ll be doing most of my grocery shopping in Baar, since it’s a little closer. We have  a small kitchen with a small refrigerator, so I can’t really do all my shopping at once. Instead, we’ll walk to the market a couple times a week. The train station in Baar is just across the street from the market, so we’ve also been there a few times to watch the trains come in and out. It’s our new airplane watching. We also have a game we play with the trains – we try to guess if they’ll be coming from the left or right, and if they’ll stop or pass through the station.

Across the street from us is a farm with lots of cows. We can watch them from our windows, but have also ventured over to get a closer look.

We’ve also found a couple little parks (key work, “little”) around the area. The parks here are very different from what we’re used to. Not as extravagant and not nearly as big. The park we like the most is down by the lake, about a 25 minute walk. There’s a twisty slide with a rope ladder, a couple of swings, a c-saw, a sandbox (which is more like a dirt box), a merry-go-round, and a large grassy area. Luckily it’s clean and in a beautiful location - kind of makes up for the fact that it’s pretty pathetic. But, it does the job and has enough room for W and me to play baseball and soccer.

Down the street from this park is a creek with a little play area. Once Westin saw some other kids wading in the water, he couldn’t resist stripping down to his skibbies and joining in on the action.

Even further down the lake is a beach area called Strandbad. Apparently there are a few of these kid-friendly beaches around the lake. It’s going to be a great go-to activity when it’s warm outside. Not only is there a little beach area, there’s also a kids’ pool, shaded grassy area, café, and bathrooms. We spent about four hours there the other day and will definitely be going back.

When it’s rainy, and we’ve saved up our pennies, there’s also an indoor play area in Baar called “Kids Meetingplace.” It has four trampolines, a cool jungle gym area, slides, all sorts of toys, a movie room… basically any kid’s heaven. Unfortunately, it’s kind of expensive, so we won’t be going too often.

And when we're just at home, this kid can't stand to have his shirt on. It's the funniest thing. We'll literally be walking through the door and he's already taking it off. 

As for grocery shopping, it’s been interesting to wander through the stores to see what they do and do not have that we have in the states. Of course I can’t find Diet Coke here, it’s Coke Light, which is just not the same, but will have to do for a couple more months. I also can’t find measuring spoons. Apparently people here don’t use them. They just weigh the ingredients on a scale. I’m having my dad bring a set in a couple weeks when he comes to visit. I’m itching for some homemade chocolate chip cookies but don’t dare just eye the measurements when it comes to baking. They also don’t have yellow cheeses (it’s all white cheese, but of course there’s a huge variety and they’re delicious), most American cereals, peanut butter (but I came prepared with my own huge Costco size tub), coconut, chocolate chips (but their chocolate isles are as big as the American cereal isles), and some Mexican spices. I also learned the hard way during my first trip to the store that you have to weigh and print out the prices for your produce before you get to the checkout counter. They also use special garbage bags that cost 29 Swiss Franc per roll! Everything here is expensive. There’s just no getting around it.

And today we finally made it to church. There are three wards around us (and when I say around us, I mean about 15 miles away, and about an hour train/walking combo). We chose to go to the one that had the easiest route – the Bonstetten Ward. I don’t actually think we are in the ward boundaries for this ward, but it’s the one that is the most English friendly. In fact, about half the ward is English speaking and the other half is German speaking. We arrived right on time, and were able to meet the Bishop and a few people before we walked in. One of the girls I met is actually someone who another friend of mine put me in contact with via email. So it was great to meet her, along with another thirty-something-mother of two elementary aged boys (she actually writes a blog about activities to do in Switzerland with kids – looking forward to reading that). Both of families live in Zurich, but hopefully we can get together with them every once in a while. Jessi (the girl I’ve been emailing), has two boys and a daughter, Chloe, who is Westin’s age. She and Westin hit it off immediately. During Sacrament meeting, Westin asked me where Primary was. I said I didn’t know and that we could ask Chloe afterwards. He didn’t want to wait and walked over to her, and quietly whispered, “can you tell me where Primary is?” At the end of Sacrament meeting, they ran off together before I could even get out of my seat. I love how easy it is for kids to make friends.

So during Sacrament meeting we can wear headphones and listen to someone translate the speakers, and there is an English Sunday School class. I think Primary was mostly in English, but Relief Society and Priesthood meetings are not. I think we’ll just have to sit next to people who can translate for us.

We might also check out the Richterswil ward, which is the one the Mormon guys from Partners Group go to. It’s more of a trek, with two train changes, but I think it will be worth going to for Ryan to meet the guys from work.

Speaking of work, Ryan made it through the first week. I think the biggest challenge was just getting used to the full-time work schedule again. It's not quite the same as being a student, and definitely takes some getting used to after being out of it for a while. The atmosphere is very corporate, and he wears a suit and tie to work everyday - except for Monday, which is their casual day. Funny, right? We're so used to casual Friday. I guess Ryan was actually talking to his boss (who's Italian) about this, and said something to the effect of, "what's up with casual Monday? Why not Friday?" His boss replied with something like, "It's already Friday, why do you need anything else to get you more excited about that. It's on Monday when you need something to feel good about." Not a bad point. The office is pretty international - lots of different languages spoken among the employees. I think there's only a handful of Americans among the 200 employees in this office. Anyway, all in all, I think the first week went well.

And yesterday we took the train up to Zurich. I'll write another post with lots of pictures for that, but I'll tell you now we really liked the area - despite it raining all day. Very cool city, with lots of shopping, restaurants, cobblestone streets, old churches, boat rides and chocolate stores. To be continued...