IKEA, I wish I could quit you

By Swiss law, all stores are closed on Sundays, so we had to do all of our shopping today.  An interesting loophole to that law is that businesses inside train stations are allowed to stay open on Sundays: there's a veritable mall in the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) of businesses thriving with their Sunday-shopper monopoly.  And all of the other stores are just that much more crowded on Saturdays.  Ikea was a mess today.

We had a bunch of odds and ends to pick up: storage crates, an area-rug, a shower curtain, kid-sized silverware, a desk chair.  It all added up very quickly to being a very awkward load.  Fortunately, a stroller for Joey was also on our shopping list, and that made carting everything home somewhat easier.  I was surprised by his reaction when I pulled the stroller out of its box for him: "Yay! YayyayYAY!"  Maybe he wasn't enjoying his shopping-cart trips as much as I thought.

Anyway, the stroller is safer, and I'm especially glad that I have a safe, contained space for him now that I've seen how very fast the trains can fly through stations.  We were on the S-line today...not as fast as a TGV, but up there. One S-train flew through the station without stopping: the wind and pull and sound were dizzying.  It made me glad that I could strap down my youngest and most impulsive child, at least.  Especially given his obsession with trains.  Oh, he loves them.

And a good thing he does: our other errand for today was to get our year-long, Switzerland-wide train passes.  They're rather expensive, but we figure if we go on a longer trip once or twice a month, they'll be worth it--and it might just be worth the cost, too, if it encourages us to get out of the house and go on adventures.

Surprisingly, buying that pass was one of the more pleasant parts of the day.  The woman who helped us was a wonder.  We were embarassingly unprepared when we went to buy our tickets: we were meant to have brought our marriage license and passports.  For the marriage license, she said it would be enough for her if we could just show her id with the same last name...she accepted our US drivers licenses in lieu of our passports, as well.  We didn't have a single piece of photo id for Ella (the boys are under 6, and are, therefore, free) but Dennis happened to have a photo scan of Ella's passport on his phone.  She was happy to accept that as well, thank goodness.  The kindness of strangers.

The kids continued to impress us today as we hauled all of our booty home.  Picture Alex hugging a rug twice his height while Ella pushed a shopping-bag-laiden stroller.  I hope their bravery extends to Monday--they both say that they're excited about school, but I'm nervous for them.  We still have some work to do on getting them accustomed to this time zone, especially with Ella.  We've got big plans to get them out and about somewhere tomorrow, to give them some fun and to exhaust them utterly, hopefully leading to an earlier bedtime.