More Laundry Stories

Today I decided to wash the sheets (for the first time in weeks and weeks. We sort of live in our own filth). I went to the laundry room, I marvelled at the fact that no one else was washing (which is unheard of), I put the washing on*, and as I was leaving I decided to have a quick look at the laundry rules (which up until now, 3 weeks before we leave forever, I have failed to do).

Yes, as we could have all guessed, you're not allowed to do your laundry on Sundays. This, while being completely insane (if the problem is noise, the laundry room is a whole 2 floors below the closest actual residential bit in the building and there is no way anyone would hear it from that distance. I can hardly hear the machines when the laundry room door is shut) is not at all unusual in Switzerland. Although I have never really done any laundry at all on weekends before (except maybe on one other Sunday, when I also noted the remarkable availability of washing machines) I've heard a zillion other people (foreigners) complain about how insane the rules in their apartment blocks are.

Anyway, I went back upstairs and told Reto about my terrible unSwissy behaviour, and he looked at me as though I was insane and then made some unkind comment about how I had probably misunderstood the rules (which were obviously written in german). He then gave it some more thought, and decided that I was still wrong, because this is a Protestant town and apparently Protestants have no regard for Sundays. Anyway, I made him go back down there to hang it out when the washing was finished (just in case we have vigilant rule-followers in the building who like to stand around and yell at surreptitious launderers) and he apparently ran into someone else who was doing their laundry too. Oh, and he checked the rules and found (shock horror) that I had read them correctly.

These Switzies are crazy.


* 40C if you are interested, which is as low as the temperature options go.