IKEA-Every ex-pat's first stop

OK, so I've never blogged before, but some friends of mine told me I should start one to recant my experiences in Switzerland. (What they probably mean is "Don't e-mail me the details of your life! I have enough junk mail already. If anyone cares they can check your blog!:) So here I go...

We've been in Zurich almost 2 weeks now. We spent our first week in a hotel (one bed, one pull out couch-not fun nor spacious!). We were hoping to get into our apartment sooner, but our furniture got held up on the Rhine River and last Friday was a Swiss holiday (Aug. 1st is equivalent to the 4th of July in the USA) and NO ONE in Switzerland works on Sundays, so we couldn't get our stuff until Monday. But, being the ambitious people we are, we decided to hit IKEA on Saturday to pick out and purchase our "shranks". Shranks are closet or wardrobe systems. You may not realize, but in Europe homes do not come with closets or light fixtures (many don't even come with kitchens, but luckily ours did!). So, everyone goes to IKEA to buy, and of course assemble, closets and light fixtures.

So Jason and I drag the kids into IKEA thinking we'd be in and out no problem. Right. It took us 5 hours (no joke, we were there so long we ate breakfast and lunch!) to get out of that place! We had to pick out 12 different light fixtures and get closet systems for 3 bedrooms. Lainey and Aidan's were easy, they each just got one, but for our room we had to measure and pick out all the drawers and accessories and figure out how to ask for help when we don't speak German. Finally, we were ready to check out. I waited in line only to find out that our credit card wouldn't work. Apparently, we'd spent too much on it in a few days in another country, so the security blocker went on. Great. Luckily, the customer service people let me call Mastercard to get the blocker taken off. Unfortunately, it was only 5:30 am in the States and MC's security department wasn't open yet! Next, they let me call Visa, who was in fact open and did take the blocker off that card so we could buy all our stuff.

Oh, it doesn't end there! We can't fit everything in our car so we ask to have some of it delivered. IKEA calls this taxi-type delivery service for us and says they'll be at our house in 2 hours. We go to the warehouse, get the stuff we're taking and drive home. Somehow the delivery guys beat us home (way to go for our GPS!) and are waiting at our apartment. I start showing them where to put the boxes, and they tell me, that'll be an extra $150 to bring them into the house, otherwise we'll leave them on the curb. Fabulous. So Jason and I don't want to pay double, so we haul the boxes (all 20+ of them) into the house. Thank God we have a ground floor apartment!

And now the fun begins! Assembling shranks is equivalent to hazing new ex-pats. Supposedly, it's all step-by-step and part of the "experience". Bull. It's HARD!!!! These things are 8 feet tall and weigh hundreds of pounds. It's especially difficult when you don't have tools yet! We had to go buy a grocery store set of screwdrivers (one of which we used as a make-shift hammer) and didn't have so much as a chair to stand on as a ladder. (Instead of a ladder, we used suitcases.) By the time we start the DVD on the laptop to keep the kids happy and begin assembly it's 6pm. (This is when we really realize how nice it was to be able to drop the kids off at Grandma's when we needed to shop or do a project!) We think we can get one done before we go back to the hotel to sleep. Not a chance. Once we get the main part screwed together and try to stand it up, we realize that it is too tall to put in the upright position. We tried every which way, to no avail. By now it's after 7, and we have to take the whole thing apart and start over!!! But, we wouldn't give up that night. So we start over from the standing position to start with. Definitely a harder way to do it, but also the ONLY way.

By now it's 8pm. In Switzerland, they have "quiet hours" at lunch time and at night after 8. You aren't supposed to make any noise (some books even say you shouldn't take a shower or flush the toilet!!!). We still aren't done with one stinking shrank so we decide to play dumb on the quiet hours and start hammering away. Luckily, most of the apartments in our building are still vacant! Around 9:30, we finally finished the first one and went back to the hotel.

The assembly continues still, a full week later. We did cave in and hire our lights to be installed when we realized that the wires are completely different from in the States and we still didn't have a ladder. Jason didn't want to tell people at work that we hired it out. He thought everyone he works with did their own too. We later found out that NONE of the other people he works will installed their own lighting or shranks!!! Did anyone tell us that it's normal to have someone else put the IKEA stuff together? No. That's what I mean. It's like ex-pat hazing. The locals are all watching us and laughing as we bust our butts.

We are almost done with the assembly of everything, and our air shipment comes Monday. Our apartment will feel like home when the movers finally take away our stacks of empty boxes and IKEA packing materials. Now, if we can only get our TV and phone installed...