1. Laundry. Don’t even think about washing clothes on Saturdays or Sundays. And you have to return the laundry room key by 5 p.m. when the apartment office closes, which is cool because I always envisioned A) using vacation days to wash my clothes or B) hand-washing all clothes in my tub.
2. Hours. Thursday nights have turned into this odd shopping frenzy as it’s the only night where stores are open past 7 p.m. The rest of the week? I’m normally weeding through the cupboards and pondering dinners of rice and dried fruits.
3. Dehydrate me. Restaurants are not big on giving you water. They will sell you sparkling water, but you have to finangle a bit for the free carafe d’eau.

Ok, the crabbiness as left the room, so I’ll leave you with three things that work pretty darn well.

1. Gummy candy centers in every corner store
2. Free eau potable (drinkable water) fountains in most neighborhoods
3. Plainpalais flea market where you can get a roasted chicken, cheapo English-language books and a stolen bike or two. OH and doll heads, but they were sold by the box, not individually so I passed.

AND they have free wifi.

I’m far too happy about this.

The only other locale I’ve discovered with legit free wifi (i.e. you’re not stealing it from a hapless neighbor), is Starbucks. And when you’re paying 7 CHF for a latte, it’s hard to call their measly 30-minute cards free.

So, let’s add up the plusses: free internet, the opportunity to use up all those silly coins that are actually worth 2 and 5 swiss francs and hot drinks (if I’d had the spare 1.50 frances, but it went towards drying). Not a bad deal.