Switzerland Is In Our Future

My husband, Jared is finishing up his PhD in Chemistry and a few months after his graduation we will be moving to Switzerland where he has a 2 year post-doctoral opportunity lined up. I hope to journal every step of the way including the days and months leading up to our departure from the United States. We are looking to move in October of 2010. In the meantime, there is lots to do in order to prepare. We have already begun to sell some of our valuables that have no real sentimental value as we will not be taking anything more than the necessities with us. I have been asked a lot about this and the answer is YES, we WILL be taking our cats with us. They are not cats to us...they are our children and we wouldn't dream of leaving them behind. From what we have read and been told the process for transporting cats overseas to Switzerland is a fairly simple process and they are very pet friendly over there. The other issue we had to think about was transportation. While we will most likely use public transportation of the railroad system we also wanted to have a car during the 2 years we are there. Cars in Switzerland are roughly $10,000 more for the same car you could buy here and the price to ship or import a car is only $1,500 so what we decided to do was buy a small European style vehicle for cheap here in the United States and ship it over to Switzerland. It just seemed like the logical thing to do. So we traded in my SUV today for a Toyota Yaris. I have to say, it feels surprisingly roomy inside for being such a compact car and rides smooth. It has very small trunk space but the back seats can be laid down if necessary for more storage room. The dashboard is a little odd, but overall it's a good car. It's perfect for what we need. There are no big cars in Europe so we'll fit right in. We were able to get an unbelievable deal on the car! Sticker price was $15000 and after taxes we ended up paying a little over $10,000 after rebates and the trade in on my SUV. Pretty sweet deal. So here she is....our new 2010 Toyota Yaris. I didn't get a choice in color but the maroon is growing on me.



So with these first few steps toward the big move I thought now was as good of a time as any to start journaling about it. I will do my best to keep this blog current during the busy times ahead so check back often for updates!