Return to Suisse
Crossing back over the boarder into Switzerland it felt like we were coming home.
When we left for our two weeks Easter break we couldn’t wait to get out of the place; escape all the school drama and the Moggy mansion. But two weeks had been long enough, we’d missed the Alps and the lakes, we’d missed the rhythm and routine and everything that had now become familiar enough for us to not have to think too much. And we’d really missed all those people that had become accustomed to our crappy French. All those people who made us feel like we were actually getting somewhere with the language, instead of the blank stares we’d often got in France.
Driving back through the Jura the landscape seemed to change as we left France behind and went into Switzerland. The hills seemed bigger and everything much greener. Everything seemed that bit more manicured, neat and tidy, all in its right place. The trip from Paris to Switzerland had taken us eight hours; this seemed ridiculous when you could do it on the TGV (Europe’s form of the VFT) in just over three and a half hours. I guess the train does go a lot faster though, about three hundred kilometres an hour and doesn’t have to stop very often. It certainly doesn’t have to put up with autoroute traffic or kids in the back seat saying their busting every time a petrol station looms on the horizon.
The best part about coming back was that we didn’t have to go to the Moggy’s, well not straight away anyway, we’d have to go back to get all our gear but we’d never ever have to sleep there again. We drove straight to our new house in Champagne instead, a B&B called ‘The Cedars’ on a dairy farm in a small Swiss village. Exactly the sort of thing I’d been dreaming of before we left Oz. The apartment that was going to be ours for the next three months, dated back to 1635. It used to be used for …… There were cows, fresh milk, baby chicks, fresh eggs, green hills, babbling creeks, endless bikeways and farm tracks, and a small village atmosphere where everyone in the street said Bonjour or Bonsoir depending on the time of day. Even the teenage kids zooming through the town on their mopeds slowed down when they saw you to say bonjour. The best thing about The Cedars though was the landlady. Georgette was a woman somewhere in her sixties. She had short cropped red hair, fair skin and spoke fast French that was often hard for us to keep up with, but she was always patient, taking her time to explain what she meant and was always quick with a joke. The best part about Georgette was she shared my strong belief that housework came a very distant second to kids and enjoying life. So it appeared from the beginning that random house inspections wouldn’t be an issue.
When we arrived she opened up the doors to our new house for us and asked if there was anything she could do for us, like cook diner. It took Pete and me a few minutes to register what she was saying, by this stage with Madame Moggy she would have been highlighting what we weren’t allowed to touch. When we said no thanks she told us to be sure to gather up all our washing and bring it over, saying she’d do it for the next six weeks until we moved into the apartment next door which had a washing machine. I’d only washed once during our two-week holiday so that meant there was almost a whole suitcase full of smelly washing. I tried to explain that with four kids there was always loads of washing but she just smiled and said it was fine, she’d had three kids herself. She told me I should bring a load over first thing in the morning.
It was wonderful to have a place that was all ours. I mean there were people in an apartment above us and on the other side of the back bedroom wall, and when we walked out the door we looked straight at Georgette’s house, but the whole apartment was ours. We could lock the door and no one could come in unless we opened it and invited them in. We dumped our suitcases on the floor, dug around for pyjamas and toothbrushes and then collapsed into squeaky beds that sunk slightly in the middle sleeping deeply in our shuttered rooms. Not even the dread of finishing off at the Moggy’s the next day could keep us awake.
The next day at Mogster Mansion was predictable. I tried to chase away the irksome feeling that descended on me as we drove up the driveway by thinking about our new house. The sounds of the cows that we’d heard that morning mooing for their breakfast as they waited to be milked, the chickens clucking, the smell of fresh cow manure and the container of fresh cows milk that had been waiting for us on the doorstep. But even all that couldn’t completely stomp on the dread of a clean up that had to be inspected by Madame Moggy herself.
Madame Moggy was there but lying low, waiting for the right time to pounce, no doubt monitoring our progress by all the sounds she heard on her ceiling, our floor. She waited for Christine to turn up, Pete’s cousin. She must have spied her arriving through one of her dungeon windows because as soon as Christine called out ‘salut’ from the front door, the Mogster was there. She had Christine bailed up before we’d even had a chance to put down our mops and brooms.
Christine nodded and smiled at everything Madame Moggy had to say, catching our eye from where we stood behind Madame Moggy. When Madame Moggy took her first breath Christine said, ‘Oui, oui, a bientot, d’accord?’ and gently nudged her way past Madame Moggy up to our level.
‘Est-que une probelme?’ I asked Christine.
‘Tout le jour une probleme ici, elle a malade dans sa tete. Je t’aide?’
Christine was offering to help us clean, help us get out faster. She’d already done so much for us, I wanted to tell her we’d be fine, but I didn’t. It was too tempting a set of extra hands and Christine’s lightness, always making us laugh at the little things.
I’d done all the scrubbing, dusting and vacuuming before we left. It was just a matter of getting everything down to the car, unloading the fridge and kitchen cupboards and giving everything a final wipe down.
Madame Moggy stuck her head in a few times. Once she told Christine to tell us that we would have to pay to have the curtain dry-cleaned that we’d tied in a loose knot above Kai’s mattress on the floor so it wouldn’t hang in his face while he slept. ‘No, sorry,’ was the simple answer I gave. And the other times were for nothing much at all, just excuses to check up on our progress and to add bits and pieces of advice where she thought necessary.
When we were finished Christine and I went outside to stand in the sun and wait for Pete to come back. He’d taken the kids and a car full of bags, skis, helmets and schoolbooks over to Champagne. Madame Moggy, seeing us outside, took the opportunity to bustle up to the top floor. After five minutes or so she came down the stairs to where we were standing in the sun. She stared straight at me with her hands on her hips, it was the first time I’d seen her without her cover smile firmly set in place.
‘Vous avez fini?’ She asked me.
‘Oui,’ I smiled looking straight into her stare that looked like it could kill a tenant in one blink.
‘J’ai pense,’ was all I got out of the French that was spitting out of her mouth. She knew I didn’t understand her, so she turned to Christine.
Christine nodded and said ‘mai oui’ a lot. Except for one time when she was very adamant with her ‘non!’ It turned out Madame Moggy wasn’t happy with the cleaning we’d done. She said she would come and help us, make sure the job was done properly. Christine, thank goodness, wasn’t having any of that. Madame Moggy scoffed, saying if the job wasn’t done properly I would have to pay for a house cleaner to come in.
I was embarrassed and humiliated. I know I’m not the world’s best housekeeper on a day-to-day basis but when it comes to cleaning, doing a final clean, I’m very particular.
I told Christine she should go home, that I would do the second clean myself, but Christine insisted on staying and helping. She grabbed the mop and bucket and gave me a duster to wipe everything down. As we started all over again I told her it was only two weeks ago since I wiped everything down with a wet cloth, since I’d mopped the floors, cleaned the bathroom and scrubbed out the toilet, and no one had been in the house during those two weeks.
Christine, gave me a squeezy hug, the sort that when your feeling vulnerable makes you want to cry, and told me two things. One, that dust in Switzerland is horrific, two weeks, according to Christine was plenty of time for it to have accumulated and settled again. She also said that she knew people like Madame Moggy and it was all to do with the smell. Smell? Christine said if the place didn’t smell clean then the Mogster would think it wasn’t clean. But the house didn’t smell at all, there was nothing mouldy or musty, nothing rancid or worse still, nothing farty. Christine said that was the problem, no smell at all. Madame Moggy needed to smell the sweet smell of chemicals splashed all over the house, then, Christine assured me, Madame Moggy would be happy.
I gave in at that point, agreed with Christine and started off on all the wet dusting that I’d done only two weeks before, but this time using some strong lemon scented chemical. Christine got out the mop and bucket and set about splashing the smell of pine trees all over the floor.
When we were finished for the second time we went back out in to the sun. We could smell the freshly sterilised level two from where we stood. Madame Moggy had given Christine the electricity bill; Christine pulled out her calculator and set about calculating how much we had to pay. When she’d finished she handed it over to me and asked me if I agreed. I told her it looked fine. I dug into my wallet and got out some euros for the bill and an extra fifty to cover the couple of glasses and plates that we’d broken. I handed the money over to Christine. She looked at me and shook her head.
‘S’il te plait,’ I begged in a high squeaky voice, wanting Christine to give the money to Madame Moggy for me. My humiliation was almost at breaking point and I was afraid if anything else nasty came my way I might break down in tears in front of the Mogster and that was the last thing I wanted to do. It would be like handing over the gold trophy right at the end. But Christine insisted, told me I was big girl and Madame Moggy wasn’t that bad. She had no idea of how much I was feeling like a very little girl.
So I took the money and the bill and went inside up to level two where Madame Moggy was fussing around. She smiled at me this time, not her usual wide, forced grin, but a sad tired smile. For the first time I was given a bit of insight into how hard this had all been for her. It made me wonder if she really had had no idea of what it would be like to have a family of six living above her head.
I handed over the electricity bill with the cash asking her if Euro would be OK. I didn’t have any Swiss franks on me; the euro was left over from our two weeks away. She nodded said it was fine. Then I gave her the extra fifty-euro for the breakages. Christine who was standing behind me started explaining in French what the fifty-euro was for. Madame Moggy shook her head and said it wasn’t necessary, waving her hand at the fifty euro. Christine and I both insisted. Madame Moggy took it in the end shrugging her shoulders as if to say whatever.
After the bill had been paid Madame Moggy’s big fake grin was back in place and she was insisting we have an espresso before we left, pulling out the seats from the table for us to sit down. Christine had a coffee in one of the tiny little brightly painted cups. The smell of the strong coffee over powered the lemon and pine disinfectant in the house. I refused the coffee. I could see it made Madame Moggy feel uncomfortable. Her Italian blood didn’t trust someone who didn’t drink coffee. I refused to sit as well, couldn’t go through the pretence that everything was fine and we were all best of friends now. I’d had enough and was still worried I was going to cry if I didn’t get out of there in a hurry.
Christine was fast with her coffee, three mouthfuls and it was gone. Then there were kisses goodbye, three for Christine and three (I couldn’t believe it) for me. Madame Moggy promised to stay in touch with Christine, said they would have to have coffee soon. Christine nodded and smiled. I wasn’t sure if she was thinking, ‘Yes when the alps are covered by the sea,’ or actually thought it might be a good idea. In the end though I think she was as glad to get out of Moggy Mansion, relatively unscathed, as I was.
The relief when I collapsed onto our couch at our new place in Champagne was immense. Our next three months all of a sudden looked like something to look forward to, instead of something to negotiate, and as if to signify that things were changing for the better a phone call came through from our new French teacher, saying she’d found Kai a school close by. A big school she said, with about seventy kids, (apparently big by Swiss standards), but she reassured me that all the teachers were lovely. The school teacher wanted Kai and me to come the next morning, Monday morning, about ten minutes before school started so that there would be time to show Kai around and give me a quick run down on how things worked. Our new French teacher, as if she hadn’t already done enough for us, insisted that she would come along the next morning, ‘Just in case you need some help with interpreting or something.’
When we told Kai that we’d found him a new school he clapped his hands and jumped up and down with little squeals. It was hard to fathom his excitement, after what he’d been through at his first school I thought the only things he should be feeling were fear and apprehension. I was sure if it was me in the same situation I would have been saying to my parents, ‘Yeah right, as if you’re going to get me to do that again.’ But Kai was genuinely excited and really couldn’t wait to get started at school again. He seemed to see no reason why things wouldn’t be different this time, why it wouldn’t work. When I kissed him good night that night in bed he squeezed me tight and said he thought it was going to be hard for him to sleep, ‘You know mum, like when it’s your birthday or Christmas the next day.’
The next morning I felt sick, the thought of breakfast made me want to heave. I couldn’t find anything fair about putting Kai through his second ‘first day’ in three months at a school where he didn’t speak the language. I think if Kai had cried and said he didn’t go I would have found it hard to not give in. But it wasn’t the case; he was awake and ready to go school before I’d even pulled on my clothes.
We went and picked up Pete and my French teacher first. Kai sat in the back of the car. When our teacher got in she asked Kai how he was feeling. He smiled and said ‘good.’
‘A bit nervous?’ She asked.
‘Yeah a bit,’ he giggled, ‘I feel all sick and tingly in the stomach like I did when I started at the first school.’
‘Well I’ve heard that all the teachers are really nice at this school, so I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about.’
‘Good,’ Kai said and went back to staring out the window at paddocks and the lake in the distance.
Kai’s new school was modern by Swiss standards, only ten years old, a flat rectangle building that seemed to sit low to the ground, probably because of the hills of vineyards behind it and the Jura that rose up above that. From the front verandah of the school you could see Lake Neuchatel. When we arrived we found Kai’s new teacher in the small staffroom along with the other five or so teachers who worked there. She knew who we were straightaway and came over to shake our hands and introduce herself. She had big wide blue eyes and a grin that you knew would welcome anyone, she was probably somewhere in her mid to late twenties. The relief I felt at her warm welcome and tight handshake was like a warm blanket being wrapped tight around you after a night out in the cold.
She took us around to the classroom that would be Kai’s, showed Kai where he would be sitting, next to one of the other kids in the class who spoke English, there were apparently two, and then introduced him to the classroom hamster. While Kai made friends with the hamster his teacher sat down with me and gave me a run down of the routine and what Kai would need to bring to school with him each day. I gave her phone numbers, mine, and Christine’s for a back up and asked a few questions in really bad French. I was impressed with her patience with my bad French. She spoke slowly and always found a way of making sense of what I was saying. She was going to be perfect for Kai, the complete opposite of what he’d had at the other school. Exactly what he needed to establish his love of the French language and to allow him to make friends in Switzerland.
Pete and I spent a long distracted morning in French class that morning with our old French teacher who had just got back from India. It was difficult to concentrate, neither of us could stop thinking about Kai, wondering how he was faring with his new classmates. When our class was over I had to stop myself from running to the car. I volunteered to go and get Kai while Pete stayed at Poppy’s school to wait for her, the two pick up times now clashed.
When I arrived at Kai’s school the bus was already there and the kids were piling on. I could see Kai standing at the top of the steps, kids running past him, saying things to him, waving, Kai waving back shyly a soft smile on his face. When he spotted me he smiled, lifted his hand slightly from the side of his leg, the sort of wave you give when you don’t want anyone else to notice except the person you’re waving to, and then walked down to the car.
Before he’d even closed the car door, before I could ask him how his morning had gone he was asking me when he could start catching the school bus with all his friends.
‘Friends?’ I said, looking at him in the rear view mirror. ‘You’ve got friends already?’
‘Yeah, of course, I think the whole class likes me and two girls have already told me they love me.’
‘Not a bad start. And what about your teacher?’
‘She is so, so, so, so, so, nice. I was a bit worried before I went today that all the teachers in Switzerland might have been like my old teacher but she’s nothing like him. She smiles all the time and she hasn’t yelled at anyone all morning.’
From the back of the car Kai couldn’t see the tears in my eyes, and he didn’t notice that I couldn’t speak because he had too many things to tell me about his morning. After a while he was quiet, staring out the windows at the crops of sugar beet and wheat that were just starting to push through the soil. Then he started to laugh.
‘What?’ I said, my voice having come back to me.
‘I was just laughing because I can’t stop smiling about my new school. Even if I try and make my lips go all straight or cranky they keep on smiling.’
It took a few days for me to accept that Kai’s first morning at school wasn’t a fluke, a one off. It took a few days for me to understand that we’d actually, thanks to our French teachers help, stumbled across an exceptional school with exceptional teachers. It reminded us a lot of our small country school back home.
The first Friday night of Kai’s week at school there was a slide show of all the photos that had been taken at the recent ski camp. We were invited to go along. The thought of struggling through a night of French with a group of people we didn’t know was a bit daunting. But we wanted to make as much effort as the school had made to include Kai and make him feel so welcome, and after all the whole purpose of being in Switzerland was to sink into the culture.
So Friday night Poppy, Kai, Pete and me went to the school. There were kids and people everywhere, no one we knew and no one we could understand unless they were going to speak really slowly and use lots of hand signals. The kids didn’t have an issue with not knowing anyone and not being able to speak the same language, before we’d even got in inside the building where the slide show was going to be shown they were pulling at our shirts asking if they could go and run outside with all the other kids.
Isabelle, Kai’s teacher was at the front door along with two other teachers. They were shaking everyone’s hands as they walked in, big smiles and French words of welcome that skimmed by our ears.
Isabelle to my surprise recognised me immediately. She shook my hand warmly and did the same to Pete when I introduced him. Then in very slow careful French which to my surprise I had no trouble understanding she told us that Kai was a delight to have in the classroom, she also said his French was really good, a lot better than what she’d thought it would be. She said all the other kids loved him and were really curious about Australia. It was a relief to hear that he was fitting in without any dramas.
She told us that she wanted to introduce us to someone, a mum from the class who spoke English. She looked around the room from where she was standing at the front door and then got distracted by another person who was coming in. We walked off quietly not wanting to intrude on her time but heard her call out after that she would find the English woman and introduce us.
Not that I was being ungrateful but we needed French speaking friends, not English. People that we could miss understand and make ambiguous hand signals at. As much as the thought of speaking to someone in English was appealing, almost enticing it wasn’t going to push us to the fluency that we hoped to have before we left.
The photos in the slide show were full of smiley happy kids and lots of snow. The whole time we were watching I kept thinking how easily Kai would have fitted into this camp compared to the hard work he’d had to do to get along at the camp he’d gone to with his old school.
When the slides were over the kids were straight outside again with Kai’s new group of best friends. Isabelle, who hadn’t forgotten us, brought Angie over to meet us. Angie was a tall skinny woman who loved to run, she had a wicked English sense of humour that matched our Australian sarcasm and a strong clippy English accent in her French. She’d been living in Switzerland for twenty years. It was lovely to talk in English, to not to have to think, to not have to wonder if you’d been understood, if you’d accidentally offended someone. It was also lovely to get an outsiders view on Switzerland. Even though Angie had lived here for twenty years she struggled with some of the little quirks of the culture. Like when she knew someone well enough to say ‘tu’ instead of ‘vous’ and when is it OK to say salut instead of bonjour. And she still couldn’t understand why rules were so important and why everything had to be so neat and tidy. And why was it so odd to pop in on someone for a cup of coffee without a prearranged time?
We talked on and on for ages. In the end Angie invited us to come round for lunch on Wednesday afternoon, the day the kids got the afternoon off school. It felt like we were back home, back in the routine of school and kids. As much as that routine had dragged like a heavy stone in still water at times, I missed it and it was lovely to feel and inkling of its familiarity all the way on the other side of the world.
Before we left Kai’s school that night I started to wonder if we should be moving Noah as well. With the help of Angie as interpreter when we needed her Pete and I had a slow French conversation with the teachers about the possibility of Noah coming to the school. The class he would be going into was already over full, but the teachers didn’t hesitate in saying they could squeeze him in, the only condition they had was that he had to be an easy kid. They said because the class was so full they wouldn’t cope with a kid that was both trouble and a non-French speaker. I reassured them that Noah was a good kid, an easy kid to have in class and it was decided if the director agreed and Noah wanted to move schools that there would be a place for him. The only question left was had Noah had enough of Madame Kick Shins and his classmates or had he got it into his head (as only Noah can) that it was some sort of challenge and he had to see the class out until the end?
