Location, location, location....

There is one novelty thing I never seem to get used to while living here in the continental Europe:
all the other countries are so damn near. 

I've always lived in quite excluded/logistically challenged countries and it always took some effort (read: blood, sweat and tears) to travel from/back to.

When I was a kid back in the days when travelling was still considered as quite a luxury (80s and early 90s), my parents would pack us 3 kids & camping gear and we'd either take the ferry to Germany or we'd drive through Sweden to reach the continental Europe.

While all the others retrieved to their cottages for the holidays, we'd spend our summers on the road. Driving all over the (Western) Europe by car, sleeping at the camping sites. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, UK....You name it. I literally grew up in the backseat of our family car watching the blurry, ever changing landscape through the window. We were like travellers, restless, always needing to be on the move. It was the time before navigators, Tom-Toms and such. It was just us, the car and the Michelin map of Europe. We only knew the day we'd have to go back home but everything before that was organic. We went where the wind blew us (as long as there was a camping site nearby).

When we started growing up, my parents ditched the tents and we began staying at Guest Houses, B&Bs and hostels. As we grew even more (both horizontally and vertically) the next logical step was staying at hotels. When we reached that point, though, it was simply cheaper to start flying to places. Road trips became a thing of the past. We discovered the convenience of air travelling. And solo travelling (which I began at the tender age of 15).

Flying was never that cheap and it always still took some time to reach the destination, however. It was still "somewhere there" far far away. Continental Europe back then was what China is today.

And things never really changed when I left Finland. When I lived in UK, it was a damn island. And Australia was far from...Well... Absolutely everything.

Where am I going with this? What does this all have to do with Switzerland?

Now knowing my history a little, try to imagine my feelings when my husband tells me that he's off to France for training. The training takes 3 days in total.

My heart automatically sank, of course. France... The country of baguette, red wine and garlic. Au revoir mon amour, send me a postcard...

It's only when my husband continues "so, it's closer to home than the office I go every day so I'll be home for dinner earlier than usual" I realise....

Effin' hell....

Everything is so.....damn.....CLOSE.

I have been "Switzerlanded"

Like every fortnight, I ordered our groceries online. We've done this for over a year as we noticed it cuts our costs significantly. It's not 100% perfect but what is.

• Sometimes items are missing. No problem, those can be easily compensated. Insert smiley face here.
• Sometimes items are broken. No problem, those can be easily compensated. Insert smiley face here.
• Sometimes an item is not in stock. No problem, you either choose to replace the item with something else or the item's price is reduced from the bill. Insert smiley face here.
• Sometimes you place an order, get the delivery and notice some items have not been delivered. You check the list you submitted into the online ordering system but then they simply vanish from the order confirmation/delivery. Insert a pout here.

Ah. We have a problem, Houston. Ordered items seem to have disappeared. Vanished. Like they never existed, let alone ordered. Poooooof. Magic.

Yesterday it happened again. I usually do not care so much because I can always pop to the supermarket and purchase the missing item (as it has "vanished" from the order, it hasn't been included in the bill). But this time, the item was nearly 40L of water and my only reason for ordering it was not having to carry that load myself. But the water never came. I saw online I had ordered it but it had disappeared from the confirmation. No notification of items being out of stock, no nothing. Interesting.

As an old customer service specialist (back in the day, long long ago, before electricity), I thought I'd inform them that they might have some online glitch which makes some items disappear from the order. I composed a rather dry, neutral e-mail to the customer service, explaining what had happened and asked if they had any idea why this order went how it went.

Promptly, I received a reply which pretty much said: "Ordered item was out of stock, you must have missed the information about it on your computer screen. What you order is not relevant, only confirmation counts. Thank you for your understanding, blah blah blah".

I see. I am dumb. A bimbo. I don't know how to order stuff. Hell, I can't even walk and chew chewing gum at the same time.  I was in the wrong. Sorry. You're correct. Silly for me to question your holy system.

As a thumb rule... You never accuse a paying customer being in the fault/too dumb/being ignorant. You say "oh, I'll put this to our IT team to look into", "it was the scary monster under our bed that did it", "it was the Martians". Anything but the customer. Do. Not. Blame. The. Customer. Because when you turn it to be the customer's fault, you can be sure that you'll now get Mrs. Marvelous pretty angry.

So I e-mailed again. This time not so neutrally.

Yes I have been ordering around 27 times a year so I know how things work. In the same order another item was out of stock, it notified about it and we replaced the item with another one. Also, if the item has been out of stock but the order went through without notification of it, we've received a text message before delivery that the item will not be delivered. All this is ok.
But what is not acceptable is items vanishing into thin air without notifying the customer. As we placed the order and the system didn't alert that the water was out of stock (come on, it's a friggin' pop up with big red letters, only missing a klaxon sound) we couldn't replace it with another brand. If Mrs. Marvelous doesn't get a notification, she thinks everything's fine and dandy like cotton candy at Disney Land and is expecting the item to be delivered. Which didn't happen. Which is why I contacted the customer service in the first place.

And their reply was....

....It was.....

Yohhooooo....?

....Anyone there....ere....re....? *echo echo echo*

Indeed. I forgot customer service here works differently.

I have been Switzerlanded. 

Switzerland, the land of cows, cheese, chocolate, watches and other wonders.

Here I am, the wonderful Mrs Marvelous, Trailing Spouse extraordinaire. Uprooted from the North of Europe, planted now in the soil of Switzerland.

Before we moved here two years ago, I imagined mountains, snow, tranquility, trains that never run late and Winter with a capital W. Right? Oh boy, how wrong was I! 

This will be a blog about my daily struggle life as I kick off "Operation Integration" as it seems we're in no hurry to leave this country. 

No one told me that the summers here are hot, that our town has its own micro climate that seems to keep cold air and clouds away and that bugs come super sized comparing to where I come from. 

I'm terrified of bugs and last week Nature attacked me in my own home in a big way. As Murphy's law is what it is, my bug catching Ninja (aka the husband) was abroad. Of course. 

I was on my way to the kitchen when I saw an eerie shadow in the hallway on top of our wardrobe. I looked up and met a pair of eyes. Hungry, hungry eyes (no, not really, this is just my imagination). A gigantic cricket. Never seen anything that big before (in Europe, that is. Used to live in Australia so can't compare the bug sizes). How did it get up there, I wondered as I ran to the living room, slamming the glass door shut behind me. There is no option of gently catching a bug when it's just me and me alone. No way. Keep your cup/cardboard methods, thankyouverymuch. 

It was survival of the fittest and the cricket was winning!

I took a bug spray (opened for over a year already and it claims to be valid only for 2 months after opening) and from a great distance, I sprayed at it. 

Psssssfffff. Psssssssf psssssfff PSSSSSSSSSSSSFFFFF! *insert here an image of Rambo shooting*

That sure pissed it right off as it took off and flew (so that's how it got up there, dammit) right at me. 

Screaming, I ran back to the living room and slammed the glass door shut once again as the cricket decided to park itself to the other side of the glass. I looked at it, it looked at me. Laughing, mocking my pitiful attempt to kill it. It eats girls like me for breakfast without chewing. I'm sure of it. It now had me cornered, there was no way out for me.

The bug spray sure as hell wasn't killing it but it got it a bit tipsy. So tipsy it forgot to eat me and instead flew into our guest room. As it did so, I made my move and closed the door of that room. I would've locked the door but the key was on the wrong side. Luckily,  it didn't know how to turn the handle to open the door.....

So there it was, still chirping its blood thirsty songs, waiting for my saviour husband's return flight. 

....And then it was Go Time for Jiminy Cricket....

No zooming needed.