The Saga of the Plug for the Cooker

One of Tue's new laboratory friends had kindly informed us that there were some problems with the plugs for electric cookers in this country, so we anticipated that the socket in the wall (shown to the left) in the apartment probably wouldn't fit the plug on a new cooker.

A couple of visits to the electronics store 'Fust' confirmed this anticipation, which was why we didn't hesitate to buy a second hand cooker with a different plug (the black one below). The girl we bought it from reminded us that we had to check the socket at home, but since we already knew that we had an older socket which would need replacement anyway we didn't realy worry about this detail.

As it turned out the agency we rent the apartment from were willing to pay for the replacement of the wall socket and we set up an appointment with their designated electrician. We were quite taken aback when he arrived and installed a third type of socket in the wall without asking us any questions - now the cooker had to have a new plug as well! (At our expense, naturally).

Apparently the socket in the wall when we got the apartment was of the old-old type (4 pins); the cooker came with a plug of the recently out-phased type (5 pins), and the rental agency obviously wanted the investment with the highest potential for future usage and ordered the electrician to install the newest type (3 pins).

Considering that the 5 pins plug on the cooker looked pretty new (and also knowing that the seller told us it was only 4 years old) it must be concluded that the Swiss have some trouble deciding on which type of plugs and sockets are ideal OR that the Electrician/Cooker-producer lobby is very powerful!



But when the electrician left the cooker was at least functioning and after 5 weeks of not being able to cook warm meals the first warm meal prepared on the new cooker was simply divine: