Thanks for 114 Gifts

Good news! Our 114 gifts from the United States arrived on Friday, Dec 21, just before Christmas. Of course, warmest thanks to everyone for sending them! No, wait, actually never mind the thanks, we packaged and sent these to ourselves back on Oct 26, exactly eight weeks to the day--all our furniture and belongings from Chicago!

Yes, our Christmas arrived slightly early as six nice Swiss men (call them Elves) moved our long-since-forgotten Chicago possessions into our new Zürich apartment. And the logistics culminating at that moment are impressive. Everything not sold or given away in Chicago was wrapped up & boxed, loaded on a moving van on Fri, Oct 26, trucked somewhere, transferred to an ocean freight container, loaded onto a boat called the "California Luna" at Norfolk, floated east for six weeks, eventually arrived in Rotterdam, was reloaded onto a truck, driven through most of Germany to Switzerland, unloaded into a warehouse somewhere near Zürich for two weeks, then finally reloaded into a moving van which I met outside the new apartment at 8am on Fri, Dec 21. By 2pm the Elves had delivered every last furnishing and box to the sixth floor, which although sounds brutal really only amounted to a day of abuse for the building elevator. The sixth floor provides quite a view, though (picture above is northerly from our patio).

The feeling was initially quite bizarre to see furniture and the beginnings (not many boxes were actually unpacked) of clothes, dishes, sheets, books, etc., that we'd forgotten we owned.
The funniest part about finally not living from suitcases after eight weeks was that actually, we didn't. That is, Steph returned from work that Friday evening and I returned from the new Zürich apartment to Kloten, where we immediately packed those same suitcases for a four day trip to Paris beginning the next morning; we wouldn't actually move in and start unpacking for nearly a week more. Oh well, no rest (and in this case, no new travel clothes) for the weary...