Renee and Stefan: September 2005

15 September 2005

Pictures of our apartment

As promised, here are a few pictures. We will have much better ones once we move there, but for now this is what we have.

Our building:

Just kidding! That one is way too nice.

For real:

Ha ha! Not really. That one is way too ugly.

OK, this really is our building:

A closer view of just our apartment (2nd floor) and the front deck:

The back deck is much bigger, but we couldn't get a picture of it.

Another view of the building:

And here is our building with a view of the catholic church next door:

And, finally, a picture of Renee resting on our street:

I have to give Renee credit for the idea of the joke about the buildings. =)

posted by Stefan Pharies at 06:32

Zurich dialect

During the week we spent in Zurich for house-hunting, I began to learn to understand some of the Zurich dialect. I'm far from finished with that learning process, but at the end of the week I was able to understand probably a third of what people said. When I first heard people speaking Swiss German, I understood nothing but a few of the numbers. Luckily they all speak standard German too, so if you speak to them in Hochdeutsch, they will happily switch to that.

Most differences between Hochdeutsch and the Zurich dialect are recognizable as transformations of simple sounds. Of course, the common words have changed even beyond that, so they are not pronounced in the way you might imagine if you simply followed the transformation rules.

Here are some of the observations I made. I'm probably wrong about a few of them, and I'm certain it's not a complete list.

Words

The numbers one through ten: eis, zwie, drü, vier, feuf, sachs, siebe, ocht, nün, zan.
Twenty-five: feuf-e-zwanzg
'Nicht': nött
'wir': 'ma'
'Kosten' -> 'chöcshte'
'Zürich' -> 'Züri'

'ch' always gutteral
'ch' is always pronounced like the 'ch' in 'loch', never like the 'ch' in 'mich'.
[k] -> [x]
This applies universally. For example, our relocation consultant's last name, Kamer, was pronounced with the gutteral [x] sound, which the Swiss spell 'ch'.
'r' usually trilled
Only a few R's are pronounced as in Hochdeutsch; I haven't figured out yet which.
'l' farther back in the throat
as in Scottish English
Syllable-final 'n' -> dropped
This is true in Heidelberg dialect as well
Many consonants are emphasized
I'm not sure what the rule is yet. Maybe before a dropped 'n'? Maybe all double letters? Examples:
'gekommen' (as above) has a long 'm'
'guten' (pronounced 'guette') has a long 't'
'st' -> 'scht' or 'sch'
This is true anywhere in a word, not just at the beginning of a syllable as in Hochdeutsch. Heidelberg dialect does the same thing.
'ist' -> 'isch'
'Nebenkosten' (other costs such as utilities for an apartment) -> 'Nabechöschte'.
[z] -> [s]
'Sie', 'Salz', 'See' are all pronounced with a hard 's'. Heidelberg dialect does the same thing.

ä -> ö
Printed on a restaurant sign: 'Öpfelchammer', a transliteration of 'Äpfelkammer'.
'Wäscheküche' (where you do your laundry) is pronounced 'Wösch-chuchi'.
'später' (later) is pronounced 'spötr'
This transformation applies only to words spelled with 'ä', not to all words with the long 'e' sound. The Swiss make a distinction between those letters. (Germans make that distinction only sometimes.)
many unaccented vowels -> dropped
'zwanzig' -> 'zwanzg'
'gekommen' -> [kxom?]
'geschaut' -> 'kschaut'
'e' -> 'a'
'gehen' -> 'gah'
'essen' -> 'asse'
This applies to long and short e's, but not to schwas.
'a' -> a sound closest to 'o', but more open
long 'u' -> diphthong 'ue'
'guten Morgen' -> 'guette Morge'
You learn this one first because 'gut' is so common.
'i' -> always pronounced as English 'ee' in 'beet', never as 'i' in 'bit'.
'ei' -> 'ie'
'weil' -> 'wiel'
'eu' -> 'ü'
as in Schwizzerdütsch
long 'i' (spelled 'ie') -> dipthong [i?]
'Dietikon' (a place name) is pronounced [di?tikon]
I observed this with a few other words, but it is not universal. 'Wie' is still pronounced as in Hochdeutsch, for example.
long 'ü' -> a little more relaxed
The 'ü' in 'Züri' is just slightly more open than 'Zürich' in Hochdeutsch, closer (but not all the way) to the 'ü' in 'küssen', but still long.

Intonation
Swiss German is bouncier than Hochdeutsch, a little like Swedish but not as severe.

When it is used
Dialect is the default language spoken between strangers except in special circumstances. During our tour of apartments, our consultant spoke dialect with all of the landlords except one, who preferred Hochdeutsch - presumably as a sign of education, status, or politeness, or maybe in deference to me (he knew I spoke Hochdeutsch). On the radio, the headlines are read in dialect, but the news itself is read in Hochdeutsch. Phone interviews during the news with witnesses or experts are in dialect.

posted by Stefan Pharies at 06:04

14 September 2005

More details on our Zurich visit

Here are a few more details about our week in Zurich.

After getting to spend another week in Zurich, I am even more excited about living there. It is really impressive that the city has evolved (after much effort put forth by its inhabitants) to be such a beautiful and livable city.

The relocation consultant we worked with was amazing. We spent the first day on a tour of the city, learning about the different neighborhoods, getting acquainted with the shops we'll need to know once we move there, and getting some insider tips. For example, we learned that there is a bar at the top of a tower that was once an observatory. If you come to visit us, we'll take you there (and many other places we learned about).

The Zurich tram system is great. It's surprisingly dense in the center of the city, and you often have several choices about which line or which route to take. During the day, the trams on any given line come every 6-7 minutes, so you never have to wait long.

Our new apartment is very near Kreuzplatz. There are two very nice supermarkets (one of them has a better selection of foreign foods - particularly Asian and Middle Eastern - than most places in Seattle), some good restaurants, and a huge bakery all right there. And three different tram lines stop there. It will probably take me about 15-20 minutes to get to work by tram.

Oh, and by the way, we did take a few pictures. We didn't get any of the interior of the apartment, but there are some of the outside. I'll be posting those in the near future.

posted by Stefan Pharies at 05:56

We found an apartment!

Renee and I spent the last week in Zurich looking for an apartment to live in when we finally move out there in October. The trip was one of the relocation benefits I got from Google: They flew us out, put us up in a hotel, and provided us with a relocation consultant to help us get acquainted with the city and find a place to live.

I'll give you the result from the week first: We found an apartment that's pretty much exactly what we wanted, and we've already signed the lease! Its location is the best thing about it - it's in a very nice, vibrant neighborhood, two blocks from excellent shopping and dining, two blocks from two different tram lines, and two blocks from a park. But it's great in other ways too: we have two bedrooms, a cute living room, a large deck, and a great kitchen, and it's in a beautiful building with real character from 1912. It's large by Swiss standards at 90 square meters (960 square feet). In other words, it's everything we had hoped for.

That's the result we had hoped for, but we had been warned that we should not expect it. And based on what we saw and learned during the week, we were very surprised and very happy when it worked out so perfectly in the end.

Zurich's housing market is very tight. Really very tight. On top of that, apartments come available only two or three times a year - by law, tenants must give notice three months before they move out, and most leases stipulate that they leave only at the end of March, June, or September. What that meant for us was that by the time we got to Zurich in September, most apartments whose tenants were moving had already been "on the market" for two months (since the end of June). Thanks to our excellent relocation consultant, this did not mean we had a smaller selection of apartments to choose from - but it did mean that those available were not all perfect.

Another effect you get from the tight housing market is that landlords can be very choosy about who they accept as tenants. Most apartments will have many applicants, so even if you find the absolute perfect apartment, you may not have impressed the landlord as well as someone else. We were at a disadvantage here, because we are not Swiss. Luckily we were looking at apartments in a budget range slightly higher than most people, so that kept the number of competing applicants at a lower level. (But we still had competition.)

We looked at a total of 11 apartments over two and a half days. Almost all of them were good enough that we could have lived there given no other choice. On the other hand, once we had seen the great characteristics of so many different apartments, we began to form an idea of the "perfect" apartment - and they all had one flaw or another that kept them from qualifying. A few of them were on busy streets or railways, a couple were too small, one was too 70s, and one was even too large (!). Some of these flaws were truly severe (especially the loud ones). So having been through the whole process, it was pretty amazing to have one place we still really liked.

Given that we had found an apartment we really liked, and that our application was accepted, it was just icing on the cake that the landlord was available to prepare and sign the lease while we were still in Zurich.

posted by Stefan Pharies at 05:39

Preparing to leave my job and leave Seattle all at once made me busy. There was one night that was so complicated I thought it was worth blogging about. This was last Tuesday night I think. The goals: pick up my car from service, get my heavy couch out of storage and bring it to Renee's house; and show my car to someone who was interested in buying it.

I left work on the bus and went to the VW dealership. I picked up my car and drove it to where the FlexCar pickup is parked. Luckily Renee was in the area, so she met me there, parked her car, and drove my car home. Then I drove the pickup to Juan's place to pick him up. Then we drove to storage, loaded up the couch, and drove home to Renee's. We unloaded the couch and put some boxes in the truck, and then I showed my car to the guy who was interested. He ended up being so interested that he bought it! Then Juan and Renee and I piled into the small pickup, dropped the boxes off at storage, and continued back to Renee's car. We returned the truck, got into Renee's car, and drove to Juan's neighborhood to meet Krystal for pizza. After dinner, Renee and I finally drove home.

Whew.

posted by Stefan Pharies at 05:38

Our friends are really special

I've been too busy to blog the last few weeks, and the topics I want to blog about have been piling up. So I'll try to do a little blogging catch-up.

The first and most important blog entry is about our friends in Seattle. Meghan and Jennie put together a combination going-away/engagement party for us. Of course it was great to see everyone together, and we had the typically great time when that happens. But this party was a little more special, because I knew and everyone else knew that Renee and I were going to leave soon. Gus and Bob both made some amazing photo prints for us. Gus's is a collection of memories Renee and I had together with the rest of the group. Bob's is one picture of each one of us - and every single one of them is absolutely hilarious. Needless to say, the photos and the party will help us remember what great friends we have back in Seattle.

posted by Stefan Pharies at 05:35

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