We are cool again

Yup. This morning, our new refrigerator/freezer was delivered.

The Bauknecht service administration called me yesterday to let me know that the delivery truck would be in our region between 9 and 11 am. At 9:15, the doorbell rang (I almost consider this being late for Swiss ....) and to my surprise, there was only one tiny, thin man (about 5'6") standing outside with a tool box. I kept the door open and stuck my head outside after I had let him in, thinking that someone would follow him with our new fridge, and with a short laugh, he said: "There's no one else. Just me."

I must say, our refrigerator/freezers here do not have the dimensions of North American ones, but still, we have many stairs here (split level house) and I wondered how he'd take it down one flight of stairs to the entrance and up two again on his own. After dismanteling the cover panels and pulling out the old fridge, he went out to the truck. I saw him coming back with the new refrigerator strapped on somekind of a trolley. No problem to get to the entrance; we have a bicycle ramp, but then will he ruin our wooden stairs with his trolley? Nope. All of a sudden, I heard an electric motor and see here; he had a stair climber built in to the trolley.

Anyway, the new fridge is installed, filled up again and it works. The one downstais is happy with only wine, beer and non alcoholic drinks. The only thing we have to get used to now is that the freezer part is on the top (and we used to have 3 drawers that I will miss) and the fact that I will probably be running down three flights of stairs to the extra fridge in the coming days for nothing, purely out of habit.

But hey, we're cool again.

Frozen goods first!

Last Friday, I was at my computer in the dining room when all of a sudden, I heard a loud sound, something like „Rrrrr -Ra-Ta-Thump“ coming from the kitchen. I checked and everything seemed normal again. I was pretty sure that it came from the fridge, though.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to the kitchen to take out some milk and noticed that it was not very cold. I verified the setting, but it was still in 3, so it should have been cold enough. I could still hear the motor running and the light was on, so it couldn’t be a fuse. Odd. I then checked in the lower freezer part. O-ooooh! The ice cubes in the top drawer were already starting to melt. OrangeX and I immediately took the still frozen goods down to the basement in our second refrigerator-freezer. Luckily, we didn’t have very much in the kitchen freezer and only a few items had to be thrown away. Next thing to do was to transfer the contents of the kitchen fridge and bring them downstairs as well.

First thing on Monday morning, I called our real estate management company (we rent our house) and an hour later, I received a phone call from the repairman himself, who said that he could come by at 1:15 that same day. At 1:10 pm (typically Swiss), the doorbell rang and at 1:25 pm, he was out again. Diagnosis: After 13 years of service, our Bauknecht refrigerator has passed away, kicked the bucket, bitten the dust. May it rest in peace. Amen.

Anyway, we’ll be getting a new refrigerator-freezer, hopefully, by the end of this week. I can’t wait. I’m sick of running up and down the stairs every time to pick something out of the fridge!