A Mr. & Mrs. trying to live with the Swisses: “I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.”

When I arrived in Switzerland, I made a little list of things I had to do that didn’t seem like fun. This list included getting a microwave, health insurance, and filling out my direct deposit information for my paycheck, among other things. One of those other things was getting a deadbolt on our apartment door. The door to our apartment, the external door to the hall, had a hole in it from where the last tenant appeared to have removed the old deadbolt. So we had a hole and a sticker. Anyone with a pen could have poked through our “security sticker” to see all the way inside our apartment.

When I briefly met our next door neighbor in October, one of the three sentences he said to me was that we should really get that lock fixed. In an ominous tone. I really appreciated that while living by myself on the floor at the time.

I started the process of trying to get the hole fixed and lock replaced in October. There was a lot of going back and forth about who would be paying for what, and at one time John and I looked into what would be involved to fix it ourselves (I hope everyone knows that by “ourselves” here, I mean by John’s self). After some more research, it also appeared as though our apartment has been broken into before since the wood on the inside of the door was cracked. This made me feel really good inside.

So, finally, after several letters, phone calls, and learning a lot of French words including deadbolt and varnish, we got it fixed! We had no idea when we woke up yesterday that it would be such a special day. And we didn’t have to pay for any of it. I think this is fair since I’m pretty sure we’ll leave this baby with the apartment when we move out. They have to come back to varnish the door, but isn’t she a beauty?!