Egg

Egg is located on a hill, and means 'edge' in the local dialect. We took a walk on Sunday and learned that we're on the outskirts of Egg (about 2 blocks and you're in the country!), so we live in the Egg of Egg or the Shell of Egg if you will :). It's a pretty town with lots of residential areas, which is a nice way of saying there's not a whole lot going on, and this is fine with us for the most part. We have easy access to several grocery stores and it has a general store (houseware items), which is most of what we need. However, we have not found any clothing or children stores, so we'll likely have to shop outside of Egg for those items. The train runs right through the center of town, which is where all the grocery and other stores are located as well (about 4 blocks away). There's also a couple of restaurants, one downtown (it's good!) and one at the end of our street (less than 1 block away!), which we're looking forward to trying. I don't have any pictures of the downtown area yet, so these are just from the pictures of our walk out of town.

Egg! This is the pretty downtown church, which we can see from our house as well.

View of Egg from the hill we were on. You can also see the valley below.

Our street! Quaint, right? :)

Restaurant at the end of our street.

Except for the style of the buildings, the farms look similar to home :) 

The farmhouses were mostly HUGE, and a lot of them had the barns attached, like this one.

The Alps! We're going to get our camera fixed sometime soon - sorry about the spot!

Carsten slept the whole walk. Don't worry, he was toasty ;).

New things we've learned:

- toilet paper has rectangular sections, not square

- microwaves are also tiny

- all appliances are terribly expensive (a cordless phone was ~60 franks and that was the absolute cheapest phone)

- our laundry area downstairs has clothesline all through the room (installed), which is really nice

- our phonejacks are old by even Swiss standards and almost no one sells adapters anymore:

Phone jack is the top 4 holes, then 2 cable outlets, and then three Swiss outlets on the bottom.

- train passes of any kind are expensive. Just to get into Zurich (45 min ride) is 10 franks each way. Fortunately, Andy gets a 1/2 off pass from the university, but even a monthly pass is still expensive. But hey, at least we don't have to drive the roundabouts :).
- Milk comes in a box (2 L max) and the lowest milk fat we can find is 1.5 %. They call it 'milk drink' once the fat has been reduced. Also, the boxes don't need to be refrigerated until opened because they are ultra-pasteurized, which is weird! 
- Orange juice that isn't from concentrate is only 50% juice; I find this strange and not at all tasty.
- You have to label your produce at the market (i.e., weigh them out and put a correct price sticker on them). This is difficult to remember and if you have a fussy baby, not at all fun.