Getting the furniture

    Getting the furniture

    Last week I got the keys to my apartment, so I started looking for furniture. On Saturday I went to IKEA together with some other Nooglers and we spent six hours there. SIX HOURS. More exhausting than the Uetliberg hiking trip. And I didn't even finish buying all the stuff that I needed.

    Among the stuff that I bought was a kitchen table, that they didn't have on stock right then, so they offered to ship it to me later on, for free. I accepted, being in no rush to move to my apartment and I chose the next Monday for shipping. The rest of the things were supposed to be delivere yesterday in the evening, sometime between 6 and 9.

    I come to the new apartment excited, but ready to spend a couple of hours here (aka I had my laptop with me). I did some shopping around for some small stuff I still need and explored the two major shops that are close to me. At 8:05 the delivery guys call me and tell me they had some car problems and they won't be able to deliver in that evening, so we resched­uled for tonight, in the same interval.

    Then, this morning I got an SMS saying my parcel will be delivered today between 11.02 and 12.02 (yes, they were that precise at that accuracy) and giving me a number for any questions I had. Of course I had the question "Can I reschedule so it's not during my working hours?". I tried calling the number, but it went to a robot answering machine. Getting past the first question was easy. I had to choose between german, french and italian. But after that "Ich weiss nicht".

    So I went to work and I found a german colleague and asked him for help. He managed to get to the point where you wait for a human being to pick up, but after 5 minutes no one answered and we went to our bussiness. After 20 minutes, I found another german colleague and we did the same thing again. After 12 minutes of waiting we gave up.

    Having no other choice, I left work at 10:35 so I could get to the apartment in time. At 11:20 my interphone rings, I open the door and I start going down. I see some guy leaving a nice package at the bottom of the stairs, but by the time I get down, he's gone. I look at the package, it has my name on it, so I go outside to look for the delivery man, but he is gone, without at least confirming that hey, I gave this to the right guy or having me sign anything.

    Luckily, the package was not heavy and I could carry it upstairs myself easily. But this was the first weird experience here in Switzer­land.

    But, while waiting for the delivery of the rest of the stuff, this evening, I have managed to assemble my first piece of furniture, the table:

    IKEA table

    Yaaaay. Buy my apartment is suddenly full, with all the new boxes I just got. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I will probably have to work a month to get all the stuff assembled. Any volunteers to help me out? :D I'll get cookies... or really good Lindt Chocolate :D