I love a deal, I love getting used stuff, so it filled me with joy when I found the for sale page for Zurich Googlers. There’s tons of new stuff everyday that allows me to be materialistic without the guilt of getting something new. I found an Ikea Kallax shelf with 16 squares to store tons of things. I thought this could act as a good first bookshelf in the dining room that now mostly looks like a place where we store cardboard..

I haggled the offer (the internal tool is like ebay) and got it! Oh the endorphin rush!! Shit, now the hard part - how do I get it from Weidikon to our house in Wollishofferplatz?

Queue Dima, an energetic, kind Googler who has worked with Rich for almost 10 years. He’s been checking in on me a lot while we’re settling, and it feels so nice to have someone looking out for me and Fred. He’s also got a stick shift Subaru Forester that he offered me to use to pick up the shelving unit. You know he’s nice since he’s a Subaru person!

I got in the Forester and it felt like home! No one loved my 2006 light blue stick shift Outback with many dings so no one wanted to park near me as much as I did. The clutch is easy, the controls are all the same - I was ready to take on my first time driving in Zurich! I drove incredibly slowly, as I couldn’t always tell the speed limit, and I really didn’t want to be pulled over. It’s a bit confusing to drive in the city because as a car you weave in and out of sharing a lane with the street trams, which always have right of way. I made it to Weidikon, and my stomach dropped realizing I would need to parallel park. Summoning courage (and using the back up cam), I wedged myself into a spot only needing to go back and forth 3 times!

Though this story has triumph, it also has troughs. I walked into the seller’s apartment and knew this unit was not right. On top of not loving the Pax fake-wood vibe, it was short for a shelf and the thing wasn’t going to fit in the car. Oh why didn’t I turn around at this point?? The seller and I spent 45 minutes disassembling and couldn’t get all the wooden pegs out of the holes. In my chaotic state, I rushed and started shoving things in the car. Wooden pegs snapping everywhere!

I picked up Freddy, tale between my legs, knowing my addiction for a deal had gotten in front of how we actually want our home to look like. We’ll get back to this as the car was parked illegally in front of our apartment..

We jumped in the car and drove to Dima’s in Horgen. After some navigational challenges (but no stalls!), we found his family’s house. We walked into a flurry of young children in a small apartment. All the kids who lived in the apartment building were in the flat! He welcomed us in, and gave us a great dinner of meat pie and rice, topped with family tea, sweet bread, and chocolate. It was this incredible multilingual household where Dima was speaking Russian to his family and English to us, his wife, Olga, speaking German and Russian, and his kids chattering in Russian while drinking earl grey tea at 8 pm. No wonder everyone was wired!

We learned about the Swiss school system, where there are two forms of high school, one for those hoping to attend Uni and the other for those going to apprenticeship programs (btw med school is free). It really was a chaotic delight!

Dima drove us home, and the wave of a fun dinner was about to crash. We now needed to put together this worthless piece of Scandinavian Design. Stacking one row at a time, the contraption got flimsier and flimsier the more we built up. I had stripped some screws making it so some of the doors on each shelf-box would not work. I was trying to laugh at the absurdity but this thing was pathetic - as always the last piece was very hard to align, so we were banging on the side of the shelves to get it in place. Good thing our upstairs neighbor has a crying child, so we’re both noisy..

It is now complete and in the dining room, and Freddy and I can’t look at the damn thing because of its mediocrity. 

I think the lesson I learned is, don’t get wrapped up in a deal!! Buy things that give you joy forever, not just during shopping!!