By special request, here is a picture of the outside of our building. I may look a bit ugly from this angle but we love it! Guess which balcony is mine.....

On Monday we did our rounds as far as getting bank accounts, registering at the stadthaus ( city hall), and got our train passes (only 2175 CHF for the year, man).

The woman at the bank was wonderful. her english was pretty good but not perfect but she was cracking jokes anyway! I was impressed. I think she liked us because she gave us not one but two swiss chocolates, our first ones here.... turns out they are as amazing as everyone says.

after registering at the stadthaus, they gave us a free pass to the thermal baths here ( a big tourist attraction for baden apparently) , some free bus passes, a free indoor swimming pool pass, some iodine pills and a free garbage bag. You may laugh at the last two, but let me explain them. The iodine pills are a precaution since we live near a nuclear power plant ( on a side note, about 95% of switzerlands power production is clean power) and in the case of a nuclear meltdown, they sound the alarm and we take these pills. I'm really hoping it won't come to that. Speaking of nuclear power plants, we saw one as we flew into germany and it was exactly like you see in the simpsons.

The free garbage bag is nice because here, they will only pick up garbage that is in a specific garbage bag. They sell these bags 10 for 15CHF and it acts as a perfectly fairly distributed garbage tax. I thought it was kinda a good idea....

Our roomate has also been teaching us some german( we totally lucked out and Riley is fairly fluent I think) so now we can say "I don't Speak German", "Please" , "Thank you", "Sorry", "Wonderful", and last but not least "What's your star sign?" in german!

Yesterday we were out walking near the river again and we saw a swan. I think he likes our swimming spot as much as we do! We also walked down to the dam. One of many i think, I'm pretty sure hydroelectric power is fairly common here.....

Also, I thought i'd post my mailing address in case anyone wants to mail me a care package (wink wink!) also my room is pretty barren so if anyone has sweet pictures their getting rid of....

 Martinsbergstrasse 34
5400 Baden
Switzerland

xo olivia