Some Kind of Groove, Pt. 2

Hmm, similar to an actual work day, I forgot where I was in recounting my new weekly routine (cut me some slack, I'm out of practice). Ah yes, I remember now, I remember everything...

Carless in the evenings, I walk 5-10 minutes from the hotel through the main train station to catch a bus, destination: health club (sister club to our Zürich membership) at least two nights a week. After a year in Zürich, a bus still feels more natural than a car; it's hard to re-teach an old dog older tricks. I also want to check out the main Lausanne public swimming pool (Swiss public pools rock!) but haven't attempted it yet. Last week, as is typical for a traveler with too much on his/her mind, I nearly disastrously forgot to pack my workout shorts, but luckily (aha!) had brought my swimming attire. It was anything but pretty, but my spandexy black swim-training suit over my spandexy undershorts got the job done (you know it still wasn't as ridiculous as some peoples’ attire).

After working out, I usually grab a portable dinner at the train station to eat back in the hotel room, typically a sandwich (always on French bread, never the pretzel bread ubiquitous in Zürich) and a mini (1/2 to 1/3) bottle of wine. My big meal is cafeteria lunch (rabbit or trout or something) so a light dinner is fine; a bit lonely and boring, but whatever. Last week I mixed it up by venturing to the Old Town neighborhood near the health club to satisfy my craving for an always-delicious Turkish Döner kebab, my first on the French side. Evenings not spent at the club, I hit a local low-key restaurant in the hotel/train station neighborhood, of which there are plenty to choose from. The average Lausanne mom-and-pop restaurant & café offerings are still somewhat constrained by Swiss respect for the norm, but supremely better than Zürich’s; no cheaper but at least varied, original and interesting (and French). My language limitations also admittedly temper the dining experience: it's funny how mastering the physics of wave-particle duality during the day yet not being able to order a side salad at night gives a net bedtime result of feeling like an utter idiot. You'd expect a better mental balance but no such luck.

As the curtain closes on the workweek, I exit the office late Friday afternoon to catch a 4:30pm train home. Unlike the outbound trip, I wouldn’t dream of mixing with Friday evening’s 2nd class carloads of obnoxious teenagers drinking 1.70 Franc cans of lousy Feldschlösschen beer (Switzerland’s Budweiser or worse). Goodness no, I pay the 22 Franc upgrade for an adult 1st class seat where we drink 1664-brand beer from France (the haute tradition bière) for a respectable 2.00 Francs per can. I reach my doorstep more or less around 7pm. Let the weekend begin!

Starting mid-January however, compress that same schedule from five full days to only Mon-Wed or even Mon-Tue, with the other 2 or 3 days working from home and that’s my new routine. Half French, half German, all Swiss--hopefully my brain doesn’t explode (or as the Germans say, my head doesn’t smoke, mein Kopf raucht nicht). Hey, it’s a living.

Some Kind of Groove, Pt. 1

Self congratu- lations are decidedly in order, as I just completed my second work week. Consistent with animal nature (humans are also animals), establishing a routine generates feelings of increased comfort and security and after only my second week of commuting I’ve more or less established mine (ten weeks of forethought waiting for my work permit helped immensely).

I pack for the week on Sunday night, taking great pains to conceal the process and obscure the readied suitcase from Hobbes, who despises readied suitcases and sulks incessantly in their presence. I rise Monday slightly before 6am (ugh) to catch the train departing slightly after 7am from Zürich direct to Lausanne. I forsake a train station espresso to maximize my sleep time, riding 2nd (cattle) class with earplugs and snoozing more or less the entire 2 hour 10 minute journey to the Röstigraben and beyond. I half-open my eyes every 30 minutes to spy several curmudgeony co-passengers eyeballing me, shocked by the potential scandal of oversleeping my destination. Their fear isn’t misplaced, but I’m lucky that my only stop is the final one. I go to sleep hearing Swiss-German dialect and wake up hearing French (I understand neither).

Although I hopped a cab this week, normally I’ll hop in a pre-reserved Mobility vehicle at the Lausanne gare (that’s French for Hauptbahnhof, oops, I mean train station) after buying a croissant to replace the calories burned while sleeping. The office lies about 20-25 minutes distant, I arrive about 10am. For now, until the apartment is ready, I commute Mobility-style between the gare and office using a different car every day--sometimes station wagon or economy or comfort class, sometimes manual or automatic, sometimes keyless or with keys, but always bright red--keeping it from morning to evening but returning it overnight.

The work atmosphere is French/international, light manufacturing, high-tech analytical instrument assembly, like Swiss watches on steroids. My coworkers are analytical chemists and physicists and PhD’s, often with a long company history (20+ years is not uncommon). So far I’m mostly learning about the instruments--like a rapid recall of high school elemental chemistry and physics (!)--and acquainting myself with applications in petrochem industries. Who knew that argon’s ionization potential makes it the noble gas of choice for characterizing x-ray dispersion spectrums? Sheesh.

I limit myself to two double espressos per day, one AM and one PM, excellent for the rock-bottom price of 0.70 per shot (2.80 total, tea is free). Lunch is always in the cafeteria, there’s virtually no other option (I’m not set up to brown-bag it), and I’ve decided that the cafeteria rocks. Two new menu choices every day, you name it: trout, salmon, lamb, rabbit, braised leeks among other more pedestrian choices like penne alla’arrabiata and pork cutlet. It’s not haute cuisine but pretty good considering they feed nearly 300 people daily.

OK, we're only halfway through the day, gotta break here and continue later. By the way, I snapped the above picture one evening carousing around Lausanne (ha! yeah, right), some big public building floodlighted for Christmas...

Excuse My Carbon Footprint

As briefly mentioned in my one-year Swiss anniversary recap, we drove a car not even once our first year in Switzerland. Zürich features one of the densest public transportation networks in the world (second perhaps to only Tokyo), so driving for us was never absolutely necessary (although potentially infinitesimally more comfortable in several cases, usually concerning IKEA). We successfully navigated the paperwork and independent eye test (you arrange an appointment with an optometrist who certifies your eyeballs and stamps his/her approval--always a stamp involved) to receive our Swiss drivers licenses in October, just under the 12-month Swiss limit for extending a foreign license; thus we avoided attending (God forbid) driving school.

Possessing a Swiss license enabled us to join the quite-excellent Mobility car-sharing service, a rent-by-the-hour setup with 2,000 cars all over the country. We have three Mobility locations with 7 total available cars within a 5 minute walk from home, and that doesn’t even include our local commuter train station. Jump in, drive around, return it, walk away. No attendants or lines or any of that crap. You don’t even refill the gas in most cases. The fees are not so hot for long travel distances or travel times but for bulky errands it can’t be beat. Even so, I introduced myself to Mobility only because of the perceived necessity with Lausanne being my new home away from home.

Lausanne is less than half Zürich’s size and its public transportation is nowhere near as comprehensive. My office lies out in the industrial boonies (yes, unbelievably, it is indeed possible to find a small spot of ugly near gorgeous Lake Geneva), a minimum twenty minute drive from the city center, and is serviced by only one peripheral train and bus line that quits service at 7:30pm. Eventually I’ll stay in a corporate apartment near the office (I’m currently lodged in a city-center hotel during apartment remodeling), so I needed a longer-term viable transportation option. Enter Mobility.

Steph kindly burned a vacation day the Wednesday before I started work and we practiced my commute: 2 hour 10 minute direct train from Zürich to Lausanne, Mobility car reservation and rental at the station (first time we’d tried it), driving out of the city to the office and otherwise exploring the region. Needless to say, nothing is as easy as it appears on Google maps.

Our ridiculous red station wagon featured a loose manual transmission and tight brakes (I reserved late and got the bottom of the barrel), an especially bad combo for a very hilly city; every other block presents a roundabout intersection with five mysterious choices; streets are alley-width and mostly one-way; street name postings are infrequent, tiny and French; stoplights are oriented slightly differently; street signs are all unusual; heavy construction is ubiquitous; constant vigilance is required to avoid both aggressive pedestrians jumping out in front (cars must stop for all pedestrians or risk a steep fine) as well as automatic traffic cameras that automatically mail tickets (also steep fines) for speeding; speed limits are posted in kilometers not miles/hour; last but not least, not shifting gears before 2,500 rpm is more damaging to the environment. And although I try to refrain from sweeping cultural generalizations (and profanity), I must say the Swiss drive like bats out of hell. Smart move to practice first with two people!

Lausanne in general is much prettier than Zürich, with several spectacular churches and Old Town overlooks of Lake Geneva, with the whole city built on a hill sloping downwards towards the lake. We stopped at the Christmas market for the usual warmed wine (now vin chaud instead of Glühwein) and examined the Globus gourmet grocery store. And I happily used Mobility again the very next day to pick up a bulky, heavy load of new ski equipment :-) from a far-flung Zürich suburb.

Last week--my first week on the job--I lucked out. The office training center had arranged a shuttle taxi from the office and hotel each day for several visiting customers. We caught the taxi at 8:30am, arrived to the office by 9am and departed at 4pm. Now those are my kind of work hours. This week however (so close to Christmas), no visiting customers means no shuttle. Monday’s travel included a 35 CHF one-way taxi trip (for less than five miles, ouch!) to the office, followed by the newly-acquainted, typically flustered administrative assistant (who doesn’t know me from Adam, only that I don’t speak French) forgetting to book my taxi home, thus requiring my waiting until 7pm for an impromptu ride from a coworker. A logistical comeuppance from the prior week, no doubt. Tuesday and Wednesday I jumped back on the Mobility bandwagon (actually thankfully not a wagon this time) for some Fahrvergnügen, albeit navigating alone in snowy, slushy, dark conditions. But I’ve managed successfully now four times. Too funny, can you believe I hadn’t driven to work in over 7 years?? Craziness.

So far so good at the job, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the next two weeks off including a Christmas visit to the U.S. of A. My timing is pretty good.

The Other Melting Pot

While the United States undoubtedly reigns supreme as the world’s melting pot, employment with a European-based international corporation provides another funny slant on mixed cultural experiences. I survived my first workweek in the Swiss-French canton of Vaud near the shores of Lake Geneva despite bombardment by spoken and written French, of which I know nearly nothing. Of course, virtually everyone in the office speaks excellent English as a backup but--in a decidedly different twist vs. Zürich--the region overall is significantly less English-friendly.

For example, I found the wait staff in restaurants speak hardly a word of English (or German), a poor combo with my reciprocally weak French. Thank goodness for our year of adjustment in Zurich’s easier environs; I’m long-since inured to taking the brush-offs personally. For now, oui, I’m content as long as I receive my glass(es) of wine.

Last week, my ears were habitually attuned instead to the occasional German utterance in the office. Luckily some visitors from Austria provided a needed fix. And I actually spoke a bit of German as well, during lunch with another friendly visiting customer from (where else?) Cairo, Egypt. Do all Egyptians speak German? The office hosts a training center, so customers and prospects routinely visit from all over the globe; I rode to the hotel each day with a Greek contingent and Thai guy. The trend continued this week as I enjoyed for yesterday's lunch an excellent preparation of lapin (rabbit, from the cafeteria’s cooks French influence) with a delegation of Russian professors from Moscow and Siberia (on a separate culinary note, I'm already best friends with the office espresso machine as captured above via my new work camera-phone).

Keeping with this theme, I left work last Friday directly for destination Basel (not Zürich) to accompany Steph at Hyatt’s Christmas company outing, where we dined at a table with several Germans, a Scot and Ukrainian, and later attended Saturday brunch with her coworkers from Germany, Norway, Ireland and Australia (strangely enough, Friday night’s corporate event was the Blue Man Group, a show Steph and I had never witnessed despite it being performed less than a mile from home in Chicago for the past 11 years--we needed to come to Basel, Switzerland to see it).

To complete the international flow thus far and cap my seventh day of work yesterday evening, an extremely nice Libyan coworker dropped me at the hotel so that my Indian boss or Dutch HR manager didn’t have to. And as need has dictated, I’m now preparing to start studying French (without giving up German just yet), so that I can someday soon be equally terrible at three foreign languages (don’t forget I brushed the border of functionality with Spanish two years ago, but stopped tantalizingly short of adequacy). Did I mention I'm learning German via Skype from a Russian national currently living in North Carolina? On that note, à demain / bis morgen / hasta mañana… until tomorrow.

Lausanne & Laax

Okey doke, here we go with the rest of the story (Paul Harvey, anyone?). So despite the commute from Zürich to Lausanne not being ideal, my new company and I shared a good vibe with each other during the interview and reached a workable compromise. I'll work 2-3 days a week at the office (actually outside of Lausanne in an industrial area of a neaby town) and 2-3 days at home, when I'm not otherwise globetrotting.

I'm wary of naming names (especially of the corporate variety) on Blogspot because it seems tightly intertwined with Google's spiders; I've been burned not once but twice with blog-named-company employees jumping on me the morning after a post, as some desktop Google alert of theirs goes off. So we'll simply call my new employer TSF Corp., a $9 billion U.S. corporation headquartered in Massachusetts with offices all over the world for the manufacture, distribution and sales of various chemical laboratory equipment and analytical instruments; if you work anywhere near chemistry, you'd probably recognize their name (but not as I've given it...ha!).

The French-Swiss site hired me to develop the petrochemical market for their certain type of elemental analytical instrument. In other words, for example, I have to figure out how to convince oil refineries to spend $100K-250K for TSF machines that measure the amount of sulfur or other things in oil. They currently have a 5% market share and of course would rather have 50% and need someone to devise and execute the plan. The territory is basically the world everywhere oil is produced, except for the U.S. Think glamorous locations like the Middle East, Venezuela, and Russia. Who knows, we'll see. It was quite a stretch for both of us, seeing as I have no deep petrochemical or analytical instrument experience, and they're three hours from home and I don't speak the office language. But a good vibe and some flexibility overcame those hurdles, I guess.

So for the first four weeks, I'm spending all week in Lausanne to meet people and understand the products, how to operate the analytical instruments as well as the cafeteria espresso machine, etc. I'm living in a hotel until they remodel the corporate apartment near the office. A lot of the long-term logistical details have yet to be worked out, but I'm keeping the faith. Surprisingly (or not), work itself after a 13-month break isn't really so bad. Everyone has been very nice--despite not understanding why I don't speak a word of French when I live in the GERMAN region--and the cafeteria food isn't half bad.

I have to wind it up because I only bought a 2-hour Internet card, but those are the salient details. Steph and I also went Swiss skiing for the first time last weekend at an area in the Alps east of Zurich called Flims-Laax-Falera. The snow was unbelievably perfect...Switzerland isn't Europe's ski capital for no reason. Our group was 22 people strong (!), as our friend-of-friend network keeps growing. Maybe I'll elaborate more on that trip because of course there are a zillion crazy details, but in the meantime here are some pictures from Steph's and my scouting trip to Lausanne the week before I started work, and skiing pics:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=2hd8fyj.2lwxh0yj&x=0&y=qhfjdf&localeid=en_US

Hi from Mars

I think I've figured out why my blog production has been so dismal lately...I believe it's because I started running out of things get off my chest. Somehow Zürich started to become comfortable without us really noticing exactly how or when. And so that drive to exorcise frustration through writing dimmed. Good to know then that I've recently reloaded with fresh ammo. Starting a job will do that.

To fill in history dating back from the mid-summer and early fall, the Swiss job market for unemployed foreign chemical engineering business managers turned out not so easy to crack...big surprise, eh? For all the online job sites scoured and headhunting agencies applied to and CV's emailed, I received only one interview and it happened to be on the other side of Switzerland, not so far from Geneva. As ridiculous as it seemed, I went ahead and interviewed to dust off the ol' cerebral cobwebs. And wouldn't you know--after a ludicrous 10 week wait for a rubber stamp on my residence permit that extended my streak to ultimately 409 consecutive nonworking days--here I sit in Lausanne, a three hour train ride from Zürich, after starting work on Monday.

Talk about déjà vu (ha, ha, no pun intended)...after a year of German environs and study and (I'm finally admitting) attaining marginal proficiency, here I go starting from scratch again. This time with French, of which I know nothing. And although most everyone in the office speaks English, the preferred language appears to be French, about 30/70. In other words, if I'm not being spoken to directly, they speak French. And I've also unfortunately found the restaurant and other service-type staff speak a lot less English than in the "big city" of Zürich...as in mostly not a word. Just another fascinating cultural paradox to add to Switzerland's list. But here's something else I've learned...after your first ex-pat shake up, the second one isn't as bad. You learn to just chuckle and roll with it, I suppose. More details later, I'm exhausted and it's bed time!


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Meleagris gallopavo Weekend

Here's hoping everyone in the USA had a happy Meleagris gallopavo weekend (that's the biological classification for turkey)..! I never knew that our Swiss Family H was so sentimental about Thanksgiving until we started spending it on a continent that doesn't celebrate. All the Europeans here with American acquaintances more or less acknowledge Thanksgiving (which is commendable), as in, "Hey, isn't this weekend your Thanksgiving holiday?" But of course, businesses and employers don't care one iota, so the fourth Thursday (and Friday) in November is usually just another cold, gray, dark November workday. Blah. It wouldn't be so terrible without the knowledge of everyone stateside cutting work early on Wednesday afternoon and subsequently preparing for a long weekend of the big F's: food, family, friends and football.

Of course, given the more than sizeable American ex-pat population in Zürich, it's not a question of IF one will attend a Thanksgiving dinner celebration, only a question of WHOSE dinner and which dish we'll be responsible for, and then primarily a grand annoyance that the whole caboodle is delayed until Saturday. Actually, now that our friend base has grown over the summer and fall, we were somewhat surprised by how many American acquaintances returned home for a quick but looong trip. Unexpectedly, we're now strongly considering it ourselves for 2009; the weekend somehow seems to hold more sentimental gravity than even Christmas. But that's the real difference, I suppose--the Europeans celebrate Christmas in spades, so it feels like less to miss.

This year, not dissimilar to last year, we stuck close with the Hyatt clan. Along with last year's hosts--Hyatt-Chicago Dave and Heather and their (relatively) new baby AND a visiting sister--we descended on the household of Stephanie's boss's boss, originally a Pennsylvanian but calling Hawaii home most recently before moving to Switzerland a few months after Steph & me. Their family--including two really nice kids aged 9 & 13 AND their pug (Hobbes's sometimes crime partner) AND also visiting grandparents--lives in Winterthur, the next sizeable town over from Zürich (where we ran the entirely uphill half-marathon last spring). The same family is planning to watch Hobbes over Christmas, so he was also invited to Thanksgiving dinner to acclimate to the environs.

Well, we enjoyed a splendid time. Saturday morning was cold, clear and gorgeously sunny (a rarity in the past month) and we spent all morning preparing Steph's grandma's recipe for mashed potatoes (should be called "mashed cream & butter accompanied by potatoes") and stuffing; only a slight stretch of imagination was required to pretend it was a Thursday. Not at all unexpectedly, the hosts and crowd were warm and ingratiating and the Thanksgiving spread was really top notch, as was the accompanying wine (as were the not-so-traditional pre-dinner martinis). Hobbes ran himself completely ragged and remains hung over now well into Monday evening due to the overwhelming combination of missing his Saturday afternoon nap + long train ride + kids + babies + dog-loving grandparents + snow + food + food + more food. We no longer worry that his spoilage factor will be (heaven forbid!) dialed down even a half-notch during our brief late December absence.



Thus notch our second successful Swiss Thanksgiving. Despite the great evening, we're still considering swinging back across the Atlantic for a quick-turnaround trip next November. You see, a lack of football while scarfing turkey really negatively affects one's digestion. Funny how I never realized that before. At least I'm fairly certain it was the football and not the martinis...

One Year Down, ?? To Go

Happy Halloween! And happy one-year anniversary on Oct 31 to our family since arriving in Zürich!! Yes, it's simultaneously been the longest and quickest year of our life. So allow me to catalog exactly what we've achieved. Although many list items will sound mundane (they are), imagine the same accomplishments when unfamiliar with your surrounding city, culture, offerings and language. We were quite lucky with the frequency of English spoken in Zürich, things could have been much tougher. But being unable to read anything--packaging, letters, offers, specifications, instructions, etc. (especially in the beginning)--and every item being slightly different than what we're used to makes for a tough slog. And everything costing 2-3 times as much makes any purchase feel like a mistake at first. So here we go, one year of achievements in no particular order...

We worked through the red tape of residence and work permits. We moved twice in two months, first to outlying Kloten in Nov then to Zürich in Jan. We obtained drivers licenses two weeks ago without ever driving (and were repeatedly reminded of the extreme shortcomings of Illinois state government). We located suitable doctors and dentists and groomers and veterinarians and pharmacies. I've learned 1,400 German words and four verb tenses and more grammar than I've heard since eighth grade. We opened a Swiss bank account and circumnavigated online banking and security, conducted wire transfers and learned lessons about maintaining foreign (U.S.) bank accounts; we won a random bank drawing worth 100 CHF in wine. We figured out domestic and foreign postage and how to obtain and mail absentee ballots. We've found repair shops or made calls to fix bikes and espresso machines and smashed computer hard-drives and our Internet connection and washing machine. I finally found a male haircut for the rock-bottom price of 28 Francs instead of the usual 60 CHF; the only catch is you have to speak a little German. Steph only had one Swiss haircut (price = ouch!) in a year, the other two in the U.S.

We've managed through several iterations of electrical transformers and adaptors for all manner of devices; we've improved weak lighting and poor fixtures; we figured out the pay-per-volume garbage system, where using the wrong garbage bag earns a fine. We elucidated the various recycling locations and methods for each plastic, glass, paper & cardboard, and whatever doesn't fit in your kitchen garbage can (for example, big pieces of packing Styrofoam). We've purchased bedroom furniture and patio furniture and entire closets and other storage units without ever using a car. We paid triple the U.S. price (on sale!) for an imported Weber grill from Palatine, IL, a mere 25 miles from our old home, and never regretted it for one instant (I've had some snafus buying charcoal, however).

We figured out public transportation on trams, buses and commuter & interregional trains, including day cards, short trips, round trips, half-fares, weekend rates, add-on zones, flex-passes, dog fares and bike fares, all inside and outside the Zürich network. We acquired cell phones and astronomically expensive calling plans (no other choice), a phone land-line, broadband Internet connection (twice) and cable TV with digital recording. We learned to work several non-U.S. versions of ovens, stoves, washers, driers, and dishwashers; we learned lessons on laundry soap and mandatory appliance water softeners and mandatory dishwasher glass sparkler.

We haven't watched a single TV football or baseball or basketball game; we did watch TV netball games in Kloten. I haven't played a single hand of poker. We went out to exactly zero movies. But we did see R.E.M. in concert. And we have been bowling. I haven't driven, not even once; Steph drove once for work. We haven't skied (to be remedied in early December--who lives in Switzerland and doesn't ski??). We haven't been served a single unsweetened iced tea in a year, but we drink real Coca-Cola with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.

On the cuisine front, we discovered Cervelat sausage, crusty Bürli rolls, Christmas fire-pliers Glühwein plonk punch, ubiquitous veal Kalbsgeschnetzeltes, mystery-meat Pferde, delicious cheesey Chäschüchli, chocolate-filled Schoggigipfels, German Maultaschen, Turkish Döner kebabs, blood orange juice (Blutorangensaft), Appenzeller bitters, Rivella Red and Tomme & Tilsiter cheeses. We still miss the burrito but found the best Mexican food in Switzerland (one authentic Mexican ingredient store + everyday grocery produce + our kitchen); we've never made better corn tortillas from scratch.

Healthwise, I was sick once a month for the first six months, but only once afterwards.

Hobbes has explored hiking trails and farm fields and cow pastures and dozens of parks. He's swum repeatedly in mountain-fed lakes and streams. He's a pro at riding on public buses and trams; he's ski lifted up mountains and visited cities in Switzerland that his parents haven't even seen. He's upset swans and ducks but won the hearts of Swiss groomers and veterinarians and pet-shop owners. He misses his old buddy Charlie but loves nature-friendly Switzerland.

Athletically, we swam in Lake Zurich and the Adriatic Sea. I road-biked up 1,800 feet in Zürich and mountain-biked down 3,500 feet in Interlaken; we biked from our front door to Germany (but not back). I hiked to the Alps' Faulhorn peak and ran two half marathons (far from equaling a marathon) but no triathlons despite training for them.

We attended 2008's second-largest world sporting event and Europe's most popular (practically in our backyard), participated in one of the world's largest outdoor rave parties, and spent three days at the world's most legendary beer festival. I saw a gigantic snowman's head explode and burst into flames.

Together we visited 26 cities in 8 European countries (blue tags on the map below); Steph visited six additional cities including twice each to Russia and Istanbul, Turkey (yellow tags, zoom out twice to see them all). We returned to the U.S. twice.



Most importantly, we hosted or rendezvous'ed with 11 different U.S. visitors on 15 wonderful occasions throughout the year. And although we spent our first seven months in Switzerland virtually friendless, we've since made friends from Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Mexico, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.S. (thanks, Europameister 2008!).

A huge thanks to everybody for their extraordinary support, whether that means visiting Europe or just reading the blog and commenting or emailing once in a while, we really appreciate it! So we now have one year down and ?? to go.

Ah yes, and one other recent accomplishment. I also found a job. More on that soon.

October Snow

Ack! We had a bit of unexpected weather last night. This picture is NOT from last year, it's from this morning, Oct 30. Reportedly the most snow Zürich has seen this early since 1939. Der Winter ist schon angekommen! Winter has arrived!

Our September was particularly unseasonably cold and wet, but October had mostly rebounded to normal. Then yestereday the temperatures dipped amidst some standard rainfall and voila! Next thing you know it's snowing. And snowing. And snowing. All afternoon and night. Kind of fun actually. I don't know any place other than Minnesota that gets more excited about snow than Switzerland. Everyone here went to bed with their skis or snowboard last night. Because when it snows in Zürich, it must be absolutely piling up in the mountains. Steph and I are already part of a ski excursion planned for Dec 5; it seemed a bit early but might be just fine if things keep up. We had a cold and snowy November last year as well--we remember vividly because we'd just arrived and everything seemed so new. Maybe we'll see a repeat this year.

But here this afternoon almost everything has melted into slush already; still too warm for much snow to stick around, except on some rooftops. A few pictures of Hobbes' and my excursions (he loves the snow like nothing else): http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=2hd8fyj.5lezcxb7&x=0&y=olx340&localeid=en_US

The Best Fest, Pt. 2

OK, I left off approach- ing the Hofbräu-Festzelt (party tent) in leather pants and suspenders. At 6:30pm on an un- seasonably cold Friday evening (which also happened to be a German national holiday) the Oktoberfest fairgrounds were completely packed. Unfortunately this didn't make things warmer, as my Lederhosen were the shorts version, not pants. Our U.S. group of 10 nudged its way shoulder-to-shoulder for twenty-five minutes down the main fairground aisle and then the tent aisle, finally finding the Hofbrau entrance for ticketholders. A short wait and we were in.

I don't know how to describe the environment other than complete revelry and chaos (and quite warm and moist); check out the pictures at the end of the post. The Hofbräu tent fits 7,000 people, mostly on reserved benches arranged so closely together that you're literally back-to-back (pressing somewhat uncomfortably) with your unknown neighbors. The ticket price includes 2 Maß (two liters of beer) and half a roasted chicken (surprisingly quite delicious!). Anything additional, e.g., a gigantic pretzel, more beer, etc., costs a few Euros. After one liter of beer, everyone in the tent is handling their BAC pretty well; things are under control. After one-and-a-half liters, everyone is bombed more or less simultaneously. Then everyone continues to drink somewhere between 2, 3, 4, ? liters more. Brain cells beware.

A centrally-located German oompah band plays mostly classic German drinking songs, occasionally interspersed with a popular song from the last 40 years (still in oompah format), and, literally every five minutes, a short toasting song called Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit, or "Toast to the coziness!" At first you toast your table-mates, but before long everyone also toasts the neighboring tables, then people spill into the aisles (due to simply too much coziness) and everyone continues toasting basically everyone all night long. Yes, beer is flying everywhere, and the heavy glass steins are dangerous. We met several awesome German people from Stuttgart and near Frankfurt. Under the heavy influence of beer, most were initially fooled into thinking I also was German and not American, due to my Germanic complexion, ability to pronounce five German words, and my dynamite Lederhosen. Everyone is politely herded out of the tent at 11:00pm; I was waylaid on the crowded dark fairgrounds talking to some weird drunk German guy and somehow separated from our group, requiring me to figure out the tram and walk back to our hotel alone. I somehow made it, Stephanie was justifiably relieved to see me, and I her.

Steph and I enjoyed the honor of repeating the exercise the following morning, starting again at 11:30am for lunch seating at the Hippodrom tent (colorful carnival theme, more upscale and considerably roomier at only 3,200 guests) with our Zürich group of 8 (German/Manhattan/ Australian/Philly/Mexican/Swiss). Guess what? Up to the first liter-and-a-half of beer, we were all still feeling ill from the night before. After that, we all felt great and started toasting the neighboring tables, etc. After 2, 3, 4, ? more liters we were politely kicked out for the next seating at 3:30pm, but then rendezvous'ed with some of the U.S. group and drank additional liters in a cold outdoor fairgrounds beer garden. Finally, for whatever reason, we returned to the scene of Thursday's crime--the Hofbräuhaus itself--for dinner and yes, more beer. Needless to say, craziness ensued all day and evening. I'll spare the details (I can't remember them all anyway).

As could be expected, Sunday was payback time from all the bodily organs harboring hurt feelings from Thu-Sat's inelegant treatment. And there was no escape during the four-hour train ride home. One of our Zürich number looked solidly green from 9:00am at the hotel through the entire trip until we arrived at 4:30pm; his stomach kept rebelling. Poor Stephanie exited the train (with me accompanying her) directly at the Zürich airport--not yet near home--to board a flight for Ekaterinburg, Russia of all places for a week-long work trip. Matt & Mel spent that Sunday night and partial next day with me at our place before continuing their honeymoon to Interlaken and then Italy. Every single Oktoberfest participant that I'm aware of caught a cold the next week; who would've guessed that three solid days of drinking in 40-degree wet weather would compromise one's immune system?

Regardless, the combination of old friends from home together with new Zürich friends at a spectacularly fun event made for our best single time in Europe the past year. A fair number of pictures have been culled so as not to preclude any Oktoberfest participant from running for public office later in life, but these are still good: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.3flf93f7&x=0&y=60q99s&localeid=en_US

The Best Fest, Pt. 1

I'll start with a zinger--Munich's Oktoberfest is the best time we've had in nearly a year in Europe and ranks among our top parties of all time. After having tentatively planned to attend for years but now finally within striking distance, our nagging apprehension that the event would be campy or touristy or overrated was off base. If marathon beer-drinking isn't your thing, you should probably select a different vacation spot. But if your liver can handle a weekend of craziness, this is the carnival for you.

In a nutshell, Oktoberfest (held since 1810) runs for two weeks and three weekends hosting six million visitors in Munich's festival grounds. It's a gigantic carnival whose prominent feature is a wide corridor of 14 "tents"--temporary structures but more like gigantic decorated warehouse buildings--hosted by local Bavarian breweries. Beer is served only by the Maß, or heavy 1-liter glass stein, early and often. Each tent holds three seatings per day, lunch from about 11pm-3pm, happy hour from 3-7pm, and an evening seating from 7-11pm. Tickets are required for bench seating, otherwise crazy people queue outside for hours for general admission standing room. Various tents hold anywhere from 2,000 to 8,000 people. The festival is additionally celebrated by men dressing in traditional Lederhosen, or leather trousers, and women in Dirndls, which look like a St.Pauli Girl dress.

Our Chicago friends Matt and Mel--who quit the rat race and have crewed in the Caribbean for the past two years and just obtained their own 45-ft. catamaran for chartering (check them out and book an awesome vacation at http://www.sailfreeingwe.com/)--got married the last weekend in September and subsequently honeymooned for two weeks in Europe, including visiting Oktoberfest accompanied by a group from their wedding party. Steph and I obtained tickets (via eBay in German, not easy) for the U.S. group for seats in the Hofbräu tent on Friday evening Oct 3, and we were also invited to the Hippodrom tent for Saturday lunch with a group of Zürich friends.

Matt & Mel came to Zürich to unwind for a few days at the Park Hyatt (he's a former Hyatt employee) after their wedding and before the big event. I greeted them at the airport and showed them around Zürich a bit the first afternoon before jet- and wedding-lag took its toll. The four of us spent two nice evenings together and then boarded the train for Munich on Thursday morning. The ride was uneventful save for an atypical draught beer vendor hawking his wares up and down the train aisles--at 8:30am (we declined, beer and espresso don't mix). The various U.S. group members and one early Zürich couple--our good Australian/Philly friends--rendezvous'ed throughout that afternoon and evening. Steph and I had briefly toured the city (two days, one night) way back in 1998 and our group similarly visited the Marienplatz and Rathaus Glockenspiel and meandered through the old town before (like all groups) being irresistibly magnetically drawn to the legendary Munich Hofbräuhaus am Platzl. In that cavernous raucous beer hall we luckily snagged a far-flung corner table, began drinking beer in earnest and seemingly barely stopped for the next 48 hours.

Coming out of the gates far too early on Thursday night made Friday afternoon a bit rough (I'd say Friday morning but we didn't actually see it). We walked from our hotel through dismal steady rain to Munich's enormous public park, the Englischer Garten, for lunch and a recovery panaché, or 50/50 beer with 7-Up (so as not to shock the system too much either way). After a critical nap, I donned my Lederhosen and traditional German shirt (obtained from eBay and a Munich clothing store, respectively) and we all headed to the fairgrounds (I was the only U.S. group member decked out but Saturday's Zürich group was well-costumed; Steph had tried in vain to procure a Dirndl...next year)...

OK, sorry to stop here for now, but there's more description and, more importantly, pictures of Hosen, Dirndls, massive steins, bloodshot eyes, etc., to come.

Basler Halbmarathon

My first triathlon season this summer/fall in Switzerland turned out nothing of the sort. Although I had trained for and planned to participate in a few short- to medium-distance events, none came to fruition. The first event had filled up by the time I tried to register, the second was preempted by our weekend trip to Paris (oops) and the third--in French-Switzerland with a killer hilly bike leg that I was really looking forward to--was obliterated by heavy rain and 40-degree temps on race day. So to keep some sort of athletic goal ahead of us, Steph, our Australian friend Kim and I signed up for the Basel Half Marathon (13.1 miles) in late October.

Unfortunately for Steph and Kim, too much international work travel (Russia+Turkey and Beijing, respectively) disrupted their training schedules requiring both to bow out, leaving me as the lone competitor. Kim agreed to join Steph in my cheering section, however, so the three of us met too early on a chilly Saturday morning at the Hauptbahnhof for a 7:00am train. Basel sits in the country's northwest "corner" where Switzerland meets both France and Germany, about an hour train ride from Zürich.

At 900 participants, the event seemed miniscule compared to our old Chicago races, where at least 5,000 people turned out for every 5k run. Conditions were perfect, cold but clear and sunny. Logistics were adequate, the main beef being a stated requirement to arrive 90 minutes before the start, when 30 minutes would have been more than adequate (every moment of sleep is precious to me). Somewhat bizarre for Switzerland, the course was mostly flat and 2/3 on concrete instead of trails, a welcome change from the Winterthur half marathon Steph and I ran in May. I rose to the occasion and smashed my previous best time, finishing in a quite respectable 1 hour 47 minutes (damn but the Swiss are fast, I didn't finish in the top 50% of men).

Soon after, I received congratulatory phone calls from from both our Dutch and Mexican friends; I only mention it because the support of three friends on the day was another hugely welcome change from our May race, in which Steph and I mainly supported each other. Developing a friend network is so important to settling into a new environment that I can't overstate it. Steph, Kim and I spent the early afternoon briefly wandering Basel's downtown shops after a satisfying lunch of pizza, beer, salad and fantastic French fries. The town is smaller and quainter than Zürich with more French influence. Steph and I will return in December for her company Christmas party, so we'll take another look around then.

Just to keep the day jam-packed, we had also planned to host dinner for our German/Manhattan friends (the same couple I'd seen that Thursday night). Steph did most of the work with last-minute shopping and pulling everything together by 8:00pm, and we enjoyed a nice evening hanging out, eating and drinking wine until nearly 1:00am, when both Steph and I crashed head-first into the pillows and slept like stones. To stretch out some leg soreness, we took Hobbes on a long, wonderful autumn walk up our Zürich hillside late Sunday morning, discovering a new French bakery & café (a huge addition to the neighborhood!) and wandering through vineyards with still-unharvested winegrapes and excellent lake views. After later meeting our Dutch friend to catch up over drinks (non-alcoholic) and a light lunch, Steph cruised off to Milan on Sunday evening for another work photo shoot, this one thankfully only lasting one day. All-in-all, a successful October weekend.

Race pics: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.bqj0op8z&x=0&y=-oagt1g&localeid=en_US


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In The Groove

Before recounting our two (yes, two) recent Oktoberfest experiences, I'll interject with a present-day update; it often helps me grease the sometimes-rusty blog machine. This prior week of October 19 depicted our (albeit primarily my) current daily lifestyle fairly well after nearly now a year in Switzerland. Stephanie had unfortunately departed for a week-long work trip to Istanbul that Saturday and left Hobbes and me to a week of bachelorhood. Now how should the boys fill that time..?

Our Chicago-Hyatt friend Dave returned Sunday from their first U.S. return trip in over a year. With him fighting jet lag and me a hangover from Zürich's Saturday mini-Oktoberfest, we convened for dinner at the Zeughauskeller, a staple German-style beer hall serving classic Swiss-food in Zürich's historic former armory; the food is hit-or-miss but my Wienerschnitzel and fries hit the mark perfectly. He also came bearing critical requested supplies from the U.S.: extra DayQuil and two jars of Frontera salsa. We discussed perceptions from his trip to Chicago, the financial crisis, election politics and life in Zürich for over three hours.

Tuesday was Steph's birthday (Happy Birthday!) and she couldn't have imagined a better celebration than working twelve hours on a photo shoot in Istanbul (ha!). Her co-workers did throw an impromptu surprise cake party, and her overall Istanbul experience was much improved over her initial trip back in March. I had been invited to an evening fondue boat cruise on Lake Zurich that evening with a dozen ex-pats, some well-known friends and other unknowns; I sat with three strangers (from Raleigh-Durham, Bavaria and Slovakia) and we had a marvelous time meeting each other and eating melted stinky cheese on bread cubes. The views of the lake's slowly passing village-lit hillsides were quite pleasant.

I scheduled two hour-long German tutoring sessions for the week; extended studying usually keeps me out of trouble. German is slow to adopt compared to, say, Spanish or French, but after eight months of lessons I may be finally turning the corner (and with an additional year I might actually become functional). Steph and I use a Skype-enabled tutoring service (me for German, Steph for French) and my instructor is a lingustics major originally from Russia and living now in Raleigh, fluent in six languages including German. Unbelievably, she used to host a Russian TV-cooking show called Die Geheimnisse der deutschen Küche, or 'The Secrets of German Cuisine'. Since I also love to cook, we exchanged recipes: I traded her the classic Zürich dish Kalbsgeschnetzeltes (sliced veal in a mushroom cream sauce) for a classic southern German dish called Maultaschen, meat- and spinach-filled dumplings like German ravioli.

So on Thursday I invited our friend from Heidelberg, Germany to my homemade Maultaschen dinner; his girlfriend from Manhattan also joined us after returning late that evening from a business trip to Berlin. The recipe turned out rather well (homemade pasta always impresses, pictured above) and he in particular was quite complimentary, claiming my creation the best Maultaschen he's eaten (and although it sounds novel to us, he's eaten a lot of Maultaschen in his life, much of it fairly marginal quality).

Hobbes also enjoyed an exciting week, visiting his groomer at the crazily-named Hundesalon Dolly, with whom he has become fast friends. They warmed to each other gradually after the first several visits, when she struggled a bit with his significant girth and hairiness. They don't make many dogs like him in Switzerland, but he's not so hard to get to know. We visited the neighborhood vet the following day as Hobbes hss been fighting a slight doggie cold and cough; he quickly learned the Swiss-German word for cookie (Guetzli) after eating as many as the vet staff would provide. He's more than happy to be poked, prodded, pricked, flipped upside down, you name it--as long as there's Guetzli at the end.

I met Steph at the airport for her long-awaited return home Friday evening (complete with souvenir pistachios and Turkish Delight), the remainder of which we laid low in anticipation of the Basel Half Marathon the following morning. I think I'll save that for an additional entry, however. Keeps me motivated to continue writing ;-).

French Quarter Quarterly

Whew, it's becoming harder and harder to catch up from my blog backlog! OK, prep yourself for some lame posts. Oh well, at least I have some pictures.

Steph had another work trip to Paris in late August/early September, which she craftily extended through the weekend for some R&R and invited her husband (me!) to join. All in the spirit of honoring our half-serious oath upon departing Chicago for Europe to visit our favorite city quarterly, we've surprisingly almost achieved that goal this year--our third visit in nine months.

I arrived Friday afternoon and after rendezvous'ing and situating ourselves at our favorite Hyatt Madeleine, we headed to a classically Parisian quaint grocery-shopping street for wine; Steph (who has been refreshing her French with a weekly tutor) impressed both the wineshop staff and me with a fairly full French conversation regarding our wine options. We promptly carried the bottles to a lovely dinner at the downtown apartment of one of Steph's coworkers, where we spent the remainder of the evening.

Saturday we again repeatedly rented the all-too-easy and so-available Vélib bicycles to explore Paris as we love to do. We checked out the city's outskirts, visiting the canal district for a very neighborhoody and different feel than downtown. We hunted down a recent award-winning bakery (and that's saying something, given just a bit of competition in the city) and over-ordered all manner of sweet and savory baked goods, which we promptly biked to a nearby park and scarfed on a bench. Cruising back into the city center in the mid-afternoon, we stopped at a lively Bohemian bar called Chez Prune for a beer before returning to the vicinity of the hotel. We shopped briefly at our favorite food shops around the Madeleine church (and peeked in the window of 2007's MOTY champion Maison de la Truffe) before the mandatory Saturday afternoon nap, necessary to pass our non-eating time more quickly.

We hit a neighborhood wine bar to warm up for dinner, a simple restaurant known for its steak frites; we make a point of eating steak outside of Switzerland, where the price-to-value relationship is a bit too out of whack by our spoiled U.S.-beef eating standards. We stopped at another café for a final nightcap glass of wine, until we realized how close we were to Harry's New York Bar (we've visited before), where we stopped again for a final-final nightcap. Harry's dates from the early 1900's; it's decked out with a fascinating array of throwback (authentic) U.S. university banners (which creates a weird sense of nostalgia) and is widely credited as the birthplace of the Bloody Mary in the 20's. They haven't lost a step, as the one I sampled again that Saturday night ranks as possibly the best (or close second) Bloody Mary I've ever imbibed.

Four hours on the train saw us home that Sunday. Chalk up yet another perfectly lovely trip to Paris, although I am slightly concerned how we'll fit in that final trip in Q4. Pictures: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.6hn4l8ib&x=0&y=-mcdd8z&localeid=en_US

Social Schmetterling

Oops, yet another blog drought for me in September and October, I suppose we've been busy (who hasn't?) and I need to keep these entries staccato or else they become too daunting. A German work colleague of Steph's recently joked that their Germanic language isn't the most beautiful compared to Romance languages, or even to English (also Germanic but heavily influenced by Latin and French). His example was comparing vocabularies for the beautiful, poetical insect Papilionoidea, better known in English as the butterfly; in French as le papillon; in Spanish as la mariposa; and in German...der Schmetterling. Yes, perhaps not so lyrical. But I'll quickly summarize our fall activities, as we've been fluttering around like busy social Schmetterlinge.

Regarding our all-time favorite topic, i.e., dinner, we hosted an informal Mexican food fiesta--featuring tacos al pastor--for about a dozen attendees and more recently last weekend a smaller gathering for tortas ahogadas. Our several Mexican friends and acquaintances here appreciate authentic Mexican food in Europe almost as much as Steph and me. We also hosted a French/English couple for a French dinner, complete with champagne, poached salmon and a homemade fig tart (pictured here) which, if I may say with all modesty, may have incited duels between my old coworkers/ pastry admirers in Chicago. We've also attended several small dinner parties, including one sushi-making session (our first time rolling sushi, it takes some practice) with several German friends.

We took mightily to bike-riding this summer and fall, given Switzerland's almost limitless trail options that never disappoint. We've ridden around scenic lakes, to preserved medieval villages (always with a sausage and beer stop) and I, the flatlander--with a particulary adept Dutch friend--have climbed hills that feel like mountains. The hills have become a masochistic addiction, as I took to routinely conquering one near home as training for a fall triathlon that depressingly never happened due to terrible cold, windy, rainy weather on event day. Oh well, I suppose I kept in shape.

Our cadre of ex-pat acquaintances here keeps growing slowly, mostly through friends-of-friends, and stands at maybe two dozen. The bad news is that given the group's average age of perhaps 30, I'm the old man. It's only bad because these people party in Zürich with the gusto I had at age 30 in Chicago, a pace that's significantly harder to maintain at a ripe 37. Not having a job has been my critical recovery source. We've hit several birthday parties, one including bowling (can you believe it?) in which the New World participants significantly outscored the Old World participants (like night and day); I keep blowing through my Thursday night curfews, somehow ending up at bankers' nightclubs (everyone making the scene in suits, lamenting the markets) or late-night divorcée piano lounges.

Never fear, Hobbes is still doing well, swimming weekly and still intent on exploring nearly every inch of Zürich. Steph and I also hit Paris again in late August, and then enjoyed two sets of visiting friends in September including a spectacular visit to Oktoberfest in Munich. Our weather was crummy all September, unseasonably cold and rainy, but picked back up in October. More entries and other news coming up! Pictures here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.4j3qg6sb&x=0&y=-n7q75z&localeid=en_US

Secret of Our Unpopularity

While the cultural and social adjustments one must make when moving overseas are significant, certain actions may more smoothly facilitate one's eventual adoption by the local population. For example, learning the local language or dialect, purchasing or displaying affinity for local products, or attempting to mirror some personality traits or mannerisms in interactions with new local acquaintances. Conversely, one must remain diligent not to inadvertantly exhibit any cuturally inappropriate actions. Unfortunately, despite our little family's mighty strivings to adapt since our arrival in Switzerland last November, I discovered last week an incredible faux pas we've been committing. And one not limited to Switzerland, but consistent in virtually every country across the globe. Yes, in fact, nearly every expatriation problem we've encountered can now be traced back to one simple cause.

You probably guessed it already: for the past ten months we've been washing our clothes with water softener instead of soap.

It's amazing what you learn when you finally slow down long enough to pay attention. We've more or less settled on one brand of every household item in our extended need for simplicity. Our dishwasher detergent is Calgon, available in powder or fancy Express Tab form. We settled on the Calgon Express Tab because it's what we'd found in our temporary apartment way back in Kloten in November. Calgon also makes Express Tabs for the washing machine, so we simply bought those too. Voila! Kein Problem.

After repeating this easy habit about every six weeks for ten months, I finally became confused last week in the grocery store. My understanding of German continues to slowly improve, and after searching in three local stores I couldn't find the correct Calgon laundry soap, only Calgon water softener (Swiss mountain-fed water is quite hard and all appliances require periodic doses of special salts to reduce scale). I returned home empty handed to double-check the nearly empty laundry tab box. Hmm, wouldn't you know, it looked disturbingly similar to the grocery boxes. And the harder I looked, the more conspicuously absent any reference to soap became. Only a picture of a washing machine and references to water. And after sitting down and painstakingly translating the entire box, the true horror finally struck home--Calgon laundry detergent tabs don't exist, just dishwashing detergent tabs and laundry water softener tabs.

Steph and I enjoyed about the hardest laugh we've had since moving overseas. In retrospect, our clothes never came out dirty but likewise they were never particularly cleanly fragrant. I always chalked it up to European environmentalism and relative austerity with household chemicals. I returned to the store to purchase Ariel brand laundry soap tabs, and the next load of clothes' resulting flowery fragrant scent nearly knocked me over. So much for austerity. Luckily the drier sheets have had some pleasant scent to them, or we might not have had any friends over here at all.

Get Your Techno On

Rewind if you will to the second weekend in August, the hosting weekend the past 10 years of Zürich's single largest annual event. No, not the International Bankers Association convention, and not the Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute flea market, but good guesses. Actually think something approaching the opposite. Yes, in its seemingly neverending paradoxical style, Zürich hosts the largest techno/rave party in Europe and one of the largest in the world, simply called Street Parade.

Zürich's techno club scene supposedly enjoys an outsized reputation for the city's modest size; we wouldn't know firsthand since it's not really our thing. But everybody here knows Street Parade. The kooks come in for one Saturday, from all over Europe and maybe the world, 800,000-1,000,000 people, a huge number dressed up or down or whatever you want to call it, the key themes being scanty and gothic. Maybe it's the way crazy ravers dress at 4:30am in hidden, pitch black, throbbing underground clubs, except in this case it's 2pm on a cloudless summer day and everything's wide open in public. The parade itself is a series of floats--each outrageously decorated blasting techno music and featuring gyrating costumed dancers--proceeding slowly along the side of Lake Zürich. The crowd masses alongside the procession (as shown above), drinking and dancing all afternoon. Good idea on somebody's part, I suppose.

So our core Australian friend invited us to her rooftop patio pre-Parade party along with more or less all the Rimini people and others, with only one catch--costume mandatory. Oh, what we won't do to build friendships, eh? Steph had been in Moscow (and liked the city!) for work the entire week prior, so we had precious little time to devise costumes. On our way to Zürich's flagship toy store (think FAO Schwarz) Saturday morning, we saw enough wackos already milling about to help focus our aim. Steph ended up in a boa and short skirt combo and I with a crazy devil outfit (sorry no pictures), both on the reasonable end of risque. As first time Parade-goers, we attained a more or less middle range of respectably weird at both the party and parade. Apparently with more experience, weird becomes more comfortable.

We partied it up on the rooftop on a beautiful sunny day (some people earning sunburns in strange places) and only descended in time to catch the tail end of the float procession, somewhat amusing but no great show. The crowd was crammed shoulder-to-shoulder for blocks upon blocks, but we persevered slowly to the event's center to be joined by other past Europameister friends (all parts of the same large group) near the beer tents; by early evening everyone was fairly swaying.

The group (not pictured here) broke apart slowly as sub-groups headed for different pre-parties or post-parties or all night rave parties or outdoor techno extravaganzas or who knows what. Steph and I and another Rimini couple selected a safe option, an all-ages free-of-charge techno party at the main train station; yes, the train station doubles as a big event hall. The station was (surprise!) packed solid, we hung around for one or two more drinks and danced with the sixteen year olds for a while, finally calling it quits around 1am. We'd later learn that we'd again achieved middle ground, with some of the rooftop group going toes-up by 10pm and others lasting until 5am. Ah, the luxury of youth.

So there you have it, our first and largest one-day outdoor costumed techno/rave parade party successfully completed. Is that the worst Zürich can throw at us? This is getting too easy...

Coastal Craziness

Way back on August 1, after spending all of 1-1/2 days back in Zürich since returning from the U.S. (just long enough for Hobbes to reacquaint himself with our smells), we boarded a train that Friday morning for a seven-hour trip through the Alps and down into Italy. Destination: the Adriatic Sea.

The Australian/American (Philadelphia) couple who first opened the friend floodgates for us at Europameister--Steph and he ride the same commuter train to the same office complex--invited us with a group of eight unknowns to the beach resort town of Rimini, Italy, for the weekend. Steph and I, still jet-lagged and generally travel weary, were slightly regretting our positive RSVP several weeks prior, generally grumbling about the 14 total train-hours and staying in a cheapo beach hostel (not our usual highbrow style) during the coming three days with a group of basic strangers. A work colleague of Steph's had characterized Rimini as a tourist trap for Germans, and blog followers may remember my generally mixed feelings on Italy from my first-ever trip in March. But far from being homebodies and willing to take chances to meet people, we dug down for a little extra social energy and set out. Funny how those decisions always seem to pay off.

We half-accidentally bumped into two group members--another Australian girl and American (Iowa) girl--on our train and chatted for most of the trip; it's easy to kill lots of time learning about everyone's background & situation and comparing notes on Switzerland. I absorbed the rather parched countryside views as our Swiss train passed through the famous Emilia-Romagna region's gourmet trifecta towns of Parma (prosciutto), Reggio (Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese) and Modena (balsamic vinegar) before switching trains in sweltering Bologna. We spent the 45 minute layover sampling some tasty panini-type sandwiches before boarding...the Italian Nightmare Train.

The final planned 70 minute ride seemed to last 7 hours itself. On a packed, crummy old undulating train with broken air-conditioning and windows that barely cracked, the relentless baking sun and humidity were stifling. The journey began with an hour's motionless delay. My lightweight shirt and drawers were soaked through with perspiration--with actual damp dark spots like spilling water on one's self. Quite lovely, but I certainly wasn't alone. At some point, things became comically uncomfortable; we just laughed. Ultimately we arrived in Rimini, deciphered the bus system (not nearly so organized Switzerland's but then, whose is?) and cruised in a somewhat better-ventilated bus down the town's long main strip to the hotel.

The tiny modest hostel room, also sans-AC, met our low expectations with a combo bathroom/shower that indiscriminantly sprayed water all over the sink, toilet and aging bidet (?). We walked the short distance to the beach and rendezvous'ed with the previously-arrived full group around 6pm, also enjoying a short beachside jaunt through the warm salty waves. The all-Zürich-based group featured two Londoners, two Scots, a Canadian, and one Swiss in addition to the already familiar double-Australian/double-American combo; all single (one dating couple) and mostly younger by several or more years; nobody had known each other before moving to Zürich anywhere from three years to nine months ago.

To make a long weekend story short, everyone was extremely friendly (keeping with my theory that not many ex-pats are duds) and we had a blast dining, drinking, dancing and beach clubbing until way too late both nights and relaxing in typical laid-back beach town fashion during the day. The beach was surprisingly large and uncrowded, full of Italians with hardly a German in sight. After only a day of unwinding, the hostel room seemed perfectably serviceable--it is a beach town after all, yes, not a global finance hub? Nearly every local was happy and friendly, food was inexpensive and occasionally delicious, our companions were fully entertaining and we felt right at home. My previously somewhat hard stance on Italy softened appreciably after a totally enjoyable weekend and I can say (gasp!) that I cautiously look forward to returning in the future.

Just to make us appreciate Switzerland all that much more, however, the entire Italy-based train ride home lacked AC and we fidgeted variously (I quite hungover, although Steph not surprisingly had behaved much more responsibly), uncomfortable under a constant slight film of perspiration for the full seven hours. I even unbuttoned five buttons and left my chest fairly exposed the entire trip. How's that for embracing the local culture? Doesn't seem so silly to me now.


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Nichten machen Spaß!

Hello again! How was that crazy Labor Day holiday last week? I'm hopefully going to fire off some short entries this week recounting August activities before I fall too far behind in September. Our social calender has indeed turned quite lively over here!

As a final follow up from our trip to Minnesota in July, here are some pictures I couldn't help but post. Given our three brothers' home bases of Minnesota, Madison and Zürich (formerly Chicago), full reunions are rare but we managed one for our July backpacking trip and very much enjoyed spending time with my twin brother's twin nieces in the process. Now 3 years old, they joined us at Steph's family's lake cabin for a day of craziness in the water and we rendezvous'ed later again after backpacking. So much energy and really wonderful girls!

Nichten machen Spaß (nieces are fun)!: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.34mlbwd7&x=0&y=rgbhxl&localeid=en_US

A New Kind of Hiking

Not five minutes into the shrouded humid forest, we sensed big trouble. Mosquitoes swarmed virtually every step, especially for the poor soul leading the charge, kicking them up from the damp overgrowth obscuring the seldom-used trail. Yet our defenses held them at bay. We had hoped against but rationally expected this possibility and soldiered on. Alas, the Achilles heel of our tenuous stand-off with the blood suckers was its sustainability. The oppressive humid heat and exertion encouraged ample sweating, quickly diluting the OFF!. You know the feeling when your sunscreen application is wearing off and you just barely sense the sun burning your skin? We all sensed almost simultaneously the bug spray wearing thin and, of the dozens if not a hundred mosquitoes literally bouncing off us every minute, one or two buzzing jerks gaining purchase. For me, it began on the heels of my hands where my hiking poles had rubbed the protection off first; not normally a choice site for a mosquito, eh? Yeah well, these suckers were tough. We heavily reapplied with OFF! and moved along.

After perhaps two miles, we reached a clearing at a gravel county road and paused to reassess in the cool open breeze. Billy had sustained more than a few bites on his shaved head, having unwisely opted for a hat during our initial ten minutes before donning the head net and unfortunately trapping one lucky mosquito inside. Gavin unhesitatingly ditched his head net for the full torso net (including head, quite stylish) and Billy and I followed. The suits were comfortable enough that I accidentally tried to eat a Snickers bar through mine (either that or I’m just dumb); the Snickers was so melted that it almost worked. We crossed the clearing and plunged into more trees.

While perhaps less inspiring than Yosemite’s panoramas or the desert’s vast austerity, this GT section featured some lovely scenery, most notably serene forested lakes and reedy grasslands. The going got rougher as we near-bushwhacked through the completely overgrown trail over marshy terrain and muddy depressions. The mosquitoes and horseflies never relented, occasionally scoring a good bite through the nets. Our mental fortitude hung tough but ebbed gradually over five, six, seven miles with the dipping sun until another all-too common setback struck--we lost the trail.

Every case runs a little differently, but it happens to everyone. Too many four-wheeler trails and other hiking trails crisscrossed, our vague map was no help, we followed the wrong blaze on a tree, took a presumed shortcut to reconnect and found ourselves still off the correct trail and uncertain of our exact location with perhaps 90 minutes of sun remaining. That was the final straw—beleaguered and grumpy, we agreed on an evacuation plan, determining to follow a trail south and west to hit one of two county roads that reconnected with the GT.

We exited the forest onto a county road, nervous about trespassing slightly between disconcertingly junk-strewn farms showcasing rusted equipment and a burning garbage can, all the while imagining rock salt-filled shotguns pointed at our backsides. We traversed our ninth mile of the day on concrete to reconnect with the trail. In the rapidly dwindling daylight, we scouted both sides of the trail intersecting the road with equally dismal results—one side in a thigh-high-grass field bordering a particularly unfriendly looming farmhouse, the other side ensconced in dark wet forest, both sides swarming with dusk-enthused mosquitoes. No decent place to situate a tent (much less two), with road signs additionally warning against tents and trespassing, and no water sources.

We may have contended and persevered against one or two such negative elements. But faced with mosquito swarms, trespassing, no flat dry ground, no water and no sunlight, we ultimately differentiated between roughing it and stupidity. For the first time in any of our lives, we embraced a completely new type of hiking—hitch-hiking.

Yes, you heard it, UHR 2008 aborted. While Gavin attempted via emergency cell phone to locate and contact the few motels and bars in the surrounding towns, searching in vain for a shuttle or taxi or desperate proprietor to drive 20 miles to a remote county road to pick up three strangers, Billy and I started thumbing the infrequently passing vehicles. Several slowed enough to observe our spooky mosquito net and headlamp getups before accelerating on; some drunken teenagers paused for amusement to hear our story and offer a few words of useless advice; in the dark a blood-chilling cacophony of howling let loose from the nearby looming farmhouse as if from a pack of wild dogs or perhaps werewolves (minutes later, our throats remained surprisingly intact).

Finally a beat-up car containing a man and several kids stopped. A local farmer, he offered useful advice regarding exactly where to camp without trespassing and then thank heavens! further offered to drive us to our car or a town bar. I’m certain we appeared an equal measure of probably normal but perhaps slightly odd to each other (eek, Deliverance!) as we carefully negotiated him dropping off his kids and returning to carry two of us--Billy and me without gear--back to our trailhead car 15 miles away via pitch black county roads. He did, and during the drive he said his kids had asked him why he actually returned to help us. He explained that he’d lived in Alaska for fifteen years and knew exactly the feeling of being bug-bitten, lost, thirsty and exhausted. Our guardian angel that night, for sure. We found our car, followed him back to find Gavin and the gear miraculously unaccosted in the dark after 40 minutes alone, paid him $20, thanked him profusely and sped gratefully toward the nearest decent-sized town with a real hotel. Chalk up 2008’s short UHR as the weirdest one yet.

Epilogue: while the mosquito bites were TNTC (too numerous to count), Gavin won the tick contest that evening, removing 10 from his chest, back and legs, vs. 6 for me and Billy’s mere 4, all tenaciously grippy but none yet engorged. Following UHR tradition, we consumed as much pizza and draft beer as our stomachs could hold at a local bar later that night.

Click to enlarge the GPS/Google Earth track (above) as hiked from right to left. Pictures: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.1e9zyexn&x=0&y=vlfjqp&localeid=en_US