I haven’t posted in a few days. I figured a day to day account of me going to work, coming home, eating dinner, and watching Netflix/World Cup wouldn’t be too exciting, so I’ll be spacing posts out a little bit.

We’ve now been here for over a week and have experienced a full work week in Switzerland. We’re now registered residents of Basel, which is still something that feels absolutely surreal to me. We have some other logistics in the works, such as our Swiss bank account (fancy, I know), but we have finished a number of other ones like getting a monthly tram pass (for within the city) and annual half fare pass (for half-fare travel within Switzerland). Both are a pretty great deal.

Food is pretty expensive here, not just when you’re at restaurants but also in the markets. A lot of people here tend to shop in Germany where it is a lot cheaper. Trash is also pretty interesting here in Basel. There are specific trash bags that you have to buy from the grocery store. They’re expensive because they include the trash taxes for the city. The result is that we’ve been a little more cognizant of the waste we’re creating. It’s not a bad habit to develop, so I can complain.

Life without a car has been fine. My commute is non-existent, so I wouldn’t have needed it for that, but we definitely feel it the most when we go grocery shopping and can’t buy things in bulk as much as before. We need to buy one of those trolleys at some point, but it isn’t without its benefits. When the choice is between carrying more food and soda, you tend to cut out the soda. We walked a lot during the first few days we were here. Like 7ish miles a day. That’s cut down significantly since we settled into more of a work routine and bought the tram passes, but we still have to do more walking that we do back at home.

Other than that, it’s still hot (although it’s warming up again after staying around mid-70s for most of the week). We’re almost getting over jet lag. The fact that the sun doesn’t set here until almost ten really didn’t help with the jet lag.

I’ll do more check ins about life here in Switzerland, but for now we’re signing off. Expect more on World Cup viewings from this weekend. We’re sticking to the Alsace region for the weekend so we can watch the World Cup final in France.