Moving - Stage 2

Stage 2 of our moving plan consisted of staying at our friends Kai and Vanessa's home for 5 nights while we waited for our temporary housing to become available. In the meantime, we spent some quality time with our friends and Carsten had a ton of fun playing with their daughter Eleanor. We were very thankful to be able to stay with friends during this time. Our other job in this interim period was to clean our apartment in Egg before Monday December 3 when our handover was scheduled. We spent two full days cleaning the apartment to be cleaner than we had ever seen it, but in the end it was not enough for Swiss standards. The lady just went around and pointed to everything and said 'dirty'. She would not explain anything to Andy's German-speaking coworker and in general, was just rude. Even though they will be redoing the floors and walls, they will be charging us a 'cleaning fee' which mostly makes us feel like they will be charging us to clean up their mess after they are done renovating the flat. They are taking us for a ride, but it seems to be standard practice here and it makes me grateful that we didn't move around more here because then every time you leave you get hit with this 'fee'. Really, I feel that it would be more honest to put it into a lease so that way you don't have to stress about the cleaning fees. We're in the middle of still trying to get this resolved, and it was not a good way to end our time in Egg. Silly Switzerland.

Amongst this transition, we still managed to have a bit of fun, so please read on about our adventures :).

During our stay at Kai and Vanessa's, it snowed and was absolutely beautiful, so we got some good photos. Carsten insisted on eating the snow. He would just plant himself in the snow face first and eat the snow with great gusto. Our intent had been to take a walk, but with Carsten planting himself in the snow every couple of feet, it was very slow going :). Vanessa and Eleanor were very understanding, and while Eleanor was happy to watch Carsten, there was no way she was going to join in eating the snow (smart girl!). Here's a few photos:

Vanessa and Eleanor on our walk!

Carsten really enjoyed eating snow :).

So pretty!

Good friends :).

Two cute kiddos :).

This is pretty much what Carsten looked like the whole time.

Eating snow makes your nose run.

Eating snow!

Snow beard!

Incredibly happy with himself. :)

After we finished cleaning on Sunday in Egg, we went to the Christmas market in Egg where we sampled some brats and bread and then watched the Samiclaus parade (there were 5 Santas!). This is one of our favorite things about Egg and we happened to catch it last year, so we were very glad to be able to go again. Somehow the sleepy town is transformed as everyone comes downtown and has fun (normally there's very little to do in town). This was our last official day in Egg as a family, so we let Carsten enjoy playing outside with his diggers for a while since that was his favorite activity. In fact, he rarely used the nice play equipment - he just played with trucks! Of course, he liked us to play trucks with him too so he'd hand us one and say 'Follow you follow you follow you' to indicate that we should play too. Here's a few photos of our last day in Egg:

"Follow me follow me follow me!!!"

Carsten actually did do the slide repeatedly once we figured out that it was icy and he could go REALLY fast :).

Big digger!

Christmas tree in the square in Egg.

Christmas tree in the market in Egg.

No Swiss parade is complete unless it has extremely large cowbells.

How many Samiclaus can you count in this photo?

The Christmas market in Egg was a fun ending to our time in Egg. Goodbye Egg!