Swiss Bank Account

Actually much easier to get one than you would think. In fact, I now have both a chequing and a savings account. You all now know where to send your cash (haha).

On Thursday, I came into the lab directly from the airport. Actually we stopped at my temporary accomodations in Birmensdorf to drop off all of my luggage first. Here's a picture:



It's a house owned by an older woman and she rents out rooms by the month to mostly the students of the WSL. There are also students from Bern, Italy and Bulgaria staying there at the moment.

Once at the lab though we had to go for morning coffee break. There I met my other supervisor on the project as well as Fritz Schweingruber (a big name in the dendro field). Although I was tired (I think it was about 3 AM Ottawa time) I had heard that to beat jet-lag you need to muscle through and stay up. I decided to take care of some administration and along with one of the technicians I went and took care of my Swiss residency permits and my bank accounts. Then we returned to the institute in time for lunch, where I had my first schnitzel since first year in the cafeteria. The afternoon was spent meeting other researchers and checking e-mail and getting things set up in the lab. In Birmensdorf, everything closes early so I needed to get some food for dinner. I managed to muck my way through the grocery store and get some museli for breakfast and stuff to make sandwiches for lunch and some torellini for dinner. One of the other students actually made me food last night, so that torterllini will have to be for dinner tonight. Last night I was also able to head to the bar (despite being terribly tired) to watch the Swiss Professional hockey playoffs. However, there is smoking permitted inside bars here (until October 1) and I was extremely tired, so it wasn't that great. I left after the second period to get some sleep.

And sleep I did as I didn't get up today until 11:30 AM and I walked to the lab in the afternoon. It's a nice walk, albeit a pretty steep climb up the hill. Tonight I will brave the transit system and find my way into town for a party I was invited to attend. Tomorrow the plan is to go to Zurich and look around for the day. The weather looks like it could be nice.