My husband arrived in CH before me and found us a house out of a choice of about 10. He went for a really nice house which i really like,the only problem is our neighbours are the landlords. He reckons that this seemed to be the norm in Swiss, that your landlord lived next door or pretty near. Somehow I doubted it but thought that hopefully it would be ok.

Well they have started off being very friendly, inviting us for lunch and helping with translations and official stuff but they are slowly starting to annoy me and I am questioning whether i should be annoyed or if i should do something about it.

The problem is they feel the need to drop by whenever they feel like it, most of the time at very inconvenient times, like Sundays and evenings when it is really hectic in my household. Also just sticking their head around the garage door when we have just arrived home. This i suppose would be ok in inself albeit irritating but when they do drop by they normally drop some sort of comment or advice like when the husband noticed the cardboard packing in the garage which had covered the furniture i had just ordered. He wanted to know what we were going to do with it. Perhaps he is worried about it being a fire hazard or something. Then last night the wife came over and asked me what I was washing the glass top cooker with. Also. with two kids hopping around, it is really hard to keep the house constantly clean and tidy in case the landlords pop over. Last week i noticed that loads of leaves had fallen in the garden from the trees but my husband and I did not get the chance to rack the leaves the weekend, then the wife pops her head over the wall to say how busy she has been sweeping up all the leaves that had blown into their drive. Hint, hint. So off i went at a trot to rack the leaves. It is just little things like that. But then there are the nice things like when their kids carved out a pumpkin and left it on our doorstep with a candle in it for the kids.

The hard part of this all is that it is all shadowed in a guise of friendship. So my problem is are they just being friendly or are we going to, at least twice a week, have a landlord inspection. It is just hard to feel comfortable in the home we pay good money for when we constantly have the owner nosing about.

Am I being silly or would you take exception to this too. If so how do i address it without being rude especially since i dont know if they are being friendly or just nosey.