My year in Switzerland

When I was 20 I decided I wanted to live abroad and having childcare experience I started looking at au pair job postings online. I spoke some french so France was my first choice but I got offered a job in Lausanne, Switzerland I jumped at the chance. It seemed like a good opportunity, the kids were bilingual, the mum was Irish and they lived in an incredibly beautiful city I had never been to before.

And in the end it was an experience I'll never have again which is both a good and a bad thing. My job was to mind the two children aged 4 and 5 from 8.30 am in the morning until about 7pm most nights and that included bringing them to and from school, cooking all their meals, entertaining them after school and bath time. all mine and at first it was a little scary as I hadn't really cooked before plus I was a vegetarian who had never cooked meat.

I lived in the house in my own little room which consisted of a bed, a wardrobe and a small balcony which had no curtains to cover the window but kind of metal shutter which gave the room a slightly claustrophobic feel. It had no tv and I had a limited supply of books and suddenly moving to a french speaking part of Switzerland didn't seem like the best Idea in the world.

The kids were pretty sweet but the parents were uber-clean freaks that seemed to resent me living in their house and it made them tough to live with. on the upside I was living in Lausanne ( About the size of Cork city but far more beautiful) and they paid for my travel pass and french lessons which helped a little especially considering I was living off €150 a week which didn't go far in a country that expensive. That was the year i started to put on weight and it was hard to avoid as a chocaholic living in a country famous for its chocolate plus after a while I wasn't that happy over there and if I know how to do anything it's to eat my feelings.

It wasn't all bad and I loved living somewhere so Scenic, I made friends with a polish  girl Alicia in french class and we got on well even though she barely spoke English when we first met and neither of us spoke enough french to manage a decent conversation, needless to say our early exchanges were somewhat stilted but she and I would go out some weekends and often we would go on day trips. There was an older guy who I only remember that we nicknamed ski (he was interested in Alicia) and he brought us to the mountains a few times and we sleighed while he went skiing or we went sightseeing and I saw some really beautiful 

mountain towns and one time he brought us to Lavey les bains, these outdoor baths. That was amazing , You were outside in a swimming pool and the air was so so cold but the water was really hot and when you looked up you could see the snow peaked mountains.

We also went out from time to time although she didn't crave the social side of things as much as me and I dragged her reluctantly to captain cooks the english bar, the only place where i was likely to meet other Irish people while she preferred au lapin vert, a place that was frequented by the swiss and some eastern europeans. I spoke fluent french after a few beers and danced on tables but then again everyone did in captain cooks and we would move on to Jaggers, the night club around the corner where they also played new york new york if they felt the crowd was getting too rowdy and then I would have to run to get the pajama bus home (the night bus) or if I missed it I crashed with some Irish friends who lived closer to the city and would have to creep home early the next morning before the family got up, hungover and shaking on bus home getting funny looks when I was clearly in last nights clothes. 

While I liked the kids the parents were heavy going and I'd find myself living for the weekends they all went away which was once or twice a month just so I could look forward to having the apartment to myself, actually being able to sit in the sitting room and not feel I needed to spend my Sundays somewhere else. When they were home I used to get up early on a Sunday and bring a book and my discman (hey it was 2003) and I would get the bus into the city and walk around just to be somewhere else and sometimes go down by ouchy (right by the lake) and just spend the day there walking around listening to music and killing time until I absolutely had to go home.

I'm glad that I went but It  was a lonely few months and the homesickness was tough to cope with  and eventually the family became tougher and tougher to live with until I had enough. They were obsessively clean and used to give out to me relentlessly over the smallest bit of dirt and often when they were unhappy about something they would just give out about to the kids and nothing makes you feel like an authority quite like a six year old informing you that mummy says you shouldn't do this and then telling you it's not your house. So I decided to move home and the parents responded by locking the room with the phone and computer lest I decide to start making loads of international calls. and I booked my flight home on a payphone to my parents grateful that I had gotten away when I did.