My Weekend trip to Züri

It’s my third weekend in Europe and last before the rest of the clan arrives. It’s also one of several four day weekends that are spread throughout the year and a very nice benefit to working with Hilti in Liechtenstein! So with a few weeks to go before chaos arrives, I decided it would be a great opportunity to do some advanced scouting of our closest major metro area, Zurich!

To be honest this particular four day weekend snuck up on me and I was wholly unprepared to travel as of Thursday morning so I did a frantic internet search for a hotel to stay at for a couple nights, researched a few touristy things to do that were within walking distance of the hotel and did some light packing in preparation for an early morning drive to the “Z” (bear with me, I’m going to try out some nicknames for a bit). Now normally I’m excellent at road trips. It’s a long standing tradition within my family going back generations but one of the things I quickly learned when travelling alone is how much I rely on Amanda for the detailed planning aspects of our trips. As I’m sure we’ve mentioned before Amanda is not just a normal type A personality. She’s an alpha type A + with seemingly endless energy to plan and research every aspect of our daily lives, and she takes that energy level up another step when planning vacations. I, on the other hand, like having a plan on hand and am more than happy to contribute my opinions on our travel itinerary but seldom do the hard graft required to make everything come together. So when I went to bed on Thursday night I was already mentally exhausted from the very minimal planning I had done throughout the day.

Enter Friday morning. I woke up early, got a jog in, cleaned up, checked for all the relevant documentation I would need for the few days away, loaded the car and pulled out of the garage. And not 5 minutes down the road the car notifies me that it would like breakfast prior to heading into “Z town”. At this stage I had avoided buying fuel since my arrival and I was a little tenuous about it because my rental was Diesel and as far as I recall they don’t call it Diesel in Europe, and I don’t have any way to look up what it is called because I don’t have internet access without WiFi. But either way I had to get gas so I stopped at the first place on the motorway and much to my relief they actually listed Diesel on the pump! So I filled up, picked up a road snack and drink because I hadn’t thought to plan food for the journey and started down the road again.

Now some of you may have picked up on the lack of internet comment and instantly wondered how I was going to navigate to and through a foreign city without a navigation system, I know who you are! Some of you may have instantly given me the benefit of the doubt and thought “oh he’ll at least have a map to help him find his way” and to you I would say that is far more credit than I deserve! But I would venture to bet no-one who knows me and is reading this would even think to imagine that I took the time to memorize my route and take it on faith that I would be able to traverse a major European city without navigational aid on the first attempt and hope to end up anywhere near my destination. But low and behold, 1hr and 22 min later I was pulling into the parking garage of my hotel. For me this was nothing short of a personal triumph and perhaps something of a minor miracle for which I am indelibly grateful!

But on to the real reason I made the trip. I started my scouting trip with a walk over to the Swiss National Museum where the confluence of the Limmat and Shil River occurs just north of the Zurichsee. This is also the northern extent of the “old town” and proved to be a very nice area to get some decent pictures.

I walked along the Limmat back towards the Zurichsee passing back and forth across several bridges that span the river to find various picturesque locations. Once I reached the Zurichsee I stopped for a Bratwurst at one of the street vendors and then continued down the southern shore to a few parks before beginning my search for the FIFA museum. This is where my lack of navigational tools had the most significant impact. The FIFA museum is supposedly just 2-3 city blocks east of the Zurichsee as the crow flies but then I’m not a crow and had to deal with the marginally winding roads that make up the older areas of the city. After wandering up and down various streets for more than an hour I finally gave in and started to walk back to the hotel in the knowledge that we would be back in Zurich many
times and eventually I would find it. I also had a movie to catch that night in one of the local cinema’s that played English versions of current Hollywood hits and I still hadn’t decided where to have dinner.

After a brisk 3 mile walk back to the hotel to clean-up and change for the evening I decided that the timing was too tight for dinner and the movie so I decided to go heavy on the movie snacks instead. “Death on the Nile” was my subject for the evening and the blue Cinema Capital was a decent, if small theatre to get my silver screen fix in.

The next day I walked back to the Swiss National Museum and spent almost the entire day wandering this thoroughly modern museum inserted into the site designed by Gustav Gull in the 1890’s. The building itself has the feel of a much older castle or monastery that would have fit on the peninsula a few hundred years earlier but was purpose built in 1898 to house various collections from Switzerland's history. Within the main building the exhibits are presented in a way intended “…to bring artefacts to life in their presumed original surroundings and infuse the historical experience with an intense, enchanting atmosphere” (National Museum around 1900). The Gull definitely hit his mark with overall site design and the curators have done a fantastic job to make this entire site feel anything but purpose built to be a national museum. I’m really looking forward to coming back and sharing it with friends and family in the future!

I finished my last solo day in Zurich dining at a local BBQ restaurant called Brisket that promised “Texas style brought home” and it did not disappoint. It was so good in fact that I did a little research on the ownership (Von Matt Hospitality Group) and discovered that they used some of my favorite barbeque locations from back in Texas as their inspiration for taking Texas BBQ to Switzerland. I also discovered that they are the same ownership group responsible for La Brea SoCal Tacos and this gem of a sign that I couldn’t agree more with!

After dinner I had one more movie to catch on the weekend because new releases in English are really difficult to find within an hour radius of our apartment and taking 4-5 hours out of any given day to “catch” a movie once the wife and kids arrive will be extremely difficult. So back to blue Cinema for “Fantastic Beasts: the Secrets of Dumbledore,” but this time the theatre was at the Abaton location which was much larger and only half a kilometer from the hotel.

All told my trip to Zurich was a fantastic time and I can’t wait to get back with Amanda and the kids in the coming weeks!

The View from our Apartment

Several weeks into my time in Liechtenstein and I can’t get over the views! You’ve likely seen several of them as you’ve followed along but I wanted to share some of my favorites from the first few weeks here.

A visitor!

I’ve made it through the first week with some success and since I {kind of} know where things are, it’s time to welcome my first visitor! It just so happened that a few days after I departed for Liechtenstein, my father had a business trip scheduled to Italy!

One of the benefits to having a permanent place already established before entering the country is that you can start entertaining as soon as you get furniture in place. And on that front Hilti provides rental furniture until your actual furniture arrives as part of the relocation package.

Dad arrived in Liechtenstein the following Friday for a quick weekend visit to see where we would be staying and do some of his own scouting for their vacation here later in the year. Friday night was pretty standard, dinner out followed by a walk out to the local municipal sports park and spent the rest of the evening enjoying the view from the house as we caught up on all things family related.

One of the fascinating features about the Mauren/Eschen sports park is that it was visited by Saint Pope John Paul II in 1985 and still maintains the stone altar where he stopped and said Mass for the residents and visitors to the area.

We started Saturday off by taking a walk out to the village of Mauren to enjoy the bright sunny mourning and see one of the local churches. The church is very picturesque and with the Liechtenstein mountains in the background and surrounded by the local cemetery for the faithful. One could think of worse places to allow their physical remains to linger for the rest of eternity.

We returned to the apartment shortly before lunch and decided to make our way out to Vaduz so we could see the “southern” half of the country during the afternoon. On our way we made a slight detour to see the Prince’s official residence which is perched at the top of a cliff face several hundred feet above the capital city and offers commanding views of the entire valley below. While not allowed to go inside the castle visitors are able to utilize a free parking area just up the mountain from the castle as well as access several of the mountain trails that run between the small villages that are dotted across the slope.

Vaduz is the capital city and is quite small by almost any standard. You can walk from one end of the main street to the other in under 10 minutes. But like many central European cities the main thorough fair is for pedestrian use only and it makes for a very comfortable stroll from the shops and cafes at the north end to the parliament and Cathedral at the southern end.

On Sunday we decided to take a look at Feldkirch. The largest town in the area, it sits nestled in a valley straddling the Ill tributary before it joins with Rhine on the journey north. While many of the original medieval buildings are no longer around the town center maintains much of the footprint that existed back to Napoleonic times when the Rheintal Valley functioned as a gateway into the heart of the Alps from the north making it a strategic garrison and defensive location. While nothing like a bustling metropolis, there are a good number of cafes and shops that line the cobbled streets and comfortable walking paths that flank either side of the Ill tributary. And they have amazing pizza!

There’s also a local baseball team! That’s right, Feldkirch is home to the Feldkirch Cardinals and belongs to the Austrian Baseball Federation. The ABF is the governing body for Professional Baseball and Softball in Austria and also organizes the national teams it sends to international competition around the world. I had no idea this was even a thing prior to a coworker telling me about it earlier in the week so when I told Dad we should go check it out I really didn’t know what to expect. Low and behold, as we drove up to the park that functions as their home stadium they were warming up for what appeared to be a preseason scrimmage so Dad and I got out and wandered up to the stands. Attendance was free, they had food cooking on the grill and most of the fans were family members who had come to show support for their team on a brisk April afternoon. It was perhaps the most surreal environment I have ever witnessed as a baseball diamond. The temperature was in the upper 30’s to low 40’s but the sun was shining and the setting with mountains in the background was stunning. And then all of the sudden, about 2 innings into the scrimmage it started sleeting! The sun was still shining, the game was still going and there we were watching in the sleet. The winter weather only lasted for half an inning or so and we continued watching for a little longer before we had to head out but nonetheless it was an exciting find!

By the end of the day on Sunday we had seen quite a bit of my new home and I think I may have worn dad out a little.

We had a great time and I can't wait for his return trip with Mom this fall!

Rundgang

My first week in country has been a whirlwind to say the least but I have managed to go on a few brief “walkabouts” to familiarize myself with the surrounding area and today’s post in honor of the views we’ll get to enjoy over the next few years.

This is the view from our balcony:

With a little dusting of snow!

Not bad for a bachelor's dinner

These are a few of the views from the trails around the apartment:

Here is the local park:

Our fellow inhabitants:

This is literally a two minute walk from my office - I haven't gone off in the wilderness to find farmland!

This is the view from my desk. I keep looking for mutton on the cafeteria lunch menu...

On my way out of the parking lot at work

Up on the mountain:

Overlooking the Rhein River:

The Liechtenstein Alps:

The well earned meal

And dessert!

This has to be the largest strawberry I've ever seen!

Immigrating into Liechtenstein

Situated in a valley at the northern extent of the Alps as they cascade into central Europe, the Principality is notoriously particular about who and how many foreign nationals can live within the borders in a given year. For instance, they limit EEA nations and Swiss nationals to only 89 residence permits per year. Typically, foreign nationals from non-EEA nations who come to work in Liechtenstein are required to live in the neighboring countries and commute into the country for work. However, there is a relatively new visa arrangement between Liechtenstein and specific non-EEA nations that allows individuals and their families to obtain a 3 year residence permit within Liechtenstein. From what little information we’ve gathered about the permits they are typically awarded to the 2 or 3 largest international organizations with offices here and that after our 3 years are completed there is a 1 year “cooling off” period in which the permit holder is unable to hold any role based in Liechtenstein for the following 12 months. However, I’m currently taking this one with a grain of salt as I can’t find any mention of this anywhere!

Anyway, while you are in the process of obtaining your visa you not only have to show proof of employment but also proof of residence. And not just temporary residence but permanent residence. This puts the visa applicant in the very unusual situation of having to find a place to live without having issued an authorization for you to live here. So in February, Amanda and I embarked on a “house hunting” trip to find a place for us to stay so that the government would authorize our visa. Truth be told, by February we had already identified a place we were interested in online and entered a general agreement with the landlord but we still had paperwork to finalize, bank details to sort out and actually visit the place we would be staying to ensure it was suitable for the family. It also allowed Amanda to do some space planning so we would know what furniture to bring and what to leave behind.

It also served as an opportunity for Amanda to sign her new employment agreement with Hilti that she had been working to negotiate. SURPRISE! We’re a Dual Hilti Income Family!.

Anyway, the house hunting trip was successful, we signed all the housing paperwork and got to visit the School in Switzerland that Charlotte will attend and the Daycare Olivia will go to in the fall so at that point it was just waiting for word from the Liechtenstein government that I could proceed with my Visa application to enter Switzerland and then travel on to Liechtenstein to acquire my residence permit. That notification came about 3 weeks before I was scheduled to fly Zurich.

One problem... Olivia's name was spelt Oliva on her visa. We went back to the immigration folks to get it fixed, they said it would be about a week to reissue. Amanda looked into how long it would take to change Olivia's name on her passport to Oliva, we thought maybe the Swiss have it right & she should have been Oliva all along. (It takes longer than a week). We eventually got the corrected visa and immediately sent all the family's passports to the Swiss Embassy in Atlanta so they could apply the Swiss Visa to our passports. All this surprisingly took less than 10 days as the Swiss Embassy turned our passports around in under 24 hrs with Visa’s applied and mailed back to us. Got to love Swiss efficiency!

However, one is still not done with the process. Upon arrival into Liechtenstein you have 10 days to register with the local canton (think county in the US) to confirm with them where you will be living and provide proof of residence at the physical location. I had to show my authorization letter from the government and the original signed lease for our apartment. Additionally you must acquire the appropriate health insurance and submit all documentation to the immigration office so that they can finally process your residence permit. But thankfully I had assistance in the form of our real estate agent who also works with expats on the finer points of immigrating into the principality which was great because in a country of 38,000 people she also knows all of the people I needed to work with to finalize the permits, insurance and banking topics.

It’s now been about 3 business days since I completed and submitted the last of my documentation to immigration and then today received my actual residence permit so I guess I’m official now. And not a moment too soon as my first guest arrives in 2 days and now I can travel in and out of principality! Looking forward to sharing those with you soon!

Advanced Scout

One of the weirdly common aspects to Powell family moves is how frequently I end up on site well before Amanda does. The first time this occurred was our move from Abilene to DFW back in 2005. I had to start work in mid-May while Amanda was finishing her Master’s Degree at ACU. It then occurred again on our move from Bristol to London and then a third time for our move from New Jersey back to Texas. I was told after the 3rd occasion that it would be the last, yet here we are with me moving into our new apartment in Liechtenstein and Amanda still in Dallas with the kids and all our belongings. Amanda truly is amazing for taking on the final stages of prepping our move, finishing her own workstreams and taking care of our kids!

Officially my first day in the new role was April 1st, which was also a Friday so there were really solid April Fools vibes going into this whole adventure but I can confirm that after I arrived on Mar 29th and spent a few days getting registered with the local Canton, getting access to the apartment and finding transportation I arrived at the office on the 1st and was given a computer, a badge and a welcome by new team I felt reassured that I was in fact supposed to be here.

The first few days were very hectic. My flight departed on the 28th and I arrived in Zurich around 9 AM on the 29th after a brief layover in London. My flight to London was brilliant by the way. Someone, managed to get me into Business class unannounced so when I got to the row indicated on my ticket and found that I was in business class rather than coach I was incredibly surprised! Like I said, the woman is amazing!

Upon landing in Zurich we had decided that it would make more sense for me to take the train rather than attempt to drive in a foreign country on no sleep (I don’t sleep on trains). I managed to purchase a flex ticket for the route I wanted to take and made my way down to the platform. Of course this was made more difficult as I was hauling a backpack, rolling carry-on and two rolling checked bags each weighing just under the 50lbs limit. For what it’s worth I’m pretty sure the checked luggage was actually lighter than each of my carry-on items. By the time I made it down to the platform with my roughly 200 lbs of luggage the doors to my train had closed and it was slowly creeping away from the platform.

Now normally people with a flex pass wouldn’t be too stressed about this and just check for when the next train was scheduled to department. But I, my friends, am anything but normal. Particularly when it comes to travel. You see when I purchased the ticket, I wasn’t able to find an English translation on the ticket machine and since I had no internet access on my phone (we’ll get into this a bit later) I didn’t know I had purchased said flex ticket. So, after issuing my very best forlorn stare at the departing train I dragged my luggage back to the escalator and made my way back to the main floor to see if I could find a human that could help. This activity took around 35 minutes until I finally found a manned ticket office tucked away in the corner of the station. Gratefully the attendant spoke English and explained that I had managed, by considerable luck, to purchase a flex pass for the route I wanted and that if I made my way back to the platform I had just left another train was scheduled to depart in 15 minutes for Zurich central station where I could transfer to the train that would take me to Buchs and hopefully a way to contact the co-worker I had pre-arranged to pick me up from the station later in the day.

Following the instructions I’d been given, I managed to make the next train and disembark at Zurich central to make my transition. The timing for this exchange was however a relatively tight 12 minutes and there wasn’t another train heading to Buchs for another hour if I missed this option. So me and 400lbs of luggage briskly moved down the platform towards my next train. Zurich central however is a large station by most American standards with multiple levels of tracks and it just so happened that my next train was up 3 flights of stairs! I’m sure there were escalators or an elevator that could have assisted me on the journey up, but the walk had already taken me 5 minutes and I wasn’t sure how much further from the stairs my train would be when I got to the top so instead of risking not finding a more efficient option I chose to carry my 700lbs of luggage up the three flights of stairs. Upon arriving at the top of the stairs I was relieved to see the train was directly in front of me, so I hustled down the platform and arrived at the first open door for the train.

This train however was constructed differently than the one I rode from the airport. Where the first train was a stepless transition from train to platform, this train had 3 steps just inside the door that one had to traverse in order to get to the seating level. After catching my breadth and just as the departure bell was starting to sound, I took hold of my 900lbs of luggage and heaved myself onto the train and directly into….1st class. Needless to say, it was immediately apparent to everyone on board that one of the passengers was not where they belonged, gulp.

Quickly gathering myself and doing my very best to absorb the perturbed yet polite stairs I awkwardly rolled my 1,200lbs of luggage through the first-class cabin, lounge car and a completely full second-class cabin until I finally found an open section of four seats where I could sit alongside my 1,900lbs of luggage for the duration of my trip to Buchs.

Once you’re on a train in Switzerland though the journey can be quite lovely. Mountain scenes abound along the entire route and the cabins are comfortable, clean and quiet which made for a very nice portion of the trip.

When I finally arrived in Buch’s it was 3:30 in the afternoon and I now had to find a way to contact my colleague who had agreed to pick me up whenever I arrived. So back to the internet quandary from earlier. I did bring a phone with me, but my service didn’t include international calls or data. I could use it with wifi but in Switzerland if you want to use free Wi-Fi the organization providing it is required to send you an access code either by text or email. But without access to data the access code never makes it to your phone which ultimately prevents someone like me without data access from using the free wifi. Ultimately, I found my way around this by asking the attendant at the ticket counter if they could provide me with an access code rather than having it sent to me. She kindly agreed and I was able to reach my colleague and get picked up around 4:30, retrieve my rental car and make it to the hotel that I would be staying at for the first few days by 5:30.

 
After dropping my 2,100lbs of luggage at the hotel I went with my colleague for a quick bite to eat at a local Kebab shop and then back to the hotel by 7:30 to phone home, clean up and get to bed by 9. All told I had been awake from 6:00 AM Mar 28th Dallas time (1:00 PM Liechtenstein) to 9:00 PM local time on Mar 29th. During which time my luggage hit a max weight of 17,000 lbs, I road in 3 cars, 2 trains and 2 planes and completely butchered one foreign/local language. Sleep never came so quickly, and the next few days would hold even more adventures that you will be sure to hear about in the weeks to come.

And so it Begins…

The time has come to bid my homeland goodbye for a while as I depart on our next adventure. As most adventures do these days, mine is starting with a flight. We decided that it would be easier on everyone if we left the kids with the grandparents while Amanda took me to the airport. Who were we kidding? Amanda and I hadn’t made it out of the neighborhood before I asked to go back to the house to say goodbye one last time to my little girls. Leaving the rest of the family behind is absolutely the most difficult aspect of this transition and even though it’s only for three weeks it constitutes the first time we will have been apart for more than 12 hours since Olivia was born. And while I’m not a nervous flier, the thought of something happening between my departure and their arrival had been nagging at the back of my mind for several weeks so back to the house we went for one last embrace! 

Sappiness concluded when Amanda and I started back towards the airport and focused most of our discussion on the things we wanted to do and places we wanted to visit during our three years abroad. There’s still so much unknown to us that it’s a little hard to visualize what our life will be like but we at least know many of the places we want to go so we focused on that and made it to the airport with plenty of time before my flight. Another tearful goodbye with my wife and I was through security and standing at my gate awaiting more boarding time. 

This flight would take me into Heathrow where I would change planes for a short hop into Zurich before my train ride to Buchs, Switzerland. What I didn’t realize is that Amanda had snuck onto the AA website and upgraded my seats to London! 

And not only was it business class but with my flying at the end of the pandemic I also ended up with the entire row to myself! As flights go it was a glorious way to spend 9 hours by myself watching endless movies (I don’t sleep on planes)! 

A real glass on the plane!

Arriving in Heathrow was as I remembered it. Busy! My connecting flight was several miles away in a different terminal but at least I was only dealing with carry-on luggage as I went through UK security and made my way to the next flight. This was a regional commuter that was just under 2 hours and was packed! At this point I had been up for nearly 15 hours and was tired, so I shut my eyes for most of the flight and just listened to the hum of the engines and chatter of other passengers as I willed the flight to arrive in Zurich so I could begin the next stage of travel for my day.