• The house finally sold. Hooray! Feels good to tick that one off. There was a bit of a panic when the solicitor said they had sent me the proceeds by a same day transfer but they hadn’t arrived by 6pm. I did lots of Googling for things like “UK account number check digit” and “reasons for CHAPS delays”. It turned out there was some boring admin reason for the holdup and it arrived the next day. Hooray some more!

  • On Tuesday I planned to take the train from Southampton to Zürich (via London and Paris, but hopefully cheerier than that book), but over the weekend there was a landslip under the train line to London. It’d have been possible to get to London by train without going over that line but it felt like quite a gamble given I had a 10:30am Eurostar. I ended up taking the coach to Heathrow on Monday evening, staying there overnight, then going into London on Tuesday morning to get my train to Paris.

    I like taking the train. London to Zürich by train is definitely slower than flying, even if you count the airport tax, but whatever it’s different and quite enjoyable. I had a load of spare seats around me on the Eurostar and I sprung for a first class TGV seat which was wide and comfy and had no other seat next to me, like some kind of velour throne. I had downloaded some stuff from iPlayer and spent my time watching that, eating crisps, and nodding off.

  • When I got to Zürich I stayed at the Alpine Garden capsule hotel. This was quite fun — “cheap” for Switzerland, great shower, pretty comfy — but I managed to sort of half fall down the ladder at 5.30am when I was leaving and scraped up my foot. I don’t consider myself unathletic but man those ladders could do with another handle.

  • On Wednesday and Thursday our stuff was delivered. Stuff. So much stuff. Every room has a pile of boxes that looks like a bit like the Giant’s causeway but I am slowly chipping away at the problem in time for Nanda and the kids to get back to a nice apartment next weekend.

  • Gigabit internet is nice.

  • Have already seen some friends for dinner! Such a socialite now.

  • Unclear if I still have a job offer or not. I guess I’ll find out soon?

  • 10 plugs rewired so far. I spent 70 CHF on extension leads, and not even that many of them. Once again I have been Switzerlanded.

  • I am regretting using the accent on Zürich but since I did it once I am forever compelled to keep it up in the name of consistency.