Unwanted residents, hiking and how to buy cleaning powder

The temperature is dropping in St. Gallen and both people and insects are retreating to the warmth and quaintness of indoor spaces. The biggest impact on our small WG (Wohngemeinschaft ~houseshare) is the sudden siege of our bathroom. Not by narcissistic men or nose-powdering ladies, but by wasps. Placed in a corner, the window of our bathroom is just opposite the next-door building, where, in the wooden frame around one of the windows, a colony of wasps has taken up residency. Now, apparently, they have decided to expand their territory.
They have actually developed quite a genius strategy. At night, when we leave the window slightly open, they sneak in, which give them first dibs on the bathroom in the mornings. Normally one would expect humans as well as insects to respect that other people also need the use of the bathroom in the mornings, but these wasps are not that very polite. It has now happened twice, and we decided to throw them out of the apartment if they continually won’t follow house rules. Unfortunately they respond unbelievably bad to logical reasoning. Therefore Mark called a wasp-bouncer today, who fixed the problem with gas. The only remnant of wasps in the bathroom is now the smell embedded in our clothes.
Sunday I had a nice break from studying, going on a hike on Säntis, a mountain in the pre-alps just south-west of St. Gallen. The weather was perfectly clear. We went there around 15 CEMS people, starting out at 10 o’clock from the bottom and hiking our way up to the summit. It was an amazing 3½ hours hike. I was immediately reminded of the fantastic trip Nina, Erik and I had the weekend before and the views of the Jungfraujoch glacier, we this Sunday saw in the distance from the summit of Säntis.
It was a nice break from studying. It seems that group presentations have become a fashion element in the CEMS courses in the university. In the 4 courses I have started on, we have been put into 5 different groups (none of which are identical). It is a very exciting challenge to work in that many groups, but also a bit of a planning circus. I have begun my German studies as well. I decided to start out by buying an interactive piece of software, and am currently doing approximately one hour of German lessons per day. This works great, although I would probably need some real life discussions soon to stay on the learning curve.
Speaking of learning curves, I went shopping in one of the supermarkets yesterday. Before leaving the apartment I took a mental note of the cleaning powder for the dish-washer – we had run out, so I thought I might buy some while being at the store anyway. As with other purchases this was of course also bound to some criteria: It should be soap, it should be for a dishwasher, it should be in the form of tablets so you won’t have to dose it by spoon, and it should be of a certain brand. “Got it”, I thought and went down to the store. Going through these very neat criteria, most of which would seem pretty obvious, it probably comes as a surprise that what I came back with was actually calcium carbonate remover, for laundry mats, in powder form. I didn’t even get the brand right (although the packaging actually do look a bit alike). Since this didn’t really dawn on any of us until today, we can honestly say that dishes do get clean in the dishwasher using only calcium carbonate remover. The task of buying cleaning powder has now been delegated to one of my roommates.
All for now – life is good! I miss you all.