The good, the great, the bad, the weird layouts, the questionable plumbing. It was We had a balcony and individual parking spots. This is it. My apartment in Rome, just a few blocks from the Vatican, had a bunk-bed in the kitchen and a teeny tiny balcony that all 5 roommates piled out on to drink bottles of spumante before a night out.
In another, my bedroom window opened up to the fire escape, and I would climb out late at night to watch the world go by and yes, absolutely pretend like I was in a movie. My roommate and I lived without one for a few weeks until we finally found a cheap used model on Craigslist. The doorways were crooked, the light switches were crooked, even the floor was crooked.
If you dropped a marble on the living room floor, it would always roll to one corner. The garage was full of old broken furniture, curious antiquities, and bottles of wine that had long since turned to vinegar. Raunaq also swears he found bones in the soil. But it was our apartment, the first we had built together. All this is to say is that apartment living can sometimes be more than just a place to lay your head and store your things: it can be an adventure in of itself. In some ways, each place has become a framework of that specific stage of my life.
That country, this neighborhood, that landlord, this roommate. Swiss apartments, in this way, are no different. Swiss apartments, and the standards of apartment living, are one of the five things I think this country truly got right. But when you do finally sign that rental agreement and get your key, there are a few things you can come to expect about your new Swiss apartment.
Ok, 14 things. You all know that brevity is not my strong point. Swiss apartments are BYOL bring your own lights. When you move in to a new apartment, it looks like it was ransacked by a lightbulb burglar. There are wires hanging from the ceilings every room, but not a bulb in sight.
