This is the view from the master bedroom the afternoon I first arrived.

8/15/08 15:45
I knew there was a reason I came here. No sooner do I turn on the TV but I find an Olympic football match – Germany versus Sweden quarter-final no less. OK, but before I get too Eurocentric I should admit that now that it’s half time they’ve switched to equestrian events and badminton!
But I forget myself. How did I get here?

Well, it’s simple really. 5.5 hours from San Francisco to Philly. Then a too-brief night with Paul and Dan and a glimpse of Paul’s family’s new life, another 7 hours of flight, another 7 hours to get the remaining 90 km from the airport with buses and trains and I’m here. Well not really. I was in the San Nazzaro train station where I hid my bags behind some recycling (people aren’t supposed to steal in Switzerland anyway), walked to Marianne and Wälle’s house, and got Marianne’s car key. Of course I had their house key because I picked it up in Jaimey and Jacqueline’s hotel room in Bellinzona on the way. I got my bags and headed over to Vira, the next town over, to find my house keys. The email I got from Sylvia, the house owner, was that the realtor put the keys in a milkbox next to his office. I was pretty sure that a milkbox was Swiss slang for a mailbox, but I didn’t see any of those either. I had to drive back to Marianne and Wälle’s to get Sylvia’s number. Sylvia didn’t know much more than I did but elucidated that perhaps the “left of the door” meant not from the position of one entering, but was perhaps more deeply mired in the realtor’s incompetent subjectivity (i.e. had more to do with his left when he exited the office). Armed with this I went back to Vira. However I still found no mailbox – how did they even get mail?? I didn’t have the realtor’s cell but I called Vikas who was able to text it to me. However, the realtor wasn’t answering his cell. It’s Maria Ascension holiday by the way – one of those Catholic wonders where everyone nods and says “oh yeah, Maria’s Ascension,” but when I ask what it means no one can really define it vis a vis Jesus’ ascension, Easter, or Pfingsten (whatever that is in any other language). I called Sylvia back and, in exasperation coupled with a desire to get me the key finally, she offered to drive to Ticino – three hours without traffic. But remember it’s a stormy Friday afternoon of a three day weekend. But I haven’t given up. I go across the street and ask at the restaurant if anyone knows where the realtor’s mailbox is. A waitress points to someone walking along the street and says she’ll ask him since he owns the building. This seems common in towns with under 5000 people. Sure enough, he shows me you have to enter the apartment building next door, and, in the foyer, there are mailboxes. Well of course! He reaches in the mailbox and pulls out an envelope. He looks at me skeptically, assess my disability, and asks if he should open it for me. I bite it and rip it open with my teeth before he finishes his sentence. And I have MY KEY!!
I drive to La Perla and call Vikas as I open the door. This is the moment. Everyone has been asking me when I’d be excited about my house. All year I’ve said “the moment I have the key in my hands and it’s actually opening the door.” And it finally happened!!

In my glee I run around throwing open all the shutters and windows to let the breeze purge the stale air. I ignore the rain beginning to pour outside and now inside. I run upstairs and do the same. But suddenly I feel like I’m in some Scooby Doo episode. The wind is slamming shutters and windows. The thunder is pounding the big empty house and I walk from bare room to bare room. So I close the windows and tackle the electricity.

Sylvia had told me to find the “fuse box” or whatever you call it in English, I mean German, I mean Swiss-German (because I have no idea what the electrical control box thingee is called – foreshadowing). She said it was on the first floor. OK, so that’s not the ground floor, but the one above it. No box there. Maybe she was pre-translating it into American and really meant the ground floor? Nope, nothing there. I knew there was one of the second floor because we had tested it when we were thinking about buying. I figured she must have meant the first floor above the first floor and I flipped all the switches. But nothing happened. I called Sylvia and she confirmed that she meant the first floor upon which her father lived – but of course!! Nevermind that it’s the top floor of a three story house. I told her what I did but she couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working. She said she’d call her dad’s friend over and see if he could fix it. Herr Bühler came over about five minutes later and set about dialing these loose dials tighter. My technical language skills are bad so I had not understood the difference between flipping some switchy type things and tightening some screwy type things. But, if you’re ever in Switzerland and need to get the power on, now you know.

So now I have a place with power, with fridges (4 of them), with TV, with cable, with Germany and Sweden still scoreless. I have arrived! (Now only if I can find some food on a rainy holiday…)