Its been a couple of weeks since my last post, and its been a busy period!
I managed to move out of my temporary housing, and into my long term house on the outskirts of Basel. Its lovely to no longer hear boy racers, in their BMW’s driving past my window at 1am in the morning with their music blaring, and of course to be living in an area bigger than 30sqm! There are of course down sides too, namely the fact that I now have a 45 minute commute, albeit an easy one with one direct tram, but namely the fact that my apartment is huuuuge, and its empty! When my husband and I decided to move back to Europe, we decided not to ship any of our furniture; knowing that our American size furniture would likely not suit a European apartment. Whilst it has been liberating to sell or donate everything, it is now the reason why I am sleeping on a mattress on the floor (waiting for my husband to arrive to build the bed), and that an IKEA sofa is the only piece of furniture in my living room. Curtains, TV’s, Dining Tables, and other pieces of furniture are all on the shopping list and are going to be assigned to my husband as a “to do” once he arrives.
Speaking of arriving, this is the other exciting part. After 3 long months, the Swiss Authorities finally granted my husband his Swiss visa. The canton where I lived sent me approval my email, which I then sent to my husband. He sent this together with his passport to the Swiss Consulate in San Francisco, and they issued his visa, hurray!!!!
We have only been apart 3 months but it has felt like a very long time, and although we have been preparing for the move for a year, now it’s starting to get real! Until this point for him, it was always something that would happen in the future, and now with his visa in hand, it has started to dawn on him that this is happening! Cue that he needs to start emptying our house, and getting this, and our car ready for sale. This also means getting the logistics finalized for importing our animals; which has always been our priority! Time to follow up with our banks, insurance companies, pet relocation companies, realtor in the US, and more to finalize the move.
On the Swiss end, because of the quarantine requirements for Americans entering the country, I have been stocking up on the food and other items needed to sustain the family for 10 days. Knowing that like many European fridges, my freezer is just about large enough to hold two pizzas and not much else, that does somewhat limit our options. But regardless, I throw myself into stocking up on supplies, to include lots of pasta! I even venture out to the Asian stores in the vicinity of of our offices, where not only do they do a great selection of hot Indian food, but they also sell a good selections of spices, which will make my seasoning loving Louisiana husband very happy.
Time to book my flight, and of course my PCR test!