Jac Goes to Switzerland!

Laundry, this is the Last Time

2008-11-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

Readers, I have HAPPY NEWS!!

I just realized that tonight was very likely my LAST trip to the laundromat, ever!!!

I am going home on Saturday for a week, and then I return November 30. After that I am in Geneva for just 2 more weeks. And readers, let me tell you, I can make my laundry str-e-e-e-tch (it's all about the handwash). So it's not likely I will have to go again.

Oh laundro, I will not miss you. I will not miss the randoms that hang out there who come with 25 garbage bags full of clothes. I will not miss when I have to fight people for dryers. I will not miss men looking at my sexy underwear when I manage to drop JUST those on the floor on my way to the dryer. I will not miss lugging my clothes 5 blocks away and having you use up all my good coins and refusing to take my 10s and 20s. I will not miss that time you locked my clothes in the machine!!

After this, I will either be using:

a) Justin's new common washer and dryer in the basement of his building
Pro: It's in the basement
Con: The basement is scary and you have to go outside, requires quarters

b) Aimee's in-apartment washer and dryer
Pro: It's in a cute "laundry closet" and it's free
Con: Aimee will probably force me to "just throw in a few things with mine"

c) Mamoo's energy saving, super quiet, totally awesome washer and dryer in Naperville
Pro: Comes with Mamoo's free laundry expertise; if you are lucky it will be folded and packaged just like if you sent it out!
Con: Have to drive to Naperville to do it

To commemorate this happy occassion, I have written a small ode to the laundromat:

(to the tune of ABBA's "Dancing Queen," since I saw Mamma Mia! again)...

oooooooooo
You can wash, you can drrrryyyyyy
having the time of your life
ooooooooo
See that girl, wash those jeans,
She is the washing queen!

Monday night and the lights are lowwwwww
Lookin out for a place to gooooo
Where they got the right washers, getting in the swing, I've come to wash my things
Any washer could be my guyyyyy
Night is young and the setting's hiiiiiiiiiiigh
With a bit of detergent
Everything is fine
I'll soon have some clean pants
And when I get the chaaaaaance

I am the washing queen,
Young and sweet, gettin my clothes clean
Washing queen,
Get those coins from the change machine!
You can wash, you can dryyyyy
Having the time of your liiiiife
See that girl, wash those jeans
Diggin the washing queen!

This is cool

2008-11-04T22:08:00.000-08:00

I just woke up and saw these words on my internet homepage:

"Barack Obama est devenu le premier président noir de l'histoire des Etats-Unis. Après son écrasante victoire, il a déclaré que "le changement arrive en Amérique".

Which even if you don't understand French, you know.

It's been super cool to be over here for the election. People in Europe have been very interested in the race, curious about both candidates and how our voting process works, and hopeful that whoever was to win the election, this individual could help to repair America's relations abroad.

So now, on verra!! Time to head to work to spread the good word!

Down on the Farm Part II

2008-11-01T05:19:00.000-07:00

Hi readers! You thought I forgot about this, didn't you? No, I've just been lazy. So let's back up, shall we?

When we last left our heroine, me, I had just tucked in for the night down on the farm near Stein am Rhein. So I slept in the dorm, not the straw, but it was still pretty darn cold - there was no heat in there. I slept in my long johns under an old Swiss military blanket and felt warm and snuggly...till I had to get out of bed the next morning!

I went down for breakfast and spoke for a few minutes with Doris, Heinz's wife. She was super nice and making us breakfast of fresh bread, cheese, meat, yogurt and fruit. The coffee was AWESOME (Doris did not make the coffee though - I think that was Nespresso). Being a farm, there were bugs buzzing around inside, which I was NOT a fan of. At one point, a bee buzzed over my head and landed on one of the ceiling beams. Doris reached up with a kleenex and smushed it. "Wow, you're brave!" I exclaimed. "Oh, that was a male one...they don't sting, and they are very stupid and slow," she explained. Naturally!!

As I sat down to eat, my bunkmates appeared. It was a middle aged German woman with short grey hair, and her daughter, who seemed about 14. I found out shortly that the woman, Dorothea, spoke english, so we were able to chat over breakfast. We talked a bit about how I got here, why was I traveling alone, etc. I was also curious to speak with her about German vs Swiss German. I didn't realize this at first here, but Swiss German (or Schwyzertuutsch, which sounds like "Schweizer Deutsch") is purely a spoken language and completely incomprehensible to "regular" Germans. Most newspapers etc are written in high German, which is the same, but when it comes to speaking, Swiss German is basically a totally different language which is not written down. I was always glad that I was in the French speaking part!

Anyway, as we finished up breakfast, Dorothea and Lea offered to drive me into town. This was HUGELY appreciated because otherwise I would have had to wait for the random bus by the woodcutter's house, which I'm pretty sure came only once per hour.

We packed up to go and I went in to say goodbye to Doris and Heinz. Inside, their 4 kids were running around - all little blond haired ones, 3 of them holding baby kittens and playing gently with them. It was really one of the sweetest scenes I have ever seen (try that 5 times fast). They were such a nice family. There is a link to their farm here which is in German, but you get the idea. And this page is the family one - so cute!

Stein am Rhein was just a short drive away. When we arrived there, I told Dorothea and Lea that I was going to walk through town...kind of giving them an "out" in case they wanted to ditch this random American. "mmhmm," Dorothea hummed, and discussed with her daughter in German for a moment. "We will walk with you, we have all afternoon and are not in a hurry," she announced. We wandered to the town square, and she pointed out many of the buildings and the history. "Oh there's a museum I want to show you!" So we walked through a small museum and again got a history lesson. "Oh this is a famous shop!" I walked around with them for about an hour or so, enjoying the cute little town, and then we parted ways with warm handshakes and a "Tchuss!"

This is a picture of the town square. I have seen things like this before, but only at like, Epcot. Switzerland continues to surprise me.

For me, it was back on the train, now to Schaffhausen to get to the Rhinefalls. The ride was not long, and I was soon walking down a hill towards the sound of rushing water. I won't discuss the falls too much because the pictures say it, but it was pretty impressive.

While my day started off cloudy, it cleared up quickly, so I spend a long time lingering by the falls and enjoying the beautiful colors and scenery. The Swiss being Swiss and clever like they are, had built a number of different viewing platforms in order for you to be able to experience the water from afar, below you, right next to you, etc. It was really cool.

The most amazing thing was there was a huge rock in the middle of the falls where a tiny viewing platform had been built. To get there, you had to take a small boat into the falls and hop out. Of course like any sucker, I paid the 6 CHF and got on the boat. It was well worth it. The view of the falls from on the water was gorgeous, and as we crossed the Rhine, the green water beneath the boat was bubbling excitedly, giving the impression that we were cruising through the inside of a san pellegrino bottle. From the top of the rock, the water crashed down on either side of you while you stood under a brave Swiss flag. Very cool!

After I had enough fun in the water, I stopped for a beer and to send a postcard to Justin, before heading to catch the train to Winterthur, Zurich, and eventually back to Geneva.

You can see more pictures by following this link.

Stereotypical

2008-10-12T12:58:00.001-07:00

I had a really Euro-style day today and found it pretty amusing -

-I went to see a movie (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and even though there were several parts where the characters were speaking Spanish and the only subtitles were in French (or German), I found I could still understand everything going on. yay! The movie was good and I noticed that some of Rustbucket's friends made cameos!

-I went to the pool for a swim and afterwards was standing under one of the dryers - side note - they have these AWESOME big dryers mounted on the wall that you can move up and down to dry your hair etc...such a good idea and you don't have to bring a hairdryer to the gym. Anyway, I was using the one just inside the locker room and seriously, this pool boy came by to vacuum up the water on the locker room floor and I suddenly realized he was vacuuming in a circle around me. Literally every time I would shake a droplet of water on the floor he would suck it up. It was hilarious, I mean who has the kind of patience/desire to keep things in such a good order EXCEPT in Switzerland??

-As I was riding my bike home around sunset, I passed a slow moving Italian on his bike. "Ciao bella, comment ca va?" he said. "Bonsoir!" I yelled and pedaled off in a hurry. Don't be jealous J man, he wasn't cute, but seriously I thought it was hilarious. Hitting on a someone while riding bikes?

One last thing

2008-10-07T11:36:00.001-07:00

I know I've been kind of veering off the subject of Swiss life lately, but what good is a blog if you can't use it as a soapbox every once in a while? I promise this is it. The video is worth it.

I actually know some people who told me they are not voting, so I hope this changes their mind:

Me, Ms. Absentee

2008-10-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

So I voted today!! I can say first hand that I understand how they screwed it up in the past. It's a bit confusing, at least the whole absentee thing.

I was already registered to vote in my state, so it was easy for me to request an absentee ballot for the primary. But I found out the hard way in college that at least in Illinois, if you have never voted before, you can't vote for your first time as an absentee. That's how it was in 2000, anyway. So I didn't vote that year.

Anyway I did vote in 04 and as I said, was then able to easily request the absentee ballot this past winter. You have to put what it is that makes you an absentee - are you in the military, are you a citizen temporarily residing abroad (me) , are you a citizen in jail currently awaiting bond and cannot go to your polling place (hmmm, not me), etc. Then I put my political affiliation, even though I don't have one - but I guess in some states if you don't put that, you don't get to vote in the primary. Anyway, then a few weeks later, I got my ballot for the primary. They send you like a MAJOR envelope that's super official looking. That little parcel is definitely on official U.S. business. And inside is a ballot and a secret envelope, and another envelope for you to put the little secret one in, in order to mail it. Then you have to practically sign your name in blood saying that you voted in secret. Finally if you happen to live near the embassy, you can take it to them and they mail it for free. Unfortunately for me, I do not. So essentially I had to pay to vote in the primary.

Now a few weeks ago I got the biggie ballot. I was kind of confused though because it was a federal write in ballot. Not the scan tran one. The instructions said that my county's ballot was not ready yet, but when it was ready, they would send it to me. And to mail it in as soon as I got it. But if it was too late to mail it in, that they wouldn't count it, so I should mail this one in, and if I mailed both in, they would know which one to count. Got that? Of course this was in September, so I ignored it. Lo and behold, I got my REAL scantron ballot on Friday from my county. I went back and checked the write in again, and I guess they throw it out if you send the real one in by the deadline. The deadline according to my county is that it must be postmarked the day before the election in order to be counted. So since I have a lot of time, I figured to ditch the mail in and just go with the real one. I don't think they need any additional confusion over there in the church basement where they're counting the votes all night.

Word to election officials - you should probably write what color pen to use to mark the ballot ON THE BALLOT. I was lucky and guessed black after looking everywhere for the instructions on how to mark it. Then on the back of the instruction sheet, there was a short sentence about what color ink to use. Of course the entire instruction sheet is in caps, underlined, etc about all the things you need to do and not do, so it didn't exactly stand out. Again - on the ballot. This should be as fool proof as possible.

So I voted and put it in the secret envelope. Then I had to sign again saying it was secret and yes, I was temporarily residing outside the country, not awaiting bail. This morning I excitedly waved my official looking ballot around my office (it was ok, because I had already safely sealed it at home so NO ONE could influence my vote). Then I took it to be mailed and to send it "recommande," which is like registered mail, cost me 12 CHF!

Anyway, I'm proud to say I did my civic duty. It has a nice feeling to it. Kind of like when I give directions to a lost random person or workout first thing in the morning. Except I don't get a cool "I voted!" sticker like I normally do from my polling place.

And remember if you don't vote, you don't get to complain. So get out there and vote!!! We can all do it, doggone it, yes we can!!

Here is a picture of the super secret envelope to put the ballot in - actually it's the one from the primary. See how official looking it is?? Hope I don't have to mark my next ballot from jail for posting this...

VOTE!!!

Sports Redemption!!!

2008-10-05T13:37:00.000-07:00

Vanderbilt is ranked #13 in the U.S. and is 5-0 for the first time since world war II!! yEEEAAAH!!

who ya with VU?!

This is so FREAKIN typical, part II

2008-10-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

Yes of course I woke up at 6am to watch the second half of Cubs game 3 against the Dodgers. For whatever reason my mlb.tv wasn't working too well (the whole point of why I bought it was to someday watch playoff games, so WTF?), but fortunately I was able to at leat listen to Pat Hughes and Ron Santo. The two of them sounded frustrated and desperate, just like all of the Cubs fans out there. Clutch hitting...we don't have it.

Everyone said before the playoffs started that the Cubs were a solid team because they were so well rounded. If their hitting was bad, their pitching could pull them out, and if their pitching was off, their hitting could pull them out. Everyone contributed and there was no one player for whom we had to rely on success. So I guess since EVERYONE on the team played awful, is the reason that we lost (maybe DeRosa gets a pass since his hitting was great - but that error...).

It's really sad and frustrating but we're getting kind of used to it now. Maybe we need to lower our expectations a bit? I don't know what the answer is.

I find the most ridiculous thing is that the Trib is publishing a book called "this is the year" or something like that and that they were having a camera crew follow the cubs around in the postseason...this was of course before anything good had happened. Does anyone think this is a good idea?! Things like that are an obvious jinx!!!

This is so FREAKIN typical!!!!!!!!!!

2008-10-01T17:16:00.000-07:00

I have to interrupt my story about the farm to discuss: THE CUBS.

Remember, I was here last year too. And so were they. And they got swept by the freakin DBACKS.

So, it's 2am. Cubs are up 2-0 in the top of the fifth. Dempster looks a bit shaky but hey, postseason jitters. He has given up some walks but the important thing is that he is getting the big outs when it counts.

Then he gives up another walk to Furcal. He has Manny on an 0-2, 2 out count. Walks Manny and all his stupid hair. He walks Ethier. Bases loaded.

Then he gets up on Loney. 0-2. Looks like strike three but he juuuuuuuust got a piece of it. And then....BOOM. Grand slam. Like that the Cubs are down, 4-2.

This is so Cubs!!!

Now it's 2:20 and the bottom of the 5th, finally, thank you Mr Marshall. Here I was thinking we would wrap this soiree up by 3. But no. So now you will get me and some live Cubs blogging. Are there any other displaced Cubs fans out there? Like on that cute Coca Cola commerical for USC vs ND where they watch it in China at 3am? I mean a REALLY displaced Cubs fan, like me. Not someone who lives in like, Boston or something. Give me a break, your city wins everything anyway.

Ok so...here we go. Bottom 5. I'm trying to stay awake. Nothing good here. I'll come back when things are more interesting.

Bottom 8. More interesting now...if you're a dodger fan.

Down on the Farm

2008-09-27T11:34:00.000-07:00

Readers, you wouldn't believe where I am right now even if you were here drinking a beer with me. Which I wish you were, since I'm doing that alone at the moment.

I'm currently sitting about 15 feet from a bunch of muching cows, with the scent of hay hanging sweetly in the cold autumn air. I'm about a 5 minutes drive from Hemishofen, Switzerland. And I'm spending the night on an organic farm - the Bolderhof farm.

How I got here...we'll have to go backwards to get there. Basically - because I was bored.

All of my friends (five) are out of town this weekend, and they were also out of town last weekend. I can only watch so much TV at home - plus up until this week, RB was rusted solid to his post (more on how that happened later). It has been unseasonably cold and crappy so wakeboarding, etc is out of the question. My eye is still not healed so a lot of other activities are out. And since I have officially (as of today) 79 days left in Switzerland, I kind of decided this weekend I needed to get off my ass and go explore my country.

But where? I've been to most of the hot spots - Lausanne, Basel, Zurich, Lugano. Pretty much to a lot of random towns in west Switzerland - Montreux, Chateau D'Oex, Gruyeres, Leysin, Neuchatel, Yverdon Les Bains. Zermatt and Lucerne twice. Interlaken region 5 times. I'm hoping to go to Liechstenstein for a work trip (because then it would be free). So I pulled out my lonely planet and rick steves to see where was left to go.

I decided at least for this weekend on the northern area of eastern Switzerland, which includes Appenzell - a town with a very tasty cheese. Also I figured I could check out the Rhine Falls - Europe's biggest waterfall - on my way back to Geneva. So this morning I got on a train at 1045 heading to Appenzell, which gave me almost 5 hours to look at the Swiss countryside and figure out what to do next.

I really had no clue about lodging, until I saw this advice in one of my books that during the summer and early fall, many Swiss farmers rent out the straw area, which is normally for the cows, to tourists. The cost is about the same as a shared bedroom in a hostel. That sounded fun to me. I started looking for one that was kind of between Appenzell and Schaffhausen (town close to the falls) and that spoke english. What amazed me was that there was about 200 farms all over Switzerland that participated in this thing, and that a lot of the farms had their own fax machines and websites!!

I called one and spoke to a nice man named Heinz, who apologized for his screaming kids. He gave me directions (take the bus to the only stop in the village, turn left at the woodcutting shop, 1km later you will find the farm...no seriously, that's what they were) and told me to come any time.

With that settled, I checked about 50 different combinations of train timetables (as some of you know, I am slightly obsessed with these things) until I arrived in Appenzell. I was a bit disappointed, which maybe is my own fault because I only stayed there for 30 minutes. But as far as I could tell, it was just one huge smelly souvenir shop (smelly like the cheese, so in a good way). I decided pretty much immediately to blow that popsicle stand and head to Ebenalp.

Switzerland has, in addition to a bad ass public transport system, about 100 million cable cars. Anywhere there's a mountain, there's a cable car. This middle of nowhere place was no exception. I took another short train ride to Wassueren (I'll check that spelling later) and then a cable car up to the top of Ebenalp. There were tons of people going paragliding off the side of the mountain, which was pretty crazy to watch. I don't really get why they wear helmets. If something bad happens, I don't think a helmet is going to really save you if you are like 5000 feet in the air. Anyway, I decided that I couldn't stay long if I was heading to the farm, because I didn't want to have to find my way in the dark. I did a short hike down into these cool caves, snapped some photos, then hiked back up which was DIFFICULT...I almost passed out. Then cable car down again.

THEN I got on the train again, after about a 10 minute confusing discussion with the man in the ticket office. He spoke only German, which I don't speak at all, and someone was even helping me translate, but he could not for the life of him figure out why or how I was going to get to Stein am Rheim. I made the train with about 10 seconds to spare. I took this to Gossau, to Winterthur, to Stein am Rheim. Overall I spent probably close to 7 hours on trains today. I LOVE the Swiss train system though. It's amazingly quiet, always on time, normally not super crowded and normally quiet (unless you are coming down from the Jungfraujoch with every tourist in the world). And the view is incredible - picturesque houses, rolling hills and mountains, azure alpine lakes and cows cows cows sheep goats chickens and more cows!!

By now it was about 745p and it was dark. I suddenly freaked out realizing I would definitely not be able to find my way to the farm. I was pretty much resigned to staying in a boring hotel in town after convincing myself that even though I had an ipod AND a cell phone, that would not be enough light to help me find my way to a random ass farm on a pitch black night.

But as fate would have it, I called back to the farm to ask how dark it would be and Heinz offered to pick me up at the bus stop. Which, incidentally, when the bus left me there, I was shocked at how in the middle of nowhere I was. Really, I could be completely screwed if he didn't get me. But thirty seconds later a minivan pulled up and it was him.

So we arrived at the farm, where I was immediately greeted by Funny the dog, and Heinz explained I would either be sleeping by myself in the straw or I could have a room in the small dorm. The straw part was a big loft above where all the cows were eating which to my complete surprise, had a shower, sink and flush toilet (for the people, not the cows). Just across the way was the dorm which looked brand new, with 4 cozy rooms, a kitchen and bathroom.

Now I kind of had my heart set on the straw. But I had lent Bhav my sleeping bag for the weekend, and so it would be me, alone, in a dark dark barn, in a rented cotton sleeping bag. Deciding I had been brave enough for the day, I opted for the dorm which Heinz agreed was the better choice.

I came down to the big kitchen with my laptop, feeling inspired to blog to you readers, after I heard they had free internet. I opened a bio beer (surprisingly good) and had just sat down when Heinz came back to check on me and spent some time telling me about his family (wife and 4 kids all under the age of 8 - yikes) and what they do on the farm. It has been an organic farm since 1996. Switzerland is pretty huge on organic products - they have a bio option for almost everything and it's normally not too much more, so I try to buy this when I can. However he explained that supermarkets are starting to push them out because it is more expensive for them to buy the organic Swiss products than things from Germany, Poland, etc. So now in addition to working with grocery stores, they have an online delivery store and they also promote tourism by bringing groups here, tourists or schools, to learn about life on the farm for a week or a few days.

Anyway readers, its 940 and time for me to go meet my random roommates. I think they only speak German so it should be pretty easy to ignore them. Tomorrow morning I am going to try to wake up early and spy on the cows who are just below and opposite my bedroom - they will be getting milked at 7am, then around 830 we have breakfast, and then after that, my random weekend continues.

I will post pictures and definitely, a link so you can see Heinz and Doris!!

It just keeps turning up

2008-09-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

You may or may not know that I have a strong distaste for: the penny.

Especially now, living in Switzerland where the smallest coin is a 5 cent piece (and you rarely get them), I hate the penny more than ever. When I go back to the U.S., I make it my goal to not come back here with any pennies, even if that means dropping them in the street or throwing them in the garbage. Yes that's right.

So I was shocked to read today that we are giving ol Abe a new look starting next year. What?!Please. I am going to make a plea for 1 and 2 dollar coins and the metric system, but I know those will both fail miserably. But can we please, PLEASE at some point (read: NOW) get rid of the stupid penny!!

I know there is a very good charity or maybe more than one that collects pennies. I have a feeling that most people don't have too strong of feelings towards the nickel either. Can't you start taking those?

Someone at the Tribune agrees with me, and someone running for President also agrees with me.

Who else agrees with me??

If you disagree with me, I ask...will you please take my pennies?!

I'm Movin' Out

2008-09-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

As you already know readers, I live in an odd country. I am starting to learn just how bizarre with only a few months to go. Lucky me!

I write to you while I am on my 3rd day on a new job - real estate agent. But I haven't quit my day job. No, this is something additional I get to do. Allow me to explain.

The housing market in Switzerland, especially in Geneva, is VERY full. I read estimates of about 80-85% of the population are renters of property - because in order to purchase property in Switzerland which is very VERY expensive (remember - a large Dominoes pizza is CHF 45), you need to put down a 20% cash down payment. No funny mortgages over here. Anyway, in addition, apparently 99% of the available apartments to rent are already full. This is because a lot of the properties are old and the area is pretty built up - there is not much space to put in a new apartment building without knocking down something else. So it's a bit of a problem. Oh and we don't have big ugly high rises but charming, 6 story buildings as you can imagine. Most people spend months looking for an apartment. Once you find one, you have to apply, and just because you are a suitable tenant - meaning you can pay the rent and the deposit (which is a hefty sum of 3 months rent) does not mean you are necessarily the person they choose. Nor does being the first person help. It's completely at random, and while I have heard that couples have better chances at getting bigger apartments than single people, I obviously got my apartment as a single person. Although the regie (explained below) must find a minimum of five suitable tenants before making a decision, you can be competing against as many as 80 other potential applicants for an apartment.

What does this mean for me? Well, I had to give notice to my landlord - or they guy who runs the thing for my landlord, so the property manager or whatever, it's called a regie here (probably because they lead a regime and totally control the entire housing market) 3 months notice prior to my departure. Then I had a "pre inspection" where someone from the regie came to look at my apartment and make sure that nothing is broken. And then, they must have given out flyers with my personal information because I started getting 5-6 calls a day asking to come see my apartment.

First I swore to myself that I was only going to do it in English, because I was getting so irritated about the numerous calls. Then I found myself switching to French and being my typical nice, accomodating self (damn you conscience!!). I set a time for Tuesday (tonight) at 7 for people to drop by. "Can't you do it earlier/later/another day? Like in the middle of the day? Or at 5pm? Or on a Saturday night?" NO!!! I don't understand where this people get the idea that I should inconvience myself to help them to see this apartment. If you really want it that bad, you can wait for an hour after you get home from your job and come over! I made an exception for 1 person who wants to come tomorrow morning because he broke his arm and needs to go to the hospital tonight (I am going to look for evidence in the morning).

One of my friends came on Thursday which wasn't bad. Another nice woman came Saturday morning (although I made the mistake of offering her a tea, and she stayed for an hour). I feel kind of bad for these people as the situation really sucks. But it's nevertheless annoying.

So since 6:20pm, when I was literally walking up the step to my apartment, someone has been with me. Two people came, then a slew of about 8 who complained I had given ALL of them the wrong door code - which is no doubt because my pronunciation was slightly slightly off on saying "one, three, five, A" in French and I don't feel bad about it. There's a keypad with 9 numbers and 2 letters. Pay attention! Then two more came and since then, it has been quiet.

Someone else was supposed to come at 7:30, but I have lost track of how many people were actually coming, and don't know if it is safe to relax and make my dinner or not. I think I will wait a little bit more. I don't know how it became my job to show a property which I am renting to the next potential tenant. I just hope that they find their "suitable person" so my phone stops ringing every five minutes.

Don't you think?

2008-09-21T02:39:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm having some breakfast and reading about the Cubs winning the NL Central for the second year on a row.

And apparently the last time they did that was 1908. Which for anyone who doesn't know, is the last year the Cubs won the world series. A HUNDRED FREAKIN YEARS AGO.

And about how they have the best team in the National League (I have to agree) and that they have a different ballclub this year, and I think they do. I follow the Cubs every day, and while there were some tough losses, I didn't hear much about the losing, or some freak injuries, or anything else that resembles a curse. I just read about a good baseball team, playing well and most of all, just going out there and winning.

So let me get this straight...

I lived across the street from Wrigley field (my dream) for one summer. The Cubs lose 96 games. I went to games for like 5 bucks, they were so bad that year.

Following that summer, I move to Switzerland only for 2 years, where the Cubs proceed to win not ONE but TWO division titles, which they haven't done for 100 years. People are partying on the street in front of my old building. If they make the NLCS or WS, Good Morning america is going to BROADCAST FROM MY BUILDING!!

And in 2 months, when the stands are empty, the ivy is dead and the fans are long gone, I'll be home for good.

Is God trying to tell me I should be a Sox fan (although they might make the playoffs too)? Or a yankee fan, because they have really sucked the past 2 years I've been gone?

I've cleared my schedule for Oct 24 and 25. The weekend that the NL team will be hosting games 3 and 4 of the world series. I'm just saying. I don't care what it costs. I will not let irony screw me this time.

Oh and next years World Series? Those same games happen to fall on the weekend I'm getting married. In which case, I would obviously just have the rehearsal dinner on a Cubs rooftop and the reception in the parking lot of my old apartment (it's next to a Taco Bell - I figure we give all the guests $5 and let them go crazy).

So of course I'm bitter and jealous and unhappy that I'm missing it all but anyway...GO CUBS.

101...and Boney M

2008-09-19T13:35:00.001-07:00

Hello! Post 101. Guess that means I am a real blogger. I have a lot to talk about as I am starting to think about moving home and all that and of course, like anything administrative in this country, it is 10 times more complicated and annoying. But more on that later.

First, I need to conduct some research.

I saw Mamma Mia! last night at the cinema and it was fantastic. I loved Meryl Streep and the girl who I will refer to as Karen from Mean Girls. She was fantastic!! Pierce...you are still soooooo dreamy, especially in your boater shoes and crisp summer dress shirts, but his singing was a bit off the mark. Anyway, I came into work today with an ipod fully loaded with ABBA in order to share some of my new songs with my office mates.

I was recently promoted to manager and share an office with two younger staff. I'm not sure if I'm the best example. I trash talk HR or anyone else that gives me a hard time, offer my philosopy on how things should be working, curse at my computer when it malfunctions and I occassionally show up in very wrinkled/non matching outfits. Oh and I often blast music and sing while I do my work. Anyway, they seem to respect me and ask me lots of questions, so I guess I am somewhat helpful. I love listening to music when I work and so do Angelina and Abrie. So today we did basically what was akin to a "dance off" and each of us kept finding songs on the internet to see if we could find ones we all liked or maybe to introduce someone to a new song.

Now I'm from across the pond, Abrie is from south africa and Angelina is from russia. Three continents is fairly vast. But we found a lot in common. For example, we all liked hotel california. And we all love ABBA. But then, Angelina suggested this band I have never heard of.

"It's called Boney M." she said.

"Bone what???" I replied. She instructed me how to spell it and I looked up the song on youtube. When I pressed play, I heard some song that I have never heard in my life.

They were both completly shocked. I continued my research later in the day and asked my colleague Theresa if she knew this band. "You're kidding. Not knowing them is like not knowing Michael Jackson." And my colleague Barbara said the same thing. "Course I know them, everyone does. You must be kidding. That's like saying you don't know the YMCA. Or any normal famous group." But every Yank that I asked said they had never heard of them.

So I did a little more research on my beloved Wiki (and I have donated, I love it so much) and apparently Boney M is like another ABBA type band, popular around the same time and coming out of Germany. The music is actually really good. I mean, if you like fun cheesy pop, which I do. But apparently the albums were only released in the U.S. for the first time last year. And they are def not in the itunes store. I just checked.

So can you please go on youtube and look up this band and leave a comment if you have ever heard this song in your life? It will help with my multi cultural research. You can look up Rivers of Babylon, Rasputin and Sunny which are the ones we listened to today.

Other things we had in common (just a few):

Angie and Abrie - Dr Alban (he wrote scatman)
Me and Abrie - How Bizarre and that stupid ass song about girls that wear A and F...you know the one??? how does crap like that make its way over here but we don't get bands like boney M which have global appeal?
all of us - Fascination (by Alphabeat...also only over in Europe for the moment I think...but I love it)
Me and Angie - Debbie Gibson (except she liked some new song and I played "out of the blue", and neither of us had ever heard the other one).

Fun right??

Yay!

2008-09-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

It's my 100th post!! Well I don't want to ruin it, so I will go ahead and move on to post 101. However I have included my most Swiss photograph ever as a celebratory image here on post 100. Merci to all my readers for sticking with me!

I can't resist...

2008-09-16T14:18:00.000-07:00

For my concerned readers out there, you ARRRRRRRE (in a pirate voice) going to be happy to know that my eye is healing well according to the Swiss doctor. I have to go back next week just to be sure. And don't worry, I can work on my computer ALL DAY and there is no need for me to take any sick leave. I can continue to review with one eye just fine. Hooray!

Next topic - I found this gem today and I could not resist posting it on my blog. I am probably going to lose a lot of respect from my random fans, co workers, all of my friends and definitely my fiance and my future new family. But I can't help it. This video is from my childhood, and my sister Aimee and I must have watched it at least 100 times (NOT in the past 18 years or so though until today. ok maybe 15).

My entire office had a really crap day today, and I'm going to do my part by singing this to all those surly Swissies first thing tomorrow morning.

There must be one of my readers out there who also knows all the words to this song?? (besides Aimee and I'm sure my brother, who was force fed girly culture and cartoons from a very young age and still turned out to be a super cool dude).

Madrid y mi ojo en fuego

2008-09-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

Hola readers! I have just returned from quite a weeend in Madrid. Before I get to that though, let me preface this entry with a little story from my past, which some of you may already know.

It was about this time 2 years ago that Justin and I flew to Switzerland for my look see trip. The day that I left, a Thursday, I woke up with a bad sore throat and what I thought was the beginning of strep. I explained to my doctor that I was going out of the country for a week and got some antibiotics. Nine hours later, across the Atlantic I was not feeling too hot. I woke up the next day feeling worse and Justin got me french fries and an orange Gatorade. I had a fever and a bad sore throat and figured the antibiotics just needed some time to work. Saturday I mustered up the strength to go out for the day and felt a bit better, but Sunday morning again I felt really sick. At night, I couldn't sleep and neither could my jet lagged Justin; we would end up watching the Swiss Animal Planet channel for hours before drifing off. More daytime sleeping (which Justin was happy to join me in doing) and we called a doctor to come to the hotel, who gave me more antibiotics. That night, we went out for pizza which seemed fine. Then I woke up in the middle of the night and threw up, crying because it hurt my throat so bad. On Monday morning, we called the doctor again who declared I had an abcess behind my tonsils (which were grape sized and white) and I needed to go to the hospital and couldn't eat because I would probably need surgery. So we went to the hospital and fumbled through in English, and would eventually wait for over three hours to see a doctor (during which I was passing out from hunger and lack of sleep). The doctor said that he didn't really want to operate and did not think it was an abcess. Also strangely, I tested negative for strep. He gave me more antibiotics and set up an appointment for the next day. By some miracle of medicine, my fever finally broke in the night and my tonsils began to heal. Needless to say, it was the sickest I have ever been in my entire life. I rarely even get colds. But somehow I end up in the emergency room in a foreign country.

Needless to say, when I boarded my plane to Madrid on Friday evening and my right eye felt a bit scratchy, I figured my contacts were just dried out and my eyes were tired. It looked slightly bloodshot but nothing serious. I slept a bit on the plane, thinking that closing my eyes would help the situation. But when I woke up, my eye hurt more than before. By the time we landed, my right eye was pretty squinty and painful. Everything seemed to bother it, especially light. I high tailed off the plane and wandered through what has to be the biggest airport I have been in in all of Europe to get to the baggage claim area. I made a mad dash for the bathroom and looked at my eye. I could have drawn the ire of a bull, it was so red. I immediately took out my contact and left one in my left eye, not knowing if I had any spares. When my luggage came, I ripped out the eye drops and begain dousing my eye with it. This did not seem to help. Again the bright lights of the terminal were really bothering me, and I had both of my eyes barely half open. The entire terminal must have thought I was high. Ignoring the weird looks I saw out of my half raised lids, I made it to the taxi stand. No way could I take the metro when I could barely see where I was going.

I sat with my head in my hands and eyes closed in the back of the cab. I knew this was probably really really dangeous, but I couldn't help it - my eye was killing me. We arrived at the hotel and I stumbled up to the 3rd floor, where I was meeting my friends. My friend Robyn opened the door and I exclaimed, "Hi, I have a problem, I think I'm going blind." Immediately I took out my other contact lens and put on my sunglasses, laying down on the bed and explaining to her this strange turn of events in the past 2 hours. My friend Aya then appeared with some contact solution, which I used to try and rinse out my eye. Hoping it was an allergy (I get bad hayfever in Switzerand and France that I never had in the US), I popped a claritin and continued to rinse. After about 45 minutes I had not improved, so my friends left to go to dinner.

Not knowing what to do at this point and starting to feel desperate, I immediately turned out all the lights. Then I started hysterically crying, thinking that at least the tears might help. But they didn't. I filled up the sink withh water and dunked my head in, opening my eyes underwater and looking around in an attempt to get out whatever it was in there that was hurting. This soothed the pain for maybe 10 seconds. Then nothing. Back to crying. I started totally panicking and thinking what would happen if I did go blind. I would have to quit my job. I would never see the Cubs win a world series. I would never get to see Justin's cute scruffy face again. Finally, not knowing what else to do, I picked up my phone and called my parents.

My mom and dad suggested I go to the doctor and tried to calm me down. I felt bad but sent a text message to Aya, and told her I needed to go to the hospital. At this point it was around 1130 and the pain was absolutely excrutiating. It felt like someone was pouring acid into my eyeball. Just a constant burning feeling, with occassional bouts of searing pain. About 30 minutes later, Aya came to my rescue and we went to the hospital princessa. At least it sounded nice.

When we got there, I explained to the receptionist that I had a problema con mi ojo and then proceeded to respond to her, stupidly, in French (I now automatically respond in French, even though I understand Spanish very well). I was taken back to a small room where two nurses came in to look at me. They leaned over and cocked their heads to get a look at me, and both of them winced. "That obvious huh? That's not a good sign" I said to Aya. They asked me, "Itchy?" And I replied, "No itchy, burning, en fuego." They sent us back to the waiting room at that point.

I then sat with my sunglasses on, squeezing my eyes periodically because they pain was really out of control. I kept my eyes closed and chatted with Aya. I felt like Ray Charles and an old grandma wrapped up into one. After about an hour, Aya went to go chase down my paperwork, which had been lost and hence the delay. Good thing because about 5 minutes later, the doctor called us in.

Although I was half blind, I could tell my doctor was a cute girl who looked friendly and about my age. The opthamologist squeezed a tiny drop into my eye and I felt instant relief. "Anesthetic," she explained. She looked at my eye, up and down, etc, and then pulled back to explain. "You have...on your eye...como se dice...when you fall, on the ground, and you get this thing on your knee, what is it called?"

"A scratch?" I offered.

"Jes, a scratch, jou have a big scratch on your cornea. This here is your eye," she said, as she proceeded to draw a picture, "and here, dis is the scratch," and drew my iris, then a giant blob which covered 2/3 of my iris. No wonder it hurt so bad!

"Jes it is a very bad one and you need to be careful now...no contact lens for 2 weeks and you need to go to the doctor when you get back to Ginebra." Then she gave me 3 different eye drops and an ointment, warning that one would sting and that the ointment would make my vision very blurry. "But, jou have to do it," she said firmly.

We walked out to check out and to my surprise, I was not charged for the visit or the medicine. I was told later that when the problem is simple, they normally just fix it for no charge. Of course, I was also told that Spain's doctors were not that good which was why the treatment was free. I hoped that the former one was the real answer.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was 230 in the morning and I did my drops regimen and ointment, then crawled into bed, exhausted from the night's ordeal. When I woke up on Sautday, the pain had slightly subsided but was still pretty strong. I put in more drops and took a shower, feeling generally crappy. We were going to watch a soccer match played by some of Robyn's friends. On the way, I got a really good ice cream (Banana Split) and a box of eye patches. We were REALLY hoping for the black piratey ones, but instead there was only the band aid like boring ones. I was worried about dust blowing into my eye at the field, so I slapped on a patch there.

Literally, I was a sight for sore eyes. Of course I couldn't see any of the game, what with my one squinty eye open and my other eye sealed under a patch. It was incredibly bright, and while my friends continued to talk about the hot Spanish men running around on the field, I was quickly bored. I found a shady tree and took a siesta during the second half. Later we had some beers and cold tapas, by which point the swelling had gone down. After a second siesta later that night, the pain had mostly subsided and it was just dealing with the blurry vision.

The rest of the trip was short but much better. We had a delicious nighttime meal of tapas and vino tinto. Saturday happened to be "La Noche en Blanco" or the white night, which had tons of perfomers and street acts plus cool exhibitions all around the city, open until 7am. We tried to go to the Reina Sofia Museum which was unfortunately closed.

Today the 4 other girls left around 10, so me and my one good eye were on our own. I ate a delicious Napolitana (it's the best chocolate croissant I've ever had...and I have had them from France) and then went to the Reina Sofia museum and quite enjoyed it, although I had to stand SUPER CLOSE to the paintings to see them. I really love Picasso and some of his contemporaries like Braque and Dali, and this museum had a whole floor of it. I even got an audio guide. After a bit of shopping it was off to the aeropuerto.

So all in all, I got to really see Madrid for less than 24 hours. The first 20 or so I was half blind so I don't count them. It was a super friendly (although some girl did get robbed on the metro, right next to us apparently), very modern but also very old and beautiful city and I definitely want to go back.

I have written this entry with basically one eye, so I apologize for any spelling errors. I have to now go on another fun adventure, which is finding a Swiss eye doctor. Tres bien!!

Beeg Bong, part deux

2008-09-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

I forgot that you probably were thinking I was smashed to smithereens yesterday.

Remember when I went to CERN? Well they finally turned on the LHC which was pretty exciting for all those cute little geeks. I was on the plane at the time. Anyway, guess it worked and I'm still here. So it's all good!

My Day Off

2008-09-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

Hey there upper East Siders...

Just kidding, this has not turned into a blog about rich high school yuppies, but I am really into Gossip Girl now (sad, I know). I was in the U.S. for 2 weeks playing with some old friends, making business deals and of course hanging out with my awesome fiance. I flew back on Tuesday afternoon and arrived Wednesday morning, worked the entire day and went to bed at 9pm. Fortunately, today is "Geneva day" or something, I think it is a cantonal religious holiday but the google translation I got was not great. Anyway, it gave me an excuse to sleep a lot, make kraft macaroni and cheese, and totally binge on season 2 of "Heroes."

So now I am going to unpack and repack, because tomorrow I am headed to Madrid to meet up with some friends. A quick recap about what I missed about the U.S. (besides the obvious old friends and awesome fiance):

-cheap beer
-really cheap taxicabs
-nachos
-american football
-TV that I don't have to download

Things that were really lacking:
-public transport...it was ok, just really slow and fairly inconvenient
-bizarre weather trends (ok, this is just Chicago, but still)
-croissants...they were awful
-a mountain or two

Finally, two other small things to share with you all. First is that I have about 10 weeks left here. Well I am likely returning in December for 2 weeks, but going home for 2 weeks in November, so overall, it would be a wash, and 10 weeks total. Which is crazy. Second, my palate is all messed up. They don't have spicy food in Switzerland as you might have surmised...considering their national dishes are comprised of cheese and bread or cheese and potatoes or chocolate. I LOVE spicy food, but I am way out of training and could not eat anything when I was home! Even delicious chipotle set my mouth a blaze (it was only the medium salsa!!). Fortunately, my dairy and alcohol tolerance has risen waaaaaaay up...

Hopefully I can train my tastebuds a bit in Madrid. Until then, hasta luego readers!

Another rant

2008-08-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

I actually am a very happy person, as most of you know, but there's just one thing I am starting to get a bit sick of.

I know that Ameri.cans have gotten ourselves a bit of a bad reputation for being notoriously bad at certain things. To list a few:
-Poor at geography
-Culturally insensitive
-Culturally overly sensitive
-Self obsessed/no idea of what is going on outside of the U.S.
-Loud and obnoxious
-Wasteful and constant need for instant gratification

I would say that the above list is somewhat fair. I know a lot of people who fall into at least a few of these categories.

HOWEVER I will also say that some of them are maybe not so bad after you think about it. For example, is there really a need, in 2008, to make numerous sexist jokes in the workplace? Regarding the instant gratification bit, is it really so bad to ask that a store be open until 8pm once in a while or that you don't have to wait 45 minutes to get your freaking check at a restaurant? I don't think so.

I find that I get labelled pretty badly as an Ameri.can, which means people think, for example, I am the following:

-Poor at Geography

Ok, I was once asked where "Aiti" is. "Excuse me?" "Aiti." I had to apologize and say that I had never heard of Aiti, to which this person replied it was pretty pathetic that I didn't know the islands in the Carribean considering how close it is to the U.S. "Oh, HAITI!!" I said. I mean is it really my fault that people don't pronounce their H's here? I know that a lot of people probably expect me to speak Swedish when I come home. But I won't. And I would like to inform you that I came in 4th place of the entire Kennedy JH 7th grade geography bee. My geography is not bad.

-Culturally insensitive or overly sensitive

Sure, a lot of people don't make an effort to learn French. I have, and it is also not my fault that my country does not use the metric system. I like the metric system!! Also I get made fun of a lot for having a positive attitude and wanting things to be "fair" and "equal" and everyone to play on a team together. What is so bad about this? I realize that the world is not so sunshiny and wonderful, does that mean we have to always be trying to screw each other over??

-Self obsessed

OK, this is the main reason I am writing this post.

First of all, I just got in a long argument with a guy who was telling me that it is "50 times cheaper" to ship my things by sea than air freight. Yes, I know. I work with expatriates on a daily basis. I am an expatriate. Yet, he was trying to convince me that instead of paying for an extra bag on my flight on Thursday to the U.S., that I should ship it through the post office. Because apparently, since it is 50 times cheaper, it is only going to cost like 2 francs to ship it, because the extra baggage fee (and I JUST checked) is 100 bucks. I have several small packages of like 2 kilos each to the U.S. through the post and it cost like 40 CHF each. So don't try and argue these things with me and act like because I am not so wordly like you, Mr, that I don't know how much these things cost. I do.

Second, what the heck is Can.adian thanksgiving? Apparently there is such a thing. I first heard about it on HIMYM but my friend Anji verified that it is real. Ok, so fine. There is CT. Do you think in grade school we learned anything but about the AT? No, of course not. And by 3rd grade, we were a little busy learning multiplication tables and didn't have time to hear about yet another group of settlers and indians who got together. I accept the fact that it exists and it's unfortunate that we were only informed of our own tradition. When I was discussing this new found fact with a few people, one girl said to me "How long have you lived in Geneva? One and a half years? yes, well, that's the problem with your people, you think that everything that exists in the US can only exist in the US and no where else." Hello!? I'm not saying we are the only ones with independence day or christmas. I'm saying thanskgiving, which is kind of a unique holiday. That would be like expecting me to believe that something like the Escalade also happens in say, Italy, which it very well might but as far as we know, no one else threw soup over the wall at the french except for the genevois.

Everyone has their faults and just because I don't speak 5 languages and want things to be open on Sunday and might not finish all my food and tu someone when I should vous them doesn't mean that I should be a social pariah. We have nice things too. Like late night food. Really, REALLY awesome customer service. TJ Maxx. All the good movies and songs that euros LOVE. Maybe we are a little bit less cultured, but we sure as hell are not so stuck up and are much more friendly. And we don't wear tapered jeans or ankle booties.

So my point is, I am really sick and tired of having these pre conceived notions. Of course they probably think I'm being overly sensitive.

And by the way, the brits are by far louder and more obnoxious. I'll never look at one of their cute red phone booths the same way.

Stupid

2008-08-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

I have about 3 months left of my assignment and I still don't understand:

WHY DOES EVERYTHING CLOSE SO EARLY?!!

I got stuck at work and raced home in an attempt to make it to the pool. But the pool closes at 830. Why can't it close at 9? 9 is normal. 830 is like...annoying. I was walking out the door at 805 and came back in frustration. When things close here, they are SHUT. Seriously they turn off the lights in the grocery store when it closes. At 7pm. So I could bet you anything that had I tried to get just a 15 minute swim in, they would have denied me even to get in.

Other annoying things:

A light blew out in my kitchen, or should I say, THE light, and I can't get another one because the stupid store is closed. So I had to cook in the dark.

I am out of toothpaste and conditioner. Again, I cannot go to the store. I realize I can go to the corner store but I don't want the random brands. I want MINE that I normally get, at a normal store, that is open at normal times!!!

To top it off I now get to go to the laundromat. The bane of my existence!!!

Busted Rustbucket

2008-08-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

I know you have all been waiting for a picture of my dear friend Rustbucket. Here he is, in all his rusted, grey glory:

This is taken outside of my work. He's much rustier in person.

And I know you're tempted to make fun of the basket. Feel free. It is so practical. I put everything in there - laptop, workout clothes, towel, groceries. Two weeks ago, I tried to put Bhav in it. That didn't work so well and we ended up crashing onto the pavement (not to worry, we were drinking and didn't feel a thing until the next morning).

As you already know, RB accompanies me to work every day that it doesn't rain. And we go wakeboarding together and other errands. But lately, me and RB have been having even more adventures. For example, he now gets to come out late with me to bars and escorts me home at 2am. It's really sweet. And because he is so ugly and rusted, no one would ever want to steal him. He has become my constant companion.

We had quite a big weekend together. On Saturday, we went to wakeboarding at 8am (15 min ride) , then home, then back to wakesurf at 230pm. Wakesurfing, by the way, is awesome. Everyone sits on one side of the boat and it makes this little wave. You have a mini surfboard which is not attached to you at all, but somehow you just surf in this wave. And I got up on the first try!! I have to admit I was pretty darn pleased with myself. There are not many things I can get on the first try. Anyway, after that, we rode across the lake to the windsurf club (30 min but we did in 20), then rode home (30) then rode back to windsurf club (20) then rode to this boat to have dinner (15) then rode to a bar (10) then rode home (20). Then on Sunday we went to Versoix, which is maybe 40 minutes away, and of course we rode to dinner and then we rode back home.

This morning was a bright sunny day, and we were off for another adventure. Until some frenchy mechanic started yelling some jibberish at me about my velo. "Mademoiselle!!" And they pointed to my tire. I got off my bike and bent down to take a look.

"Ah merde." I said. My back tire was completely flat. Remember the story about Justin's flat tire? Yes, it was just as flat. I had a ton of stuff to carry and hated the idea of having to drag it all on the tram.

As I was parking it back by the other bikes, frenchy mechanic and friends came over to me with a hand pump and offered to blow up my tire. I have to say I was really touched that some stranger would stop and do this. Yes, I was freshly primped for work and yes, they were 3 crusty mechanics but still. The pump was tiny and it took quite a bit of effort. After a few minutes, RB was in stable condition and we pedaled off to work after many merci's were doled out to my new friends.

However, once at work, I solicited the help of my colleague Simon, and when we went out to check out my bike at 11am, once again, the back tire was completely flat. So today I bought a new tube, or as they call it in French, a "chambre a air" (literally means "a room for air") which Simon will help me install tomorrow. Let's hope this does not spell the end for our dear friend RB!

Bad Jac

2008-08-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

I know, I'm SORRY. I don't have any excuse other than I have a totally awesome, action packed social life. So now let's take a trip in my time machine and see what it was that kept me away from all you lovelies for so long.

The Sailing Trip

2008-07-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

This post is LONG overdue. And it's going to be lengthy. So get yourself a glass of rose and get ready. Or skip straight to the pictures.

Sometime near the end of June, I was down by the lake drinking rose and suntanning with Bhav and Annie and some other friends, and Bhav's friend Anjali's boyfriend Markus came along and stopped by to chat with us. The next day he sent a message to invite us on his catamaran on Lake Geneva in the afternoon. So the 4 of us sailed around the lake on this baby cat for an hour, which was really fun. He was telling us about a sailing trip he was planning beginning July 5, to go between Mallorca and Ibiza, Spain, for a week on a 10-person catamaran. Unfortunately there were still 2 places on the boat which were not full and the trip was 2 weeks away.

Something started buzzing up in my brain. "Well, give me the info...maybe I can go." I said.

The fact that I have never been sailing and that it was with 9 random people kind of scared me at first. But then I kind of looked at it with the same philosophy I had when I was considering Switzerland. What's the worst than could happen? I get seasick? Everyone is mean? I would still get to see beautiful beaches and get a tan. Plus Bhav knew some of them, so it was like having a referral (I found out later they included me partly for the same reason). So I decided that not really knowing the people was a stupid reason not to go, and the other thing I was worried about (missing work) was an even more stupid reason, so I decided to go for it and ask for the vacation. I was supposed to go to Greece the weekend before and it ended up the flight was cancelled. So I saw this as a sign that instead I was supposed to go on the sailing trip. Right? Right.

Overall we were 2 Germans (Markus, the Skipper, and Voelker), 1 Swiss (Carola) , 2 French (Youcef and Flo), 2 Canadian (Anj and Sherrie), 2 American (Greg and me), and one Polish (Agnes), 6 girls and 4 guys, ages from 24 to 40. It was like a little floating UN. Or a week long version of Real World, Semester at Sea. All I knew was that I was flying into Palma, sailing to Ibiza, and at some point sailing back to Palma to fly home. And also that I had probably packed too much.

There were 6 of us who flew out on July 4th, which happened to also be Greg's birthday. Random small talk was made at the airport and on the way to the hotel. Later we met up with the rest of the crew in an area of Palma that had somehow been transformed into a pub-filled street in Germany. We ended up going into this bar called Uberbaynen where one half of the bar played techno and the other played traditional German songs. Guess which side was 10 times more popular? Markus translated some of the songs for us, my favorite of which had a chorus which went "I'm a doner kebab, I have an onion on my head." Next thing we were all sharing one of those fishbowl type drinks with long goofy straws and belting "Country Rooooooads." Yep, I pretty much knew from then it would be a great trip.

Saturday morning we took a bus to Porto Colom, which was where we were picking up the boat. We sat in 100 degree heat and tried to figure out how to buy food and drinks for 10 people, for a week. Of course there was always someone who wanted apple juice, not orange. Whole milk and not "lite milk." But overall everyone was pretty flexible. Being the accountant, I was assigned the task to track all the money for the trip and promptly collected 100 EUR from each crew member. Then me, Voelker, Greg, Youcef and Flo headed to the grocery store. 50 liters of water. 60 cans of beer (lasted for less than half the trip). 6 bottles of rose (gone by Weds). 3 kilos of tomatoes...387 euros later, we were headed back to the boat to stock it and get ready to leave. Markus gave us all a very detailed safety lecture and showed us how everything on the boat worked. There was a spot for everything and all sorts of nifty things like all the sitting areas were actually the cabinets.

I am sure you want to know. How did one shower and use the toilet on the boat? Well there were 2 bathrooms (SMALL), one of which had a shower. To use it, you just basically sprayed the water around the entire bathroom. So no one used that one. There was another outdoor shower on the back of the boat. To use the toilet, you had to bring in water by pumping this handle 10 times. Then you would turn a switch and pump another 10 times to "flush." It worked fine, but I will just say that the crew took advantage of every minute we were in port to use the "land toilets."

Around 4pm, we set sail from Porto Colom. We sailed for about 3 hours and then anchored near a nice beach for a swim and to make dinner. We had a stove and oven on the boat, so it was fairly easy to cook (when we were anchored of course...while sailing, even making a bowl of cereal was difficult). I didn't do very much cooking (or cleaning, or anything), but everyone was very helpful. It seemed that everyone took turns with responsibilities, and there were never any arguments about who was supposed to do what. After a nice spagetti bolognese and waiting for the sun to set, we picked up again and started sailing through the night towards Ibiza. This was to be done in 2 hour shifts (Skipper let me sleep through mine, so I never had to do anything).

There were 4 cabins on the boat which were very small. As there were 3 couples, then 2 other girls who roomed together, Greg and I had the last room. What this meant for the trip was that at any time one of us had the room all to themself and the other one would be sleeping outside, which was really nice since the beds were so tiny. So the first night, I slept in the room. But it's not so easy to sleep on a boat when you are not used to the rocking motion. Or the fact that my room was under the captain chair so I heard everyone walking about that was sailing. Or the fact that the freaking MOTOR was right next to my head. I think I slept about 2 hours.

At 6:15, Markus rose the crew to watch the sunrise. I emerged from "down below" to a rosy-blue sky, with nothing else around. No boats, no land. Just our Gemini and the sea, and then after about 15 minutes, a bright red sun. Less than 24 hours since our sailing had started and already an incredible memory.

I have to say that the trip was a bit of a blur. Not because I was TOTALLY WASTED which I know is what you all are thinking (maybe, I was a little wasted at times). Just because...well, you wake up everyday to a clear blue sky and a clear blue sea, and you have some breakfast, and then you think, hmm, which sunscreen do I put on? Where should I sit on the boat for the next hour? Do I want to read a magazine or nap? And meanwhile we sail around to beach after gorgeous beach and then sometime in the afternoon we start to drink and then anchor at a another nice beach or cozy port and watch a sunset. And then repeat it for a week. No one ever knew what time or day it was, and no one really cared (ok, maybe Markus cared because he had to keep us on course and was checking the wind and crap like that). We had music but obviously no tv or anything like that. It was really difficult to be so relaxed and do NOTHING. But I got the hang of it after...I think about 1 day. Anyway, I will not go into so much detail about each place we went. You can see the pictures (there are a total of 1800 which were taken by the crew - I have condensed them). Everywhere was gorgeous and perfect. I will just go through some of the many highlights while taking you through the rest of my week.

After Sunday's sunrise, there was napping etc until we anchored at a nice beach for a swim. That evening after over 1 day of sailing, we checked into port (don't ask me the name - I think it was St Eularia or something like that). I had MAJOR land sickness. Everything was moving so much - especially when I used the nice port shower and leaned over to get my shampoo. Whoaaaa!! Also at dinner, I had to practically hold on to the table. I was so happy when we got back to the boat. Totally bizarre. Incidentally, I did not get seasick on the trip, but I did feel a bit sick at times. Anytime you were sailing and you went inside the cabin...everything was moving around SO much, and it was so hot...it was awful. So I was inside the boat for as little time as possible, less than 1 hour per day (and I was usually up at 9 and in bed around 1...or later...) Also there were these "seats" on the two front hulls of the catamaran that would kind of "surf" up and down on the waves. This was my favorite spot on the boat. You would think that you would get totally seasick, but maybe because you were moving even more with the water and all you could see was water, which basically just looked all the same...at least for me, it was perfect. At times we were in big waves, and it seemed like the cat was going to fly out of the water.

Other things about the boat while I'm thinking about it...there was this awesome hammock type thing in the front where you could lay and get a suntan and underneath you, hear the waves and occassionally get a splash. It was SO nice, and I always fell asleep there. Come to think of it, that was maybe my favorite spot. Also, we didn't sail very much. We had the sails up for part of the 12 hour trip each way between Mallorca and Ibiza, but most of the time we were using the motors, because the wind was either blowing the wrong way or not fast enough. It was really nice and peaceful with the sails though. I drove the boat for an hour or so when the motors were on....it's hard. So most of the time we were also on autopilot.

Ok, back to the trip. On Monday morning, we had a nice brekky and left port to sail to a nice beach (like I said...you repeat). I think at this point we were in Formentera, but I'm not entirely sure. We anchored and made lunch, swam a bit and afterwards, a group took the dinghy to shore, where there was a nice Shark bar serving caiprainhas and pina coladas and that sort of thing. We hung out there for a bit, jumped back in the dinghy, at which point, the motor broke, and we had to paddle to the boat (as we approached the boat, it started working again - go figure). We left this spot, and sailed for a few hours to a completely natural beach. Nothing there except sand, palm trees, and of course...naked Europeans sunbathing! Come on, of course they are! Fortunately there weren't too many, because they let it ALL hang out. Really.

At this beach, there was a mud lake which Markus led us to. It was a huge lake that reeked of sulfur, and had a thick salt crust on top. Markus sold it by saying that afterwards, our skin would be baby soft. Then he promptly stripped and sat down in the mud, happy as a piglet in a pen. "Come on," he said, "It's really perfect!" Some people followed his lead while others of us maintained our bathing suits, but nevertheless proceeded to get completely covered. Afterwards, we strolled down to the sea, no doubt scaring all the small children we encountered on our way, and swam around in order to wash off the mud. It totally worked for my skin by the way!

We played around on the beach while the sun was setting and then headed back to the boat (me, Agnes and Greg swam back). For whatever reason, maybe it was the mud, it ended up that Monday night - day three, I would like to remind you - was the craziest night on the boat. Me, Anjali, Greg, Voelker, Markus and Agnes were up quite late drinking, chatting, generally acting stupid (see the photos). The night ended with everyone jumping in the water, then getting out, then Greg puking, then me sleeping outside on the boat which was really nice until I woke up the next morning with a massive headache and had slept next to all the booze bottles. Classy, I know. So how did I cure my hangover? I immediately jumped in the water, of course.

Because Monday night was pretty late for most of the crew, Tuesday was a fairly calm day. We left our nice beach spot around noon and sailed back to Ibiza (this was the time when I drove the boat...I think). We stayed that night at a port in San Antonio, which is I guess the big city in Ibiza. All the big clubs and everything are in the area. I agree that Ibiza does have a big party scene (and far too many annoyingbrit tourists, in my opinion), but I also saw a ton of families there and chill couples. And it's GORGEOUS. So don't rule it out.

Tuesday night we went to the famous Cafe del Mar to watch an amazing sunset over a beach packed with tourists. The sun was so red that it looked like it would blow up. We had some more drinks at the cafe and then tapas for dinner, but decided against going clubbing until the following night. Probably a wise choice, considering Wednesday we spent walking around the city.

Did I mention how hot it was on the trip? It was en fuego. I think it was +30C everyday, and I wore 50 sunscreen on the boat for the first part of the trip (totally got made fun of, but what I didn't get, my friends, is wrinkles. so there!). On the boat, you have the sea and the breeze to take off some of the heat. But in town...blazing. No wonder everything shuts for siesta, because I think it is seriously dangerous to be out and about in that. I was feeling pretty lousy when we got off the bus into town - absolutely exhausted and SO hot. I went to lunch with Carola while some of the others decided to hike up to the top of this cathedral. The lunch was pretty awful, and I was feeling progressively worse. Finally, I was really shaky and felt like puking, and had to excuse myself. I felt so awful, although the walking helped. I found an oasis - an airconditioned jewelry store. I hung out in there for about 15 minutes until my core temperature returned to normal, then got a popsicle and big water, and I was much better. Better enough to do some shopping for a few hours and then head back to the boat!

We didn't go out to dinner, but instead just snacked on some remaining boat food and got ready to go out. Around 1245 me, Anji, Greg and Agnes left for two nearby clubs. It ended up that we got into the Eden for free (cover is normally 40 EUR) which was awesome. We didn't really drink, partly due to the expense, but also because we were sailing back to Mallorca the next morning. Hangover + 12 hours sailing = really bad idea. Instead we danced our pants off. The music was so good and really fun. We went across the street to Es Paradis just to see it, which was terrible, at least that night, so we went back to the Eden and stayed there dancing until...5am! We were setting sail at 6am, so what to do for an hour, since sleeping was obviously pointless? We wandered into town and natutally went to KFC - popcorn chicken in Spain is soooooo not the same - and went back to the boat to wake up our skipper. We helped Markus to prepare the boat and took off. Some of us had some late/early morning beers while watching the sunrise over some cliffs. Then around 730am, I went to bed.

Thursday was a lot of napping due to the night before and the fact that there wasn't much to do for 12 hours. We dropped anchor around 6pm near another beach close to Palma. We made dinner on the boat and watched another beautiful sunset. That night was supposed to celebrate my birthday, but everyone was too tired. Around 1am, I watched the moon set into the sea and curled up in my sleeping back on the back deck of the boat.

"Wake up!" was the next thing I heard. Markus and Anjali had woken up to go lay in the nets at the front of the boat, and Markus came back to get me to see the sunrise. I sleepily wandered to the front of the boat and laid down in the smaller net. The sun had risen for about 15 minutes already and was glowing yellow right in front of the boat. It was beautiful. "We ordered it just for your birthday!" Markus said. I tried to keep my eyes open, and contemplated getting up to get my camera, but in the end, I was too tired to move. I closed my eyes and felt the warm sun on my face and thought how lucky I was to have a sunrise like this for my 28th birthday.

I woke up again around 9 when we were sailing to a beach back towards Porto Colom. It was very secluded and had the most fish of anywhere we had seen. The water was crystal clear, with amazing turquoise and azure colors everywhere we went, but it was really funny to see all the fish at this area. Youcef had the brilliant idea to start feeding them the bread from the boat. I was floating around on a raft and suddenly, fish were jumping everywhere. Next the whole bag went in, which brought literally, a huge school of fish that was just swimming around all of us. It was totally weird but also hilarious.

We sailed back to Porto Colom where Markus had to "park" the boat under the worst conditions of the week (wind blowing the wrong way) and not only that, but he had to essentially parallel park it. It was really amazing how much he knew and how well he handled the boat and the responsibility of being the skipper. We went to dinner in port that night for my birthday and drank sangria and ate yummy fish. The crew surprised me with a cake and singing Happy Birthday, which was really sweet. It was so funny to think that a week earlier, I didn't even know these people and now, we were celebrating my birthday together like old pals.

Saturday morning we woke up early and walked 30 minutes to the bus stop, with our bags, only to find out that...there was actually a stop RIGHT next to the port. Oops. The rest of the day was spent walking around in Palma and sightseeing, eating some really good gelato and tapas, and then going to a really cool bar at which I unfortunately kept falling asleep, despite the vodka limons the crew kept feeding me.

And then Sunday morning, we flew back to Geneva. And voila!! That was essentially, the Sailing Trip. Probably one of the best weeks I have had here, if not in my entire life.

So if you still have some free time on your hands, you can check out the pictures now to get a real feel for what it was like!

From the Left Hand Side

2008-06-15T04:03:00.000-07:00

My summer so far has been considerably quieter than my winter here this year. Except of course for the engagement, that was pretty exciting! But you may remember in the winter I was out doing snowboarding or some other activity every weekend. Partly because the weather has been crap and partly because I am somewhat lazy, I haven't done much other than take Rustbucket around town on a weekend (he's a very cheap date).

Well today I think I found a new summer activity. My friend Bhav has been trying to get me to come wakeboarding with her since last year. The idea of getting up at 7am to go jump in a lake is not very appealing to me. I used to get up at the same time to catch the skibus, but at least for that we got on the bus, had a little snooze, got a coffee and a croissant, got on the nice relaxing chairlift, and THEN started snowboarding. Oh and there's that little part about being dressed in 4 layers, instead of practically naked (bonjour!) and soaking wet. But she was going today at 9, which I agreed would be more feasible.

We biked about 20 minutes to the wakeboard club on the lake and met up with 2 other guys, plus the driver, Nicolas, who would be taking us out. The sky was greyish and it was quite cool (60F), but the water was calm and as smooth as glass. I have a longjohn wetsuit from my triathlon days, although I completely forgot to pack my bodyglide which meat it took me a bit long to get on (and was seriously difficult to get off too!!). We all climbed into the boat and headed out.

First up was this guy Alex, a big, happy guy from Norway with a beard. He jumps into the water and the boat speeds up. Immediately he is up, carving in the wake, riding switch, doing all sorts of jumps. Basically, looking super cool and making it look really easy. It was really fun to watch actually. I didn't realize until then that one big bonus of going wakeboarding was that you get to ride around on a boat on beautiful lake Geneva with nice chill people, blasting music and having a little wakeboarding party for yourself. The sun came out while Alex was riding and on the stereo was blasting "Pass the dutchie from the left hand side." Hilarious.

Next was little Bhav who jumped in the water and proclaimed that it was nice and warm. Although she didn't do as many tricks, she could still do jumps and was attemping to turn a 360, where you pull the rope behind your back and then grab it with your other hand. She was able to grab it and turn and stay up for a few seconds before falling. Still very impressive!

Next up was me. I grabbed a life jacket, and Nicolas helped me to put on the board. Amazingly, it is exactly like a snowboard. The bindings look almost like snowboard bindings except the boot is attached and your toes are exposed. Obviously it's wider than a snowboard, and obviously it floats. Very comfy too.

I eased into the Lac Leman for the first time since arriving in Switzerland and gasped sharply as my breath caught in my chest. Warm!?!?! Of course, Bhav is not really sensitive to temperatures, as you might remember from our picnic in the snow. The water was 60 degrees. And the sun had gone back in. Great. "Ok," Nicolas instructed, "You don't pull wiz ze arms, you pull ze knees hup to your chest when ze boat start to go, you stay bent and slowly you let zeboat pull you hup. And you don't try to turn until you are all ze way hup." "Ok," I answered though clenched, chattering teeth, my heart hammering. I felt like I could barely move or breathe in my wetsuit, which I haven't worn in a long time. I gripped the handlebar with white knuckles and yelled ok.

The boat started to move and I pulled up, and fell forward immediately, getting a huge facefull of ice cold water. It was seriously shocking and not fun. I popped up and gasped for air. "You pulled wiz your arms. You stay bent and let ze boat pull you hup," he instructed from the boat. "Ok, got it." I said. Starting again...I got about halfway up, and fell again. And again. "You don't turn ze board until you are all the way hup. Just wait, zen turn it once you are standing hup." "OK, got it, no turning." And then on the fourth try, I stayed bent at the knees and slowly, slowly let the boat pull me "hup." And I was standing, and I turned to my snowboard position, and I was wakeboarding!!

I decided not to try any jumps or anything on the first time out, just to practice carving a little and get the feel for it. It is pretty much exactly like snowboarding so once I was "hup," I did pretty well. Falling was also similar to snowboarding - impossible to do gracefully, although thankfully I didn't have any more face-first choke sessions like I did on the first try. I ended up having about 4 long runs after I was finally successful. I smiled back at the boat while I concentrated on carving the blue and white wake. Finally, after about 15 minutes, I was done. It is seriously exhausting on your arms - mine kill right now. But it was super fun, and I of course got a huge confidence boost out of the fact I was actually able to get the hang of it pretty quickly (snowboarding took me about 2 full days and I broke my wrist in the process).

I got a "forfait" which means a pass to go back several times. It's not that cheap - about 40 CHF per time. But snowboarding was more, and I did that every weekend, so I can justify it. Plus hopefully it will get my arms all buff.

Next weekend I am bringing my camera so hopefully I can put up some photos and videos. Dude!!!!

Swissness

2008-06-14T05:12:00.001-07:00

Hi there! I've been putting off posting about some random things because I wanted to keep my super spectacular post about my recent news on top. But I have some things to comment on and can't figure out how to rearrange my posts on here. So I'll just put a link to my love story, in case you still want to check out how it all happened.

I feel I've occassionally strayed sometimes from discussing Switzerland, so I will do that today! Two things I have recently learned which I thought were awesome:

1) Switzerland has air rescue service throughout the country, something called REGA, which can dispatch a helicopter or air ambulance to come get you. Everywhere in the country, except the Valais region (which is the big mountainous valley area with awesome skiing and wine) can be reached within 15 minutes. AND they also cover the ENTIRE WORLD using jet aircraft if necessary to come rescue little Swissies stranded atop some mountains in Peru or Nepal. How much does it cost to get such insurance, you might ask? Like 1000 bucks a year? 500? No. 30 Swiss Francs if you are single or 70 Swiss Francs for a family. That's cheaper than going out to dinner in Switzerland! And it is completely private - not one cent from the government. If I had known about this before, I definitely would have joined for ski season. I honestly don't know how they figure out some of this cool stuff.

2) Geneva has recently been voted by Mercer the #2 place to live in the entire world!! That's right. So how lucky am I that I have been able to live here for almost 2 years? Number #1 is Zurich, which is nice but...they don't speak French and I can't imagine they have as much good wine and cheese as we do here in Geneva, because we're closer to France. So just my personal opinion...I know that normally they are also rated 2 of the most expensive cities in the entire world, but I have to say I have certainly not gone into any sort of debt living here (although if I did more shopping and eating out, I definitely could). The U.S. didn't even crack the top 25 - only Honolulu landed on there, at #28. Even the U.S.'s northern neighbor managed to sneak 2 cities, Toronto and Ottawa in there (clearly, the writer of the article was bought ooout). Obviously if Chicago was able to upgrade its public transport system and recycling programs to a grade above where they are now (D+ for transport, F for recycling), and the winter was 3 months shorter (4 instead of 7) and maybe they could make some big mountains nearby for skiing, it would be just as good as Geneva.

Did I mention the sun is setting at almost 10pm every night at the moment? So cool.

You can read an excerpt of the article here.

That's how you know

2008-06-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

It's been almost 2 years to the day since I first got the e-mail asking if I might be interested in working in Switzerland. Who knew a one line e-mail could completely change my life. My job, where I lived, my friends, the languages I could speak, my lactose and alcohol intake. I knew it would be exciting and fun (it has been) and probably a bit challenging (I may have slightly underestimated that one). The one question I always got pegged with was "What's going to happen to you and Justin?"

Surprisingly, this is the one thing I didn't worry too much about before leaving for Switzerland. Everyone else worried plenty, believe me. I still remember going to dinner and telling him what I thought were the pros and cons, and getting ready to write out a list (I'm a nerd, I know, he tells me too). Justin just looked at me and said, "Well, it's an incredible opportunity, and I think you should take it if you want to do it. But you have to promise to come back." And that was that. Of course we both knew that living 5,000 miles apart was not going to be easy. Personally I always swore I would never find myself in a long distance relationship and then suddenly, I had created one for myself. But I don't think we ever worried "would we make it?" I didn't. And let's be honest, girls obsess about those kinds of things. We just kind of knew it would all be fine.

This year has definitely been more of a challenge, partly because Justin is working. Which means, he's not home from business school every day anxiously awaiting my call in between rounds of dubious, dilligent studying and maybe a game or two of Tiger Woods golf with an ice cold mug of juice. We can only talk really on the weekends and just email during the week. Now I know you might say "Well, in the olden days, you could only send letters, and people didn't even have email or cheap international long distance!" But I didn't grow up in the "olden days," and so that doesn't really help. We miss each other and a lot of times it seriously sucks. But we've made it this far.

Justin came back to Switzerland about 3 weeks ago for his first visit since last summer. I had last seen him in March for about 55 hours, and that includes time we spent sleeping and on gross planes, so really, it was not very quality time. The week before he arrived was, as usual, agonizingly and painfully long. In fact the only week longer than the week before his arrival is the week after he leaves. On May 23, I met him at the airport and gave him a key and a quick kiss. Then I dashed back to work, because I had to re-do a stupid project that one of my lazy, good for nothing co workers, failed to do correctly (he shall remain nameless but if you come to visit me, I promise to properly introduce you). Plus Justin and I were leaving for Provence on Sunday, so I had a lot of things to wrap up.

I was able to escape around 4pm and got home to find a few things. Justin was asleep. No surprise there. I walked further into the living room. Hmmm roses nicely arranged in a vase? Quelle surprise! That's a rarity. I immediately became suspicious and walked into the kitchen to investigate further. I found cheese and more cheese. Again, not surprising. Therefore, I decided nothing was going on and went to wake up my jet lagged boyfriend.

I'm expecting for Noah to pull up in the ark any day now, which will give you an indication of how much it has been raining here lately (except for when my parents were here, I'm pretty sure it's been raining since April. Every day.). Thankfully the day Justin arrived, the weather was nice again. We went to the store to pick up a few things. We came back and opened a bottle of champagne (my Christmas gift from work) and some cheese and just relaxed in each other's company on the balcony. We decided to watch some Top Chef.

After the episode ended, Justin decided to shower. Then five minutes later, decided not to. Ok, whatever, I understand completely that the jet lag makes us all really confused and tired. I didn't think anything of it. Nor did I think anything of his pacing around the apartment. We had finished our champagne and he suggested we refill and go back out on the balcony since it was still light and now was much quieter, so I went into the kitchen to top off the glasses.

As I was coming back, I noticed him standing and leaning out over the balcony, then turn his head around over his right shoulder, just to give me this look, this half flirting, half serious look, which at the time made me think, "What is that look??" but retelling this now, I realize exactly what that look was.

I stepped outside and handed him his glass, and we did a little impromptu cheers. "Well," Justin said...

...well, gentle reader, you must know what he said to me. What he asked. If you want the story, I will be more than happy to tell you personally, but I am not posting the details of this for the entire world. But, I will tell the entire world this:

I said YES!!!

It was a completely surreal, emotional, laughter and tear and hug filled, deliriously happy moment. We kept trying out new lines like "hi fiance" and "we're engaged!!" and then bursting out laughing. He did have another surprise which I didn't find in the kitchen - a second bottle of champagne (which we followed with a bottle of wine...I mean if you don't celebrate the day you get engaged, when do you?!). We spent a good hour or so just relishing the moment and looking at my new ring (I suppose that was more me...) before we called our families.

Mine of course, were all out (j'ai de la chance!!), but we spoke to Justin's parents, who were very excited. About 45 minutes later, my mom called me back, saying she was out with her friend Kim. Then I said, "Well, you can tell Kim that Justin and I are engaged!," and my mom starting screaming with excitement. My sister as well, was completely shocked, at at Macy's. "Ohmigod, that's so awesome!!! How did he - hold on a sec - yes can I get this in a four? Sorry to keep you waiting like that, but my sister just got engaged!!" This was actually really fun, because Mom and Aimee were pretty much the only two who were REALLY surprised, which is thanks to my dad throwing them off the trail (thanks again Dad). We called Justin's brother Chris (the number one fan of "Jac Goes to Switzerland!") and his wife who knew already, and my brother Chris who confidently announced "Yeah well (insert loud, frat boy sigh here) I'm proud to say I kinda knew something, but I didn't say anything." Our friends we called later seemed to know that it was going to happen, given the circumstances of the trip and of our relationship.

Of course, we've probably known for some time. Since Justin agreed to go to Cubs games with me, or the day I bought a Sox hat. Since the time I tried skiing, and he carried my snowboard. Since five years ago, when I have started force feeding myself olives. Since he agreed to come to my parents' house to do yardwork and move pool furniture. Since we supported and encouraged each other through busy seasons, business school applications, triathlons, internships, working too late, staying out too late, and that liiiiiiiiittle part about me leaving for a foreign country.

There's something else I've always known too: I have no idea how to plan a wedding. I can only hope I learned enough as sorority social chair to plan an event slightly more complicated than a swap with DKE. But I can't wait. All I know is our wedding is going to be legendWAITFORIT...
dary!!!!

Updates

2008-06-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

1) The plant has been mysteriously removed!! It happened when I was on vacation last week. Almost as strangely as he came, he went. Well GOOD RIDDANCE is all I have to say to that sad excuse for foilage.

2) I would like to clarify a section in my Krakow post where Abby licked the wall of the salt mine as re-reading this, I think it paints a murky picture of our adventure. You may think, not knowing Abby, that this was kind of a stupid thing to do and that her observation ("It's totally salty!) would be quite obvious. First of all, everyone wanted to lick the wall, which was clean (including yours truly) but only Abby was brave enough. I kept seeing good places for licks but couldn't get up the gusto to do it. Secondly, Abby read this book called "Salt" which she recapped for us that sounded super interesting, making us all very excited to see the mine. And in fact it was not really known to us that the walls would be totally (meaning, in total, not meaning, "radically" or "mega" some other 90's word often used as a synonym for totally) salty. But the whole thing was really, totally salty, which we did would not have discovered if it were not for Abby!! Did I mention the salt mine was TOTALLY (and here I do mean it in the other context) AWESOME??!!

It finally happened!

2008-05-14T13:11:00.000-07:00

After such a long time waiting, I could hardly believe when the moment arrived.

My parents came to Switzerland!!

(haha, gotcha readers. don't worry, I'll soon provide the next post that some of you were expecting here instead!!)

A lot of you know that I have been waiting and waiting and WAITING for my parents to come visit me. My dad came to visit in January for a few days and we made a new friend in Zermatt:

But I really wanted them both to come and see my life and my home, and experience all the things I love about Switzerland. As you might imagine, my parents were not exactly thrilled when I told them about moving 5,000 miles away for two years. I get along very well with my parents (now that we are all adults) and disagreeing with them on something which was so important to me made the decision to move quite difficult. But in the end of course I am glad I came over and especially now, in year two, things are really good over here.

My parents arrived on May 1 which was fortunately a holiday here in Switzerland (Ascension Thursday). Unfortunately, as you well know by now, this meant that everything was closed. I picked up my parents at the airport along with beaucoup de baggage. The first thing we did was take Switzerland's excellent public transport towards my apartment. A little old lady came and sat next to me on the bus, speaking in French. Somehow she and everyone else must have known that these were my parents, because random people were speaking in me in French all week, allowing me to show off to my parents! Random people always talk to me - I must either look nice or like I know directions and timetables to all transport connections. However I used to freak out that someone would ask me a question in France and would always immediately answer "non."

Anyway, my dad tested the sleeping conditions in my apartment while I took mom to into town to check out the lake and window shop. After a nice lunch and a trip to a tea room, we headed back home to regroup and had a fairly lazy night, which extended into the next day. Around 1pm on Friday, I announced that jet lag was over and it was time to get up! Needless did we know the fun that lay in store for us that night...

As painful as this will be, I have to recount this story. A little context first: Before Rustbucket came into my life, I took the bus/tram roughly twice a day, every day. Having been here for 17 months at the time my parents arrived, and accounting for the time I spent outside of Switzerland when I didn't take the bus, that's roughly 950 or so times I have taken the bus. And my ticket has been checked 6 times. That's about 1/2 of 1% chance that you get your ticket checked. Now, where am I going with this?

Here's my adorable p's in Montreux. So unspecting of the impeding drama...

My parents and I went to Montreux on Friday night since it is pretty and has the Chateau de Chillon right on the lake. It was a beautiful night with the sun setting on the lake. We got to the bus stop and did not see a ticket box outside of the bus. However normally when this happens, there is a box on the bus where you need to buy the ticket. So we get on the bus and my parents obviously had no clue what to do so sat down. I was trying to figure out what zone we needed to go to and how much to pay on this weird machine, unsuccessfully, and freaking out that I probably didn't have enough money for us to get a return ticket. This took about 30 seconds and the bus stopped.

So gentle reader, a probability question: If your chance of getting checked is less than 1/2 of 1%, what are your chances of getting checked when you have 2 other people with you and none of you have bus tickets? You would probably say well, it might be slightly increased, to like 1.5%. WRONG.

The answer is, of course, 100%.

I figured I could just explain to one of the nice Swiss men that I was trying to buy a ticket but the machine I used ne marche pas and I was just about to go to the normal one. I did this in French. "Come with me," he said in English (never a good sign), and made me and my parents get off the bus and take our passports. We were then told that we were EACH fined 80 CHF for riding without a ticket and if we didn't pay at that moment, we would go to jail. Yes, jail. I confirmed later in one of my Swiss books that this really does happen.

Obviously things got ugly after that. Let me just say that Switzerland is not America. I love Switzerland, but if you think you can appeal to rulemakers with sweet talk, bribes, flirting, stripping, idle threats, real threats, or klondike bars, forget it. I tried explaining 100 times that I always carry a ticket and was just confused and my parents didn't know, etc. My dad used a bit stronger tone and the one guy started speaking very angrily and as fast as he possibly could in French to my dad specificially so he couldn't understand and to piss him off (sorry Dad, but actually I understood what he said and it was really funny that he did that). My dad wanted to test the threat that we would be arrested, but I refused and handed over 240 CHF. Then promptly made my parents take me to a nice dinner to pay me back. Needless to say, I think this is VERY bad for tourism in Montreux and left a terrible taste in my mouth. So BOO to you stupid city with your smoke on the water. I take Geneva (which gives free bus passes at the airport for tourists) any day of the semaine.

The rest of the trip, thankfully, was much more fun. On Saturday, we went wine tasting in Dardagny. My dad who denies he can speak French, had no problem obtaining numerous tastings of this delicious cabernet sauvignon which we later purchased. We went home and took a much needed nap and then had a fun night cooking in. My mom and I watched "Charlie Wilson's War" on my HUGE screen tv (read: 17in laptop) while my dad watched the Cubbies on MLBtv.

On Sunday we went to Interlaken! We checked into the Hotel Bellevue and got an awesome triple room (yes, all in one room, we love each other!!) with an adorable balcony and to die for view of the river and mountains. Nice photo below by Mom!We took a boat cruise on Lake Brienz (the cleanest lake in Switzerland in 2005 until flooding; still looked pretty clean to me) and then had a nice dinner in a square on a quiet side of town. We decided to take a walk after dinner and that's when I noticed...the bugs. The BIG SICKASS bugs. I put my sweatshirt hood up and my parents thought I was nuts. They looked like cicadas though and I HATE bugs. Snakes or rats, throw em at me. Just not a bug of any kind. So we got back to the hotel safely and decided to open the window slightly. I was a bit worried because the screen wasn't super substantial. But we were on the 3rd floor right?

I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and hear my mom yell AHHHH!!!!! IT'S IN THE ROOM!! Immediately I scream and lock the bathroom door. "Kill it Dad!!!" I yell from inside. "You're the one who likes the outdoor stuff! Carol, kill it!!!" He yells back. My mom yells a bit more but bravely somehow manages to get him outside. "Ok J, it's fine." I continue brushing my teeth. Warily. Very waaaar... "AAAAHHHH THERE'S ANOTHER ONE!!!" "AAAAHHH!!!" I yell again. "I'm not coming out of this bathroom until they are all gone, I'll sleep on the floor if I have to!" My brave, wonderful parents conspired a plan where they trapped the bug with a jar, then slid a piece of paper underneath, and then put the sucker outside on the patio. Such a good team!! Thanks for saving my life from the cicadas Mom and Dad.

On Monday, we went to the Top of Europe, which I went to with Justin in August. It was really cool to see it this time because there was a TON more snow. My parents loved it, and we had a lot of fun goofing around and taking pictures on the mountain. And we had an amazing lunch in this gorgeous resto on the side of the glacier. Nothing tastes better than Swiss french fries at 11,000 ft!

We were back in Geneva on Monday night and on Tuesday, I went into work to "regulate" while my parents stayed home - Dad to catch up on some work of his own, and Mom to take care of me by cleaning some things in my apartment (eg my oven, which you will recall was subject to a minor grease fire). That night we went to a traditional Swiss restaurant with my friend Ingvill which was really fun. We had fondue and filets de perche and Ingvill educated my parents about lots of Swiss food and customs. I know this too by now, but it's a little more credible coming from her since her husband is Swiss.

Sadly my dad had to leave on Weds and my mom and I went to Rome. It was the first time in probably a good 6 or 7 years I have been on a vacation with my parents and it was so much fun. They are both threatening to come back before they leave and I really hope they do!!

Here's some more pictures:

Family fun on the Jungfraujoch:

Mamoo and me

Finally Mom and Dad in the Ice Palace!

My family rocks.

The Plant

2008-05-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

OK, I don't know why it's bothering me so much, but it is.

About two weeks ago, I went into the bathroom at work.

Let me backtrack a little and say that I really love our bathrooms. It is one of the few nice things about my office (the others being view of mountains and ability to watch all the planes taking off, and the recently installed teeny vending machine on the 4th floor). The stall doors shut all the way so you have complete privacy. There are air fresheners (broken at the wrong times unfortunately, but generally effective). And the lights are the energy saving ones that take a long time to come on. Needless to say sometimes when I am super hungover, I just go and shut the door and sit in the nice, quiet, dark, generally good smelling bathroom and take a moment to close my eyes and will away my headache. It's like a sanctuary.

So I went into the bathroom two weeks ago on a Thursday which was a holiday so the office was pretty much closed, and there was a disgusting smelling plant in our bathroom. In the sink, looking like someone had abandoned it. I figured that it would be gone shortly and just held my nose and ignored it.

The following Tuesday, I had to come into work and regulate on some people who decided to slack while mother hen (aka yours truly) was on vacation. I went into the bathroom and lo and behold, yucky plant is still there. This time on the counter, looking like he has made a home for himself. I asked one of my co-workers, "Who put that nasty plant in our bathroom?" But no one knew. It's kind of tall and leafy so how it made it in there without someone ,"what are you doing with that kind of tall and leafy and bad smelling plant?," I don't know.

I came back to work this Monday and guess what is there. Looking SAD I might add. Because let's think about this. Plants NEED sunlight, do they not? This is not some jade plant that you can give like a teaspoon of water and a drop of sunshine and it will grow. This is some random leafy plant which A) is being exposed only to artificial bathroom light and B) someone is REALLY overwatering. With each day, the plant looks worse and worse. Now it is about half covered in dead brown leaves and the rest are wilted. It is making me really angry. Who would be so stupid to put a cast-off plant somewhere that it would obviously die, and then make a mess, in one of the only nice places in our office?

Who does this?

And would I be a terrible person if I led the plant to its natural home (ie garbage dump/compost pile)? Maybe I should rescue it and take it to my office which gets lots of sun? Help??

Krakow

2008-05-12T13:57:00.000-07:00

Yes it's been a while, I know! I have been incredibly busy.

Things I find myself doing much more than a normal person:

a) sprinting down the street at full throttle, often in heels, to catch a tram/train
b) crying in airports
c) buying lots and lots of vegetables, and throwing them all away a week later (very bad I know, but I do compost them)

Lately I feel my life is a big jumble of racing from bed to work to french to bed etc and not much sleeping. And a lot of traveling. Let's start there.

Two weeks ago, I went to Krakow, Poland to meet up with Abby and Melissa (2 friends from college) and Cara. I LOVED Poland. The love affair began instantly, unexpectedly, like these things often do.

I exchanged some euros at the currency counter and received a neat stack of Polish zloty. "And this is for you too" she said, handing me a candy. When was the last time you exchanged money and got candy (ok I always got candy at the bank when I was little, I mean, as an adult)?? Then I got in a taxi with a driver who spoke about 10 words of english. "Hello" "Please" and "Tip I keep?" being half of that. Although we could hardly communicate, I told him that I was from Chicago, which is practically part of Poland, there are so many Polish people there. This was very exciting. Things heated up when I told him that my grandparents were Polish AND I knew how to say thank you in Polish! I was beautiful, I was told, because I am Polish. Score!

I had the wonderful fortune of arriving after the girls tried to check in to our first hotel, which was apparently a cross between a halfway house and a boxcar circus train from the sounds of it. So I arrived at the beautiful Sheraton in Krakow and showered my friends with hugs, kisses and of course, imported swiss cheese. Yum!!! You can read about some of the adventures we had on Abby and Cara's blog here.

Krakow was cheap, the food was good, the people super nice and the beer was outstanding!! I think we tried around 5 or 6. My favorite was called Dog in the Fog, a darkish local Polish beer. The slogan was "he will not lose his way" or something like that. I've looked for some stuff on google about it but have come up empty handed. You'll just have to trust me until I can get my hands on Abby's photos which prove it!

One of the interesting things we did while there was take a trip to Auschwitz, about an hour away. Why would anyone, on a sunny, fun filled vacation, choose to spend the majority of a day going to a concentration camp? We pondered it too. But we were compelled to go see it. It was one of those things that you don't necessarily want to see or do, because it is painful and heartwrenching. I visited Ground Zero earlier this year, which is different but the same in the way that it was the site of a tremendous atrocity and not something that you really want to do on vacation. In New York, I felt extremely emotional and near tears, maybe because it was something that happened during a critical time in my life and I still remember every minute of that entire day - and although it's in the past, for most people my age it is a memory that we live with constantly. At Auschwitz, it felt more like history, and while it was shocking, it was in some ways more difficult to comprehend everything. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the barracks looked more like college dormitories than places that used to house thousands of people. At one point we stood near a wall where many people had been shot, and a group of girls began simultaneously praying (what sounded like the our father to me, although it was in Polish so I couldn't tell). That stayed with me throughout the day, as did the hundreds of photographs we saw saying how long people remained alive there. Some were a year or more. Some were five days or less. I don't know if I forgot from school or I never really knew the extent, but I didn't realize the intent to basically eliminate the entire Polish population, regardless of religion. The quotes and photographs were truly mind-boggling and shocking, and I couldn't decide what astounded me more - the fact that people could actually think and act in such a manner towards fellow human beings, or the fact that other people could stand by and let them get away with it. The other thing which stayed with me for the day was walking through a barrack called "Evidence of Crimes against humanity" where you saw articles left behind from the holocaust victims. A room the size and depth of a large swimming pool filled with pots and pans. A large window, filled with thousands of pairs of spectacles. And another room, high and deep, and on either side, thousands and thousands and thounsand of shoes big and small.

I don't mean to be depressing, but the main thing I personally took away from the experience was that it is ok to feel uncomfortable and depressed and kind of angry about these things that happened, and to allow yourself to feel that way. Because it was really, really awful, and we should feel that way about it and work to ensure nothing like that would ever happen again. If you try to just glaze over it and numb yourself...well I think it was put best by one of the quotes at the site: "he who forgets history is condemned to repeat it."

Anyway...I had to get that off my chest. Back to the fun parts of Poland.

Going to Poland and experiencing everything was cool for me because I am half Polish, and it was the first visit I had to a country of my ancestors. The other fun trip we had was visiting a huge salt mine!! It was about 130 m underground and we had a super funny and cute guide to show us around. Salt is bad ass and was the world's first major trading commodity. There were a lot of really cool sculptures and an entire church which were completely carved from salt. However I think my personal highlight of the entire tour was when Abby licked the wall, and excitedly proclaimed, "It's totally salty!!"

After all the pierogis, beer, Polish history lessons (man they have had a rough time with the neighbors) and adventures, I felt more proud of my Polish heritage than I ever had. Which I commemorated by purchasing a super tacky bright red POLSKA t shirt with a huge eagle on it. Love you Poland!!! (thanks for letting me steal your line Cara!)

Me and Rustbucket

2008-04-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

Well I think I am really starting to go turn into a Euro.

First of all, I am now speaking french 2 full days each week in the office. That might not sound like a lot, but it is and it's exhausting! It's quite easy to "bavarder" (chat) in French but it gets a bit more difficult to try and explain things and understand things work related that people are telling you. But I have to say it is good practice which I really need. Thursdays it is just with the 2 girls in my office and on Fridays, some brilliant lad that I work with started "French Fridays" where all the English speakers have to speak French. This is actually quite humorous to speak French with other Americans and Brits and Russians and South Africans and other people who don't normally speak french. Anyway it's a "bonne initiative" although today for example, I got so fed up with a situation that I switched to English for the remainder of the day to make it easier for me (and bought a chocolate, also to make it easier).

Second and more notably, I bought a bike last weekend. There is a secondhand bike shop in town and in my opinion, they just go around Geneva, steal bikes and resell them. That or pull them out of the lake because they are all a bit shabby looking. But they work. I got a silver one and put a basket on it and voila! I'm ready to ride around town. I fully intended to name it "the silver bullet," but it doesn't sound quite right for its personality. And like I said, it's a bit from hunger. So, I have christened my bike Rustbucket.

Geneva is actually an awesome city for biking because there are true bike paths everywhere to make it really easy and safe to get around by bike. In fact at some cross walks they even have separate "bike lights" that you cross when that is flashing. Not to mention the fact that you can ride around the lake and check out the French Alps every day of the week. And when you ride in the other direction, you can see other mountains. Yes, just one of the small bonuses about living in Switzerland. Anyway my adventure this week was to take my bike to work! Fortunately, my office is kind of away from town. Well, let me rephrase that. It is nowhere near town. It could actually be closer to France than town. But that means that I can walk through neighborhoods and stuff (and not like the gross pigeon filled sidewalk under the Quincy L stop for example) to get there which is nice. It is also right by the airport which is super convenient for traveling and even BETTER for when you have conference calls and can look out the window at all the planes. Anyway, currently I take the tram about 6-8 minutes and walk about 15 minutes to get to work. On Wednesday morning, I woke up with a slight hangover and pleasantly surprised to see it had stopped raining for seriously, the first time in a month. So I quickly got dressed, grabbed some work clothes, and hopped on Rustbucket.

The only unfortunate thing about the ride to work is it is up a long, gradual incline. Not exactly what you want to be doing first thing in the morning. But that is just the first half or so and the rest is not to bad. It takes me now about 15 minutes door to door which is awesome. Then I go upstairs to work and quickly turn on my crappy laptop, which takes about 10 minutes to boot up, run down to the fitness, get naked, say "bonjour!" to all the other naked ladies, shower up, more naked bonjours, get dressed and run back up to work and voila! In about the same time as it took me to get to work previously, I have gotten a bit of exercise and showered. Cool!

Going home is of course super fun because it's all downhill. In fact it's a little fast for little Rustbucket, and we have to apply the brakes gently so as not to crash into a bush. But two days in a row now, Rustbucket and I went to and from work. And I took my bicycle to French lessons tonight.

All that's missing now is a beret.

Hey now, hey now, don't dream it's over

2008-04-13T10:50:00.000-07:00

It's over.

The first major chapter of my stay in Switzerland has closed. Today was the last day of the ski season, my second season here and likely to be the last "season" I ever have in my life. I actually felt a little emotional when getting up to go on the chair the last time today. Let's face it, I will NOT be driving to Alpine Valley every weekend when I get back to the U.S. Snowboarding and skiing in the midwest is just awful and not worth it. It is absolutely freezing, the conditions are terrible AND the runs are like 25 feet long. Hopefully I will go out to Vail or Jackson next winter (I am taking 3 months off work, so anyone who wants to go on a ski holiday...call me!)

So Bhav and I went to Flaine which is in France. By the way I almost always went to France - only Crans Montana, Leysin and Zermatt which I went to are in Switzerland. We got there and did a few runs and then decided to have another picnic because it was super sunny. This one was mildly more successful than our last one - there were lots of other people picnicking too. But of course as soon as we sat down we were battling clouds until the moment we finished. It was yummy though - a nice multi grain bread, avocado and cheese. With apple crumble and coffee for dessert (we got that bit in the resto). It amazes me how the Swissies and Frenchies eat when skiing - it's not uncommon to see someone get tartiflette, which I have not had yet, but it is basically potatoes, cheese, cream, onions and bacon...sounds good but during the middle of a ski day? And then wash it down with a chocolate tart and a bottle of wine. And how are Americans the fattest country in the world? Because I guess the Euros still do 4 hours of skiing after, whereas we tune in to a marathon of "The Hills."

After lunch we got serious and snowboarded for the rest of the day without stopping (unusual for us as we get tempted by various apero bars located all over the mountain). We did two or three runs on one side of the mountain and then kept taking this one awesome run. The chairlift to get up was HUGE. It was an 8 person chair which I have never seen. It was like sitting on a really comfy sofa that flew through the air at super high speed! Also it went over a waterfall and a bunch of trees. Cool. The run itself was great, starting off with a big open bowl at the top and opening into a wide flat bit where we practiced riding goofy (the other way), then narrowing up before dropping you down a steep mogully slushy bit which dropped into a flat bit and you went super super fast! Then more steep and narrow and then steep and wide and then just normal and back to the sofa chair. We went nonstop for about 3 hours and then finished off the day with a kir royale in the sunshine.

We totally passed out on the skibus and when we got back, our driver said thanks and announced that it was the last bus and he would see us all for another season and everyone clapped and cheered. It was cool but a little sad too.

Welllll in any case, this was a bonne saison all around, not just on my board, and with the exception of the few weeks I was trapped in major study lockdown for my work exams, I think I made the most of it.

I will remember the most:

-My first ski lesson in a blizzard

-My second ski lesson when I almost died and some nice guy saved my life (he was like 45, don't get any ideas)

-The amazing views in Chamonix when snowshoeing quietly through the woods, where all you could hear was the snow crunching underfoot

-The taste of a delicious pizzwich at the top of Signal in Les Contamines

-The adorable town of Les Gets and its super slopes

-Being on top of the world in a huge flying bumblebee balloon

-Seeing the Mont Blanc every single weekend

-Someone always pointing the Mont Blanc out to me every weekend

-When I took a snowboard lesson and got my confidence back (and have kicked ass ever since, ha!)

-When I would swing my ice ax just right and hit a sweet spot

-Sitting up top of a huge piece of ice I climbed and not hearing anything except people sniffling and carribeaners gently clinking together

-The first time I rode goofy and turned 5 consecutive times (and promptly fell on my ass)

-The awesome orange apero bar in Crans Montana

-Flying at super speed down the Nantes-Rouge run in Contamines

-Hearing the sound of the waterfall coming down the run today

-When I successfully took a button lift without falling!! (after falling twice before)

-The shots of Jaegermeister Bhav made us do at ONE PM

-The huge white slopes

-The wide blue skies

-The sunshine

-My last run

It was a good season.

Escargots

2008-04-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

A short post about snails.

Seriously, it has been raining and cold all week which is unusual, as I heard the weather in Chicago is nicer than here. Incroyable!! This is GOOD news for me because that means it is probably still snowing in the mountains and that will give me another weekend of snowboarding. Hooray!

On my way home from work however, I spotted a snail on the ground in the rain. I have honestly never seen a live snail crawling around outside of Switzerland when it rains. However here I see them all the time. He was totally sprawled out and everything, and I picked him up and he curled up inside his shell, just like they say. It just amazes me sometimes the things that you will find here walking home from work that you would never see in Chicago. Or has anyone ever spotted a snail outside of say, the Tin Lizzie (also known as in my opinion the worst bar in Chicago)?

By the way, if you have never eaten escargots, they are DELICIOUS and if you are a picky eater, go with a friend who is not and have them order it and get some bread to dip in the yummy garlicy herby buttery escargot-ey deliciousness sauce. YUM!

CERN

2008-04-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

Have you read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown? Or are you a big nerd? If either of those is true, you are probably familiar with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Both are true for me which is what piqued my interest in visiting CERN, and also this "open house" which was on Sunday.

As I understand it: CERN is a bad ass physics laboratory where scientists all over the world come to play and study and make cool new things happen. So they built this particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider and it goes underground - it's 3km (almost 2 miles) underground and 27km (about 17 miles) in circumference, spanning the Swiss and French borders. The LHC is new, and they are going to flip the switch I believe in the summer. It was open to the public to go underground on Sunday, which is where I went (after like 2 hours of waiting and 1 hour of taking random shuttle buses). What happens then is they send little particles zooming all around France and Switzerland at super high speeds. Then they smack them into each other, and it will re-create conditions that existed around the time of the Big Bang (or the "beeg bong" as I kept hearing the Frenchies call it). This will teach us more about the universe as we know it and such things like random particle masses that existed after the beeg bong and why the Cubs cannot win a world series (ok seriously, the answer must lie in science because there is no other explanation!!)

That is my layman's explanation of the LHC but you can read more about it yourself on the webpage dedicated to the new LHC. I basically spent my day wandering around CERN and its various sites and trying to learn about physics, which was quite complicated enough for me in school, when I was so horrible at physics that my reputation preceded me and most people refused to be my lab partner...Anyway a lot of the explanations were in French, about half of which I understood. You get my drift. It was also massively crowded because the open house was for ONE DAY ONLY and you see, even in Switzerland, people are not so refined that they can resist this kind of American gimmicky advertising!

Well CERN was interesting, but it won't make for much of a blog. I leave it to you, gentle reader, to explore the world wide web (which was invented at CERN) if you have more interest in these subjects. There's a lot of cool experiments going on over here!

Vampire Weekend

2008-04-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

No, those are not my plans for tomorrow. It's a new CD I downloaded after being recommended by a guy I work with, Geoff, after his mate (friend, for those of us non-Brits) recommended it to him.

If you know me, you will know that I am obsessed with music. If you are a random person who has stumbled upon my blog, let me be the first to inform you, gentle reader: I am obsessed with music. I NEED it to function and survive, especially sometimes to get through mundane tasks like my job or cleaning house, and to be my happy self. As much as I love eating, if I had to give up either eating (assuming I would not die) or music, it would sadly be food. I think the iPod is the greatest invention ever for a music lover. What could possibly be better than having your entire musical collection with you wherever you go?! I am happy to report that I have a 4 year old iPod with the black and white screen...I think it was the last model they released before the color one.

Anyway I love music, almost any kind, and concerts, and live music, and finding new music. But unfortunately I live in the equivalent of the dark ages here in Switzerlandin that respect because I have no radio or really anyone who can give me suggestions of new things (or old) I have not heard of, especially because I have a rather limited social circle (and life for that matter).

But I downloaded the self-titled Vampire Weekend CD last night and it is REALLY cool! Apparently they have played on SNL and are playing at the Metro this Sunday, so maybe I am just totally behind the times. I really like it and recommend it.

So anyone have any musical suggestions for me? My tastes are fairly simple:

Generally I like happy, upbeat music (I do not like, for example, scary bands like Korn) and not stuff that is too weird (for example, 8 minutes of a digeridoo). I like also other genres that people often hate like country and I like good old fashioned classic rock. I am ready to spend spend spend on iTunes because I have been dying for some new music lately, so if you have any ideas please pass them my way!

Caprices

2008-03-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

So as I mentioned last week, there was a big music festival going on in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, that I booked last-last minute tickets to for my friend Bhav and me. I think I also mentioned work has been pretty stressful. Needless to say I practically had a panic attack on my way to RUN to the 6pm train to get the heck out of town. I caught it at airport and Bhav met me at the main station in town. After a few minutes of throwing our bags all over the seats, we settled in for our 2 hour ride with some strawberries and a bottle of champagne. I never saw so many heads turn with jealousy as when that I released the cork for that ever so distinct *POP!* There's nothing quite like the sound of champagne opening to signal a holiday commencing!

Two hours, miles of gossip and a bottle of champagne later, we arrived in Sierre and asked till we found the funicular which would take us up the mountain to the resort town of Crans-Montana. I thought it was really cool that you took a funi up to the town instead of having the town situated way below (a lot of ski resorts here are like this). Our hotel was located conviently right behind the festival so it was close enough to hear the action and see the tents and walk home (you would think...more on this in a minute) but not loud enough to keep us awake. Brilliant!! We primped up for our night out - I decided to wear heels (again, more on this) and Bhav had some sexy boots of which one of the zippers broke as she was zipping it up. We were so clever that we laced it up around the outside with one of our long snowboard boot laces...function and fashion!! As we could not look any better at this point, it was time to head out.

We had dinner at a delicious little italian resto called La Raphaele. Yes, I am going to talk about the food, but I will limit it to just describing the tagliatelle pasta...it was thick and not flat, but more dense...I suppose in some way like the shape of a flattish carrot stick? Anyway, it was in a delicious super fresh tomato sauce with smoked mozzeralla and basil....mmmmmmmmmmm. The rest of the meal was also good, pizza, dessert and limoncello!

Next we headed out to the concert, again asking all the way there. Bhav, besides a fun friend is an excellent person to have with you when traveling, as she is never afraid to ask anyone for anything (leading to directions and also good tables and free drinks) and also seems to make friends (or flirt, though she dismisses this claim) with everyone around. And people always know her wherever she goes so there is further support to this argument. I digress...we were making our way to Caprices. So it turns out that the festival was in this humongous tent city. We walked into the tent city and went down about 80 flights of stairs and ended up in this big downstairs basement like thing filled with woodchips and drunk people. From here we walked down the hall to see...Eagle Eye Cherry. The best part was that we heard "Save Tonight" within about 3 minutes of walking in there. And it was THE LONGEST version of "Save Tonight" I have ever heard, at least 10 minutes, full of all the gimmicks...audience participation, clapping, reggae breakdowns, solo jams...saaaaaaaave tonight!!

After Eagle Eye we wandered around and saw another cool band called Nouvelle Vague. That's "New Wave" in French. The band does covers of older songs but adds this cool jazzy, bossa nova brazilian type flavor to them. Apparently there are several female vocalists but we saw 2, one of whom was more serious with a really good voice and the other who was a total performer and looked like she was doing a cross between a pole dance and having a seizure the entire time she was on stage. The music was really cool though, and it was definitely a good concert. After this we saw GrandMaster Flash which was fun. It was just like being in a big frat party. Surprisingly for being considered a total badass DJ, he was really cheesy and funny. He kept telling us to jump up over the mountains and how awesome we were. Anyway we were totally dying of thirst and it was about 2, so we climbed back up through 80 flights of stairs and emerged from the underground.

Remember what I said about my heels and the hotel? Somehow when I was leaping up to "Jump" by Kris Kross in my heels I felt fine, but as soon as we were outside my feet were about to fall off. I have never worn heels to a concert in my life and I will NEVER do it again. Yes, I looked good. But not worth it. We emerged totally lost and despite the fact that our hotel was so nearby, we could not find it. I walked around in my stockings while Bhav asked every person passing by if they knew where the hotel was. Finally we were directed the right way and got there. And guess who got in the elevator with us. Eagle Eye!! Well I don't know for sure. But seriously he was a rocker dude with a cool attitude and he really LOOKED like Eagle Eye. Within about 30 seconds I was asleep despite the fact that we could hear the festival going on well into the night.

The next morning we woke up and to our surprise, realized we were staying in an AMAZING hotel. Check out the view!!! We went down for breakfast and who did we see again...yes EAGLE EYE!!! There were quite a few randoms talking to him. So we think it really was. Anyway, after this we went for a little swim in the pool and then headed out to the ski rental place which was across town. Town was super super cute and reminded me a lot of Vail.

Here's a tip for when you go to Crans Montana. Everything closes between 12 and 2:30. INCLUDING SKI RENTAL PLACES!!! We got there, and I had already booked (and paid 40 EUR for) snowboard hire and the place was shut. Fortunately Bhav again made some friends who told us that there was a hire shop just below the cable car up the mountain. We went there and picked up some boards and headed up.

The slopes at Crans-Montana were amazing. Wide open and sunshine and we had no queues for the lifts. The snow was excellent. But my favorite? Well the apres ski bars of course. There were 2 really cool ones - one of which was in the middle of a slope!! Despite last week's resolution to not drink and board, I had to make an exception for the holiday. The place was COOL and we had to take advantage!

Notice the nets under the tables to hold all your ski gear. Clever!

Around 5:30 we boarded down to the bottom and continued our walking around town. For dinner we tried to get seated in this Thai resto but the guy was a total jerk and resistant to Bhav's charms. Then we tried for takeout (the resto was advertised as takeaway) and he told us that the other "customers" would be first and we would have to wait at least an hour. Funny enough when we asked if we could just get 2 pad thai tofu, it only took 10 minutes. Ah well.

Anyway the rest of the night we ate our thai and drank wine at the free apres-ski party in town called "Swatch Get Hot" and then made our way back to the hotel and funicular and train...alllll the while still in our snowboard clothes mind you and boots (I was SO happy I decided to leave my board at home). Of course on the train ride back to Geneva the loudest people in Switzerland sat right behind us. I moved half a car down and was able to sleep despite them.

Long story short...Crans Montana is cool. Another top trip in Switzerland!

Two fun facts

2008-03-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

Hello gentle reader! Well I have much to blog about from my weekend. But 2 things first -

1) Brooks Brothers no iron fitted shirts are beyond my wildest dreams in terms of awesomeness. I recently acquired one (thanks Mom!) when I was home and gave it its first washing at my favorite place..oh you know it, yes the laundromat, last night. Directions say to wash, tumble dry, remove and hang promptly. Well I did just that and even schlepped it home in a duffel bag before I hung it and it looks perfect!! They are expensive but I think well worth the investment or at least add a few into your wardrobe. Since I moved to Switzerland, I stopped dry cleaning (wash and press shirts are 7 francs A SHIRT) and although I have become really expert at ironing and somewhat enjoy it, I would still prefer to not iron. And frankly this shirt looks even better just out of the dryer than my ironing job.

2) I found out that there has been a billboard of my belle-mere (Justin's mere) put up near one of Chicago's most historic landmarks. Now if you know where I used to live, it's over there, and you can find it and check it out. I think it's really cool, and honestly, has anyone out there ever personally known someone featured on a billboard? I'm not going to post the photo, you'll have to hunt it down yourself like a scavenger hunt! How's that for a fun fact?!

It's sittin by the overcoat, the second shelf, the note she wrote

2008-03-27T15:19:00.000-07:00

It's been a long day. It's been LONG week. I mean truly, from a work perspective, one of the longest in my entire career. And it's Thursday only. It's not that the days are so long - I am coming in around 8 and working till around 8 or 9 - I've worked longer. But the stress in my office at the moment is incredible, and everyone is just really streteched.

Anyway, tomorrow is the weekend and Bhav and I got in last minute to the Caprices festival thingy! So tomorrow we leave work around 530, hop on the train, get to Crans Montana where the snow is supposed to be AWE-SOME DUUUUUDE and then we check into our four star hotel (balla!!!), go to concerts and boogie all night long, then drag ourselves out of bed on Saturday to hit that pow. Yeaaaah!! I am super excited. I just washed out my ski clothes in the sink. It has to do for now.

Ok, gotta get some sleep so I can get up early and pack. But we got concert ticket, 4 star hotel stay, and ski pass for about 250 CHF each. Good right? Stay tuned gentle reader, I have a feeling we will get some stories out of this one!

Wait for It...

2008-03-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

I have to make a soapbox statement for this:

Does everyone out there watch How I Met Your Mother?

This is such a good tv show. And I don't have a TV here and have to make a real effort to download things, pay for them, etc so I really mean it. I am addicted to this show, LOST, 24, and Grey's Anatomy. LOST is finally good again, but we are in so deep now that if you turned it on randomly, you too would be...LOST. 24 isn't on yet as far as I know. Grey's Anatomy is off for a while as they are recovering from the strike, and does anyone else agree with me that Grey's is totally stupid now?? Are Meredith and Derek "seriously" over?? That show needs to "seriously" stop churning through the same 3 stupid storylines. Anyone else think Hann is trying to be the new (but not at all the same) Addison Shepherd??

Anyway, my point is, dramas get boring and stupid, and this show is consistently AWESOME. If you don't watch it, tonight's episode has Britney Spears guest-starring so should be worth a look.

5 reasons to watch HIMYM:
1. It's only 30 minutes, so if you don't like it, no biggie
2. It is really funny and I laugh out loud all the time watching it
3. Good guest stars (see above). Also had Bob Barker on one (when Barney went on "The Price is Right"
4. I think on at 7:30 central time Mondays - so you won't miss your other shows or bedtime. You can also watch it for free on CBS.com.
5: Three words: Neil Patrick Harris

I challenge anyone who disagrees with me on this to a slap bet!!!

Snowberries

2008-03-24T11:42:00.001-07:00

It has been snowing almost all day in Geneva. It was mostly what I would describe as "Lake Effect Snow," which my fellow Chicagoans will explain to you is big fat snowflakes that fall around the city due to the lake but don't really do much damage in terms of piling up. Since about 4pm though, it has really been coming down and now there is substantial accumulation. This puts a bit of a hitch in my plans to do laundry tonight as I refuse to put on boots etc and add to the annoyingness that is the laundromat. All the skiers I know are super excited about our recent cold and wintry mix streak. Everyone else (read: boring stupid people) is complaining. I have to admit I am not looking forward to walking in this to work tomorrow, but the colder it stays, the longer the ski season will last.

Although I'm surrounded by ski resorts, it's quite rare for Geneva itself to get snow. It only happened twice last year, and this is the first big one I can remember this year. The outlying areas can get a lot, but in the city it is not common. This weekend has been interesting. On Friday, a holiday here, I left my apartment in a light drizzle to head into work about 11am. By the time I was about 10 minutes down the road and exiting my tram stop, it was (conveniently) snowing. As far as I know my office building is at the same elevation as my apartment, so I thought this was really weird.

Saturday and Sunday I was snowboarding in the day so I don't know what the conditions were like in Geneva. In the mountains though, the snow was superb and some of the best I've ever skied in. Sunday I was in Flaine which is huge but there aren't many trees there, which makes it look like a big Artic tundra. The snow is always super, and I decided to take a lesson to refresh my snowboarding memory. I also had my bindings adjusted and felt much better on my board at the end of the day, so looking forward to next weekend already.

Saturday I went with my friend Bhav and a friend of hers, Cheryl, to Les Gets, part of the gigantic and awesome Portes du Soleil resort where you can ski back and forth between France and Switzerland. (Culture tip, gentle reader: pronounced "ley-zhay" and obviously not "les gets"). It started off as a beautiful sunny day, so after a few runs, we thought it would be a good idea to get some food for a picnic and enjoy lunch on the mountain. We went into the store and got cheese, bread, salami, chips and some strawberries and naturally, champagne. Except when we came out of the store, the sun was gone, and it was snowing. And when we got to the top of the chairlift, it was even worse and blowing around.

Call me uninspired, pessimistic, whatever - at this point, I was not keen at all on sitting outside in this snowstorm and having our "picnic." Picnics are not meant for bad weather and everyone knows the ski lunch break for us average sporty folk (as you know I am as self-described in my earlier posts) is meant to warm up and eat something good at a exorbitantly expensive price. However Bhav, ever the optimist, insisted we continue on down to find a nice spot and have our picnic, and surely the sun would come out. For the record, it didn't. She was carrying all the food in her rucksack except the strawberries, which were tucked neatly in my ski jacket right under my boobs. We couldn't find a good spot immediately and it was decided that we would just "pull over" to the side of a cat track and have the picnic. Sitting on our snowboards actually made decent picnic tables. The only problem was it was windy and freezing. So we ate with our gloves on and used the snow to wash off fruits and things. Although I was cold and grumpy, it did end up being a nice picnic and we were all giddy after drinking a bottle of champagne, surely as people skied by thinking "who the hell are those nutters?!" As a side note, my next two ski runs were absolutely horrible - I think half thhe bubbles went into my legs and the other half went into my brain. That's the last time I drink while skiing. Now apres-ski is a different story...

Anyway Les Gets was an awesome resort, beautiful ski area with lots of trees, views of the Mont Blanc and a really cute town, so we are trying to get back there for a weeken before the season ends. If the season holds up, my plans for the rest are as folllows:

This weekend: Snowboarding in Crans-Montana and Caprices music festival Saturday, Les Contamines Sunday

April 5/6: Les Contamines and Flaine

April 12/13: weekend in Les Gets

April 19/20: maybe Zermatt?

April 26: then the season is over at most places and I am going to Poland that weekend to see Abby & co! Yah!!

Here are some pictures from the picnic! Doesn't it look WARM

Not one of my strengths...

2008-03-15T14:59:00.000-07:00

Lucky for me, Justin is a fantastic cook. I'll never forget when we started dating and he would just whip stuff up in the kitchen. What a way to woo a woman! I mean nothing crazy but fairly simple meals that tasted really really good. He used lot of spices that we never had at home and I was amazed (me coming from a family of picky eaters, only my mom and I are not, and will in a goatlike fashion eat pretty much almost anything except olives).

So when I moved to Switzerland, where there are not Penny's noodle shops or Heaven on Seaven or Zig Zag around every corner, and I don't have my super tall chef, I had to start cooking myself. I have gotten really really good at making eggs and omlettes. Of course, I was also doing that 8 years ago the summer I lived in New York and was super poor, and ate eggs all the time because they are cheap and versatile. Needless to say I really sucked at making eggs 8 years ago and it's been a long road. I am also pretty good at making veggies different ways and soups. I hardly ever follow recipes but just mix things up and see how it goes. Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes I throw it all out and make the eggs.

Tonight I was inspired to make these meatballs I found on my friend Tara's blog, courtesy of Ray-Ray (who incidentally, I love. Rachel Ray may be super perky and annoying and everywhere, but she is a cute little dork and successful and funny, so good for her). I was able to get all the ingredients basically no problem and started mixing it up.

Cooking in Switzerland is always an adventure. First, any American recipe I use involves a lot of math and converting, which is not fun. Why can't we just use the metric system??? Seriously, it would make things so much easier. Then, any Swiss thing I have to cook has the instructions in French so I have my dictionary by my side to look up every word. So my kitchen, while worldly, is overly complicated when it comes to using recipes. Anyway, I made the meatballs and then as instructed, drizzled them with olive oil. I am not very good at "drizzling" which is something I have known for a long time. Can someone advise of a technique for this? Preferably an idiot proof one??

I put them in the oven and all seemed to be going good until I noticed it smelled a bit like burning in my apt. I opened up the oven which was full of smoke and smelled like a greasy barbeque. Great. A huge puddle of olive oil was in the bottom of the oven and I suppose causing all the trouble. So I took out the meatballs, cleaned the oven, and put them back in. Five minutes later more burning, but what do I do at this point?? They need to brown!! So finally I take them out and open all the windows to un-smoke myself. Meanwhile I take my tomato sauce and add my store bought pesto and the zest of one lemon to it, as per Ray-Ray's suggestion.

Well, the meatballs were ok, but they tasted a little like a burnt hamburger, and the tomato sauce tasted like lemon. So not really that good. Also maybe it was because I used low-fat mozzerella, but it didn't melt that well and then the inside of the meatball was just kind of gross. Anyway, not very successful. I think it could be but it's fairly involved and for just me, I am not sure if I want to bother again. I really have been trying to be a better cook and don't know why if you follow the directions, it doesn't work out as planned. I always seem to have some major mishap (grease fire, huge spill, etc) that also doesn't help.

But at least my man can cook.

Hangin around

2008-03-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

Hello gentle reader! Well I apologize for being gone awhile, especially to one of my loyal readers, Chris, my semi "beau-frere" as they say in French. Yes Chris, I DID get my clothes out of the washing machine. I had to go back at 7am all bleary eyed and confused to get them out. The waterproofing totally worked by the way!! So if you have GOREtex outerwear that has lost a bit of its oomph, I recommend you try Nikwax Tech Wash and TX Direct.

After this little incident, I was supposed to go ice climbing the following day which was also a wash out due to the fact that it was raining. This was a real bummer as it is now too late in the season and too warm to be able to go again until next year. However the day after that was an awesome day out of spring snowboarding which was really fun and a nice treat after all my studying.

So then what? Well then I worked 3 days, went out to dinner with my boss, drank a lot and listened to hilarious stories about how the Swiss do job interviews...then went home, packed, slept 3 hours, went to airport, flew to London, flew to Dallas, tried to fly to San Antonio but flight was cancelled, got a ride, drove there, got there, saw two of my best friends from school, watched 1 get married, saw Justin and snuggled, flew back to Chicago, said bye to Justin, saw my mom and dad and sister and kitties for one day and then flew to Brussels, then to Geneva and had another crazy 3 days of work and NOW I am done with that. I had a great time in the U.S. but all this running around left me exhausted. So last night I decided to just come home, relax with some wine and catch up on LOST. It is soooo good this season! Anyone else agree?

Today I have also allowed myself to be extremely lazy. I slept late, watched LOST again, only leaving the house to get some hangover remedy (McDonalds). Guess who I saw when I was out? My French professor, the dirty old man from last year. Remember him??

OK, another story on Professor...I saw him earlier this summer with Justin and his mom, when we were going to Yvoire. Being the social little butterfly that I am, I went over and called "Professor! Yoo hoo!" and thought he didn't hear me. When I called his name, he turned and looked really angry/embarassed to see me. Huh?? He was also with a WOMAN. Interesting! He gave a gruff hello and that was it for the rest of the day. Totally weird. So today I saw him and tried to avoid him in order to avoid a similarly awkward situation. He passed me while I was heading into McDo. I was wearing sunglasses - as everyone knows, sunglasses are an excellent disguise and people can't really see you when you are wearing them. I went in and ordered my food and as I was walking out, he was there again!! Not sure if he saw me or not but I didn't say anything this time. Totally weird. I do run into people I know quite frequently in Geneva - and I don't know very many people - so this gives you an indication of how big the city is.

More random thoughts on my recent trip...

London Gatwick is AWESOME. I highly recommend if you need to travel through London to choose this airport. It is super nice with lots of good food, shopping, a starbucks! (I abstained) and is clean and easy to get around. I bought some fun things at the pharmacy, a shirt at mango and a fun little travel mouse for my laptop.

Business class is also really AWESOME. I treated myself to an upgrade since my travel time on Thursday alone was like 20 hours or something ridiculous like this. So from LGW to DFW I was in AA biz class and I loved every second. I have only flown business twice before, when I went to India. I will tell you - I upgraded for 300 bucks and 25k miles and it was worth every cent. It's like flying in a little baby hotel. The fact that you have more room and can choose which movies you want to watch instead of being subjected to "Bee Movie" with the rest of the plane is cool in itself. But the food is also really really good and they bring you whatever you want, whenever you want it. Also the pillow and blankets were snuggly and my bed folded flat (not like lie down flat, more like sleeping on a 45 degree angle flat but still not bad). We also got noise cancelling headphones which I now want to buy. I chose the good route to do this on as we were on a 777 to Dallas and the Chicago to Brussels flight was a 767...those biz class passengers did NOT have their own tv screens. That is a joke. Even a lot of economy class flights offer this now to passengers. This was a pretty good experience but my favorite of all the airlines to take is Swiss. They have the individual movie consoles in all seat classes (although they break sometimes) which you can even rewind and fast forward which is cool. The food is very good, they let you drink and don't charge you, and the attendants are very nice. I'm so easy to please, I know.

Last is a travel tip which I credit Abby with! I started doing this after she told me and it's the best travel tip in a while I have come across: bring an empty water bottle with you through security and then fill it before you get on the plane. International flights especially are SO long and you get majorly dehydrated...a tiny cup of water is NOT going to help. And buying water in the airport as we know is a major rip off. I bring a 1L Nalgene with me now and it works out great. Most airports do have water fountains or I have even filled up from the bathroom sink in Switzerland (hey, it's Evian water in Geneva that comes through the tap - it's the same water source). Obviously in India you can't do that, but it works in a lot of places. If you can't find a fountain, an airport bar or resto will usually give you some tap water if you ask politely and say "sorry to trouble you" (this is a British saying that I have picked up and I found it really helps getting people to do things for you).

Well, this is a nice long random post. Tomorrow I am working but I might encounter some interesting bits of Switzerland on my way out and about. You never know when that will happen!

C'est le comble!!

2008-02-28T15:15:00.000-08:00

I learned a good expression in French class tonight - "c'est le comble," which translates roughly to "that really takes the biscuit" or some other equivalent of, a lot of stupid things happened, and that's just the cherry on top. So I ask you, what would be more sad than having to do your laundry at 11pm at the laundromat?

I know! How about YOUR CLOTHES GET LOCKED IN THE WASHING MACHINE??

I have to go to the laundro even though there is a washer and dryer in my building. Why, you ask? Because to use the washer and dryer in the building, you have to have a time slot. Between 9am and 6pm. No Sundays. Oh, and it's like YOUR slot after you sign up, so if you get 3-6pm on Tuesday, you better damn well get your washing done in that time because all the other times belong to someone else. So, since my available laundry slots are oh so conveniently located during the time that 99% of people WORK, I have to go to the laundro down the street.

I used to go on the weekends but it's a total fight to the teeth for the dryers and too many randoms going in and out with annoying children. So now I go after work or French, which can be a bit dangerous because it closes at midnight. And there is no attendant - it's video survellianced. Last time I made it out around 1150 and there was one poor sap still in there. I didn't know what was going to happen at 12 and didn't care to find out. Would all the washing machines turn into white horses and the giant industrial dryer which is 1 extra franc turn into a pumpkin?

I should have stuck around.

Tonight I was on a mission to re-gortex my ski clothes for the weekend and also wash my work clothes, as my personal responsibilities to anything but studying had been put completely on hold the past 2 weeks (and the efforts did pay off, thank you very much). The re-gortex required 1 wash to get the clothes clean with some special stuff and then another with the actual waterproofing crap in the wash. So about 1145, cycle 2 is still rinsing and my other clothes are in the dryer. I speed through one rinse cycle in order to get it onto the spin, so I can take them out around 1155. At 1155, I am over at the dryers pulling out my clothes, and thinking that I should probably open the door in case it automatically locks or something. HA! Technology techschmology. I walk back over to the dryer and was just about to then get out my ski clothes when

the lights go out.

I yelp.

A light flashes.

I freeze.

the lights go out again.

Now I am panicking, in the dark, trying to get all my clothes out of the dryer. I lose socks between taking them out of my drawer and getting over to my shoes, so I am not too pleased that I am now trying to retrieve all those little guys with only the streetlight from outside and this freaky ass light in the laundro blinking on and off like some kind of beacon on LOST.

Then it hits me. No electricity can't mean that my clothes are stuck in the washer, can it? Oh YES. What the hell?!!?! Who designed these things or triggered them so they would all LOCK at midnight. I mean what am I going to do, put a shirt in there and spin it around all night? I pulled and kicked and yelled and swore but I could not open that washer door!!! So, I wrote a terse note en francais (I realize now I conjugated 1 verb wrong), and left my poor ski clothes in the washer for the night.

I guess this is what happens when you live in a country where things always run on time. When they say closed, they mean....ferme.And now that I think about it, sitting in a wet washer for 7 hours probably totally ruins the 2 hours I spent trying to waterproof them.

C'est le comble!!!

Swiss Meteo

2008-02-23T03:19:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things about Switzerland is the seasons. And when you come from Chicago, where you have two seasons - winter and construction - it is nice to have four long, kinda meandering ones. I'm noticing this today because it is sunny and gorgeous, and I decided to head to the store in just a t shirt and fleece. And I was pleasantly surprised that the sun was not deceiving me - you know those days when it LOOKS nice outside, and you get outside and its not. This happens to me all the time in Chicago, most notably when I went to Cubs games two days in a row, and the first day I was hot in a t shirt and jeans, and the second day looked the same so I wore the same thing, but I was so cold that my friend Marisa and I had to buy children's sweatshirts and hot chocolate. Anyway today I stepped outside fearing deception, but it was like a nice warm hug.

Like anything in Switzerland, the change in the weather doesn't happen overnight. It kind of teases you at first and then slowly transforms itself. I always say the winter is cold, not too cold. Cold enough to ski, cold enough to get views of snow-capped mountains when walking to work, cold enough to enjoy a fondue and a vin chaud and not feel the least bit guilty. Not cold enough that your face hurts, the pipes freeze, your snot freezes, school is canceled and you can't leave the house, but can only snuggle under a blanket with a big warm Zaza (this part about Chicago winter is not too bad).

Last summer in Geneva was weird. It rained almost every day. Fine for me, bad for my unemployed boyfriend who didn't speak french and had no tv. You read a lot of books and watch movies. For whatever reason though the weekends were gorgeous (god's way of telling us to work hard during the week?) and the summer was again, hot but not too hot. Hot enough to take nice walks on the lake and get two scoops of ice cream. Hot enough to go to a water park with a slide and feel like you are nine years old, until a real nine year old slams into you going down the slide and you remember you're not. Hot enough to enjoy a crisp white wine and a fondue under a cool August sky. (who says you can only have fondue in the winter)? Not so hot that the only way to cool off is to shower in freezing cold water, your old style is warm before you even get it back from the vendor, you're about to pass out on the El platform too hot.

The days in winter get so very short, and I really noticed this when I first arrived. The sun was rising at 8:30. No joke. And it was dark by 5. But again, this didn't last long. Now coming out of my second winter, already the sun is up now when I am and sets about 20 past 6. In the summer the days are wonderfully long, lounging out in front of you and never seeming to end, just like the comically big shadows you cast walking in the late afternoon sunshine.

And spring and fall, which barely exist in Chicago? I am spoiled to have such nice even seasons. Fall is when the grapes are all harvested in the vineyards and if you recall my post about wine tasting, you know how beautiful it is out there. And there is always this smell in the air!! Like fresh fruit. I think it's the vineyards. It is powerful and delicious, and I really can't describe it other than that. You just have to visit and hope the wind is blowing the right way. Spring is definitely coming now, I can tell by the lengthening days, and by the ridiculously large Easter candy display at the grocery store (I will have to somehow take a picture of this, it is really just...a sight to see). Today as I was walking home a group of 3 little boys was skipping along the sidewalk and suddenly stopped, peering into a neighbor's garden. "Regarde, les fleurs!! Wowwow!!" I peeked in to see sure enough, some little white flowers were just beginning to emerge. Maybe I'm just romanticizing it because it's a nice sunny day but really...it's pretty darn good.

One other tiny little benefit...I have seen more rainbows (arc-en-ciel) here than I have the rest of my life put together. Especially at work I can see huge ones, going from end to end over the airport. I'm sure there's a good scientific explanation for it. This one is from my apartment balcony after a rainstorm last summer.

Swiss Neighbors

2008-02-22T14:37:00.000-08:00

Ok, I love Switzerland, let me make this clear. It is pretty, the weather is moderate to wonderful 365 days per year, the food is excellent, things just WORK and run ON TIME and people are generally polite and nice. Generally. But people are stereotyped as not neighborly and keeping to themselves and someone just proved em all right this morning!

This morning, when I walked out of my apartment building, for whatever reason, I fell. Completely stumbled and fell on the ground like an idiot. And this woman who was passing and was no more than 5 feet away when I fell didn't even flinch!! She just kept on walking. Now I am not sure how you do not hear a human being fall over onto the sidewalk but maybe she was deaf. Anyway, this is just an example of how "neighborly" some of the Swiss residents can be.

I am a bad ass

2008-02-16T01:20:00.000-08:00

Exhibit A.

For those of you who didn't already hear about this, a few weeks ago I went ice climbing. 2008 brought some kind of bee with it for me, a bee which jumped in my bonnet and said "last year in Switzerland! You gotta do EVERYTHING!!" So I have gone snowboarding taken ski lessons, did the balloon thing, also went snowshoeing (super fun, I loved it, and at least I can do that in Chicago) and last weekend snow toboganning which is in huge inner tubes down enormous chutes in Leysin, Switzerland. I screamed going down all of them like an idiot, but it was fun.

A few weeks ago, I tried ice climbing with a guide who had taken me on the snowshoeing trip. The guide, Roger Fleming, is a super cool laid back guy who is also just a teensy bit obsessed with safety and caution to your surroundings in everything you do. So after meeting him snowshoeing and hearing he did an ice climbing course, I signed up.

You may know that from time to time (de temps en temps, I learned in French last week, and it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to make the "liaison") I have done my fair share of above-average sporty things. I did the Chicago Triathlon. I have done winter backpacking, rock climbing. I snowboard fairly regularly. I also complain a lot!! So while I will mentally want to push myself, sometimes my lazy body, which I think is just an average sporty body, not above average, will cry "why are you doing this to me???" Then it goes downhill. However having done these things means I can do other things, so usually I try them.

The day of ice climbing was after a particularly bad snowboarding outing - we were in big powder all day, fun for about one long run and then I was dead tired (and my legs complained a LOT). Another girl was in the ice climbing course with me, which was in Chamonix. We geared up in our 4 layers of clothes (seriously), boots, gaiters, harness, helmet. Then Roger says "we are going to hike about 15 minutes to the spot, now try not to get warm, because if you perspire, you will be cold, and you do not want to be cold when ice climbing." Of course, the hike was like a 85 degree angle uphill in ice and snow, and I was immediately sweating. And my legs were burning. I was thinking um, what the heck are you doing you idiot??!!! I was thinking about how much I did not really like rock climbing and maybe this was a bad idea. I tried to ignore it and be thinking instead on not sliding off the side of the mountain, which given the icy trek, would not have been that difficult to do. We pressed on and got to the spot, where I practically took off all my clothes, then froze and threw them all back on.

During the day, Roger and the other guide, Kursten, taught us a lot about ice and its strength and weaknesses, what makes good ice, etc. For obvious reasons, ice climbing is done in the shade, and you do spend a fair amount of time standing around, so when that was happening, I was getting pretty cold. We wore crampons and had these big ice picks as seen in the photo (both SHARP). First we learned how to use the picks in the ice. You have to really swing your arm and use the leverage to THUNK it in there. You can definitely feel when it is in good and not. At first we were just swinging like a bunch of monkeys with tools and ice was flying off everywhere! But after about 10 min, we had the hang of it.

Then we practiced going up the ice just using our feet, no arm tools. Crampons are pretty bad ass. They are like detachable cleats of destruction. Roger kept telling us to watch out for the rope or we could easily cut them. You have to just kick in your foot, then the next, and walk up like you are going up a ladder. If the ice was more soft, this was easy, but on the hard ice, it was quite difficult. You also need to not waste energy kicking and kicking at the damn thing. Maybe you just get one of the little diggers in there good, and you need to trust yourself that this is enough. I did find it a little easier than rock climbing, or maybe I just trusted my body more with all these additional claw-like appendages I had.

Finally we scaled up the thing twice (once half way and once all the way up) using the picks and crampons, and on a rope of course. The vertical ascent was like climbing a ladder against a house - not 90 degrees, in some parts a bit, but mostly I would say more like 75 or 80. The climb was very challenging, and partly because my hands were FREEZING cold. I think they just kind of formed around the picks and froze like that. Your hands are constantly for the most part above your head, so all the blood is draining away from them. And they are in snow and ice. BRRR!! But I found I was able to concentrate and get in a good rhythm and just go up, moving left arm, left leg, right arm, right leg, up up up. Hey I was doing it!! By the top I was exhausted, but feeling good and happy. We rappelled down which was fun, also really cool because Roger built an anchor my drilling a hole in the ice!!

Here was what we climbed up (that is Roger at the top, rappelling down)

I am going ice climbing again March 1, probably the last weekend of the season it will be possible, and quite possibly the last time in my life. But I am really looking forward to it.

Our group:

Me at the top of our climb!

By the way, the crazy bee is beginning to suggest I should climb the Mont Blanc this summer...more in the future if I decide to do this...

Bella Svizzera

2008-02-13T13:46:00.000-08:00

Ciao. Most people don't klnow this about Switzerland, but it is actually like 4 mini countries in 1 country. There is the French region, with lots of cigarettes and discotecs. There is the German region, with lots of manufacturing and sausages. There is the Romansch region, which is small and I don't really know about (apparently the language is a "bastardized Latin" that is a QUOTE, not my opinion).

And then there is the Italian region, which I had been dying to get to, and finally, I am here. Buona sera.

I was fortunate enough to get whisked on a last minute work trip to Lugano. When it comes to business trips, if someone said to me "do you want to go to Iraq?," I would probably say yes. This gives you a good indication of the extent of travel fever and my willingness to go wherever. So when I heard Lugano, a place that I had actually been wanting to go for some time, in my Swss country, I was ecstatic.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to stay in a 5 star hotel on the lake. Bellisimo! I can say that the Hotel Eden is one of the nicest places I have stayed in my life. And since it is offseason, we got upgraded to a lake view with no charge. I am here with my colleague Dave. Today I spent working in our Lugano office, had pizza for lunch, and then worked more in the afternoon while watching the sunset over the mountains outside. Then we had dinner at the hotel, in a tranquil restaurant overlooking the lake. Yes, sometimes living in Switzerland is a REAL hardship.

I just finished a fantastic dinner of raviolis, sea bass and vegetables with herbs, wine and prosecco, and a dessert called "harmony." Indeed, I have to say this is a very rare occassion in my crazy job where I am immensely happy I am involved with a particular project! My advice - Lugano is beautiful. Come here if you can. In fact, it is so beautiful, and the food is so good, skip visiting me in Geneva if you have to just so you can come here.

Off to bed...ciao gentle reader.

What have I been "up" to?

2008-01-20T06:41:00.000-08:00

Hello gentle reader. Bonne annee! I have been taking a little break for the past few weeks because since I have been back to Switzerland, my life has been mad. I have been working like crazy, 12-14 hours a day which is nuts. However I am really really trying to not let work control my life so much here, because often (as it is such a huge part of my life, spending 14 hours a day there) it really can control my mood. So although I am slaving away 5 days per week, I have resolved to keep my weekends to MYSELF and no one else.

Well this weekend was the beginning of the 30th Annual Festival International de Ballons in a little area of Switzerland called Chateau D'Oex, about 2 hours from me by train. I had wanted to go to this shindig last year but couldn't for whatever reason, probably WORK. And I originally had wanted to go because my sister and I bought a puzzle a long time ago which just so happened to be a picture of this festival (we never did finish it as there was too much white). I figured blue sky, white snow, pretty balloons...should be something to go see.

Then last week I was poking around on the website and saw that passenger flights were offered. I have to say that riding in a hot air balloon is not something I have ever considered doing. And I am not really afraid of heights, but I am finding that as I get older, they are scaring me a little bit more. However, how often do you get the chance to take a hot air balloon ride in the Swiss Alps in the middle of winter? Right. So I booked the flight for the morning of today, Sunday, got up to a very early 530 alarm clock and by 630 was on the train on the way to Chateau D'Oex (pronounced "chateau doh," I will never understand why the french even bothered with putting xes on the end of words).

It was COLD this morning!! I fortunately bundled up in a layer of long undies, boots and my ski coat and my ski mittens (including liners). I had to be there by 9am, paid up and then wandered around as I was told to come to the field at 945. However around 935 the announcer paged "JACQUELYN D----, JACQUELYN D----- S'IL VOUS D PLAIT ALLEZ A INFORMATION DU VOLS" so I guess they got the time wrong. Or I did.

I was whisked off to Balloon #15 which I immediately liked because it was in the design of a big cartoon bumblebee. There were probably about 20-25 other balloons on the field all in various stages of blowing up. The male passengers were helping our pilot to inflate our balloon while me and another girl stood back and watched.

Very quickly, in about 7 minutes, it was ready. We hopped into the basket which had enough room probably for 6 passengers, but it fit us 4 comfortably. We took up about 2/3 while the pilot had another 1/3 to himself with the gas tanks. The basket came up high enough on me, a bit above my waist, and the floor was nice and cushy since we would be standing the entire time. I felt reasonably comfortable and secure. I saw other balloons taking off and knew we would be soon. I was really excited but also a little nervous. Was I insane? Well, too late now. We were pushed across the snow by some crew to a more open area. Although it was cold, the flames which the pilot would constantly shoot up and off were warm, so I was happy about that. Suddenly we lifted off the ground, and off we went!

The immediate ascent was wonderful. I was worried about my stomach dropping away, but we went up so smoothly and peacefully that I didn't feel anything of the sort. I had a fantastic view of the balloons still on the ground readying themselves and the other ones beginning to take off. We climbed very slowly, flying through the snow-covered valley. All sorts of trees (at one point we flew into the branches of one but our pilot handled it great and we just cruised right through them) and little rivers were below while blue sky and other brightly colored balloons were above us and around us. People in cars and houses below waved and we waved back. I have waved to balloons countless times in the summer in Naperville during the neighboring Lisle's 4th of July "eyes to the skies" balloon festival - it was really funny to think of myself as the person waving!

Once separated from the other balloons a bit more, we began to climb higher. I watched our little shadow on the side of the mountain ascend which was really the only way you could tell. I would describe the ascent if anything as that of an escalator rather than an elevator - it is so gradual and smooth that you really don't notice how high you get until you are there! I admit that once we were up about the same height as the MOUNTAIN TOPS which I think was close to 2800 or 3000 m, I was a little bit scared. That's really high! And I did NOT like looking down and seeing the top of another hot air balloon! I calmed myself by looking around instead of down at first until I was more comfortable. The ride was very gentle and quickly I was back to enjoying the beautiful sights all around me. There were some balloons which were realllly high and flying over the mountains but I think that perhaps these were not for passenger flights as they landed much later than we did and took off earlier. Now that we were up high, we were out of the shadows of the mountains, and the sun was shining brightly upon our brave little bumblebee and the sloping hills to our left. It was extremely quiet and peaceful. The only sounds were that of the talk of the passengers and the radio, and the gas constantly being released into the balloon.

We floated around with the mountain tops for about 20 minutes and then began to descend. Again I was worried my stomach would drop but it didn't. Still, I did not exactly watch the ground though as we were going down!! Instead I watched as other balloons went up and down around us. Sooner than I realized we were not too far off the ground, hovering above the little chalets and waving again. Our pilot directed us towards a large snow covered field and hovered, waiting for the crew to arrive.

As the crew car pulled up, the pilot landed the balloon softly into the snow. The two guys got out and helped to maneuver the balloon onto the truck bed (yes, balloon is still inflated at this point, it was pretty cool, and I am still in the basket!) When the basket was on the bed, the guys secured it and then the womenfolk hopped out.

We ran up to help the crew member to bring down the balloon, the five of us pulling and tugging to bring down the big bumblebee. After a few minutes the balloon, the balloon was mostly deflated and we helped to begin to wrap it up. I was quite surprised that the material of the balloon itself was so thin - my jacket was a heavier material. It was amazing to think that just a humongous sheet of that fabric plus a whole lotta hot air had carried five people up to 3000m! You are apparently supposed to have a glass of champagne after your first balloon flight, but apparently this was not included for us. Oh well. I can drink champagne any time! Overall it was fantastic - a little scary, but it made it exciting and I really enjoyed the beautiful views. It was such a great way to see Switzerland!

In 2 weeks my adventures continue as I am giving ice climbing a try (going with a guide, I'm not stupid enough to do something like that alone). I've put a few ballooning pictures on here but you can see the rest on my kodak gallery page link.

Guten Tag!

2007-12-20T05:03:00.001-08:00

Greetings from Zurich! I left this morning at 830am to go to the normally calm Geneva airport. But what is holiday travel without a ginormous flock of people at every airport in the world? I waited in line to check in for 45 minutes and when I got up to the front, my check in woman appeared panicked as she ran my passport through, especially as my flight had started to board while I toiled in line.

"Oh la la madamoiselle!" she clicked and got out a small little book to find a special phone number. (Incidentally, I love being called "madamoiselle," I find it charming and much better than being called madam). I understood enough French that the computer was claiming there was no boarding pass for me to Chicago. Quoi?? When she was off the phone, she sadly told me that my flight to Zurich (now leaving in 20 minutes) was fine but my flight to Chicago was delayed until 17:45. Seventeen?!! It was supposed to leave at 12:55. Flights that leave at 17:45 are not supposed to fly 9 hours away!! Anyway she was so sweet and felt bad for me that my lunch voucher was only 20 CHF, she told me to lie and say I hadn't gotten one so I could get a better lunch. Ha!!

So, as I have still over 3 hours to kill, this post will be quite random and wandering.

I went to the ATM which is great because the UBS atms can also dispense Euros, Pounds and dollars. If you are a worldly girl like me, you might have noticed that the exchange rate on the dollar is not so good these days. Well, that's good for me, because I get a lot more Francs than I ever got dollars. I have been too lazy to actually make a transfer of funds but I needed to do all my Christmas shopping at home still. So I hit the ATM very very hard to get my dollars needed for 2 weeks of partying and shopping. I got 800 dollars (we got paid a week early for Christmas, isn't that nice??). Except they only come out in 20s....oops. If anyone sees my wallet, they are going to either rob me or turn me into the poliezi!!

I landed in Zurich and used my lunch voucher. I calculated that my lunch was 23CHF (15CHF pizza plus 5 CHF salad plus 3chf coca light) so I was preparing to pay more. Instead, the woman at the counter asked me if I wanted a free Tobelerone. Um, what?? OK!!! Maybe my little friend back in Geneva made some calls for me.

I read about 200 pages in my book and did a little shopping and now I am at a weird internet cafe. The first computer ate 5 francs and shut off after 3 minutes, which is total crap. This one seems ok.

NOW, let's talk about airports. And the Europeans that are in them. And why I don't understand.

1) MOVING QUICKLY. No one over here understands the concept of moving quickly. I mean WALKING. I was running through the airport to make it to my flight, literally running and I get behind Shuffling Sham and Sharon and cannot get around them. MOVE people! Or don't take up so much room! I don't even understand how you can even move that slow. Then, I was running through the security line (still behind Sham and Sharon) which was thank god empty except for me and them and they would NOT move to a belt or take their bags to go somewhere or anything. They both just stood there in my way, turning around in a daze and not attempting to move through the line. The kicker is I knew that they were on a flight to Helsinki which also left at 1020, same as mine (it is now 1005). Are you high?? (actually, I did mutter this under my breath, because I saw NO WAY that any person whose plane was about to leave would act like that, unless they were high)

2) QUEUEING. Be proud to know how to wait in line, my fellow Americans. We may grumble and crowd but we are NO cutters. It must be because we are raised so well - "No cuts no buts no coconuts" and taunts of "she CUUuuuuuuUUUUUt!!!" from a young age. I first learned about this phenomenon when I was in India in 2006. However I figured there are a billion people in the country and they are probably used to having to fight crowds everywhere and it is just natural. So, you would imagine my surprise in orderly, orderly Switzerland, that there are just as many cutters here!!! And unlike Indian cutters, Euro cutters are RUDE and think it is their birthright to cut you. I got in the back of a super long line to check in at the airport and this entire family suddenly pulls up next to me trying to get in front of me. I shot the woman a totally dirty look and she ignored me, but she had to answer her phone or something so I reclaimed my proper place in line. heheheh. But later while I was checking my phone, I was cut again by some ipod wearing jerk who ignored my cold stares. Why do you think it is ok to cut?!! I saw it happen at least 10 times. Forget, incidentally, about skiing or getting a drink at a bar, those places are 100 times worse than the airport. But checking in at the airport is generally such a miserable experience that it would really be doing humanity a favor if these people would learn not to cut!

Well. I'm down to about a minute here so I'll post this bad boy and go. Its now 230. And they don't sell english books here. Off to make some fun for myself in the Zurich airport and hopefully hopefully see some of you soon!

And of course gentle readers, Happiest of Holidays and New Years to you. Looking forward to more adventures in 2008!! Aufwiedersein Au Revoir and goodbye!

More Happiness!

2007-12-16T09:37:00.000-08:00

Another post about les animaux. I have included some kitty photos below! I am sure some people think I am weird because I get so obsessed with animals. I am sorry, but when you study ALL day and two little furballs sleep at your feet to keep you company, or when you close your door to get some sleep and they open it and come nuzzle right next to your face, or when they have a perfectly good bowl of water in the next room but prefer to drink out of YOUR glass...that's cute. I never had pets growing up and after getting Hiccup and Rookie, I learned why people get so obsessed with their animals. They are so loving and generally hilarious. So since I missed out on getting to know pets for the first 25 years of my life, I think that's why I get such a kick out of them now.

Another thing that is great about animals here is they are bilingual. Seriously. I know a lot of people who give commands to their pets in English and French and they LISTEN. A little sad that the canine population of Switzerland probably has a better grasp on a second language than a majority of Americans? Also dogs are welcome everywhere, as I have said before. I have actually never seen an animal misbehave when I am out and about so I guess it works. I don't know if I would take my dog to IKEA but in Switzerland it is your prerogative to do so.

Here are some pictures of Pat and Fleur, my weekend guests. Thanks to Karen for letting me see them when they were babies, and to Geoff and Severine, to whom these little guys actually belong to!

To be honest I'm not 100% positive this is them...but I think so. There were 4 and 2 were all grey (the girls) and both boys had a little white face. This is from when they were born in May. Pat has the white face.

I love this picture! C'est trop chou!!

Here's Justin with Pat at the end of July when we went to watch them. Check out how fuzzy he is (Pat, not Justin).

Ok then I took a few more funny ones this weekend...generally all in various stages of napping or waking up.

Santa?

Pat feels the same way I do about reading Circular 230

Snuggles!!!

Oh Tennanbaum oh Tennanbaum...

2007-12-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

What the heck is a "tennanbaum?" My sister and I sing O Christmas Tree this way when we like to be "jerky" as my mom would say.

I got a "tennenbaum" this year and it is so cute. See my photos. It's real too! And amazingly only 22CHF. Cheaper than most lunches in Switzerland. I got an even smaller one for my office that was 16CHF.

I LOVE Christmas. I love the lights, the smells, the cheesy songs, the horrble sweaters, the ridiculous office parties getting slaughtered off the holiday nog. Switzerland as you might suspect, is somewhat low-key when it comes to Christmas. There are no tacky light displays. Stores are NOT open any later (I find this shocking). There are no sales. And I can't say I have learned any Swiss or French Christmas songs, although I am sure they exist. I organized a Secret Santa for my office and people had no clue what I was talking about. I explained it and you would have thought that I invented something novel and clever like Clocky. (I highly recommend this as a Christmas gift!) And when we started selecting names, the first person immediately blurted out who they chose. SECRET! I explained. The word is the same in French so I was really confused why this message didn't get through. Anyway.

Two things here that I have noticed which I find funny -

Santa apparently uses the window and not the chimney. A lot of people have little Santas climbing "ladders" up through their windows outside their apartments. I suppose the Swiss are too rational to think that someone could ACTUALLY get down a chimney and naturally you would have to use the window. I will try to take a picture of this if I see it.

The chocolate section of the grocery store multiplies like 10000 times. And it is out of control with the variety and fancy boxes and this and that. This is one part of Swiss Christmas that is American commercialism at its best. Major displays everywhere. It is the gaudiest flashiest part of Christmas over here that I can think of. Imagine it as normally the chocolate display is one plain small charlie-brown esque fir tree. And at this time of year its the tree in Daley Plaza. That should give you an idea of the proportions we are talking about!

Happiness is Pets

2007-12-15T01:58:00.000-08:00

That's the name of a store on Ashland in Chicago, and I have to agree. There are certain things I have found when living by yourself in a foreign country that become automatic for you. For example:

1) People always assume that you don't have a very active social life and you become the designated friend. Dinner invitations, nights drinking after work, trips in town or out of town - you get invited to pretty much everything. And it has definitely been to my advantage to accept about as many of these as I possibly can because then suddenly it does fill up your social calendar!

2) People assume that you don't like cooking "for one" and always give you leftovers or other treats. You get sent home with things after parties. Most people I know are only 2 at home anyway so if they make a big meal, somehow leftovers will appear for me at the office the next day. I cannot tell you how many free lunches I have had (I know there is no such thing, but you get the idea), cookies, chocolate, etc. It doesn't hurt that I'm not a picky eater eiher. Only a gift of olives would be returned.

3) And finally, if you are an animal lover like me, you become the resident pet sitter for your office. I wrote previously about my time with the famous Java. I have watched him since then without incident (thank God) and will likely watch him a few more times. But what is great about this is you basically get the experience of having your own pet without the responsibility of having to deal with it all the time.

Also I have done a lot of cat sitting. As much as I wanted to bring Hiccup and Rookie to Switzerland, it would not have been a good idea, and I think they are much happier with my mom. Anyway, earlier this year in May, my friend's cat had kittens. Two of them went to a girl in my office and the other two went to a guy I work with as well, Geoff. Geoff used to live only about 2 blocks from me and had to go out of town a few weekends this summer, so I was called upon to watch Pat and Fleur (brother and sister). The best part about watching these guys is that I met them when they were teeeeeeny - I could hold both of them in my one hand. Ever since they have gotten bigger and more rambunctious and crazy. But they are so sweet that it's hard to get mad at them. They pretty much like to follow you wherever you go and lick your toes and snuggle you. And they trashed a lot of things at Geoff's apartment, but that is the beauty of just having to go watch them at someone else's place!

Anyway, Geoff just left for holiday and needed a catsitter for one week before another friend could take them. So now they are with me. At this moment, picture me sitting and typing in this blog...Pat is laying SPRAWLED out across me, with his head on my one arm, curled up toward my chest, sleeping, with his one leg perched up on top of my other arm, obviously ignoring the fact that I am typing about him. I mean so freaking cute. My cats NEVER do that and I think they must have had a rough childhood before we got them because they are so absolutely spoiled that would be the only possible explanation.

Oh one other thing. Pat can open doors. He leaps up one meter in the air and brings the door handle down with him. So you can imagine that I didn't get much sleep last night. I did get quite a few nuzzles though.

For now I am off to the store to get some study treats because I have another exam on Tues. But me (and Pat and Fleur) will update you on our weekend adventures.

Amer? I Can!

2007-12-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

Ok, after that sap of a post I just did, here is a fun one I have been meaning to post for a while.

There's not much that Switzerland doesn't have that America does. There's not many things that I miss. After my first 6 months, I would say that the things I missed the most (food wise) were: buffalo wings (still stings this one), Miller Lite, Gatorade, egg and bagel sandwiches, saltines. I think some of you probably noticed a theme there...anyway, you also start missing things that you didn't obsess about, but now that you can't have them, you do. Like Doritos. Or books in English. Take out thai food for less than 10 bucks. You get the picture.

And THEN you find some of these things here in Switzerland. Not only do you find them but they are branded differently. I can't really explain it. First, you are happy to find something that is like home. And second, you laugh because it's an American thing dressed it up in a really stupid Eurotrash Halloween costume.

So last week randomly, I found peanut butter. I do kind of miss it, but not that much. But it was exciting. When I got it home, I took a closer look at the label:

So they have "Nick's" peanut butter here, at least in the local market. And I'm not sure if you can tell, probably not, but apparently as you can see on the center label, tough guys riding motorcycles are the demographic most commonly associated with peanut butter. You will see that it is also called "the Easy Rider."

And in exhibit 2, we learn that peanut butter is an integral part of "The American Way of Life." Not just for school age children. For easy riders like Nick too.

I doubled checked the back label and this peanut butter was legitimately imported from the U.S. So Switzerland can power their country without using fossil fuels, but they don't know how to make peanut butter. Interesting....

Ok, well you may like that, but the best one so far I have found was when Abby was here. I won't even introduce it because the picture is enough. Those of you familiar with this blue bag will know my little buddies below by a different name. But I will say that we were hysterically laughing at the store and of course had to buy them. Interestingly enough we found these at the train station grocery which I would assume had worse selection than the actual grocery. Apparently not. A-MAZING! I think that we should start calling them this too!!

I will keep you all posted on more of these fun "Amer-I-can" objects that I encounter in my travels. I will say that I have found "The Laughing Cow" cheese, better known here as La Vache Qui Rit, in Portugal, France and Norway, and that little laughing cow speaks a LOT of languages!

Halftime

2007-12-03T14:04:00.001-08:00

I know it has been a long time since my last post and I apologize. During that time I was very busy working and stuying and frankly, tired and not in a mood to blog when I was done. I was also home for Thanksgiving (more on those observations in a futue post). And I celebrated my one year anniversary of living abroad! Happy Anniversary to meeeeeee. Briefly - my top 5 highs and lows from the past year:

Lows - in no particular order (boo)
1) When I went to a work party last Feb and could not understand a word of French and went home and cried
2) One day in April when I had a really bad day at work and then promptly lost CHF 300 in the casino and went home and cried
3) The day after Justin left in Sept and I went home and saw a glass he had used the day before and cried
4) January last year in the office when I got a bucketload of work dumped on me (promised to never happen again...we will find out in 4 weeks)
5) Hearing them sing take me out to the ballgame at a Cubs game on tv...I teared up

Highs!
1) Going to the top of Mt. Pilatus with Aimee and Chris
2) Hiking in First, Switzerland with Justin (and Aimee and Chris, seperately)
3) Snowboarding in Zermatt
4) The first time I ordered delivery in French
5) Martini and Rib (and singalong) night at Dave and Lisa's

Ok, well, I wrote this list in about 5 minutes. And it took me about 4 minutes to come up with the lows and 1 to come up with the highs, and I have so many more of those highs I could list. Actually the intent was not really to say that I have sooo many more highs than lows, because believe me honey, it don't feel like that all the time. It's pretty easy to get caught up in the lows and concentrate on that - same as in your normal daily life. I mean isn't it so much easier to get annoyed with some stupid idiot who sent you an e-mail than it is to get jazzed up about a nice e-mail a friend sent you a few days ago? Or more easy to get annoyed about having to stay late at work for a week than to remember the day you skipped to snuggle with your boyfriend. But I guess I do have more highs than lows, which is good!

So anyway, I guess my point is that this past year, while at times it has been super hard, and I have complained a LOT and cried to my mom, to Justin, by myself, to guys I work with that weirded them out...it has also been as well one of the most rewarding years of my life. Being all on my own can be hard, but at the same time, all the failures and successes are pretty much entirely mine, which makes them that much harder or sweeter. An interesting year for sure. Which is by all accounts better than an easy boring one.

Well well, I wasn't planning to post about this, but I guess my writer's block is over. My goals (briefly) for the next year:

1) Improve my French where I can talk to all my friends in the office easily
2) Learn to ski
3) Visit Ireland
4) Visit Spain
5) Visit Italian Switzerland
6) Read more books on my balcony (need visitors to help with this!!)
7) Stop leaving my laundry all over my bedroom floor

That's it for now. I am sure I'll come up with more, but I think these are good for the time being.

Waves, Wind and Wine

2007-10-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

So I am on my fourth wave or so of visitors at the moment. My friend Rosey and her boyfriend Tony stopped in about 2 weeks ago for a day of fondue and bike riding along the lake. Of course, if you read my post from a while back, you should know that this bike riding doesn't actually come for free. We wasted a while trying to get the thing fixed which was a huge pain.

Most recently my friend Marie stopped by on her way back from India en route to Chicago. I just so happen to be near a lot of major hubs, so I frequently "profit" as they say from my location. I try to do things a little differently with each different guest, since everyone has varied interests (and so I don't get bored). Fall in Switzerland is really beautiful, so I suggested we go wine tasting out in the countryside. Who doesn't want to do that??

My friends Dave and Lisa (and their famous dog, Java) live about 20 minutes from Geneva in a town of 2,000 people with 12 different "caves," or wine makers. They picked us up around 1030 in the morning on Saturday and whisked us off to the first cave to taste some reds. Now Switzerland has the bold French and smooth Italian neighbors to compete with, so while the reds are definitely delicious, they can often be overlooked. I certainly enjoy them but when I am at the store, admittedly I usually gravitate towards one of the "foreign" wines.

There is a very cool red they make here called "Espirit de Geneve." It's produced by 13 caves in the Geneva area, and they start with 50% gamay grape. The remaining 50% is a blend of whatever the vitner chooses, so each one is just a little bit different.

Even better though than Swiss reds are Swiss whites! For some reason, they are very flavorful and fruity without being sweet and gross. I used to be a red wine snob, but when I moved here I started trying some of the local whites. They are so delicious and refreshing and really difficult to find in the U.S. So I make everyone else try them. Plus, they are the best accompaniment to fondue and raclette.

Anyway Marie and I very much enjoyed the wine tasting...8 bottles purchased later (and who knows how many drank), we ate a big lunch and then headed on a walk with Dave, Lisa and Java through the same vineyards. Unfortunately, while it was a sunny day, Geneva is also suffering from cold winds at the moment (see photo of hair being violently whipped across my face). The wind which is absolutely bitter and horrible (and probably only Chicagoans can sympathasize) is called "La Bise" (the kiss). At times I felt like I was about to get blown over. It was so windy that even the jet d'eau was turned off all weekend. If that's what the Swiss consider a kiss...

So why have you never had a Swiss wine before? Almost every bottle is drunk right here within our neutral little borders; less than 2% is exported outside of the country. Luckily for me (and you if you come here), the Geneva canton and surrounding cantons are perfect for wine cultivation. Probably the biggest "wino" of them all is the Valais canton, which is also famous for something else a little bit better known outside of Switzerland...the Matterhorn!

"Java, red or white?"

The Fitness

2007-10-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

So I have been here for almost a year now (seems weird) and let's just say that almost a year's worth of fondue, wine, cheese, chocolate, sitting around, etc etc, have caught up with me. And because I am a total foodie, I can't just say no to all of that stuff and restrict myself to eating lettuce while I am in the land of cheese. I have put on the "fondue 15."

So I finally joined the gym. And I have already gone 4 times...in one wee! Seriously I have not done that since my triathlon days! I mean I do like working out and exercising, but I'm just very busy, and very lazy, and I have a hard time getting motivated. I even bought a scale last week, and I have never owned one before. Apparently I have already lost 1.9 kilos since last week! However I think that 1.0-1.5 of those kilos was alcohol because I was out a lot this weekend (more on that later). I will keep you posted on my fitness...it's a good way to make me accountable!

The gym is connected to my office (like everything else), so it's very convenient. Observations in my first week at the "fitness:"

1) The machines are all really really nice! And they all have cable tv which is so exciting for me since I don't have tv. That alone is going to motivate me to go. The weight machines are all nice too, but I find it odd that the machines are called like "Leg Press" because the instructions are in French. Why isn't it called "Press de Jambe" or something like that?

2) They don't give you towels, which sucks. However everyone brings their own and naturally, being Swiss, they keep the machines scrupulously clean and always wipe off the sweat and clean them and etc etc. Very courteous.

3) Fitness Fashonistas: You know who I'm talking about. The people who go to the gym to see and be seen but not really work out. Well I will say that most of the people so far actually DO seem to work out, but being europeans, they wear some weird outfits. Examples:

- a guy wearing denim Keds with no socks

-a guy wearing an all white tracksuit with a "Texas" bandanna tied around his head like a cleaning lady

-a guy wearing super short shorts which showed his somewhat longer but still short, shorts tan line

-several guys wearing polo shirts

-a woman wearing flip flops - like the crappy shower sandal kind

-finally a guy wearing the tightest spandex shorts I have ever seen which also (brace yourselves) were so tight that you could see his little thong underwear underneath. Ewww!!

4) Another pro - everyone is very polite. Same with everywhere you go in Switzerland, you "bonjour" and "bonsoir" and "au revoir" people until you're blue in the face. Even at the gym this is true - when leaving the locker room a lot of women say bye (now read the part about the locker rooms...)

5) Finally, the locker rooms. You've been in one with some of those people who just LOVE to be naked. And as you may have heard, Europeans also LOVE to be naked (this stereotype is 100% justified). So, the locker room in a European gym is a complete nudefest. A free for all of bare breasts and buttocks and people just unabashedly struttin their stuff.

The showers for example - the towel rack (and there is only 1) is outside of the shower stalls. So you have to leave it there and stroll in. While there are dividers between the stalls, there is no curtain and no door. So if you and someone else turn around at the same time, it's full frontal nudity. I'm not the most comfortable with my body (hence the reason I joined the gym), but it would be so much weirder to NOT walk around naked that you have no choice but to just follow (birthday) suit. So far I haven't really minded. But some of my co-workers are threatening to come with me. People who normally see me clothed I would really prefer NOT see me naked. At least not like so naked that I have to walk 100 feet before I can get clothes on naked. Anyway it's kind of funny. A bunch of ladies standing around totally naked talking in French. That's my life.

Important: Somone Else's Blog

2007-10-10T14:16:00.000-07:00

Hi loyal readers!

I'm coming to you today with an important and easy request - to go someone else's blog.

My sister Aimee is friends with a woman in her law school class named Kim Klein. Last spring, Kim was diagnosed with breast cancer and has been very bravely sharing her story online. Her blog has been selected as a national finalist, and she is eligible to win a $10,000 scholarship if her blog receives the most votes out of the 20 finalists. Please take two minutes right now and go to her blog and then when you see "vote for me, national blogging contest" enter a vote for Kim Klein. This is a very nice, outgoing woman who is balancing a husband and two kids with chemo and law school.

Honestly, in my opinion, this woman deserves more than $10,000, she deserves a medal or sainthood!

I have read her blog and it is great. I encourage you to vote for her, and please pass this along to anyone else you know via a message on your blog or via a simple e-mail. The voting ends on October 28 at midnight.

Thanks everyone! And special thanks to Karee for telling me the link to Kim's blog wasn't working :)

Swiss Facts

2007-10-07T12:39:00.001-07:00

Well after two rants about the Cubs, I decided to write a short post about what this blog is really about - my life in Switzerland.

As much as I miss home sometimes, I have to say that Switzerland is one of the most interesting and unique countries in the world (in my opinion). I found out two facts about my current home over the weekend that I thought were pretty cool and wanted to share.

1) Politics in Switzerland

Switzerland is the purest form of "direct democracy." My interpretation of this (feel free to make your own) based on reading up on Wikipedia is that this is total bad-ass democracy that really has the people directly involved, and also cuts out a lot of the garbage seen with officials who are just representative of the people but push their own agendas too. The U.S. is also a direct democracy, but not to the extent that Switzerland is (e.g., at the federal level).

-Any citizen can challenge a law that has been passed by Parliament after getting 50,000 signatures in 100 days;

- Any citizen can seek an amendment to the constitution after getting 100,000 signatures in 18 months.

These two things, while pretty cool, can also fall under the subheading "Things that will work in Switzerland and no where else in the world."

-The government is headed up by this federal council of 7 people. Anyone can be elected to it or run for it if they are eligible to be elected to the National Council (basically the Swiss Parliament/Senate). The council together makes decisions and serves as the executive branch and collective presidency. The council is elected collectively to a 4 year term, and the presidency and vice presidency (largely figureheads only), rotate each year. Right now the President of Switzerland is a woman, Micheline Calmy-Rey. Yeah!

2) Swissies and the Environment

Ok, I have become somewhat freakishly environmentally conscious over here. But it's so easy that you feel guilty if you don't. Recycling is a breeze and there are containers all over the place to recycle. They pick up paper and cardboard once a week. I also compost my food because they pick that up too; there is a compost bin outside right next to the trash bins. It's actually very easy and it makes your garbage not smell disgusting, so you only take out little bitty compost bags instead of huge ass garbage bags. Anyway, there is a big incentive to recycle. Why? Because it is free. Garbage on the other hand, I have to buy special bags for (supposedly they WILL go through your trash if it's not in one of those and can fine you up to CHF 1,000).

On average over 76% of things that can be recycled in Switzerland, are recycled.

Finally, Switzerland runs on roughly 40% nuclear power and 60% hydroelectric power...therefore producing carbon emissions of a big fat zero.

It's been one week...

2007-10-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

Let's just get this out of the way.

First of all, it's 3:30 in the morning here for me.

Secondly, that was one of the WORST baseball games I have ever seen. Can we all agree on that? Was there anything positive about the Cubs performance in that game? I honestly can't think of a single thing.

Third - things I have a problem with:

1) Grounding into 4 double plays (I know for sure 2 were inning ending, I was asleep for one of them so potentially 3),

2) O for 9 with runners in scoring position. I think the stat was something like 25 men left on base overall in the series? Does that even happen to normal teams in the playoffs? Or ever in a 3 game series?

3) My supposed Cub hero, Aramis Ramirez, batted a whopping .000. The only player as bad as that is A-Rod.

4) Former Cub Augie Ojeda batted .500 and former Cub Juan "Lose" Cruz was lights out in relief.

5) You don't strike out looking in the playoffs!!! Swing the freaking bat!!!

The Cubs had about 100 opportunities to not only take the lead, but just to SCORE A RUN and they wasted every single one. It was really really disappointing. I know I haven't been a Cubs fan for very long considering how long some people have been going through this, but really, this was ridiculous. At least in 2003, even though that was a horrible horrible loss, they fought hard against the Braves and advanced and then they lost in 7 games to the Marlins. They tried. I don't think they ever gave themselves a chance to win. And it really pissed me off that most of the time the players were sitting on the bench instead of up against the dugout fence all excited. It's the playoffs!! Not some meaningless late season game!

Finally, does anyone else think it's complete crap that expansion teams like the stupid ass Diamondbacks and Marlins are winning in the playoffs. I just don't think it's fair that these teams that have been around for 10-15 years already have championships and in some cases more, when you have teams like the Cubs and Phillies that have been suffering for a looooong time. I am rooting for the Indians at this point.

This is a real tough one to stomach. And where a week ago, I was wishing I was catching this all from my front deck or smashed into a Wrigley bar, I am really really glad that I am in the Friendly Confines of Geneva, as it will make it a little easier.

The only question that still remains is...Lou, do you believe us now about the Curse?!

Hey Chicago, whaddya say...

2007-09-29T16:08:00.000-07:00

You know the rest.

Well you can all thank me for moving to Switzerland, because the Cubs would not have made the playoffs otherwise. Seriously. It's quite simple.

In the year I live across the street from Wrigley, the Cubs lose 96 games.
In the year I move 5,000 miles away, to a different country, where I cannot even watch baseball unless it is on my computer and it is a day game...

the Cubs win the Central. Had I not moved, they would not have won the Central, and you all (except Justin) would be sad, and you would have a very boring October.

To thank me, you can all contribute towards the plane ticket I will buy IF the Cubs make it far enough! I might have a bit of a tough time convincing my work that I need to fly home in the middle of a week for a baseball game.

Anyway I am very very excited about the Cubs - I slept in a Cubs t shirt last night, wore another one today (clean one of course), read every article on chicagosports.com and espn.com. And I drank a beer. I feel powerless in my ability to celebrate this historic moment, but I am doing my best.

I am comforted somewhat by the fact that there is ivy growing on the fence I walk past on my way to work. I noticed it at the beginning of September and it reminded me of Wrigley, and how cool it is there when the ivy turns red in October. You don't get to see it very often (for the obvious reason). And today when I went by the office, this ivy had also started to turn red. So I feel comforted that a little part of Wrigley is here with me in Switzerland.

I'm sure all you White Sox fans are gagging reading this. Why don't you go play your 2005 world series dvd for the 100th time and figure out how to fix your bullpen for next season, and let me relish in this glorious day in Cubbie History!!!

There's a little black spot on the sun today...

2007-09-22T06:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the absence of posts, but after my excursion to NY for Jess' wedding, my laptop is still broken. I have to say the people I spoke to at HP were EXTREMELY NOT HELPFUL and although I love my computer, I am seriously going to think long and hard before I ever buy something from them again. The conversations went as follows:

1) guy at best buy in NYC told me I need to send to HP
2) call HP technician, explain problem, he will schedule the repair and after renewing my warranty, for which I paid 120 dollars, transfers me (will refer to this moment hereafter as "game changing performance")
3) instead of the other technician, I get some idiot who proceeds to ask me 10 times what is wrong with my laptop, do I have a little screwdriver so I can fix it myself (I am walking down Broadway at this point, so obviously not). Exasperated I explain to him that I have done all the troubleshooting already and it needs to be serviced, and someone was supposed to do that. He puts me on hold and comes back to inform me that my computer can't be serviced for another month because I just bought a new warranty, which invalidated my current warranty, and so I was out of warranty for a month. I mean what the hell. That makes absolutely NO SENSE!! Am I right?? Now furious at this point, I demand they cancel my new warranty, service my computer, put me on with a manager, etc etc. The moron is powerless to do any of the above (obviously due to the fact that he has the mental prowess of a jar of peanut butter) promises the manager will call me back (he doesn't).
4) Now back in Switzerland, Justin takes it to some random Swiss place to back up the data and try to fix it (fail) while I call HP 3 more times and FINALLY they agree to service my computer under the warranty. But they can't ship to or from Switzerland, and it can't be fixed here because it needs U.S. parts. So Justin, my family and Abby are all helping in transporting this from Geneva to East Bufu HP fixit world and back to Geneva, for which I am very grateful. Therefore, intermittent posting for about another month until Abby (yay!!) gets here.

So what else? Justin is leaving next week which sucks. I have been alternating between bouts of unreasonable tears and unreasonable begging him to stay or pack me in his suitcase. But we have had an amazing summer, which we never could have had otherwise. So I am thankful for that.

NY was awesome. Jess' wedding was incredibly beautiful and super fun. We also saw a ton of friends and family and the Bears opener (could have missed that...). Our flight back across the pond was fine except for the fact that they had only one movie playing for the whole plane and it was...Mr. Bean's Holdiay. I mean come on. Just because it's a new movie does not mean it should be shown on a plane! Or ever.

I've been working a lot and am going to Vienna next week for a client meeting which is pretty exciting. Then I get a slew of visitors! Rosey, Marie, and Abby are all coming to visit me in October.

Finally Justin and I saw the Police concert this past Sunday! It was so awesome. It was at a huge outdoor soccer stadium with apparently 30,000 people. It was just the 3 of them, which was cool because no one really does that anymore. They played all the good old stuff and totally rocked. And Sting is hot (and 55 years old which is pretty amazing). After the concert we went to the Pickwick pub and watched the Bears game until 2am (v. smart thing to do on a day before I have to work). Justin was yelling to the entire bar about how amazing Devin Hester was when he ran back the kickoff for the 2nd time (unfortunately that one was called back). I think everyone in the bar thought he was crazy (Crazy about the Bears, sucka!) And that's just one reason why I love him (not Devin Hester, Justin, although I love Devin Hester too, just in a slightly different way...)

Techmology

2007-09-06T00:17:00.000-07:00

Loyal readers, I have some bad news. My laptop is broken. I don't know how or most importantly WHY this happened, as it is less than 1 year old, but it did. The screen won't turn on and it makes these horrible BEEP BEEP BEEP noise when I turn on the power.

Fortunately I just happen to be comin to America...today! Because I am flying with Justin to NYC for my friend Jess' wedding. So lugging the piece of crap 5,000 miles with me, small detour at best buy, with fingers crossed, and hopefully it should be good as new on Monday when I get back.

I will keep you all posted. I always have my work laptop, but all pictures, etc, are on this other laptop. In the meantime please excuse my delay in blogging!

Italy

2007-08-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

If I were to write this entry in my typical blogging fashion, which is to capture all details with a charming and sarcastic wit, this would be really really long. So instead I will try to do a somewhat abbreviated recap, and post pictures, and add some extra description here and there were needed.

Justin and I just got back from Italy for 10 days.

Friday, August 17 - took a flight from GVA on FlyBaboo, a small Swiss regional airline which Justin and I now refer to as "Monkey McFurrypants Air." The plane was a 50 seat prop plane, the stewardesses served tomato focaccia, salami foccacia, and nutella foccacia, and a little Ford focus was seen next to the plane loading up the waters and unloading garbage. McFurrypants indeed. We arrived late in Florence and headed to bed.

Saturday Aug 18 - Slept late. Ran out to grab a slice of pizza (the worst pizza we had in Italy for the record) for lunch. Got some delicious gelato (1 - Straciatella, also known as chocolate chip), wandered on Ponte Vecchio. Wasted an hour in line at the Ufizzi playing 20 questions and decided to postpone. Went to the huge, windy Boboli gardens where Justin actually requested a picture with a statue there. Grabbed a glass of prosecco. Napped. Went to dinner at Trattoria Zaza!! Got gelato (2 - chocolate) but it wasn't that good so I threw it out. a horrible thing I know.

Sunday Aug 19 - Got up a little earlier. Ate paninis for lunch (cold and annoying), then went to the Duomo, inside and up the tower for fantastic views of Firenze. Headed to Ufizzi gallery. We both agreed - worst museum ever (renaissance art is not really my thing). Got a strawberry gelato (3) which was terrible and I threw it out. Stopped into Academia to see David and his fine self - truly impressive and cool. Rest of that museum is somewhat pointless. Went to dinner at La Giostra. BEST RESTAURANT EVER!!! It was sooo good. I will detail in full because it was so good. Cozy dark place with lots of photos and Christmas lights in the middle of nowhere. We walked in and sat down and immediately heard a *pop!!* and were poured glasses of champagne. After ordering, we were presented with a huge plate of completmentary appetizers which included: roasted zucchini filled with ratatouille, roasted eggplant, marinated red bell peppers, liver crostini (tasted like a taco - I did not know it was liver when I ate it), little spinach balls, cherry tomato with buffalo mozzerella and baby bruscettas. MMMMM! Justin got a spagetti like pasta with white truffle oil and mushrooms (like a super duper mac and cheese), I got ravioli filled with brie served with finely sliced, fried artichoke hearts and cherry tomatoes. Why hasn't anyone else thought of ravioli with brie before??? We split a beef filet with porcini mushrooms and asparagus parmigiana (asparagus with a big piece of melted parmigian cheese and breadcrumbs). All with a delicious chianti. Seriously, the best resaturant ever, which made up for our terrible lunch and gelato that day by far. And it was recently named "best restaurant in Tuscany."

Monday Aug 20 - Day trip to Siena. Great pizza slices for lunch sitting in the Piazza. Went to the Duomo there which was really cool. Climbed a teeny tower for excellent views of Siena. Chugged a Guinness and caught the train back to Florence. Went back to LA GIOSTRA. Again, I must detail...got the champagne and free apps treatment and got the same wine. Instead we got starters...Justin got prosciutto with mozzerella and it was the most beautiful, bountiful plate of proscuitto ever. There was not a trace of fat on any of it. I had what could be my dream appetizer - mushroom carpaccio, an entire plateful of finely sliced mushrooms, served over an entire plateful of finely sliced parmigian cheese. Oh man. Then we split a plate of grilled veggies, and he had a very mushroomy tagliatelle, while I had rigatoni that was served with a sauce that combined tomatoes with a pesto like base. So so good! After we walked around and got gelato (4 - Coco).

Tues Aug 21 - Check out and head to Cinque Terre, stopping in Pisa on the way for pizza and to see the tower. It really does lean, pretty badly. It's really funny. It was kind of rainy but no matter. 2 hour train to Cinque Terre (Monterosso). About 5 minutes out, we pulled out of a tunnel into bright light, and below suddenly I saw the huge, blue Ligurian sea, the bluest blue you could imagine, crashing against the cliffs below us. It was just stunning. We got to our hotel, walked around, had a drink at "Bar" and then found our way to a local restaurant where we had the local trofie pasta with pasta and a huge bowl of spagetti mixed with piping hot, fresh clams, mussels, squid and shrimp. Two ladies next to us asked our waiter (who constantly said "ciao" or "prego") about two wines on the menu, to which he answered, "The difference between the two is very very small, but this-a one is much more better." After went to an American bar called Fast Bar and talked with some fellow travelers.

Weds Aug 22 - Got up to a sunny day for our big hike. Train over to Riomaggiore, town #1. From there it was an easy 20 minute walk along a path to town #2, Manarola. 45 minutes later, after climbing a huge steep staircase, we were in Corniglia. After that the trails became much more difficult, narrow and rocky. 90 minutes of huffing and puffing took us to Vernazza where we stopped for a lunch and had a "pesto festo" - pesto pizza, pesto pasta and bruchetta. Cinque Terre is where pesto is from and it was delicious. After lunch we continued on another long, rocky trail all the way up and then all the way down. Finally after another 90 minutes, we arrived home in Monterosso and immediately jumped into the sea for a celebratory, refreshing swim! The day was gorgeous with huge, spectacular views, and it started raining only once we arrived home.

Thurs Aug 23 - Cloudy in the AM, took the train to Manarola to do a little shopping (local artwork) and then jumped into a big swimming "lagoon" just below town. We were the only people brave enough to swim, but the water was not very cold. We then hopped back on the train to Monterosso and had a cheap focaccia lunch. Just as we finished the sun came out and we spent the rest of the day sunbathing, swimming, reading and relaxing. On the way home we stopped in a local shop to sample a bunch of limoncello and pesto (and bought a bunch too). For dinner that night we had a pizza and wine picnic by the sea under the moonlight...que romantico. Even more, we had music...some local Italian teens blasting their winamp with a strobe light down by the harbor. Very odd but entertaining!

Fri Aug 24 - early departure from Cinque Terre at 730 am to Bologna. We walked around and ate Bolognese! Then back on the train to Venice. When I stepped out of the train station, I was in shock. The place is just like you see in the movies, and the canals to my surprise were actually fairly clean looking. Did you know Venice is actually a huge archiapelago of like 180 islands all connected by bridges? And it is also sinking. The first floor doors of a lot of houses are rotted out becuase of the rising water levels, so everyone lives on the second floors now. Anyway, Justin did an excellent job navigating us to our hotel, where we had a huge old room with a big glass chandelier - fancy! For dinner we headed to a local pizzeria and then had a few drinks on a "back street," a little canal next to our hotel.

Sat Aug 25 - We slept late and then went to St. Mark's. Justin was SO excited to see my reaction to hundreds of thouands of pigeons. And my reaction was - sheer terror and disgust. I could not believe people pay money to let pigeons land on them! Disgusting! I was constantly ducking into Justin's arm to shield myself from fly-bys. The Basilica was really cool inside and very ornate. We also went up the neighboring tower for excellent views of Venezia and the little surrounding islands. Afterwards we wandered around the streets getting lost and did a little shopping (and eating gelato #5, vanilla, the BEST vanilla ever). We found a little wine bar called "Ruga Rialto" and had several glasses of cheap, delicious wine and some cichetti (little appetizers, in our case, fried calamari). The total was only 10 euros! Then we went in search of a "gondola gondola." The first two guys we met did not want to bargain. The prosecco we had bought for the ride was getting warm, and we were beginning to despair when we found a guy near the Rialto bridge who agreed to our price. It was around 7pm so the light on the city was beautiful. Our gondolier told us a little about the city and softly sang in Italian, asking "It's romantic, yes?" It was a great way to see Venice and nice to just be together with Justin in our little boat. At night we wandered back to St. Mark's where to my relief, there were NO pigeons, and we got to see several small orchestras playing in the square, each at different restaurants. The music was beautiful, but we didn't actually sit down for drinks. The menu informed us that one glass of champagne was 29 euros plus a 4 euro coperto for the music....no grazie!!!

Sun Aug 26 - Went to the Doge palace in the morning near St Marks, which was actually one of the cooler old palaces/castles we have been to on our travels. There were some crazy prisons inside. Afterwards decided to head to Lido and see the beach. It was ridiculously hot so we immediately got gelato as soon as we arrived (I had watermelon sorbet...which counts as 6). The beach was actually really beautiful with a lot of people swimming...not sure how clean the water was really, but it looked very clean. We waded in the water for a while too to cool off. Made the mistake of coming back to Venice on the #1 Vaporetti, also known as the "slow boat" and we almost passed out from sitting in the hot sun so long (I did actually fall asleep for a while). Wandered around, made another stop at Ruga Rialto for wine, meeting a not-so-friendly black cat on the way, who later was snuggled up next to the booze bottles in the bar. We ate on the grand canal for dinner which was a gorgeous setting. The people next to us were taking photos of themselves and I, stupidly, decided to make a face in the background in one of them. I have unfortunately done this several times, mostly at bars with really really annoying people taking pictures, because you can just run off and they won't know who it was. Well obviously I wasn't thinking, because these people were right next to us and realized it was me. They started laughing and pointing, and finally Justin broke the ice by asking if I had ruined their picture, and we ended up chatting with them. We offered to take another, but they declined, saying it would be a nice memory!! That's the last time I do that. We went back to St. Marks again to listen to a little more music, and then got gelatos on the way home (Pistacchio, really good number 7!)

Mon Aug 27 - Time to leave. We just got up and dragged our suitcases over like 18 bridges until we reached the bus terminal to head to the airport. Fortunately, we were able to extend our trip a little longer by having a great Italian lunch at the Venice Marco Polo airport (which is VERY nice by the way) including gelato (chocolate with nuts beat out hazelnut...it was a close race).

So, that is pretty much our trip to Italy. Perfetto!! Magnifico!! You can check out the photos, which will probably take less time than reading this blog, here:

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Interlaken photos

2007-08-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the photos from Interlaken!

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Interlaken II

2007-08-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

Justin and I planned a last minute trip to Interlaken last weekend and it was awesome. Geneva has had absolute crap weather ALL summer and it seems the only time it is not 60s and rain is when we are out of town, or on the weekends. This weekend was no exception and it was great. I will post pictures and videos for this post shortly!!

We arrived on Friday night to our lovely two-star hotel, which was like a 15 minute walk from the train station, uphill (only one way). It was kind of nice though because it was away from all the college and tourist "rif raf" which Justin and I get very tired of. We decided on Saturday to suck it up, get out of bed at 530am, walk 1 mile and a half to the other train station to catch the 6:30 train to the Jungfraujoch, the "Top of Europe." Supposedly one of those once in a lifetime things you have to do, it is Europe's highest trainstation (over 3500m) on top of the Jungfrau mountain and draws a LOT of tourists. It took over 2 hours to get there but I have to agree that the view from the top was pretty amazing. You definitely feel like you are on top of the world, albeit part of that world is a freezing, glacier covered world, that was peaceful until an entire trainload of tourists was dropped upon it.

There were a lot of cheesy and fun activities, so we got to go sledding on the side of the glacier, and also try to hit a "hole in one" off this golf tee into the snow. That was the most I have ever played golf in my life so I also got a little golf lesson from Justin. After our games we decided to hike to the Monch restaurant (45 minutes away) across the glacier. OK seriously, it was UPHILL, IN THE SNOW and it was so freaking hard. We were dying and getting dogged by old people with those fancy schmancy hiking poles. Abou 45 minutes later, huffing and puffing, we finally reached the spot which was well worth the hike (although the wind was threatening to blow us off the mountain and therefore Justin didn't care too much for the view). We had lunch there which was great as there were not too many other idiots making the hike that far, and then we headed back downhill in the snow, happily enjoying the views this time around.

On our way down from the Jungfraujoch, we stopped in Kleine Schidegg for a beer. This was worth it because 1) the views were incredible and 2) an army of mountain goats, bells clanging madly, invaded the town. There was a small brown army of goats which were show-offs and posing for photo ops, and there was a larger, more confused black army of goats which seemed to do nothing but run back and forth to make their bells ring really loud and occassionally "maa-a-a--a-a-a-a."

On Sunday, we allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit later and then headed to First, where I had gone hiking with Aimee and Chris in May. On the way our train broke down which in my opinion, is a truly rare occurence in Switzerland and deserves to be documented. First was way more crowded, but also a lot more green, so that was cool. And there were cows grazing up at the top of the mountain making nice music with their bells (I know, I agree, sometimes I also wonder if this place is for real). We had lunch on the beautiful Bachalpsee (our lunch was marginal but the views made up for it) and then took a more difficult, out of the way hike down to Bort which was completely worth it. We had the trail almost entirely to ourselves and just shared it with the cows here and there. Our legs were exhausted by the time we made it back to Grindlewald and then to Interlaken.

Now on Monday, I was sick. In fact, I couldn't go to work. So, if I hadn't been sick, Justin and I would have spent Monday relaxing for an extra day in Interlaken. We would probably go up the Harderbahn funicular for lunch over Interlaken with great views of the lakes Thun and Brienz. Then we would head across town to Lake Thun (its called the Thunersee in German, and I of course really like the ads which say "Thuner-see you soon!") and take advantage of the cheap Monday boat rides, buy first class tickets and sit on the sun deck, drinking cold beers while relaxing in the views of the Thunersee and Swiss Alps. Maybe on a last minute decicion, we would stop in Bern and have dinner. Although Bern is not really much to see.

But I don't know, because I was sick. So I probably didn't do any of those things...

La Belle-Mere

2007-08-02T04:50:00.000-07:00

When Justin and I returned from Paris, we went into a bit more of a cleaning frenzy than we usually do (let me be fair and say that Justin did ALL the cleaning). That's because Justin's mom was coming in for a visit for the weekend and staying at my apartment.

Most girls would probably freak out a little bit of the idea of their future mother in law coming to stay with them for the weekend, but I was excited. And I am not just saying that because I know that Mrs. C is a regular visitor of my blog! Justin and I are very lucky in that we both get along very well with each other's families, and also I suppose lucky that for example, my dad is not a very threatening, questioning man (i.e. "What ARE your intentions with my daughter, boy?") and Justin's mom is not a crazy, overprotective woman (i.e. relationship between Principal Skinner from "The Simpsons" and his mother). In any case, you get the idea. She is, to quote Mean Girls, "a cool mom," and so the visit was not something to be nervous about.

On Thursday night after a glass of wine on the balcony, we headed down to the Paquis for dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in Geneva, a small traditional Swiss place. We settled on a little bit of raclette and Fondue Chinoise, which is meat fondue that is cooked in bouillon instead of oil and very very good. Afterwards we got ice cream and walked around the lake to check out a little of the Pre-Fetes, which is kind of the "before" party week before the Fetes de Geneve (more on that later).

Friday I took off from work (I have not worked more than 4 days in a week since Justin got here) and we decided to rent bikes downtown. You can rent a bike for free for four hours and after that, it is just one franc an hour. Sounds like a great deal, right? I'll come back to this. It was a spectacular day with lots of sun and no clouds, and we biked along the lake, looking at vineyards and the French Alps across the lake and beautiful mansions and sunflowers all along the way. After about a 30 minute ride, we stopped for a delicious, leisurely filets de perches lunch at a place right on the water. We took a long break and then headed back to the bikes.

Justin pedaled about 10 feet and abruptly stopped. His tire was completely flat. Pancake, board, whatever analogy you want to use, it was the flattest tire I have ever seen. And we were basically in little village Switzerland where we hadn't the faintest idea of where a bike shop was or how to ask to repair the tire anyway.

So the three of us tried several things. We called the bike shop who didn't understand us or more likely didn't care (remember: FREE bikes). We asked several people where the nearest bike shop was and they responded: 4 km, 2km, 5 meters (translation: we have no idea you stupid English speaking bike riders). So that was no help at all. We asked a woman at a car dealership if there was anyone who could fix it in the mechanics dept and she responded "that's not my job." Finally we stumbled upon a motorcycle shop, and Justin asked the grumbling French mechanic if he could "reparez la bicyclette" (as we had the actual bike there with the tire, it kind of helped to explain). Grumbling Frenchy inflated the tire using a little tube and after about a minute, it seemed fixed. Rejuvenated, we pedaled off through the next "big" town, Versoix, and into Coppet.

After about 15 minutes, I noticed that Justin was riding very slowly. In fact, annoyingly slowly and I kept almost passing him. As I was thinking of some snide comment to make about this point, I noticed that an awful (yet amazingly rhythmic) sound was coming from Justin's bike. "Thun-thun-thAUNK-thun-thun-thAunk...I am the woRLD's flattest t-IRE" the bike seemed to be humming. And it really was, worse so than before, and he eventually had to stop riding. Now we were completely screwed because we were in a much smaller town and no where near any bicycle or motorcycle shop.

Just at the moment all seemed lost, we saw across the street upon a bus stop which stated that the bus to the Nyon train station would be arriving in 10 minutes. As you know by now, the buses in Switzerland are always on time and lo and behold, 10 minutes later, a bus pulled up, with a rude French woman as our savior. At first she refused to let us on the bus but I argued that Justin's tire was completely flat. She begrudingly let him aboard, charged him an exorbitant fee of 12 francs for the bicycle, and sped off, leaving Justin's mom and I to continue riding to Nyon. The ride to Nyon was about another 20 minutes and very nice except for ONE small detail. Waiting for us at the very end of the journey was the biggest freaking hill in all of Switzerland which was what we had to pedal up on our rickety-you-get-what-you-pay-for bikes. Miraculously we were able to find some teeny tiny sign posts to point us to the train station after that and were reunited with Justin shortly thereafter. We celebrated with a glass of wine down by the lake and then rode the train back to Geneva with the bikes. Worried that I might not get back the full security deposit upon returning the bicycle with the flattest tire ever, I made a big show of needing the strong, non-English speaking worker at the store to help me with alllll the heavy bikes. They never knew what hit them, and we took the money and ran!

The rest of the weekend was a little less adventurous. That evening we made a big fondue at home to celebrate our long day of cycling along with some champagne. On Saturday we headed at first back to the scene of the crime, Nyon, and took a boat across the lake to a town called Yvoire in France. It was a gorgeous old medieval town with lots of beautiful flowers and ice cream shops! We walked around and enjoyed lunch before the crowds started to swarm and then high tailed it back to Geneva. That night we went to Les Amures for dinner, an awesome restaurant in the old town of Geneva. Overall the weekend was lots of fun, with lots of walking around, talking and laughing, and me and Justin enjoying being spoiled just a little bit by a mom.

Oh and Mrs. C also met Pasha, the kebab guy down the street, which was a highlight as he did a little bow and referred to her as "Madam" everytime he saw her after that.

The City of Lights

2007-08-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

I think I have talked to a lot of you about Paris already, but I will recap it anyway, even though I came back almost 2 weeks ago.

Justin and I left on Thursday afternoon (the 19th) and took the high speed TGV train into the city center. Shortly thereafter, we arrived at our hotel, the K+K Cayre. I had won 2 free nights in the hotel at an auction in Chicago before I left; we got a deal on a third night which we paid for. It was a 4 star hotel right in the heart of Paris, a perfect location and the best part (besides the amazing bed) was the balcony which overlooked the city streets.

On Thursday night we went to the Musee D'Orsay to check out some impressionist paintings. Very cool museum, it is in an old train station. It did not take that long to walk through either so that was nice. Lots of really cool famous paintings there by Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Latrec, Cezanne, etc. You get the idea. After the museum we headed to a french brasserie recommended by our hotel which was delicious. We ordered escargots which came in the shell, a new way of eating them for me. I LOVE escargot and if you like garlic and butter, you will like them despite the fact it is a snail. mmmm. We alternated between french and english throughout the meal, using mostly what our waitress felt like using with us. There was also an older, unassuming french man sitting next to us, who when his female companion arrived, exclaimed " you look great!!!" and sounded JUST like Bruno from the Ali G show. hilarious. After dinner we walked around a little bit and ended up at this carnival taking place in the Tulieries. We did bumper cars, which was fun until these French thugs started hitting everyone as hard as they possibly could. Ow!! Then we walked over to the Louvre to check out the lights and the pyramids.

Friday morning we dragged ourselves out of bed at a relatively early hour and went to the Louvre. Amazingly, we only had to wait about 5 minutes in line. We saw the Mona Lisa first, which is small as everyone says. I think its worth it just to observe the feeding frenzy of photographers taking place there!

Friday was cool and cloudy, so we decided to spend the rest of the day sightseeing and get it overwith. After lunch, we headed to the Catacombs. This was really freaky, but cool. In the 1700s, stone was excavated from underneath Paris' left bank to be used for buildings. After a while it was about to cave in, so they stopped. The tunnels were then used as a mass grave to eliminate overcrowding in Paris' cemeteries. So you head 20m underground, through some dark and dank dunnels (now they are lit by electricity and ventilated, so we don't have it too bad), and find yourself literally, face to face, with 5 million bodies. Bones stacked on either side of you, anywhere from 5-10 feet tall and deep. It was pretty spooky, and I was glad Justin was there! Apparently there are a lot of illegal entrances that people seek out and enter into other parts of the Catacombs that we were not allowed to go to. Freaky.

After the Catacombs, we headed to Notre Dame and then to the Pompidou Centre of Modern Art. Finally at 6.30 we headed back to the hotel, exhausted. We took a short nap and then went to dinner at Le Petit Chaise, which claims to be the oldest restaurant in Paris (from the 1600s!) We were sharing an upstairs dining room with just one other party, and the restaurant had a wonderful, charming ambiance. We dined in true French style, with lots of champagne and wine, French onion soup, and lingered there chatting until we were handed the bill (this NEVER happens, you always have to ask for it). We headed home and had some wine on our balcony, while spying on our neighbor across the street. He didn't do anything exciting, which was part of the reason why we were so curious, since it was Friday night.

On Saturday, we spent most of the day wandering the city. Highlights included the Tuilieries, Arc de Triomphe, and shopping on the Champs Elysees where we bought Harry Potter 7. We had a picnic in the Tuileries in the afternoon with champagne and cheese and enjoyed people watching in the sun. Saturday night we went to dinner (not much to write about unfortunately) and afterwards headed to the Eiffel Tower, which would periodically light up like a sparkler. The tip top was closed, but we went up to the 2nd level and snuggled under the lights while looking over the city.

Sunday was randomness - we saw the Moulin Rouge (boring), ate Mexican food (excellent), tried to rent bikes (unsuccessful), and went back through the Tuileries for ice cream (definitely a success) before heading home.

J'adore Paris!! Photos will be posted shortly.

Prague - Czech it out

2007-07-23T12:43:00.001-07:00

Well it has been a week since I came back from Prague but that's ok. As most of you probably know I am giggling over the title of my post and also laughed really hard whenever I saw anyone who bought the t shirt that said "PRAGUE - CZECH ME OUT."

Let me give you some advice - GO TO PRAGUE. Preferably GO NOW. Prague was absolutely gorgeous. The city is super old with lots of really cute alleyways and buildings that make you feel like you are part of another world. The only thing that kind of snaps you out of that reality is the fact that there are thousands of tourists everywhere and a lot of them like to do things like: eat shirtless in a restaurant (true), eat shoeless in a restaurant and prop their feet up on the chair besides (also true). Anyway, despite these freaks, we LOVED Prague.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon and took the bus and metro from the Prague airport. Everyone speaks English very well, which was a huge help because I just have not found the time to study Czech since I have been here. Anyway, the cost of the transport was 1 CHF (about 80 cents).

We crossed the historic (and touristy and crowded) Charles bridge to get to our hotel, a cute yellow building just maybe 50 meters from the bridge. We knew it as the Hotel Archibald but apparently it was called like the U Mostova Kampa or something like that. If you really are interested let me know. It was perfectly situated and had an AWESOME breakfast - Euro things like yogis and granola and croissants but also toast and eggs and bacon. And it was included. The room was fine, a little weird because it was 2 single beds pushed together IN bedframes, but I guess that's common for Prague. Not air conditioned which was not awful and we were even there on probably the hottest weekend ever.

So we checked out our Frommer's guidebook and chose a "moderate" (I will come back to this) priced restaurant for our dinner that evening, which had a fabulous view of the city, right on the river, just 2 minutes walk from our hotel. It was called Kampa Park and we ended up making a 6pm reservation in order to make sure we would get the view. In the meantime, we took a boat cruise along the Vlata river, which looked much less clean than the Chicago river and a far cry from the beautiful-you-can-see-clear-to-the-bottom-even-from-a-plane Rhone which runs through Geneva. But we got a free beer and ice cream, so what the heck. Anyway it was midly interesting, and I did get an opportunity for a lot of nice photos. We learned a TON about the floods in 2002, which made me wonder what they talked about before 2002. But it was pretty ridiculous - the water level raised like 5 meters or someting like that (picture 3 yardsticks) and flooded the entire city.

After the "cruise" we went to freshen up and then to dinner. Prague is supposed to be cheap, especially since they are still on the koruna and have not yet switched to the euro. However it has still gotten pricey, I suppose to take advantage of all the sucker tourists like ourselves.

Anyway, we had a PERFECT table, right in the corner with a view of the whole sun drenched city and river. It was absolutely beautiful. After a glass of Moet & Chandon (which I later found out cost 17 EURO) it looked even better and so did everything on the menu. We finally decided to be risky - Justin tried beef carpaccio and I had raw scallop and sea urchin sashimi - to start. We were both happy with them. For our entrees, I had an amazing seared tuna with red curry risotto in a nice broth, and Justin had duck with foie gras (which I had never tried before, but I realized what all the fuss is about - goooooooood). Finally we polished off our bottle of wine with a very good cheese plate of 5 cheeses - which our waiter named differently 5 different times. The setting was magnificient and so was the food, so although we were a little shocked with the bill (let'st just say that 2 nights in the hotel was cheaper than this meal), because it was so special, it was worth it completely! Although I stopped trusting Frommer after that based on the price quotation...

After dinner we walked around and had a beer in one of the various squares in Prague and then later wandered back to our hotel. The next day, after the aforementioned awesome breakfast, we went to Prague Castle which was really cool. The grounds were enormous and we saw a very old church - like a no frills cathedral - at St Georges Basillica, then also walked around in this building which kind of looked like the great hall of Hogwarts. We also took a walk down Golden Lane, a row of very small houses where originally the castle servants lived, but later named as such because alchemists used to frequent there. Sweet!!! We bought a few items and then headed back into town.

Randomly, we stumbled upon a photo exhibit of which the subject was Chicago! It was a bunch of nice aerial photos which I admit made me a little homesick. After that, we had a nice pizza lunch with cold Czech beer and then we went jewelry shopping!!

Prague and the Bohemia is apparently famous for its garnets. After being misled by Frommer once again (to a famous garnet shop which upon arrival, informed us that it did not sell garnets), Justin and I visited a few stores and eventually I struck a deal to get a necklace and some earrings. We stopped for a few drinks on the way back to our hotel in Wencesclas square, a very cool part of town. After a short nap and cooling off laying in front of the fan (it was at least 32 or 33C every day we were there and NO shade), we set off to find a traditional Prague dinner. I found some beautiful wine glasses on the way at BLUE (the area is also famous for its glass and crystal).

We found another great place for people watching near Wencesclas Square and settled upon some dark beers, "grandma's" potato soup, beef goulash and "monrovian sparrows" which was basically pork, almost like brisket, with red cabbage and dumplings. That traditional Prague food is good, but it sure is filling! Our waiter(s) were nuts and in the end annoying about demanding a tip when we were paying with a credit card (once we explained we were paying in cash, they backed off). That was the one slightly annoying thing - restaurant service was very marginal yet they still expected and in fact a lot of times demanded a tip, and also you got charged for "free" things like bread. Overall not enough to really change my feelings about the trip.

Sunday we had just enough time to enjoy the awesome breakfast again and hit the duty free at the airport (which I have come to really love...we bought some Czech liquor called Becherovka and also some Bohemian Sekt champagne..each less than 8 bucks). One more day in Prague would have been nice, but a weekend is definitely enough. So I recommend everyone go...and come visit me on the way!!

Photos of Prague (most of you have probably seen by now, but so pretty...)

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Justin goes to Switzerland

2007-07-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

Well as I have broadcast to pretty much everyone, Justin got here on July 2. The past 2 months were extremely difficult for whatever reason; maybe the 2 hardest of the assignment so far. So I was really REALLY looking forward to him coming here.

So a lot has changed since he got here!!

First, if I leave messes at home when I go to work, they are cleaned when I get back. Same with that my groceries magically bring themselves home and my errands magically complete themselves.

Seriously though it is so nice to have him here. We have never lived together and been able to spend time together so easily which makes it super fun. The first 2 weeks were pretty relaxed, we did a lot of cooking and watching tv shows and movies together and going for walks into town. We also celebrated my 27th birthday (yay!) which Justin made really special with nice things with champagne and cheese and a good dinner out and walk around Geneva.

The only thing which hasn't been good is the weather, but that finally improved at the end of last week. It was 55 degrees the day before my birthday. This is not Chicago!! I did also have a housewarming party ("Cremellaire") on July 6 where almost all of my work colleagues came. It was a "great success" especially mine and Justin's guacamole and bruschetta recipes! The weather was perfect for that, and warm enough for me to wear a dress on my birthday, and then perfect in Prague, so I can't really complain.

Now for Prague...that might have to wait until tomorrow.

Since You've Been Gone

2007-07-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

Hello hello? I am so sorry for my absence!! Well a lot has happened in the past few weeks which kept me busy:

I went to Norway - this recap is posted back in my June posts now because I drafted it a while ago. But definitely go check it out, because it also has PICTURES!! yaaaaay

I turned 27

JUSTIN GOT HERE!
And we went to Prague

So I will do as best I can a whirlwind recap of all of those things and include some photos! Here we go...

Voulez-vous parler avec moi chez soir?

2007-06-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

Normally I don't go out too much on the weekends, which is actually kind of a nice change from Chicago (although I always enjoy a night out dancing with good music!). However Thursday night was my last French class and afterwards we all went out for a drink. One girl proposed that we meet up again on Friday night for drinks as well.

The interesting thing about the group was that the girl, Sylvana, is from Bolivia, and the guy, Shekip, is from Kosovo. Neither of them speak any English whatsoever. I speak some Spanish, but now that I have learned French, when I try to go back to Spanish I get extremely confused and it is usually some sort of melange of all the foreign words I know. Example: "Yo no recuerdo, mais je pense que c'est ca" (I don't remember, but I think it's that). So we were really forced to communicate only in French, a situation I don't find myself in very often. Even at Pasha's there is usually someone who speaks English.

I was really tired on Friday and nothing is more difficult for me than trying to understand French when I am tired. If I zone out for like 30 seconds suddenly I have missed the entire conversation and then have to pretend that I understood (easily accomplished with a "oui" and nice smile, I generally find). Anyway, we met up at 8 at the gare and went to a little terrasse for drinks. We all had panache, which is beer with limonade (ok, see I just used the French word automatically there...I think a transformation is underway!). It's really quite nice for the summer, not as heavy as beer itself and very refreshing. Shekip also brought one of his friends who is from Chile. Finally my Professor (yes THAT one!) also joined us. Sylvana and I made sure that we sat on the opposite side of the table from Professor. So we had quite an international group! In fact, I told Sylvana and Shekip that they were the first people I had spoken with from Bolivia and the Balkan regions (respectively) and Sylvana told me that I was the first American she had spoken with.

So for 3 hours we spoke in nothing but French. Sylvana has a much better vocabulary and spoke a lot with Chilean friend. Some of the conversation was about Latin American politics (boring, sorry but when you can't understand everything, this is difficult). But mostly we talked about things we liked to do and food, things we used to do before we moved to Geneva, etc. It was actually pretty cool and very good practice for all of us. We also saw a fight that was absolutely ridiculous - about 8 guys, one guy got thrown into a window pane and it broke, then the guys picked up the pieces of glass and started swiping at each other, another guy was trying to hit people over the head with a bottle - this was happening like 15 feet from us!! Then all of the sudden it broke up and they all ran off. Bizarre. But it was a fun night, and in any case I now have some true French-only friends!

Today I woke up a little later than I wanted to but still ok. I have a lot of shopping to do to prepare for JUSTIN!! He is coming on Monday and will stay here for three months. Yeaaaah!!

The scariest night of my life (so far)

2007-06-23T03:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes things happen to me that just blow my mind. They are just so beyond bizarre and weird that you couldn't even dream it up. I'm trying to think of another one in recent memory that I could compare it to. I guess maybe last weekend when I was in Norway and had to get off the plane to physically confirm my checked luggage was pretty bizarre. Have you ever heard of anything like that? It resulted in a 1.5 hour delay. I can't think of any other ones right now but I will try.

The reason for this is because last night was so freaking weird and was the scariest night of my 26 years and 11 months so far. Even scarier I think than when I was held up at gunpoint at Starbucks; I think because that one I was kind of in a daze while it happened and panicked after. Anyway, I went to bed around 11 because on Saturday I wanted to get up super early to do a lot of laundry and errands etc. Intending to get a good nights sleep and be responsible.

I am on the first floor and have a huge balcony around my apartment, which is awesome. The only problem is I technically don't have any windows; only french doors that open out on to the balcony. And since I also don't have air conditioning, I leave my doors open almost all day and usually when I am sleeping as well. My apartment is probably 20 ft off the ground, so I am not concerned about any break ins.

So around 330, I am awoken out of a sound sleep to hear this strange noise. Like something scratching on my floor or being pushed around on my floor. I sat up and lifted up my sleeping mask (because there are about 10 streetlights that shine into my room) and through my blurred eyes, instinctively look at the bottom of my open bedroom door. Then, a freaking BLACK CAT scampers into my bedroom! I shrieked. Not screamed. It was a high pitched "AIEEE!" and jumped about 3 feet in the air; the cat seemed to do a sort of Scooby Doo running move and scampered right back out of my room.

Of course, I am not afraid of cats, and this one was black just like my Rookie at home. In fact I see a black cat in the alleys sometimes and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same one. But waking up to some animal running into your room and screaming just gets your heart racing about 200 kmph. I was shaking as I walked slowly around my apartment, checking all the nooks and crannies to see if I still had a squatter. I thought for a minute maybe I was going crazy. But then as I was pushing the sofa around to make sure the cat wasn't under it, I noticed some dark marks on the side. It was water that undoubtedly Kitty Cat left behind when rubbing up against my nice sofa. I wonder what else he was doing while I was sound asleep. Fortunately my apartment is relatively clean so there were no glasses or anything to be knocked over.

So of course I could not fall back asleep. I called everyone I knew (only my mom answered of course, because she loves me best) and then watched a really good episode of Queer Eye. As I finally drifted off to sleep around 5am, I thought that the cat must be one of my neighbors that had gotten outside, walked on the teeny little railing between our apartments and popped in.

But today I'm not so sure. There is a fairly big tree outside my apartment, but any sturdy branches seem to be at lesat 8 feet below my balconny. Then I realized that the cat could have come not just from my next door neighbors but any number of people on the first floor even in other buildings. So I decided I do not need to play french detective and go interrogating all of my neighbors, because they will probably think I am nuts and I would have to do a lot of questioning about this cat. I honestly have no clue how he got in.

So anyway, today I am tired and my allergies are awful, but I at least figured out a way to keep the doors just slightly open and taught so no more animals can get in. I mean are you kidding me?

Je suis malade

2007-06-22T13:49:00.000-07:00

Apparently I have some sort of Swiss hayfever. I don't really know how it happened, but on Tuesday of this week I was suddenly sneezing and nose dripping disgustingly everywhere. It has only gotten worse since the week has wore on. I guess a lot of people develop new allergies when they come to Switzerland. Probably because the air is so damn clean that your body gets used to breathing open and carefree, and then some little Swiss pollen comes along and ruins everything.

Anyway, I am not the only one. My entire office is suffering from this right now; which makes it slightly humorous and I guess ok. I just wish I could sneeze when I want to!

I realize I still have to write about my trip to Norway which was fantastic. I highly advise everyone to visit Norway! It is a wonderful country. Maybe even more wonderful than Switzerland, although the winters would seem to be pretty brutal. I have a lot of cleaning to do this weekend in order to prepare for the arrival of Justin in 10 days, but I will try to get in some blogging or at least post the photos! Ciao!

Jac goes to Oslo

2007-06-19T14:16:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend of June 15 I was in Oslo, Norway, one of the coolest cities I have ever visited and at least, the most northern place I have ever been in my life! It has always been a dream of mine to go to either Scandanavia or Alaska in the summer so I can experience 24 hours of daylight. Well, I got to experience that this weekend! Sure it was not like the middle of the day, but the darkest point, around midnight, was still pretty bright.

I went to Norway with my friend Ingvill from work, who is from Norway, to visit her twin sister Anniken and hang out with a bunch of their friends as well. They are actually both from a place farther north but her sister lives in Oslo now. Have you ever hung out with identical twins? I think it is hilarious and fun, but of course as we all know I am easily amused...

Anyway we got there on Thurs at 130 in the morning after ridiculous flight delays and it was still light out! It was kind of that dusky light the entire night. Really really cool. I never got over that even after experiencing it for 3 days straight. On Friday we went to walk down to the castle where the King and Queen live (looks more like a really big house). We also went to the harbor and got some "soft ice" which is basically like DQ that they dip in various things like chocolate powder and strawberry sugar to make different flavors. Mmmmm!

Norway trivia - What 80s band with a very short name originates from Norway? Hint, they are essentially (for U.S. purposes) a one hit wonder and the song features some very high pitched falsetto singing.

Friday I also had a Norwegian hot dog which is basically a really kick ass American dog. It comes on a toasted wheat roll and you can get all sorts of crazy things like potato salad and bacon and toasted onions on it. Super good. So like 6 hours after all of this eating we cooked dinner at Anniken's (to which I contributed by drinking wine, playing sudoku and setting the table) and then went over to a friend's house to just hang out and drink. Drinks (well, everything really is) are very expensive in Norway so it is common to do LOTS of pre-partying and also BYOB and DYOB and no one else's...not even at a party.

Saturday we went to this famous park and tried to do a little shopping but it was very crowded and panicky so we didn't really. The weather was perfect yet again on this trip - I have had really good luck with that so far! So we did a lot of walking around and eventually made it back home to enjoy a few drinks on the balcony. Later that evening we barbequed (again, MAJOR contributions by yours truly to this effort) and some people came over for drinks, including some of the girls I had met from Lisbon. It was great fun to see everyone again and I learned some good Scandanavian songs!

You should download "Sommartider" (Summertime) which is a great fun summer party song from Sweden. I swear it could easily be a hit in the U.S.

After several drinks we headed to a party a little ways away around midnight and it was still light out. I learned how to say "Happy Birthday" in Norwegian and repeated it to anyone who would listen although since can't seem to remember...finally we went out to some bars. While everyone was standing in the queue for one bar, Ingvill and Anniken whisked me around the corner to go to...the Hard Rock Cafe! It was completely jam packed with people. The bar played awesome music including some that took me back to Vandy days (I was not expecting "let me clear my throat"!! and we danced until about 3 in the morning. Afterwards, we got the drunk food of choice in Norway...baked potato. Leave it to Norwegians to eat something relatively healthy after a night of carousing. It had corn and butter on it and was sooo good. We ambled home in the early morning light after that.

Sunday I was very, um tired, so I didn't feel like doing much. It was perfect as it was a rainy day so we all just sat around and relaxed until I left around 3. I had a really annoying flight back wit 20 babies, 5 within 2 rows of me.

Here are some pictures from Norway!! And the band? It's A-Ha.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=5lax6oc9.3plhrlk1&Uy=-5hshrv&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&UV=380848097114_267303013505

The 3000th!

2007-06-10T04:12:00.001-07:00

Exciting day today...I now have over 3,000 songs on my iPod! woooo! I just downloaded "It won't be soon before long" by Maroon 5 and "Legend" by Bob Marley (a cd I am obsessed with and lost, and have lived without for far too long). So far Maroon 5 CD is excellent.

I am really considering buying Amy Winehouse, because I can't stop hearing about her and also I really like the "Back to Black" song. Any recommendations? I usually prefer to buy the whole album on iTunes if there is more than like 2 or 3 songs worth listening to. I don't have radio here and I don't go out that much so I am relying on you, gentle reader, for new music suggestions!

Anyway, this morning around 7 there was a horrible thunderstorm. I love thunderstorms but this thing was freaking scary!! I was a little hungover (more on this later) and so I was not happy about being woken up. I hopped out of bed just to make sure none of the rain was getting into my apartment because I usually sleep with all the windows open (I don't have AC and it was about 30C here yesterday) There was a really loud thundercrack that rattled my whole room. Then I was just about falling back asleep and CRAAAAAAACK!!!!! I think the lightning bolt must have hit right outside my apartment because this was absolutely the loudest thundercrack I have ever heard. It hurt my ears!!! I was seriously frightened and pulled all my sheets up under my chin and hugged my stuffed animals really close. I laid there like that completely petrified with my heart racing for about 5 minutes, and then that was the end of it.

Then I woke up at 11 and of course it's a gorgeous sunny day now. Does this place ever have bad weather? Seriously, it never lasts for more than a few hours at a time, although there was a torrential downpour last Thursday night.

Anyway now I am headed to work, as I am currently on a quest to get as much done as possible in the next 23 days before Justin arrives. Ciao!

As Promised...

2007-06-09T03:11:00.000-07:00

So, last night was Lisa's performance at the"IKEA house." The performance was AMAZING. Lisa is an opera singer, soprano, and sang with another girl who is a mezzo soprano (other girl sings at a lower pitch). I have never really seen opera before, only "The Magic Flute" which I saw here earlier this year (with Lisa in it).

This was actually in an old greenhouse which was a really cool setting. So the 2 girls sang and one guy played piano for about 100 people. It was so cool because the setting was really intimate, and the acoustics in the greenhouse were awesome! Anyway it was just an absolutely brilliant performance. This might sound weird but when I first heard the notes, it was like being hit with a gust of wind in your face or something, or jumping into a cold pool. Just like, WHOA!! She can sing so loud and has such a range, it's just beautiful. So I really enjoyed it. Afterwards when we were all enjoying cocktails they sang happy birthday to someone and it was the most amazing version of happy birthday I had ever heard. All sorts of crazy harmonizing going on.

OK now for you little gossip hounds, the rest.

1) I found out the guy is not the owner or the founder of IKEA. Apparently he is the architect of all of the furniture, which is much cooler in my opinion. I googled and wikipediaed him though and couldn't find anything. I did meet him, and he was dressed in all black and wearing a cowboy hat. It's June 8th. Naturally.

2) I never saw the house. As I mentioned the concert took place in a greehouse which happened to have a huge guest or servants kitchen whatever around the other side. The grounds on which this took place were about the size of a football field and had all these rosebushes, trellises, little paths, hedges in shapes, etc. Gorgeous. The whole scene reminded me of the old lady's property from the movie "Great Expectations" with a little less swamp and "dark and twisty" elements (as Meredith Grey would say). I kind of saw a GIANT house when passing this gate on the way out, but no clue if it was this guy's.

3) There were not meatballs or cookies. There was however veggies and a ton of cheese, champagne, beer which was left in the fountain as a cooler, and homemade fudge.

I think that's about it. Anything else you want to know?

As Iadmired the sun was setting over the mountains, watching the stars come out at 10pm and sipping champagne on this well manicured lawn, I was thinking when the heck else in my life will I get to listen to a private opera concert inside a greenhouse? It seems like there is always something special happening over here.

First...some social commentary

2007-06-09T02:49:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry to throw this in, but I'm going to have to. WHAT is the big deal with Paris Hilton going to jail and then going back to jail? It is really unbelievable how much coverage this story has gotten. This is the top story on yahoo (ok, explainable) but also on supposedly reputable sites like tribune.com and cnn.com. I just checked CNN and actually this story is now third, behind the space shuttle and one about 2 guys meeting who just happen to be Bush and THE POPE. So Paris is just slightly less important than the Pope?!

Also all of the pictures of her crying, articles about her being hysterical...come on. I am 26 and if someone sentenced me to jail I might not throw a hissy fit, but I might be pretty uspet. Then again, I would not be idiotic enough to drive drunk on a suspended license or whatever she did.

Anyway I generally do not get involved with this sort of things but the whole thing is a little bit voyeuristic and gross and I had to comment. I will admit that I read the articles, but only for purposes of research for this post. Do people really care so much about this kind of thing? Gross!

There's a band playing outside my apartment

2007-06-03T01:34:00.000-07:00

No seriously. So what happened is, I came home on Friday night and there was a big white tent in front of MY apartment. I have the corner unit on the first floor, so literally it was right in front. I had no clue for what. Then yesterday I woke up and found out there was this random street fair going on on my block. I don't really understand what though, because as far as I could tell, no one was selling anything except the ice cream vendor. People maybe were bartering? There was just all this random crap like records and baby clothes laid out everywhere. Now this morning there is a band playing. I like the sound, it's kind of jazzy salsa type with a good beat and lots of sax. It just makes me glad that I don't have a hangover.

Yesterday I had a solo adventure at IKEA. Dave and Lisa couldn't go but I was bored and decided to go by myself anyway. Actually, what I didn't realize was that the train stops right across the parking lot so it is really easy. I got some things I needed and some I didn't need. I am the most excited about a new backpack I got. My backpack is shot and my laptop bag, being free from work, is of course a piece of you know what. So this bag is perfect for my laptop and other stuff, and it also unzips in the middle into two smaller backpacks. C'est cool!

IKEA is so crazy though. I figured out why they have the arrows on the floor (which I consistently ignored), because if people didn't have something to follow, they would be constantly running into each other like cars at an intersection when the lights go out. It was actually maybe a little better to go by yourself because you can weave around people who are standing around wondering "why are the Cubs SO bad?" (well they are probably not thinking about the cubs, but another question that boggles the mind and cannot be answered) I had lunch there as well because you just cannot pass up those meatballs. The funniest thing was I saw a cart with 1 kid and 2 dogs in it. Can't one of those stay at home? I was only at IKEA for 2 hours but maybe some people really do spend like 6 hours there. Anyway, I recommend that if you ever go on a foreign assignment by yourself that you go to IKEA. I think I may start going more often. After being in IKEA, with thousands of screaming kids, slowest walking people on earth, dogs, etc, all you want to do is just go home and be by yourself!

I went to Ingvill and Laurent's house for dinner which is always fun, because they always make really good food, have lots of drinks, and play good music! Since it has been a little cold, we made fondue. mmmm delicious. Ingvill and I also made cupcakes or "muffins" as she calls them. I love cupcakes!! They are so cute and just make me happy. And they should make you happy too. They turned out really good.

Well I am heading to work and later to the lanudro of course. However I bought some cute new sheets at IKEA so that is an incentive for me to go wash things!

By the way, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE CHICAGO CUBS?!!!!

It's Friiiiiiiiday

2007-06-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

This has been a LONG week and I am so happy the weekend is here. I like to chill and be antisocial on weekends. I know that sounds lame, but be serious with me. After a long week at work I just like to chill and not deal with anyone or anything. Doesn't drinking wine and watching movies on your couch on a cold rainy night sound perfect? Seeeeeeee? And that's what I did.

As most of you know I am way behind on movies, I have seen probably around 10% of the number of movies of an average 26 year old person. Tonight I watched Mission Impossible 2 on loan from Dave and it was predictable but entertaining. Tom Cruise looks really awful with long hair though and I kept wanting to cut it. It was like he was shaking his bob just to piss me off.

I also read about the Zambrano-Barrett fight which is hilarious. Those two are both crazy and I think they should extend it to a 3 minute cage match to see what happens. At least I am not missing any good baseball being over here because the Cubs are awful right now.

Last item of this random post, I found out about this Chicago band called Red Line District and I finally listened to some of their songs tonight. They are super good, playing around Chicago and you can download their songs on myspace. I am always promoting more good music so check it out.

The IKEA house

2007-05-31T14:47:00.001-07:00

So some of my readers (I love saying this, as if I am really a famous columnist) are wondering about my planned sojourn to the IKEA house. Honestly I don't know much about it at this point. Here is all I know:

-On June 8th, Lisa is giving a duet performance at someone's house. Someone who happens to be the owner or founder of IKEA. I don't remember which, but it's safe to say that they are rich. And I don't know who Lisa is singing with, but I would be willing to bet my "Leksvik" coffee table that it is not him

-He has a big theater sized room in his house that can hold like 150 people, all of whom probably will look something like this:

-He is contributing 150 CHF to the party, which at IKEA can buy you 4 "Leksvik" kitchen chairs and accompanying cushions

-Dave is buying champagne, a bottle of which will at the cheapest be 10 CHF, which was how much one of my "Jeff" chairs cost.

I have a super cute dress to wear so I am excited about that! I promise to take photos and provide major scoop, at least as major as I can. It should be a very fun evening. I am going to IKEA this weekend actually with Dave and Lisa to rehearse. Just kidding. But they need to buy some stuff and I can't think of anything I need, but I'm sure once I get there I will. I will definitely need, for example, to eat some meatballs. And I need desparately to get some picture frames for my apartment and some extra pillows and blankets for some summer guests. Oh and I know you thought I was kidding about the cookies, but I'm not.

So stay tuned!

By the way - if you go to You Tube and look up "Five Day Old Baby Kitties" you will find a video I took of Aimee with Karen's baby kitties!

Work has totally sucked this week, and it is cold and rainy. Feels just like home! But the good news is tomorrow is June 1, which means just one more month until Justin and I are reunited! And tomorrow is Friday.

The next four months

2007-05-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

One of my loyal readers, Abby (admittedly probably my only loyal reader, ha ha ha) has asked me to confirm my summer itinerary in the event people would like to make plans with me. So, below, I give you my next four months:

June 8: Watching Lisa perform at the owner of IKEA's house (I am planning on bringing the IKEA chocolate chip cookies and trying to pass them off as my own)
June 15-17: Oslo, Norway

July 2: Justin arrives!
July 11: I turn 27! YAY
July 14-16: Prague, Czech Republic
July 19-22: Paris, France
July 22-28: Dogsit Java again in Dardagny. July 26-28 Justin's mom comes to visit and is staying with us too!

Early August: Likely taking a trip in Switzerland but nothing definite yet
August 17-27: Italy (Florence, Cinque Terra, Venice, Tuscany and some other stuff, not in that order - Justin is planning)

Sept 6-11: NY NY for Jess and Kevin's wedding. yahoo!
Sept 22ish: Likely Greece or Oktoberfest
Sept 29: Justin leaves
Sept 30: I drink an entire bottle of vodka and sing "Everybody Hurts" over and over from my balcony

So there you have it. Its a little full. But I have a lot of room so all visitors are welcome. I am going to see the world!!

By the way...

2007-05-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

Friday, 25 May marked six months that I have been living in Geneva! I'm 1/4 of the way done with my assignment!

Dreissypalooza 2007!!

2007-05-27T04:45:00.000-07:00

I'm starting with what happened most recently, because it was really cool. Aimee and Chris came to visit me on May 17 for a week. We didn't really have any concrete plans until Tuesday before they came so it was going to be quite an adventure.

17 May - I raced into to the airport, as always, and meet them outside customs with lots of hugs. We come back to my apartment which is approved of. After lunch, Aimee and Chris take a short nap. Around 4pm we left to catch the train to Lucerne. The weather was horrible, cold and rainy, and even worse in Lucerne. We arrived around 8pm and checked into our hotel, which was used as a jail until 1998!! www.jailhotel.ch After a quick change, we meandered back through town to find a traditional Swiss restaurant. We decided it would be better for the three of us to all share 3 entrees than to eat our own. We had fondue, beef stronganoff and bratwurst with rosti. Mmmm! Well Chris hated the fondue, and the stroganoff had nothing on Aimee's version, but it was still good. After dinner, we headed back to jail and went to the bar there, which was playing really loud dance music. Although we were all tired, we decided it would still be a good idea to drink a few beers and take Jager shots! yay! When we got up to the room, there was a problem. Chris had lost the room key (which had a password on it that was punched into a keypad to open). We remembered the password, but the problem was the room key had our room number on it, so anyone who found it could just come right in. As punishment Chris had to go look for it with no success. I went back with him and miraculously we found it at the unmanned reception desk, snuck away and went back to our "cell." I slept in the top bunk, which was about 3 meters off the ground, and there was no bar. So to prevent me from falling out, Aimee and Chris strapped me in by tying 2 belts together around my bed and then I slipped in underneath. Strapped in just like a real prisoner!!

May 18 - We woke up and wanted to go to the top of Mt. Pilatus, but it was too cloudy. The woman at the TI suggested we go check out the street artists fair, but we had a better idea. We took a boat cruise around Lake Lucerne. The clouds cleared while we were on the boat and it turned into a nice sunny day! We stopped in a little town called Weggis for lunch and shared again. Aimee and Chris tried their first Filets de Perches and enjoyed it! Weggis was pretty sleepy, so we got back on the next boat we could at 2:30 to take us back to Lucerne. We then walked to the famous Lion monument. It is very pretty and cool to see, and the area was filled with tourists. Nearby this was the Glacergarten or Glacier Museum. This place was so random. Apparently it is built over a huge rock that was left there by a glacier. That was kind of cool to see. Then there were some other exhibits about glacier formations. But there was also some random furniture and utensils and things around to see, as well as a big pond full of goldfish and some bunnies. We went to the top of the lookout tower and then saved the best, the hall of mirrors, for last. I had a difficult time and kept walking into the mirrors which made all of us crack up. We left after feeling kind of dizzy and nauseated, but it was pretty fun.

That night we went to this really good brewery on the river for dinner. The beer was delicious and you could only get it there, so we drank a liter each. We also had the best pretzel ever and Alpenmacaroni, which is macaroni and cheese Swiss style, which is outstanding. After waiting for our check for about 45 minutes, we headed to the casino! I taught Chris a little bit about blackjack and soon we were each up about 200 CHF. It was really fun because we were playing at our own table. But then in a flash, things turned, and I left down 100, Chris even. Later I tried to redeem myself at the 10franc table but could never win more than like 30 francs, so I gave up and we went home. We had plenty to drink at the casino, so we went straight to bed.

May 19 - The next morning I forced Aimee and Chris to get out of bed early, which they were not happy about. But it was fortunate that we did as the day was gorgeous and we were headed to Mt. Pilatus! The mountain is supposedly named for Pontius Pilate whose ghost is said to haunt it; however Rick Steeves dimissed this and said it comes from the Latin word for "cloudy." It is also supposedly enchanted with dragons. Apparently the legal absinthe over here has quite an effect on the Swiss imagination. We barely caught the train to Alpenschad, which is where the cogwheel train leaves from. Once we arrived, we got in a really long queue but were fortunate enough to catch the 12:10 ascent. The train goes at a very steep grade, 48% in some places, and is the steepest in the world. The ascent took about 40 minutes and was very scenic. Once at the top, the views were breathtaking. There was not a cloud in the sky, and it felt like you could see the entire world below you. We had brats and beers for lunch and enjoyed the views. After lunch we hiked a short way up to Eiger which is the highest viewing point at Mt. Pilatus. Just the pure magnitude as Chris said, was unbelievable.

We took a gondola down and at the first stop, Chris encouraged us to try the "Seilpark" - a ropes course. These things scare the crap out of me and Aimee wasn't too keen either, but all that Alpine air and seeing people skydive and paraglide everywhere raises your adventure spirit a little bit. So we tried it! There were 7 small courses, each more difficult than the next. After 2, Aimee and I watched Chris do an extra hard one where he zip lined about 50 meters with a view of the Alps in the background. We then did a hard one together which was really hard and scary! But I was glad he made us do it.

After we got back, we boarded the train for Interlaken. As you near Interlaken, you come around the side of Lake Thun, which is absolutely stunning. The train looks like it is riding right over the lake, which is smooth as glass. Once we arrived and checked into Balmer's, we headed out for a late dinner and then came back to the Metrobar. Balmer's is a hostel basically like a fraternity house and this bar was no different. Everyone was pretty well behaved though and they played good music. By the end of the night, we paid witness to an international dance off that happened in the middle of the bar!

May 20 - We woke up hungover and an hour late for checkout, so we had to scramble to get out of the room. We stumbled down to the train station to try and decide what to do. Aimee suggested we head to Grindelwald and take a gondola up to First, which had a hike you could do to a beautiful lake. With 3 minutes until the train left, we hurried and bought our tickets and hopped on. Switzerland has a lot of these smaller open air trains where you can open the windows and really enjoy the air and sunshine. The gondola ride up was about 30 minutes, and we had drinks at the top to enjoy the view. We decided to try to hike to the lake, which was supposedly 1 hour 40 minutes roundtrip. We didn't have hiking clothes though, or boots, and of course we trudged through a lot of mud and SNOW!! We arrived finally at Lake Balchalp (we think), but to our dismay, it was frozen. We still took some nice photos anyway and then headed back. We enjoyed some beers on the gondola ride down and hopped on the train back to Interlaken. There we had dinner at a delicious Italian place and then just as we boarded the train for Bern, it started thundering and pouring. Perfect timing!!

May 21 - After the long weekend, work was pretty difficult for me to do. That day Aimee and Chris slept late and then wandered around Geneva. We took it easy at night, making a random dinner at home of chicken, salad and raclette, and had a beer at Pasha's.

May 22 - Aimee and Chris went to the Chateau de Chillion in Montreux. That night we had dinner with my friends Karen and Christophe at their apartment in Lausanne and met their new kittens! The kittens were born only over the weekend so they were sooooo cute and tiny. They didn't even have their eyes open yet.

May 23 - Aimee and Chris went to Gruyeres. We met up at the Alibi for a few drinks and then went to Pickwicks to watch the AC Milan/Liverpool championship. Very exciting, even though Liverpool lost. Got a little drunk and ate some really good hamburgers and took a loooot of pictures as you will see...

May 24 - Aimee and Chris hung out in Geneva. I met them for lunch at a really good Italian place by my apartment. We met up again around 6 at Balexert, did a little shopping, went to the Alibi again to meet Dave for drinks and then we went to Ingvill and Laurent's for dinner and had tacos! We had a really nice time and were there until about midnight. Instead of going downtown to see the lake, we decided to go home, but took a detour and ended up at Pasha's. We talked with him for a long time and had beers and ice cream, and Chris tried a kebab.

May 25 - Aimee and Chris left. waaahhh. It was so much fun because it was really our first vacation just the three of us, and we definitely got to do a ton of stuff.

Dreissypalooza part two will be in December 2007!

Links to photos:

Lucerne and Interlaken:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=5lax6oc9.85m0esjt&Uy=-u53l2a&Ux=0

Rest of the week:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=5lax6oc9.3iwmuss9&Uy=-ph4cli&Ux=0

The Tick and Lisbon

2007-05-26T11:57:00.000-07:00

Well I think I will abridge my versions of dogsitting and trip to Lisbon, because it was like 2 weeks ago now and the trips with Aimee and Chris were much much cooler and more exciting things happened.

I went out to Dardagny to dogsit for Dave and Lisa for 5 days while they were in Greece. They have an adorable chocolate lab named Java. Dardagny is only about 25 minutes drive from Geneva but is literally in the middle of nowhere. You might recognize it as "The Shire" because its all valleys and vales and probably hobbits somewhere. There are also a ton of winemakers and vineyards there which is super cool. The week got off to a great start - we went for a long walk outside and explored some trails and streams, played with his ball, and made a nice dinner and watched Shrek 2 (I LOVE this movie!). Monday I walked him before work and came home around 6, at which time we went for a long walk in the vineyards. Tuesday I was a little late coming home and took him for a walk before even entering the house. After a 45 minute walk, wherein we were caught in a massive downpour, we came home and I noticed the house smelled kind of bad. I peeked around the corner up the staircase and saw at first what I thought was pee. But I realized, it was not pee. It was dia. And it was all over the tile staircase. My face scrunched up with each stair I ascended as I realized that the damage was not limited to one area of the house. There were two other large dia piles and then, as a crescendo, a pile of vomit. Not having a dog, I had no clue what this was, if this was revenge because I came home a little late, or he missed mom and dad, or what. But for the next hour, I cleaned and tried not to vomit. Dave and Lisa happened to call around 9 and said that he was probably just extremely stressed because it had thunderstormed that day.

So I went to bed around 1 and at 2:30 woke up to Java sitting up very alert. I sensed something was off and asked him if he needed to go outside. He answered me by vomiting. Ugh. But I felt really really bad, because I may have been tired, but I wasn't the one who was sick. We went out like 5 more times that evening/morning and I decided to stay home from work rather than risk coming home to a house that looked like a set from Double Dare. Around our lunchtime walk, Java didn't follow me upstairs like he usually did. I called him, but nothing. So I went downstairs where he was laying on the floor, looking sullen. "What's wrong?" I asked. Java kind of rolled over on his side and lifted up his arm, where I saw something that looked like a skin tag. I knelt down for a closer look and realized that skin tags don't have legs. It was a tick. Dave had warned me, with a cautionary "you need to pull the suckers out by the head, but don't worry, you won't have to deal with that."

I looked around for some kind of special tick removal apparatus and found nothing. So I grabbed my eyebrow tweezers and asked Java to lay still. I absolutely hate bugs. HATE. Cringing, I squeezed as close as I could to Java's skin and pulled slowly. After about 5 seconds, the little bugger let go and I dropped him into a plastic bag (per mom and dad's instructions, if I found any ticks I needed to keep them so they could check with the vet if they were diseased). Java and I looked at each other, then the bag, then each other again. Suddenly, Java's tail began to wag like crazy, and he jumped up and put his paws on me like a hug and started licking me like crazy. We did it!! After I cleaned him up and put the tick in 2 more plastic bags and a jar, I did some research and found out that the tick I grabbed was like 5 times a normal sized one. Not sure what that means, but I found another one later just on the fur which I easily removed, and he was tiny. Let me just say that had I found the big one later, knowing how SICKASS those things were at that point, I'm not sure if I would have been able to pull it out without puking or crying. The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. I am definitely ready to have a dog of my own or be a parent after that, although not for a while.

After Javapalooza, I headed to Lisbon for the weekend with my friend Ingvill, her twin sister and 4 of their friends, all from Norway. I learned quite a bit about Norway and the different dialects over the weekend! Lisbon is a cool city, very old but pretty clean, and not too busy. We did not do that much sightseeing because we spent most of the weekend shopping. We did go to one castle and on Sunday while waiting for our flight, Ingvill and I took one of those cheesy bus tours. Actually it was pretty good. Unfortunately it was REALLY windy and we were freezing on the roof driving at like 60 kph with the wind whipping us. Lisbon is super cheap which was also nice - dinner each night including a drink and a coffee, was usually around 20 euro a person (that would be like 50 francs or more in Geneva, 20 Euros is probably around 38 CHF). My favorite thing was that all of the old buildings had tiles on the facades instead of paint. The tiles are all patterned in blues and yellows and greens and really pretty.

Questions

2007-05-25T03:32:00.000-07:00

Well hello there. It has been almost a month since my last post, but I have been incredibly busy with a lot of adventures! I plan to spend some serious time updating this puppy today. Even better I have about 200 photos to share.

Just to summarize what I have been up to:

May 6-10 - Dogsitting for Dave and Lisa
May 10-13 - Trip to Lisbon
May 17-20 - In Lucerne and Interlaken with Aimee and Chris
May 21-25 - Entertaining Aimee and Chris in Geneva

And I was working almost that entire time too.

So just 3 questions before I launch into a 10 page update -

1) Do you guys have MIKA over there? I am obsessed with him. He is one of those artists that I am sure can be extremely annoying to a lot of people. However I think his music is really fun and upbeat and it is good to listen to all the time. He sounds a little bit like a cross between Queen and Jason Mraz or someone like that.

2) Opinions of the LOST season finale? I thought it was ok. As usual resolves one thing and opens the door on 10 others. SPOILER ALERT Abby I completely agree with you on the alternate reality. The producers have come out and said that they want to be "fair" to the viewers so I don't think that is it, but still weird. Anyone else completely not fooled when the 3 gunshots went off? Sayid is not leaving the show. at least he better not be. We have now seen Penny in 2 consecutive finales so when the heck are they going to tell us how she is making contact with the island?!!

Also does anyone else think it is kind of weird that Charlie and Kate are married in real life? She is so much cuter than him. But maybe once he gets rid of his Driveshaft tatts and nailpolish and shaves, he's a real knockout.

3) Opinions on the Grey's Anatomy season finale? SPOILER ALERT I was really looking forward to watching this and I thought it sucked. Absolutely nothing was resolved and in fact things were just made more of a mess. SPOILER ALERT why didn't Bailey get chief resident?!!! I bet they thought they were really clever introducing Meredith's half sister as a new intern but if you were paying attention last week you would have remembered seeing her pull Meredith's father away and then later flirting with McDreamy. I don't like where that is going. Every single character has become a total wuss on that show except for Izzy and it is getting annoying. Do something people!

Ok, that's it for now.

The Bunny

2007-04-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, those of you who have been to a foreign country, or even just another state that is kind of weird (you know like Texas or Wisconsin), have you ever encountered something that just totally rocked your world? That made you think, "what the...I never knew this could be possible!!" One of my friends told me she had an a-ha moment like this when she was buying butter in Europe and realized it didn't come in a thick rectangle like we are used to. It came in a flat rectangle. And she thought, I never even thought butter came any other way. But there it was, and that was normal, although at the time, to her, was tres bizarre.

My first moment like that here (well, besides stupid things like not being able to wash on Sunday or take the elevator to my own floor at work) was when I discovered that legal paper does not exist in Europe. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely hate legal paper. It just always gets wrinkly or inevitably someone will hit the button which causes your entire print job to go onto legal when you really really needed it to be on letter. But one day I needed to print something that was really long and A4 (the Euro sibling to 8 by 11 paper) just wasn't cutting it.

So I asked my office mates if there was legal paper. What? Oh 8 1/2 by 11 paper? No, I said, legal paper. It is like the same height but wider? And they had no clue. So I took a walk around the office and asked some more people. Someone claimed to know what I was talking about and showed me paper called A3. Ok, for those of you who have not seen A3 paper, it is the size of a blanket. I mean it is HUGE and in no way should be used in an office. So I said, no, I do not need this blanket sized document, don't we have legal paper, that is somewhere in between the blanket and the weird Euro A4 paper? But we don't. As the French say, ne existe pas. So that was the first time I was like....where am I?

The second was over the weekend. I give you, exhibit A.

The picture is a little blurry, but you know what it is right? Pink bunnies. Seems harmless enough.

Now, exhibit B. Notice anything weird yet?

Uh huh. I see. Ok, one more look. Exhibit C.

Did you figure it out? Did you see what caused me to do a double take at Carrefour and spend 10 francs because I simply could not believe my eyes and needed photographic evidence?.....

Did you know that there is a Duracell bunny??

That's right, a Duracell bunny. He is not the shades sportin, drum totin, going, going, going, hip hare also known as the Energizer Bunny. The pink bunny I know and love. That you know and love too. This bunny is in some weird tracksuit and what's more, he apparently has a friend. And he looks weird.

Anyway, I realize some of you might think that I have officially lost my mind but I thought this was just really strange. Kind of like that "Bizarro" episode of Seinfeld. There is an explanation though, and a good one, on Wikipedia. I really encourage you to read it, not only to educate yourselves but also because I think it is pretty funny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duracell_Bunny

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energizer_Bunny

If you want the abridged version, apparently the reason we have never seen Duracell bunny is because he actually does not exist in North America, only in Europe and Australia. And also because of some patent things.

If you have had and a-ha moment while traveling abroad and would like to guest post on my blog, just let me know via the comments section! I would be happy to post your story and photo!

Bain de Paquis

2007-04-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the Bain de Paquis with Dave and Lisa. This is basically a little beach on the lake that is made up of docks and concrete to lay on (i.e., basically a beach). I found it absolutely awesome that I was laying out in my bikini, when 3 weeks ago, I was snowboarding!! J'adore ca!

After a short sunbathe, we had a nice lunch! Asparagus is in season and all over the menus. It is like 5 of the 6 daily specials. So naturally I had an asparagus salad and some prosecco, followed by a walk back to the lake and des glaces (ice cream) mmmm. I got chocolate and banana. They put it in a side by side cone instead of stacking it. Brilliant eh? Most exciting of all was that I got a subscription to a movie rental place near me so now I can rent movies!! It is 7 CHF per day, per movie. So, not cheap, but ok as long as you watch it.

A great day overall. It is just so beautiful here that it makes me happy just walking out the door. Not to be cheesy but, you can see for yourself when you come visit!

The next wave

2007-04-28T03:19:00.000-07:00

My next wave of visitors/visiting has officially begun! This could not be coming at a better time since as I mentioned earlier in the week, I was pretty sad to leave Justin. In 3 weeks my brother and sister are coming, which I could not be more excited for!

On Thursday, my friend Aya came for a visit. She is on her way to India for a 6 week rotation (same that I wrote about in last year's blog) and stopped through Geneva. A lot of people are going to India these days so it is convenient to live over here, kind of a little hub for all of the travelers! She got in at 9am on Thurs and I unfoturnately had to work, seeing as I just took 4 days off. She met up with me and Dave for drinks after at the Alibi and then joined us to try our hand at the casino. Which I am really starting to hate. I mean, take my money but can't you let me play blackjack for more than 5 minutes? And yes, I have heard the saying that the more you gamble, the more you will lose, thank you very much. I prefer "if at first you don't succeed, try try again." Anyway, after that Aya and I went to a little Italian place by my flat for dinner. Apparently she was impressed with my french, which I find interesting since I have not done any homework lately and have missed my last 3 classes.

Friday I was able to take the afternoon off so we could hang out. After running to the airport (in a cardigan and pearls...) we caught a train to Montreux. This place is on the other end of lake Geneva and it is gorgeous, naturally . They have a famous jazz festival every year (this year 6-21 July) where everyone goes and drinks wine and sits on the lake, listening to jazz and watching the sunset over the French Alps. No wonder Europeans are so happy.

Aya and I visited a castle right on the lake called the Chateau de Chillon.
http://www.chillon.ch/en/index.html Aya has the photos so those will be coming later. It sits right on the lake, looking out at the mountains and Montreux, so the views both of the castle and from the castle itself are just stunning.

It is too bad that there are no castles in the U.S. (besides those of the white and enchanted variety). They are so cool. First, they are massive. Second, they are SO OLD. This place was built sometime before the 11th century and then gradually improved upon by all the various Counts who lived there. And it had cool little prisons and spooky gallows and things. I felt like this in India too, just kind of amazed at how long some things have been around when our little USA has only been around for the past 200 years.

Consider for example the Statue of Liberty...which was acquired in 1886. At that time, the canton of Vaud decided to start RENOVATING the castle. This thing was occupied as far back as the time of the Romans. You can read about its cute little history on the website.

After hanging out in the castle for a while, we went back to the main part of Montreux and walked around, enjoying all of the sunshine and flowers blooming all over the place. We then headed back to Geneva and walked down to the lake, which was packed with people. We grabbed a bottle of wine at a little cafe while waiting for this guy Matt, also in town working for our same company, who I invited to join us for dinner.

The restaurant was called Restaurant Edelweiss and I had heard it was traditional Swiss. So, here are some things which might have given us a clue of how traditional it was:
1) You are greeted by an enormous St. Bernard stuffed animal walking in the door (like the size of a lion). Another one is inside.
2) The menu is fondue, more fondue, meat fondue, raclette, and meringue. Some other things too, but that is mostly it
3) The waiters wore these little red and blue vests with flowers on them a la a member of the Von Trapp family (which I realize is Austrian, but you get the idea)
4) There is live music, consisting of 2 guys who play a variety of instruments, including the accordion, cowbells, and that BIG horn...think riiiiiiiiiiiiiiicolaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....and encourage people dining to get up and try the horn (essentially, make a fool our of yourself)

It was so cheesy but the food was really good and a fun place to bring tourists for sure. So this morning at 5:30 me and Aya jumped on the 10 with about 400 pounds of luggage for her to make her 6:30 flight. I plan to work this afternoon and possibly make a trip to the landromat...yaaaaaay!

The View

2007-04-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo I took from the plane which I thought was pretty awesome.

See all of the yellow squares? That is rapeseed, also known as rape, also known as a plant which immature people will need to make stupid jokes about. I actually thought it was just a really pretty weed. But I just found out that rapeseed is also used to make canola oil and biodiesel. It is everywhere here now and really bright yellow and pretty. I was just amazed at the contrast I could see from so high. This was taken about 15 minutes before I landed in Geneva.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed

Tell us bout the boy from New York City

2007-04-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a crazy weekend in NY with Justin. And Justin's family, friends, brother's friends, my friends, and random celebrities (Justin's brother had an altercation with Geraldo at the entrance to a men's room).

Highlights of the trip (excluding seeing Justin which was of course THE highlight):

1) The weather. It was so beautiful while we were there. We actually did not have much in the way of summer clothes but it was just warm enough to be nice without making you too hot.

2) Chipotle. Sorry, but it's true. It is impossible to get Mexican here and it was sooo good. Also we had awesome, cheap thai at Lemongrass Grill and NY paper thin pizza which I love. Ok, I won't talk anymore about food.

3) Mets game (against Braves). We saw Glavine vs Smoltz which is pretty cool. We also had Nathan's hot dogs (sad to say they might be better than Wrigley dogs) and lots of beers. There is nothing better than watching a baseball game on a sunny day with a cold beer and someone you love.

4) Surprisingly, the Hotel Chandler. On 31st and 5th, it was not too expensive and pretty nice. You could tell that it used to be a dump and they had refurbished a lot. Some shortcuts were a little obvious (for example, they had really nice tvs, but the remote did not really work too well, and they offered free wi-fi, but it was really slow). However, the bed was really comfy with nice linens, the shower was huge with good pressure and free Aveda shampoos, bathrobes (always a huge selling point with me), and my 2 favorites were the iPod alarm clock so you could plug your iPod in and charge/listen to it all day and also a free New York Times every day!

5) Meeting Justin's friend Chuck, who I have heard a lot about but have never met.

6) Accomplishing my goal of not coming back to Switzerland with any pennies (ok fine, I ended up with 2, but I left them along with my Vanity Fair magazine for Ruben, my bartender at JFK for about 3 hours).

7) Mister Softee ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles!!

I will say that I was disappointed by Ruby Foo's, where Justin and I had dinner Thursday. Maybe it was the jet lag but the sushi tasted like feet and the waiter was only around until we ordered and then vanished. He left us all the plates and silverware and we actually had to serve ourselves. Annoying. Also I did not enjoy paying tax on top of the stated price. It was very confusing after being so used to just paying the sticker.

Even though it was the same amount of time as he spent in Geneva 2 months ago (in fact, almost to the hour), it felt way shorter. Which sucks!! Why??!!! His flight on Monday left at 3pm and mine not until 730, and from JFK (he was at LaGuardia), so I spent the afternoon reading Vanity Fair and drinking and generally feeling miserable after we parted. In fact I felt so miserable that I bought some new perfume at the duty free shop and 2 books.

I am back in Geneva with 2 suitcases yet to unpack and an empty fridge, as usual. Fortunately, once again I have a guest coming in town right after I see Justin to cheer me up. My friend Aya is coming on her way to India for assignment. Unfortunately since I was just on vacation, I need to work most of the time she is here. But hopefully we can get in a fondue and some gambling...

Zermatt photos

2007-04-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

I still never wrote about Zermatt, which was freaking awesome. YES the Matterhorn is real, not just a ride at Disney. Here it is in the background.

I will just give a short recap. I went with my friend Katie who I used to work with in Chicago. We took a really cute train ride through all of these valleys and vales and 4 hours later got to Zermatt, which does not allow cars which means they had cute little electric ones. We met 10 Swedish dudes (well technically, 9 Swedish dudes and one known as "The Dane") which was great luck because they were able to show us the good skiing and drinking places. Basically, we spent 2 full days skiing our butts off and 3 nights out really late drinking. It wasn't exactly a relaxing ski vacation., but Zermatt is a very special place. It is probably the best place I have ever skiied. Huge gondalas and nice chair lifts and so many runs. The lines can be long, especially because Europeans don't know how to queue, but once you get off the lift, the people somehow disappear. It's got to be as big as Vail but not many trees, so it is like having an entire mountain of gorgeous packed powder allll to yourself. You can go up as high as 3800m (we did) and also ski to the Italian border (also did but did not go in). I have a lot more photos but here are some!!

The North Wall, where we had to settle for pizza instead of fondue. But it was ok, because this is were we met the Swedes, who then took us to fondue the next night!

We skiied allll the way to the other side of the mountain on Frida for this sunny lunch spot. It was completely away from everything else. We sat in the sun, had real restaurant food (rosti!), drank beer and took in the view. Perfect!

Me and Katie at apres ski! We skiied to this place also. And we had to ski down. We played some drinking games with the Swedes, including some sort of bizarre hand jive and moose game. We taught them "two truths and a lie."

Jac in action...on the "good skiers only" run. Seriously, at the top of the run was a sign that said "good skiers only" and the run was not marked a particular color (eg, red, black, etc). Just that cryptic message. Apparently, I am a good skier!

http://www.zermatt.ch/index.e.html

The rendezvous

2007-04-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

Today I somehow scrambled to finish all of my tax returns and left the office in a super good mood because I am going to New York tomorrow!! I am meeting Justin for the weekend. Spring in New York...que romantico! Especially with the record rain and winds, oh la la!

Well we had wanted to meet in the middle somewhere this spring. At first he was going to come to London but then I found a "cheap" fare to New York. Conveniently enough, his parents will be there as well for part of the weekend, and his brother and sister in law and super adorable wonderful little just turned one baby Dylan will be there too. After almost 4 years I know Justin's family pretty well so it will be great to see them as well.

To be honest, I am probably most excited to go to a Duane Reade past 7pm and buy something.

So bonne weekend toute le monde! More posts upon my return. I am going for my first haircut tomorrow so hopefully it is not un catastrophe!! Coupe pas beaucoup SVP!!

The first photo...

2007-04-16T15:57:00.000-07:00

...is of a baby panda. Porquoi pas?

I just realized that I think the images taken by my camera are maybe too big or "heavy" as they say here for uploading. They are almost 1MB each. So any one who knows how to compress jpg files, please let me know.

We are making slow and steady progress. By next month I promise you one photo of Geneva actually on my blog!!

In the style of Queen...

2007-04-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

I paid my dues
Time after time
I waited for a modem
But never got mine

So down at Swisscom
I made a plea
I said please man, can you send me my router?
And they mailed it to me!!

And while it installed I was waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting

We have the internet, my frien-ends!
And we won't have to steal it ever again...
We have the internet,
We have the internet
Time to read Yahoo or maybe buy iTunes...

I took out the package
The instructions were Francais
And I thought, crap man I am really screwed with this thing
Install won't take place
But despite those directions
I made it through
Complete with my mot de passe pour votre modem
Merci a vous!!!

Ok, that was really cheesy and terrible, but if you understood the MOMENT OF GLORY I just experienced here at Rue Liotard 44, you would sing too. I actually just did a little song and dance routine in the hallway because I HAVE INTERNET!! AND I INSTALLED IT IN FRENCH!! I understand maybe words like "continuer" might be obvious, but how about "Pour pouvoir vous servir de le Bluewin ASDL, il vous faut d'abord vous enregistrer comme client Bluewin ADSL aupres de Bluewin." Actually I still don't know what that means, but enregistrer is "computer" I figured out. To be fair there were actually a lot of nice pictures which helped. But still. This is a true expat success for me!

So Merci a Vous bluewin!! I have arrived! And now I will not be blacked out of Cubs games anymore, which is unfortunate, because it might be better if I was blacked out.