July 4, Swiss Style

Surprising- ly, we saw more fireworks than expected during our first July 4 in Switz- erland, i.e., exactly one. Some loony American ex-pat in the next town over blasted off a doozy, of which we observed only the bright red crest over the eastern city hillside from our evening patio vantage. Considerably more entertaining was a weekend visit from our frequent European partner in crime, our fifth rendezvous in eight months with Steph's college roommate, M. Sadly for us, this second visit to Zürich marked her final Euro weekend trip as her Fulbright teaching grant reaches its conclusion in mid-July and she leaves Germany after nine months to return home to the U.S.

Our July activities with M--already familiar with Zürich city from a January tour--focused more on the outskirts. As we like to do with guests, we ran her ragged and then fed her well. Steph lacks a true road bike and M wasn't moving hers back to the U.S., so they had bargained and wheeled and sealed a deal for M to transport her bike from Essen (not easy, even on Euro trains) to Zürich for Steph's discounted purchase. We celebrated M's arrival and the deal's consummation with a group ride after work on Friday, the same 13-mile round trip that Steph and I had blundered into (but now we're pros) featuring unexpected vineyard, lake and mountain views. We relaxed that evening, drinking wine and grilling pizza from scratch (have you ever grilled pizza? Slightly challenging but fun.).

Saturday we hopped the train 90 minutes south to the new-favorite Vierwaldstättersee area for a day hike from little town Küssnacht am Rigi to Lucerne. The area sits at the Alps' foot--before the mountains get too serious--featuring excellent views of peaks above lakes. We hiked about about three hours and 7.5 miles from Küssnacht under Mt. Rigi, up through a network of forested nature trails and back down to destination Lucerne under Mt. Pilatus (we visited Lucerne and Pilatus with my parents in June). I love maps and also thus Google Earth, so above is a representation of the hike from bottom-left to upper-right (click to enlarge). After emerging from the forest, rather than hoofing it another mile or two directly to downtown Lucerne, we elected the more reasonable option of pausing for Kaffee + Kuchen at a tiny village bakery and then relaxing in a lakeside park waiting for the ferry to shuttle us across the lake and ultimately deliver us downtown. We found Lake Lucerne equally as charming on this beautiful summer day as on our introduction. After several tries at finagling in German (finagling isn't easy when you're not fluent), we managed an early outdoor dinner seating at our Old Town Lucerne restaurant of choice, the brasserie that served Steph her 2008 MOY-to-date in June; everything was again excellent.

Waking from Sunday sleep-in saw clouds and light rain roll into Zürich (summers are rainier here than Chicago, but also not as hot and humid) and we took it relatively easy, consuming ourselves with cooking all day prepping for the homemade Mexican food fiesta we had promised M for her birthday the prior week; authentic Mexican is as difficult to obtain in Germany as in Switzerland (probably all of Europe). I really usually avoid tooting the horn, but sometimes the combo of Swiss ingredient quality and our practiced preparation yields fantastic results--perhaps the best Mexican dinner we've ever made, bite-for-bite like Chicago's Frontera Grill, source of most of the recipes. Corn tortillas, roasted salsa, poached chicken and guacamole, all from scratch among other condiments and side dishes. A truly gut-busting good time.

Steph sadly escorted M to the train station the following morning on the way to work. We'll miss her dearly, since her proximity in Europe and our frequent excursions together provided that hardest-to-attain and most valuable missing element from home, that is, a close friend at hand with which to share adventures and experiences. We're anxiously anticipating her return trip to Europe!

Pics from the weekend here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.3lpztl1n&x=0&y=1xy94p&localeid=en_US