We made it!

So we have officially started our adventure! Yesterday we arrived in Zurich at 7:45 am (1:45 am FL time) and started the day in Zurich. The flight was uneventful and empty and the airport was not busy at all making customs and baggage easy. Ursula (Paul's advisor's secretary) met us at the airport and recognized him immediately since we had sent passport pictures and such. While we waited for his advisor to arrive, Ursula immediately starting giving us information on our apartment and life. That was the beginning of our overwhelming feeling. A taxi (which could barely hold all our luggage) took us from the airport to the apartment. The lady we are subleting from emptied out her apartment so much that Ursula bought us toliet paper, drying rags for dishes, and brought her own guest comforter for us to use. Luckily we brought sheets and towels but we had to make up things for pillows... those along with our comforter will be coming in our boxes hopefully in 2 weeks.  Here are some pictures of our really nice temporary apartment:

Room 1: Seating area with front door on the right

Room 1: Kitchen

Room 2: Little area to the right, bed in the back corner with a small tv facing it

Night view of Zurich and the mountains from our balcony

Night view of the huge soccer arena from our balcony

After the apartment we took a tram to get our monthly tram pass and then to ETH where Paul will be working. On our trip Ursula showed us the store Sprungli which has beautiful, expensive chocolates and she bought us a new truffle to try and it was delicious! I better not go back! We toured the lab, went to get a cup of coffee (which is more like a tiny cup with expresso and a little of water), and waited for the last girl in his group to arrive before we went to lunch in the cafeteria. Because Paul didnt have his ETH card yet we both had to pay full price and it ended up being 25 CHF (almost $25) for both of us but the meals were basically like a meal you'd eat for dinner... balanced and large portions. Most people just grab a glass and there is free tap water. You put your glass in front of it and it pours clear, cold water that is really good. Then we took a walk downtown and even though I have no idea where we were it was beautiful and I want to go back because I didn't take any pictures- lots of shops and a pretty river with mountains in the background.

We went back to ETH where Ursula gave Paul a lot of papers to fill out and papers that we need to get accounts and such here. A lot of this information we have forgotten since we were so sleepy but we're doing fine. Paul finished up a few more things and I accidentally fell asleep and then we left to grocery shop. We went to a tiny market close to the tram and our place and after about 30 minutes found chicken nuggets, broccoli, salt, potatoes, and ketchup for dinner. Pretty tasty. We tried to stay awake but fell asleep around 7:30 and could not force ourselves awake until 12:30. That will definitely hurt us when we try to fall asleep tonight.

So we got up late and got ready and went to ETH to pick up the papers we needed to register at our Kreisburo. Paul asked in German if she spoke English and she did. So from then on it was a very easy conversation. They require you to register within 8 days so they know where you live and they give you a permit that you need to open a bank account. But since we got up so late we didn't get to the bank before it closed at 4:30. So that will be a task for Mon. We went to the Coop (a big grocery) and got a lot of food for a few days. Most things we were guessing/hoping they were what we wanted. The funniest thing was the "mustard" (we think) in a tube and we got a couple "meat cheese" things for lunch meat which we think is like bologna... we'll see. This was tonight's dinner, tortellinis, chicken, and salad:

Now we're relaxing and watching German TV. Nothing but American music is in English. Even American cartoons and American sitcoms are turned to german... maybe this will be my motivation to learn... maybe. I'll post more when I take pictures this weekend. On Sundays, everything is closed so we will probably do a lot of exploring!  Ciao!  :)