Hotel La Croisee update

This is really an update on our living status, since we just returned from Lausanne and met the director and assistant. It's a delicate situation (the owner occupies a chunk of the top floor with his mother) and complicated purchase (can't get into), so the upshot is that we have to be patient. We may fall momentarily on plan B and stay elsewhere for a time, since Michael is supposed to start kindergarten nearby on August 27th. He goes in this Thursday for a diagnostic French test. Got a meningitis shot, too.

We hope to move in by the end of the month though and it will be nice! Plenty of space and Michael and Jack will be happy with all the exploring. And we did get a sense of how things will be run, looked at classroom and play spaces (there was an entire nursery of play equipment which we hope they don't lose) etc. Meanwhile, I thought I'd continue my sharing of the mundane details of our lives.

Fountains are everywhere and nearly all of them drinkable. This one is across from where we are staying.

One of my personal favorites: fresh squeezed blood orange juice (and sorbet at some stands)

This is basically a trip to a small market nearby. Switzerland and many countries still take their cues from the USA, so fads like artisan bread arrived, as well. Back home, this meant, basically, "good" bread, as opposed to the factory stuff (kinda like "real" cheese), but, here, where virtually all bread is actually good and real, artisan seems to simply mean misshapen bread. Literally, the stuff looks like someone twisted it then heaved it on a board.

The best hashed browns you will ever taste. A Swiss German food, it comes seasoned in packages or cans and you just fry it up. The slow but undeniable disappearance of grated spuds from America's coffee shop breakfast menu - in favor of home fries - always seemed suspicious to me as a good use for the prior night's leftovers.


The generic brand of the Migros supermarket chain, which also goes into cooking, language, art classes, banking, and the Rolling Stones (a raffle was held in which buyers with purchase stamps could win free tickets to the August 12 show [in contrast, Deutsche Bank bought RS for a night, giving tickets to their top execs]). This is the largest milk container you can buy, and also the only place you can get the lowest fat of 1.5 %. Actually, until now, I hadn't realized that I mistakenly bought 3.5% fat on this trip! And you can let the milk sit outside for weeks until opened. Our boys are great milkdrinkers, but Swiss children seem to get their dairy mostly through yogurt and cheese, drinking far less milk during the day.

These cured ham shanks were conversation items for two elderly Italian men standing nearby. I think they were surprised to see them on display, as well, and took turns lifting them.

Seafood, particurlarly shellfish, is excellent and gets trucked in from Paris 3x weekly.

A supermarket cafeteria warms the coffee cups with hot air blowing from below these trays. The coffee itself is not as hot as Starbucks, but neither tastes burnt either. Did you know you can actually burn coffee?

The laundary schedule for 12 tenants using one machine and the drying room: two days per month and it's all yours! But you can then arrange for half-day use on alternate weeks.

Adjacent to the washer is the drying room where you hang clothes and then start a blower that heats up the room quickly. Pretty effective and not sure the chain link was meant for this, but is perfect.