Absolutely NOT fabulous

Well, it turns out I was wrong that putting up with all these rules for three months would be possible. Its just not. This weekend, I found out what I had really gotten myself into. My landlady (who looks remarkably like Patsy from AbFab, minus the vodka and cigarette--which is sad, since I rather like Patsy) has shown her true colors. My friend Nico from Corsica visited this weekend, and while I was 90% sure he would not be allowed to stay here (he wasn't) I was rather surprised to find out that he was also not allowed in our apartment at all after 6pm. This is because he is a man to whom I am not engaged, and allowing him in after this arbitrary hour would apparently sully the "impeccable house" that Mme Von F has "always kept". I have, of course, considered just proposing marriage to anyone who stops by to see me, but this gets rather complicated, and although she is not the sharpest tool in the shed, I think the woman might catch on.

The friend visitation annoyances were exacerbated by her accusation that I had lent my keys to Nico (I had not), an "offense tres grave", and by her repeated suggestions that I practice turning the key properly in the lock before going out Saturday night, as I had done a poor job upon returning home Friday night at turning it without waking her.

Today was the last straw, as I dutifully woke up two hours before the Sunday bike ride to do my laundry in the appropriate window of time (no more than 1ce a week, and never after 4pm). As instructed, I read the manual beforehand, and seemed to have everything under control, however, even after waiting for the wash cycle to end, setting it to dry, and texting my roommate to ask him to restart the dry cycle when it ended, as it is rather inefficient, I still arrived home to a dryer full of wet clothes. I restarted it again, was admonished by the Madame for causing the lint-trap to fill with lint, and went out to dinner with a friend. I came home to a type-written note laid on my bed entitled "Quelques conseils pour Lauren". Eloquently written, making heavy use of boldface in some instances and yellow highlighting to drive home the most important points, the one-page note details a history of my efforts to clean my clothes today, and lets me know all the things I did wrong. It reminded me that I was "vivement recommande de lire attentivement le manuel d'utilisation de la MIELE qui est un modele de machine d'excellent qualite", and insinuated that I had lied when I claimed that I had read it. I had indeed read enough to figure out where to put detergent, how to set the dials, etc., but this was not enough. Apparently, had there been a test on the manual, I may not have passed. My gravest offense, it seems, was putting socks in the dryer. As any reasonable Swiss person knows, drying socks requires some sort of special bag that only the Swiss know about.

And so, I have spent a great deal of time this weekend looking for a new place, and looking for a replacement for here. The latter turns out to be much easier to find, even with an honest representation of the living situation here, as people really are desperate for housing. Tomorrow I am waking up extra early 1) to avoid the post-highlighted-note awkwardness that I assume ensues after such a non-confrontation, and 2) to go in and scour the internal WTO listserve that advertises apartments.

In other news, I saw lots of cool stuff this weekend, biked to Nyon, met lots of great people, swam in the lake during my lunch hour, but you don't get to hear about any of that, because this woman has used up all of my blogging energy.