Today went to the pet store and bought Mo a bag of dog food. It worked out well at Zoo Dunkle and the store actually carries the same exact brand of dog food Mo has been eating for nearly a year now.
The shocker came at the cash register. This same exact dog food that I buy in the US usually runs for about $25, sometimes less if on sale. Today that dog food cost $97CHF... that's about $80... over three times as much.
I was actually really surprised by this. First of all, it's dog food, just dry dog kibble, not pate or anything. Secondly, the rest of the grocery store prices seem generally just marginally more expensive. Sometimes there is a shocker, like $4 for celery (uhhh I guess that is a specialty item) but most of the time supermarket prices seem only a few dollars more.

Maybe dog food should be bought in Germany. hmmm. something to consider.

Labels: doggie news, money matters, switzerland

Sweet Dreams and Goodnite

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Made it to Basel in one piece. The whole process was ridiculously smooth. No problems with customs as we crossed the border. At the apartment, the woman was there on time to hand off the keys. In spite of hearing horror stories about parking in Basel, we were able to easily find parking. We circled around for about 10 minutes and found a "white" parking space without a meter. It was perhaps a five minute walk from our apartment. This also gave us the first opportunity to get to know our immediate community....which is mainly shops. This turns out to be a pretty good thing, as I'll explain sometime later.

The first day we tried to get a cell phone. There are three providers, Orange, SwissCom and Sunrise. SwissCom as a government outfit was of course the most orderly. When you enter the store you must take a number for service. Talk about Swiss! Since this is government run, it is also the most expensive. Orange also had great service personnel but didn't have a very friendly international plan. In general, an international plan is very important since Switzerland is such a small country. Many of the providers also offered decent rates with Germany. Sunrise has some of the least expensive plans, but i wonder if sales service is the trade off. It doesn't matter right now anyway because to get a cell phone plan, you must show your Swiss visa.... which I don't have yet...since the University hasn't finalized my paperwork.
We will be leaving town almost as soon as we got here. This coming weekend we must go to London for business. Since that is in the UK, we cannot take Mo doggity with us. Quickly we have to find a place to board Mo for the weekend. We asked a woman at the pet store for suggestions. She didn't seem particularly helpful... most likely since she thought we would not be doing business with her. Her suggestion was the Tier Heim--- which turns out to be the same thing as the ASPCA back in the states. Suprisingly, yes, they also board pets. Mo has an appointment to be dropped off on Samstag Abend(Saturday evening) and picked up on Dienstag (Tuesday) We just need to double check that all of his papers are in order. One of the cool things about Switzerland is that there is actually a law that requires all animals to have a certain amount of human contact each day. So I have no fear that Mo will love his stay.
whew. I'm too tired to write anymore today. X's

Labels: basel, cell phone service, doggie news, money matters, pet boarding, switzerland

Sweet Dreams and Goodnite

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