New place to fit in

Seems like I turned into a hermit or reached a deeper level of minimalism I guess, I mean I just kind of disappeared from the online sphere, it does not mean I was not up for big changes, in the contrary, a lot of thing has happened since I moved to Switzerland.

Trying to fit in the city and into the Swiss way of living which is sometimes absurd but quiet frankly minimalism friendly a lot. So what do I even mean by that?

Let me explain, shockingly here where I am living there’s no rubbish collection daily or communal huge bins in the streets or under the apartment, here you got two days a week where you can take down your rubbish bags, next to the road, for us it means we must place our rubbish either on Mondays and Thursdays, basically it means, we are allowed to take down the rubbish the day before after 7PM until 7AM the following morning, let me tell you, it is definitely not the best way to handle waste, never been a big supporter of dumping bin bags next to a road where these bags can attract insect/rats/foxes etc or just stink there, but tried to look into it from another angle like I have to be more mindful about the waste, and trying to limit the household waste to dispose only once a week so basically 4 bags a month, which I think is reasonable amount. At the other hand, would be nice to be able to take out the rubbish whenever the bin is full, but I can live with a bit of planning so do most Swiss too.

I almost forgot to mention that I kind of like the fact, that I have to buy in the local stores bin bags, you can’t just use your own bag or whatever bag, you must use a city specific bin bag, they are not cheap but the money is used for collecting those bags, the collection is somewhat built in the price of those bags.

Minimalism is also interconnected with recycling and simple living and if I would have to point out that I love that we have in the building separate bins for organic waste which is emptied less frequently where you can compost all the organic waste you have. I like that here in Bern every 2 weeks there’s a day usually a Wednesday when collecting papers only, my first reaction was it won’t really affect me much, first of all, in the UK I barely had paper waste, no newspapers, leaflets or letters, well here in Bern this is not the case, every single day receiving newspapers, leaflets and general advertisements even though it’s clearly written on the postbox that no advertisement please, no one cares so always ending up with lot of papers. On the positive side, I happily noticed that most grocery items have paper packaging or have paper packaged alternative at least, so in overall, always manage to have couple of bags of paper up for recycling. Just to add to the topic, don’t have doubts dear reader, people are recycling not just for fun but because they are forced to do so if they don’t want to get hefty fines, but it is still an admirable way to go about recycling.

Here the people just place their papers next to the road for collection, as you can see people tend to have lot of paper waste and of course they are recycling it.

It was and still is hard to come to terms with the fact that most shops here in Bern are closing very early and not open at all on Sundays, usually the grocery shops are open until 7PM and weekends only until 5PM except the ones in the train station, which is a bit far from the apartment, this inconvenience really pushed me to have a different daily agenda alone and to sort out shopping earlier than I normally would have done in London, but can’t really complain, the life here is different, more slow, more family oriented, more organised, more calm than in London was.

It is really a new place where I need to learn to fit in perfectly and get to used to the Swiss way of doing things, so far I am happy here and happy to see the changes that I was forced to implement in my daily routine.

The less is more and it’s definitely hold true in Switzerland where most people keep it simple, so should you if the wealthy Swiss people do so, so should we.

Yours sincerely

To/Minimal