jalléCafe

City life adjustments

I'm learning to commute from my new apartment.

Called today's early morning train connection a bit tight. No time to grab my normal coffee & croissant. And as destiny would have it, no minibar service on the 50 minute ride. But fate was in my favor in the end - as a company was promoting a new cereal. They handed out single portions in the Basel train station. Munched it dry on 12 minute tram ride. Chocolate rescue!

Good omen for my new neighborhood.

Though I am still adjusting to seeing attractive, modern people everywhere on the streets.  Slightly worried that I put on lipstick to take out the trash yesterday. :)

 

Winter stories

Today I went to my car to run a short errand and found it was so frozen it wouldn't start.  This would be due to our sub-zero temperatures AND that I now have an unheated garage. Didn't occur to me to go turn the engine once or twice this week.  Learned it now!

Meanwhile a friend came by for her first visit, with her two young sons - the oldest of which is 2 & 1/2 years.  We baked cookies. He ran sprints in the open spaces.  Made a boat of one of the few pillows I have here now.  A mountain of coats and blankets under a plastic step stool in the middle of the kitchen.  Put a toy on every square centimeter of the floor.

My friend and I drank a prosecco and chatted. And then.  He  - for the first time after so many years out walking with his mother even before he was born  - climbed in my lap and asked me to read his book with him.

After I walked my friend and her boys to the tram on this cold starry night.  I opened the package that her son shyly handed me as he walked in from the start...these white tulips.

A lovely winter symbol that after only 10 days, I am already  "home."

 

Descent from pillow mountain

I hope this is the last post about changing apartments.  I've learned many enlightening and curious things about myself through the move.

Here you see a clear statement about my cultural heritage.  Americans think all large pieces of furniture should be punctuated by pillows.  In fact, so much so that one girl in one small apartment may find herself with  - and I counted them - 33 assorted fluffy "designer accent pieces."

By Swiss calculation that I lived in a 4.5 room apartment, that's an average of 7.33 pillows per room.

I repeat a quote of myself from a previous post, "What on earth was I thinking?!??"

I promise that I have descended from the summit of Kissen Berg (Pillow Mountain).  As of this writing my new apartment averages only 1.25 such designer pieces per room and I plan to keep it that way.

Moments of wonder

On a coffee pause between packing to move. I sit here in dismayed wonder.

As I sorted through my main drawers - and even after I thought I'd already recycled away so many old things - I've had repeated "what the h- was I thinking?" moments.

For example, spread before me are eight remote controls, five mouses of various connection types, a Compaq Presario laptop that weighs more than if you stacked five of my current laptops together, and the instructions for every mobile phone I've owned since 1995.

So much useless stuff kept because of clinging to the fear of being wasteful if I tossed it!

From now on I have a Jill's Rule About Stuff: Before something goes in a drawer, something else must be pulled out and tossed. Get over it, as a guy told me yesterday that his boss advised him about an ex-girlfriend. Move forward for heaven's sake.

I think it is possible that old stuff and ex-girl/boyfriends have a lot in common. ;)

Alternative life strategy

Most days, I love owning a business & the whole life that comes with it. But this specific one started with a three hour Internet outage (telephone company problem). On a Monday!

As I sit here finally at lunch at 3pm, I'm asking myself why I couldn't have just taken the life strategy of marrying a rich man who would bankroll me into a nice little retail store where I could sit every day, chat over coffee, and make something simple and pretty like, say, earrings?!

No doubt I'd get restless and then try to grow it internationally & end up flying all over the world looking for design ideas.

So I guess I will stick with this crazy idea and entrepreneur life strategy I've already started.

But first I will surely scowl and moan a little. And thankfully, eat!!