Warning!

In Switzerland if you receive notification that an item will be delivered between 8 am - 10 am, you want to be dressed and ready no later than 7:45 am. Otherwise you may be scrambling to finish dressing when the doorbell rings at 7:50 am. Swiss deliveries are excessively prompt. This is now the third time a delivery has been a bit early. I've never had one arrive late.

However, GLH was delighted when I called him on the telephone. Our brand-new flat screen tv has arrived.

Which brings us to another warning...

Be very, very careful when buying items from other expats who are leaving the country. Especially if you arrange for the purchase before you arrive and do not yet have a good idea for the cost of things.

I am an individual who believes that others' intentions are for the best until that assumption is proven wrong. Fortunately, it is relatively rare that people do not live up to that assumption. But sometimes, I am sorry to say, I am disappointed in the actions of others.

We purchased a satellite dish, television, vcr and dvd player from some American expats who departed Switzerland shortly before we arrived. We saw it on a previous trip, but did not have much time to really study it or determine how it worked. They cheerfully told us "it works great!" It seemed alright.

The satellite dish is mostly ok, although it's very old and doesn't always pick up every signal. But the rest of the stuff is pure crap. Oddly enough, it is all from the Czech Republic and doesn't work quite right in Switzerland. We did not know this before we purchased it. And we paid quite a lot of money for it.

From the age of the items, which we also did not know, we suspect that they purchased it from another expat who was leaving the country about the time they arrived. Best guess is they decided "all's fair" and passed the rip-off on to us. Lord only knows how many expats have passed this stuff on to others. Truly, it is rather old.

We've decided to end the cycle here.

Our landlady knows someone who will be driving to Switzerland from the Czech Republic in March. When he returns to his home, he is taking the equipment with him. We are donating it to a needy family he knows who cannot afford such luxuries. Even though it is old, it will likely work at least a little better in the country for which it was intended.

And we will not have to figure out how to get rid of it.

Throwing things out in Switzerland is not an easy matter. You either have to take it somewhere and pay for its disposal. Or you store it until the one time per year that you can put it on the curb with an expensive sticker that shows you paid for the pick up service.

We would prefer to not spend even a single additional rappen on it.