I really need to apologize. Yes, because I started this blog with the precise intent to update it, if not everyday, at least every time a crazy, melodrama-filled story connected to the move came up.
Surprisingly enough, I was having some sort of writer’s block.
But I’m all cured now, or so it seems.

Today I want to talk about contracts.
Yes, contracts. Those traps-filled documents that can be read within a couple of hours (and a good lawyer, and coffee, lots of coffee, and a loan – oh no wait, that’s actually not feasible today).
But see, with moving companies such as the one that I picked (using a very professional source, certified to be precise), there is no such a thing as complicated contracts. Everything is clear, crystalline, transparent, polar-ice-before-global-warning stable.
Easy. Boring. A simple description of the services they shall provide to you, the price you have to pay for each of them, and a nice comfortably dotted line for your signature, with which you officially declare yourself mentally challenged or plain naive because you ACTUALLY believed everything was going to be THAT simple.
And the good thing is, when you write an angry email to them because the delivery guy “accidentally forgot” he had to come accompanied with a couple of other people because the service you paid for spelled out “delivery of your furniture and placement in your house” (it also added the re-building of a table), they don’t even give you the thrill to enter into a vivid and uncivilized discussion with them (in which, believe me, I would have scored just as good as Einstein interviewing Sarah Palin). No no. They even dare to send you the pdf copy of the contract you signed, in an act of I-didn’t-know-with-what-I-could-start-my-reponse-kind-of-thing, they say you are right, and that’s it.
Yes, you heard me, that’s it.
No offer to pay you back with the money of the service they didn’t provide, and for which you had to ask someone else’s help. No mentioning of other forms of refund.

Hell, I don’t even care about the re-building of my table. I could have left it lying there, sadly de-mounted for years, decades, centuries…

I’ve never been the most patient of all people.
I have no patience with infants, I have no patience whatsoever with the people who want to sell you stuff on the streets and who insist even when you serve them with the usual excuses, though occasionally decorated with sorry faces. Sometimes I’m actually sorry, sometimes I’d love to smash something against them. (Like the time when I basically had a nervous breakdown with a representative of a Swiss telephone company whose name I won’t disclose because it would actually mean publicity, and I truly madly deeply hate them).

However, moving means you HAVE to be patient. With people, mostly. Which is a big problem for me.

Especially when you desperately need to know a price. A simple, simple price.
The first time I’m even incredibly polite:
“Hello, I have a question. I am moving and I’d like to send boxes from here to there. Just boxes though, with books and stuff..no furniture”. Can you hear my polite tone?

“I’m sorry. But we’re closed until 2 pm” (Look at the clock, it’s like 1.30 pm). I have no idea why the receptionists all have those incredibly irritating voices. Living in Switzerland has made me incredible good though. Before moving, I had this annoying vice of always being so polite and scared to say no. And I even said sorry when I called 5 minutes before the opening times.
Now I am a whole new me.

“Ok. So then. Why do you even answer the phone if you are closed. uh?”

“I am the secretary”.

“Ok. So you are the secretary. You answer the phone only to tell people to call back.”
Deeply rational, I think.
Wouldn’t it be waaaay smarter and cost-efficient to have an answering machine with yoga-teacher-kind of voice?

Ohhhmmmm

The moving company is easy to contact. You mostly get the information on the world wide web, you can easily contact them via email. Everything is soooo easy.

The moving company allows to have a free evaluation of what the cost would actually be.

The moving company answers swiftly to emails.

The moving company comes at 8 o’clock in the morning for the free evaluation thingy. Which lasts exactly 15 minutes.

The moving company provides you with the free evaluation quite late, though apologizing, and giving a “nice price” (according to them).

From: themove.splinder.it

When I wrote “the move” I also wanted to describe the never-ending perils you have to go through in order to reach the ultimate goal, that is your new apartment and your new life, that is MOVE IN.
I know I should FIRST rant about me moving out and THEN about me moving in. However, this is a complicated move (me= in Germany at the moment trying to move out of Switzerland).
Thus, welcome to my complicated life.

And this, yes I know it sounds incredible, requires a big amount of time spent building the new furniture.

It all starts in a huge Swedish company, whose name I won’t disclose, which ensures you the ultimate shopping experience merely by letting you walk through the not-to-be-found isles, desperately looking for row 42 (which is, of course, hidden behind rows 20 to 30).

First it’s love at first sight: the table and chairs look so incredibly good in the display area (which shouts “Look at what we have done with our 40-squaremeter-apartement!-which-of-course-it’s-actually-a-60-squaremeter-place!-with-a-giant-kitchen-that-you-will-never-find-in-human-house”).
Then you start dreaming about it in your living room…
“Honey? Are you sure it fits?” You go over the measurements again and again and again.
And at the end, the table and chairs of your dreams receive the ultimate, consensus approval.

Your journey through the “display” areas continues undisturbed. You find yourself dreaming about THAT piece of furniture in your bathroom, THAT hanger in the hall. And at the end of your romantic tour in the display section (only after the compulsory mockery at the children area), you find yourself with an endless list of items to pick up in the “isle hell”.
With the knowledge that you are OF COURSE bringing everything with you, RIGHT NOW, because delivery sucks, it takes too long, it arrives at 9.15 instead of 1 pm (and for God’s sake, had it been 5 minutes earlier, the delivery guys would have found me in my night gown, hair all over the place and screaming with anger – I do not appreciate to be woken up without much preparation and love).
However, don’t be deceived, you will have a full post about the incredible fun of “SwedishcompanywhosenameIwon’tdisclose”‘s delivery service.

Where was I? Ah, the taking stuff home-part.
“Are you sure we will make it?” I ask with preoccupation (although knowing the answer to the question won’t really change what I will have to go through).
“Yes, let me just count..Those two should go in the bags, those two we can easily carry” C., that his Him, is a wonderful creature with an unhealthy amount of optimism.

Faithful although slightly less optimistic (I am Italian, it comes with genes), I decide to agree with the crazy idea to bring home, using public transportation: a table (a nice wooden table with a metal structure, that is, it comes in two packages, one being very large, one being very heavy), two glass doors for the kitchen (ahh the kitchen requires another standing post), a coat hanger (not the standing ones, don’t worry), a nice chair-looking-thingy for the bathroom and other small stuff which could go into a purse. Have you read the list? Yeah..I thought that too.
“This could actually be quite challenging”, He says when he actually means “Oh shit, this is impossible!” (he’s German, it comes with genes).
“Let’s kidnap a cart!” Crazy idea. But he always has crazy, though great ideas.
We kidnapped the cart, transported everything to the bus station, brought the cart back, got on the bus, got off the bus (occasionally hitting someone, but whatever, I am in a bad mood and I have a great amount of heavy furniture, wanna mess with me?). We also managed to get on and off the subway and eventually even managed to go home after climbing 4, I repeat 4 sets of stairs.
Wait, let me rest a bit, I feel tired by merely writing this.

(..to be continued)..

If you stumbled across this blog, you also probably come from themove.splinder.it

this is the new blog.

A blog to talk and laugh about the hassle of an international move.