A new place? Keepin' our fingers crossed.

I think, hopefully, that we just found and won a new apartment to rent today. I mean 'won', because finding a decent apartment in Lucerne is like winning the lottery. There is much more demand than supply, and in a country where discriminating against anyone who isn't Swiss is perfectly legal, acceptable, and even expected, we are apparently very lucky indeed. We just checked out the apartment today, and I don't have any pictures of it yet, but I do have pictures of the view from its small balcony and will include those at some point in this Post. It is a two bedroom, one bath, not much bigger than our current apartment, but it does have a dishwasher (hurray!!) and a balcony, as already mentioned. The bathroom is actually smaller than the one we have now, but beggars,--- or outlanders,---can't be choosers. It is in a very nice location, not far down the road from the Casino we work at, although farther than we currently live, and a five minute walk from the lake shore and beach areas. Once the weather improves, we will be able to commute to work easily with bikes. Also, the rent will be cheaper than we pay now by about $350 a month, very cool, and we will still be close enough to town and the lake to enjoy what it has to offer without having to deal with the accompanying noise from traffic and the Church of Hells Bells. Yea for us!

I also wanted to mention that we took a four day trip to Hungary a week or so ago to hang out and visit Timi's parents. We had a good time, I played tennis with Timi's dad and he kicked my ass, and then we played billiards and I kicked his. All those years of having a pool table in our living room paid off! We also ate a lot of grubbin', and cheap, food, and I shopped for, and found, two awesome coats for half what they would have cost here. I like Budapest, it is so 'Old School Europe', the people just seem to be more 'real', and the city is filled with thousands of old, grand, Baroque-style buildings, some renewed, but most in various states of decay, a tattered hearkening back to an age of elegance, refinement, formality, tasteful opulence and grace. Sure, Budapest is grittier, dirtier, more ragged, with more crime and poverty than Switzerland, but Switzerland has never endured 40 plus years of a corrupt, fatally flawed political and economic system, and previously brutalized and/or invaded by one bully country after another. The Hungarian people, even with all their disadvantages, seem to be more creative, and enjoy life more than 'super serious Switzerland' does. Switzerland is without a doubt more prosperous, cleaner, shinier, and safer, with incredible natural resources, and that is nice and admirable; we like it here in many ways. But, at the same time, it's culture seems to lack a certain something in the personality category, maybe as a result of a lack of any real adversity for the last 500 years? I will get to my thoughts on this in a later post. That's all for now, I'm going to eat some store bought pizza(made in Austria), that Timi is sprucing up for us, then get ready for work! See ya. Check out the pics below of scenes around town. You can click on them to expand.