Switzerland, Hong Kong, France and the Netherlands in 5 Days. . .Oh My!!

What does your dinner look like when you're on your 4th country in 5 days? Well, a bag of apples and a stick of Gouda in the airport.

It has been an exciting couple of weeks for the Rickaby/Bechtel household.  I was in Hong Kong last week for an HR Leaders Meeting and then a Recruiters Forum. It was great to get to meet some of the folks I have been working with in person. Below is a group shot.

We had some fun in the lady's market and Rebecca was our best negotiator. I even bought a painting (I'm not sure Scott loves all of the gold in it).

Rachel and I  "enjoyed" some Peking Duck.

After a brief security breach on my way home, I missed my connection but finally arrived back in Geneve Saturday morning just in time for French lessons with Olivier. The weather in Switzerland is starting to get very cold but it is beautiful as the leaves are changing color and starting to fall.

The next day, we drove to Annecy, France which is just about 90 minutes away and is known as the, "Venice of France".  It was absolutely gorgeous. It has a wonderful lake surrounded by mountains and a few canals which are lined with restaurants and shops. It was a wonderful and pleasant day besides Deacon jumping into the lake which was practically freezing. We finished our trip with crapes by the canal before we went to look for cars.

This Tuesday, I flew to Amsterdam for the day to conduct a strengths finder coaching session with our compliance team. It was a good training and a long day. Scott also drove 6 hours to our office in Balerna and back to fix a network issue. Needless to say, we were happy to be home that night.

In other news, Izzie turned 4 last week!

I will be in Dubai all next week and Scott will be traveling as well but he isn't sure where quite yet. My only big plan for the weekend is to get my tulips planted before it really starts to freeze.

We hope you all have a great weekend. We're counting down the days to Nick and Jessica's wedding and also Katy's visit over Thanksgiving.

Ashleigh

Exploring Mollie-Margot

What an amazing first weekend in Switzerland we had. We began the fun with an exciting night at IKEA on Friday. Ok, maybe that wasn’t the highlight but we are in desperate need of some curtains so that I am not flashing our 13 year old twin neighbor boys. We ran some errands on Saturday and then Tim, the neighbor boy, took us on a little adventure. We walked down to the farm at the bottom of the hill to get some fresh milk. You have to bring your own canister and once you are there, you walk on into the barn. There is a large round metal machine that holds the fresh warm milk (yes, yuck to warm milk but we refrigerated it once we were home and skimmed off as much cream as possible). All you do is open the nozzle and fill your canister with as much milk as you like. The whole process is on the honor system and you just leave 1 CHF/litre on the sink when you leave. It was pretty darn cool. Saturday night we went to dinner with a guy from work, John, and his wife. We ate at a great restaurant right on the lake. Scott was mostly excited because John is American and had college football set up at his house for us to watch before dinner. 

Sundays are a day of rest in Switzerland and everything is closed. . .literally everything. You are not even allowed to make any noise. No mowing the lawn, no vacuuming, no work at all. You are just supposed to spend time relaxing and with your families. This is of course a crazy concept to me but I decided to give it a try. We spent some good time at home and then went for a long walk to explore our new town. The town itself is comprised of 1 restaurant and a recycling center so our tour of the town was pretty darn fast. We decided to keep on walking though to see what else we could find. Here are some highlights:

There are several “honor” posts with all kinds of different goods to sell. This one was a flower garden which you were supposed to cut the flowers you wanted and your money in the small blue money box.

They also had this little cabin that had jelly, fresh cheese and potatoes inside with the same concept.

As we kept walking, we ran into the local Christmas tree lot. Apparently you get a free bottle of the local liquor when you buy a tree which I think is a great idea.

Deacon was pretty excited to make friends with the sheep but that was before he hit his nose on the electric fence. I have never heard the poor boy give out a yelp like that.

We eventually came to a wooded area that had a great walking path through it. It was nice and cool and the dogs loved smelling everything. There was even a nice bench to take a little rest.

A few minutes into our walk, we saw angry looking tree. After a second glance, though, I did notice he was smiling so I think we were welcome in his forest.

After a nice relaxing weekend and also catching up on the phone, we are ready for our first full week in the office. Let’s just hope that our air shipment comes this week. I am really sick of wearing my Crocs.

Getting set up. . .in French

The Grocery Store:



Our first trip to the grocery store was quite the event. Here in Montreux, the stores close at 6:00 except in one shopping center, a bit out of town, that closes at 7:00. Seriously, how do people get any errands run before 6:00pm? Anyway, on Tuesday, we headed straight there after work. Our list included groceries, of course, as well as the essential appliances (vacuum, hair drier, shaver etc). This means we needed a large cart and had only 40 minutes to shop. The only problem was that the carts were chained together with this strange little key attached. It took us awhile to figure out that you had to "rent" the cart. Hum, I guess they've seen the slums in the US and didn't want us walking away with their cart. The other issue was that we had no idea how much to pay and it was not listed. We stood there for a moment shoving money in and taking it out until it took a 5 Franc piece.

After we got the cart figured out, it was supermarket sweep to fulfil all of our needs in 40 minutes. There were two appliance stores right next door to each other so Scott and I quickly attempted to compare prices and functions of the needed items. We did not recognize any of the brands and were unsure of what we were looking at so just had to make our best guess. This killed Scott since he is used to researching for months before a purchase. I thought it was fun :) Next was onto the grocery store next door. Besides the 7 CHF box of brownies, 9 CHF for two small chicken breasts and no baby carrots, it all went well.  Mission was accomplished in 40 minutes and we had a basket full of goods.

We conquered the grocery store earlier this week. We have also successfully opened a bank account, filled up the gas and run the washing machine in French. The 7 CHF box of brownies I attempted to cook on the other hand didn’t turn out so well. I will really need to get used to the metric system. Other than that, we have been thoroughly enjoying the weather and our views. Our neighbors/landlord are incredibly nice and very welcoming, as well are all of the people we work with. We also wanted to pass along a special thanks to Nick and Jessica for sending us the beautiful flowers that have helped make our house a home.

There are little things each day that are tough to understand with our lack of knowledge of the culture and the language. We are learning as we go and very excited to start French lessons on Wednesday!

Operation: K9-Lift!

The last couple of months we have been in a frenzy trying to prepare for our move to Switzerland and one of the larger tasks at hand was handling the logistics fro bringing four-legged friends with us across the pond. 

Commence Operation K9-Lift! 

Your mission should you choose to accept it... 

(1) plan the travel for one 9 lbs Yorkie-Poo and one 158 lbs Great Dane to Geneva Switzerland.

(2) design and construct an IATA approved airline kennel for before mentioned Great Dane.

(3) Arrange transport to DFW airport for the "package" without our cars since they have either been sold or given to Richard "the car guy" for consignment. 

As usual, should you or any member of your I.M. Force be captured or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your existence. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck!!!

Airlines are accustomed to transporting our furry friends so we did not figure we would have a problem getting them ticketed for a flight to Geneva (CH) but as we searched discussed the size of the kennels with the airlines that tune changed!

According to IATA standards the dogs kennel but be large enough for the dog to stand without hitting its head in the kennel and they must be able to turn around and lye down easily. after checking the dimensions of the dogs we determined that Izzie's crate was correctly sized and built for travel but Deacon would need a larger crate. According to the IATA rules his kennel must measure 43" H x 58" L x 32" W. The largest kennel available for purchase is 35" H x 48" L x 32" W... We had a problem!!!

We reached the conclusion that a kennel would need to be made for Deacon i n order for him to  come along with us on our journey so that is what we did! With 25 yards of fiberglass, 5 gallons of epoxy resin, 2 4' x 8' sheets of pink foam insulation, one 8' 2"x4", wire mesh, and 2 barrels locks we were on our way!

You might ask: Scott isn't this a pretty audacious goal considering your current responsibilities and the timeline in which this would need to be completed in? Well, I wish someone would have asked that question during the idea phase because this was a kick in the pants! Here are some pic's from start to finish.

Pink foam and toothpicks!

Starting to take form.

.

Bottom half.

Bottom done. Starting on the top.

Viola! Kennel made dogs inside we are on our way! Finished product weighs 66 lbs.

What do you mean he cannot get a seat assignment? You know he can be used as a flotation device in case of an emergency and he can keep an entire row of passengers feet warm! 

Robert "the TSA Guy". He said this was the first kennel ever that he has to crawl inside to inspect! 

So much for an in-cabin ticket! Just so you know this is the Cadillac of dog kennels! Time to strap in and get moving!

Upon arrival in Frankfurt we found our luggage and Izzie relatively quick considering everything that was going on but Deacon was delayed coming out of the over-sized baggage delivery because his container was too large to run through the belt system. So I traveled back into the innards of baggage delivery area and found the kennel with Deacon howling and five handlers taking pictures with there cell phones. after walking him out of the baggage area they shipped the crate around the airport to the police station to have it inspected and then they gave it back to us.

Frankfurt baggage said this was the largest kennel that they have ever encountered! I think we have set two records already!

Mission Accomplished!!!

Here is everybody alive and well in Frankfurt.

With the incredible assistance from some amazing people at Lufthansa 
airlines for everything they were great!


-Jerry Mishler from action pet express for his invaluable advice and willingness
 to answer all of our questions! 


-And to the Swiss authorities for confusing us greatly in both German, French, 
and English! We owe you countless hours of sleep lost and at least a 1000 grey hairs!

This has been a crazy adventure so far but it has been amazing in every way and

 I am glad we have been able to share it with you all!