Second Revolution

Time flies, eh? Late October brings us several celebratory dates each year, the first being Steph’s birthday (Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag! is one of my favorite German sayings, quite a mouthful and literally translated as “Heartfelt happy wish on the birthday!”), a second being my mom’s birthday and finally a third being October 31, not just Halloween but also the anniversary date of our arrival in Switzerland! And indeed the Earth has completed exactly two full revolutions around that gigantic plasma ball we call the sun since that fateful day, cause for celebration without doubt.

So what did Year Two bring us? A much-improved sense of being settled, for one significant thing. Two jobs (read: two incomes), an awesome dog-sitter, growing friendships within a relatively large group of ex-pat colleagues, some greater comfort navigating life in a foreign language, and a generally improved tolerance for annoying differences in social norms (they make it really tough sometimes though).

Year Two brought us ski equipment, discovery of world-class ski destinations a mere two hours from home and improved downhill skills last winter. It brought us to the U.S. east coast for Christmas, to Chi-town in the summertime (the best time) and a pilgrimage to good ol’ Green Bay, WI for my 20-year high school reunion. It brought us an awesome little nephew! For kicks, we followed Bruce Springsteen on his European tour for two shows in two countries in five days and watched the Tour de France peloton whiz by for all of 45 seconds. We unfortunately saw scant few visitors in Year Two compared to Year One, only two in fact. Mirroring the economy, however, we’re predicting a visitor rebound in 2010 (hint).

Have I mentioned yet that Year Two brought you 60% fewer blog posts? Sorry about that.

On the travel front, work sent us each to new coordinates. Top prize for “Uh, Where Again?” goes to Steph for her journey to Dushanbe, Tajikistan. In a quirky career turn, Steph’s travel outpaced mine by more than two-to-one including breaking in both ends of a new continent--Africa--from Casablanca, Morocco to George, South Africa. I edged her for longest trip however, from Zürich to Singapore at 6,410 miles, with her measly flight to George ticking off a mere 5,950 miles (incidentally the farthest inhabited location from Switzerland is Auckland, New Zealand at over 11,400 miles--couldn’t help looking it up--meaning we can only crow about flying a quarter way around the world).

Most entertainingly, Year Two brought us each the standard five weeks of vacation time (“holiday time” as they say in Europe) for our favorite pastime: leisure travel and attempts to eat and drink like the locals. Top cool new city honors go to Barcelona; Meal of the Year honors to the wine and Belgian beer pairings (at lunch no less) at Den Dijver in Bruges; best trip goes to our sailing tour of the British Virgin Islands on the simply awesome charter boat Free Ingwe in March. We experienced the lowlands of Netherlands and Belgium, the coastlands of Cataluña and Valencia, and “Badlands” in Vienna all for the first time. Paris, Alsace, Munich Oktoberfest and London were lovely repeats.

Few legitimate complaints these days from either the two- or four-legged variety in our household, feeling fortunate and occupied and looking forward to what the future holds. That’s the way we envisioned it, it just took eighteen months longer than expected…

[Travel map below. Blue is joint travel, yellow is Steph's work, green is my work. You have to zoom out to see South Africa and Asia.]

View Second Year in a larger map

South Africa, Here We Come

With the college football and NFL seasons fully underway (including the evergreen Favre soap opera), is anybody in the U.S. paying attention to World Cup qualifying? Perhaps not, however the soccer (or football or Fußball) results rank always as front page news in Europe.

In case you're not quite up to speed, South Africa hosts World Cup 2010 next summer. Last week saw the (nearly) final round of qualifying games across the globe. The United States national team officially qualified, no great accomplishment among the weak North and Central American qualifying group against the likes of Honduras, El Salvador and much-feared Trinidad & Tobago. Somewhat surprisingly--albeit a pleasant one for the Swiss--Switzerland also qualified from the competitive European group last week. After a series of botched games and early exit as co-host of the European Championships in summer 2008 (primarily because of the crushing social pressure they heaped on themselves, very Swiss of them), this World Cup 2010 qualification feels somewhat redeeming to this tiny but nonetheless proud country constantly on the European bubble surrounded by talented, confident giants like Italy, Germany and France.

Perusing the newspaper on a tram last Thursday, the day after official qualification, I thus found this typical "local interview" clip quite amusing. Several Swiss and several non-nationals (Argentinean and "loathed" German) are asked about their dream opponent next summer. The German (lower right) gives a great loathed German answer, he wants Switzerland to play reigning world champ Italy. The Argentinian babysitter (middle right) thinks Switzerland v. Argentina would be interesting (it might). But my favorite... the 24-year-old Swiss hairdresser (featured top left) wants an "easy opponent like Chile, USA or Australia, otherwise the Swiss may lose all their games." It's funny because she's right; the USA probably boasts roughly equivalent skill to Switzerland.

There is however an X-factor: while the U.S. historically bombs out terribly in Europe (ranking virtually last in France 1998 and Germany 2006) they can improve markedly on "neutral", i.e., non-European, grounds as evidenced by their sometimes lucky, sometimes surprisingly good run in Japan/Korea 2002. As mega-fans of World Cup atmosphere and attendees in France and Germany, Steph and I already booked our (rather expensive) tickets and hotels in South Africa next summer. After planning our travels on those previous occasions around seeing a (ultimately disappointing) U.S. game, we're instead taking a loose approach: staying in stunning Cape Town and its surrounding wine regions rather than risking soccer's unpredictable fortunes; raucously attended bars and cafés broadcast all the games on TV regardless. Steph visited Johannesburg and Cape Town on a work trip earlier this year, but this will make my first journey to the African continent.

Fun stuff and definitely something to look forward to... USA! USA! USA!

Twice As Nice

Let's see now... picking up exactly where I left off... returning from Singapore to land in Zürich quite early that Thursday morning in late May, I arrived home to a full house...

Yes, can you believe I just recovered a half-started blog entry from nearly five months ago?? That must have been when I lost the blog mojo. Never mind that so many details have faded, I found some good pictures that were never shared and will nevertheless try my best in the recounting...

Indeed, Steph and I were lucky to receive our first-ever return visitors to Switzerland, of course you remember Steph's parents--code-named Kay and Archer to protect the innocent. Gluttons for punishment, they scored some cheap airfares and again landed in Zürich 13 months after their initial visit last year in late April. I blame the Global Economic Crisis for (among lots of other things, as I find convenient) general expense aversion and a relative dearth of visitors in 2009 compared to 2008. Or perhaps that a majority of friends and family are exhausting their schedules raising young children these days, making a trip to Disneyland (much less Switzerland) an arduous undertaking.

This year's 10 days with Kay and Archer required slightly different organization than last year's, per yours truly trying my hand at working again in 2009. A common theme emerges: work interferes with blogging, work interferes with Hobbes's swimming schedule, work interferes with visitors, work interferes with [reader's choice]... Instead of touring Switzerland's entirety, we opted for bookend weekend excursions to France and Germany and left them to their own devices with Zürich as home base during the workdays.

We ventured first just over the border to Strasbourg, a perfectly excellent French border town sporting plenty of interesting German influence amidst the heart of the Alsatian wine region (Steph's and my second trip since June 2008). Awesome Gothic church, great white wine, lots of Flammeküche (Alsace pizza, not to be confused with Pflaumenkuchen, or German plum tart), just a solid European town. Pictures below tell the story. Later that week back in Switzerland, Kay and Archer hiked in the vicinity of Zermatt and The Alps' famous Matterhorn peak (still haven't seen it myself) bordering Italy, and spent Friday with Steph exploring the voluminous castle in Montreaux over in my Swiss-French neck of the woods (I was working), later commuting home with me.

Saturday we visited the impressive impressionist van Gogh art exhibit in not-so-far-away Basel, Switzerland and then trained it yet again to finish the long weekend in Mainz, Germany, home to a nice Hyatt and quite near the Frankfurt international airport for their flight home Monday. Mainz scored better than expected, pleasant in its own right, more than simply a Frankfurt suburb. The highlight of the trip was an afternoon historic castle and vineyard cruise down the Rhine River through the heart of the Rheinland-Pfalz region. Castles on bluffs around every turn with Riesling vineyards strewn steeply below. We disembarked at one of the many villages along the way for a light lunch including a liter of the local white for a bargain 5 Euros served by the 85-year-old proprietress. Ich kann es nie genug sagen (I can't say it enough): Germany rocks!

Strasbourg pics link here. I think I have Rhine pics at home, but no access tonight in Lausanne. Sorry! http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?token=368064518703%3A542620968

Blog Back On! - summer recap

Okey doke, here we go again! My blog output dropped so anemically this summer that I simply must have saved up some creative energy, eh? I'll try to keep the next posts short and rapid-fire rather than too-big bites. Otherwise I can't even keep a Part 2 post alive these days. But don't worry, if you're really curious about the intracacies of dog-grooming in foreign lands I'll try to finish that last post too.

In the meantime, check out our fancy rooftop garden this summer. Pictured here: San Marzano tomatoes, a rampant basil weed, thyme (obscured by said weed) and yellow tomatoes, also accompanied (not pictured) by a robust potted rosemary bush and not-as-robust Italian flat leaf parsley. All soaking up the sun on a lovely blue-skied summer day, of which we can boast quite a quantity from June through September this year, a longer summer and overall less rain than last year. We suffered one hot spell for about two weeks, only about 30-32ºC (86-90ºF) and less humidity than in the Midwest U.S., but those conditions can wear on you slightly without a shred of air conditioning at home, while sleeping or in the office (also sleeping?). And although overall I'm not a big weather-complainer, this year provided even the curmudgeons scant fodder.

So we overplanted our first-ever rooftop garden a bit, underestimating how much sun the plants would devour six stories up, and watched the tomatoes strangle each other mid-summer to yield ultimately a high count but low average weight tomato--more like large cherry tomatoes. Regardless they were fantastically delicious off the vine, especially the sweet yellow tomatoes. One summer evening we prepared the classic Italian, rely-entirely-on-quality-raw-materials caprese salad with freshly-picked tomatoes and basil with olive oil and a cheese reminiscent of fresh Mozzarella (that I mistook for a special Italian-commune-labeled Mozzarella but was actually more of an under ripe version that oozed after cutting; the cheese options in the average Swiss grocery might confuse you too!). The result... not bad at all! There may have been wine too...

I'll sign off here with one more summer pic. You'll remember that the Most Spoiled Dog on Earth enjoyed the services of a full-time caretaker and entertainer during the summer of 2008, since his primary servant then lacked a job in the human world. Hobbes's new typical schedule of Mon-Wed as the only boy in the house (with his servant in Lausanne) plus Thu-Fri with a work-from-home companion didn't settle well at first. After voicing his discontent several times regarding too much time home alone--including knocking out our internet for a full week (Swiss service doesn't exactly jump to fix things) and climbing up all 88 lean mean pounds on the brand new dining room table (really a first, I would've loved to see it) to impart a few choice, deep claw scratches in the wood veneer--and with lots of help from our awesome Mexican dog-sitter Mitzy, he was more or less on board with the new routine in Summer 2009, pictured here plotting to terrorize a family of ducks on Lake Zürich. Could you tell by the smile?

Whoah! Excuse the delay!

A quick note to the blog faithful--sorry for the long delay! Hopefully we'll still find out about Hobbes's new groomer. This whole working thing really puts a crimp in my blogging style. And I guess we had a busy summer. Here's a picture from a trip to Valencia, Spain, in August to tide things over for now. We just returned home from Oktoberfest in Munich this weekend, our second annual trip, that's certainly always good blog fodder also. So hold tight please and I'll get back in the groove..!

Hair of the Dog, Pt. 1

Big news in Zürich city this August on multiple fronts! First our little neighborhood Hungarian specialty foods store started selling freshly baked bread, a remarkable event indeed well worth the newspaper coverage received. Quite a shrewd move, since we (and I can only imagine other locals) didn't frequent the store very often. After all, once fully stocked with an industrial-sized tube of authentic paprika paste and bottle of Unicum bitter herbal liquor (Hungary's answer to Jägermeister, which actually didn't need to be answered) we're set for several years of goulash dinner parties.

But a tiny new bakery is entirely a different matter. We stopped during Saturday morning's walk with Hobbes and tested the new wares, the family sharing a single Nussschnecke. Yes, that's spelled correctly with three consecutive s's, literally it means "nut snail" or what we'd call a cinnamon roll (that's Zimtschnecke) except not so sweet, with nuts instead of cinnamon sugar. The tasting panel decided it wasn't half bad with one judge in particular voting an emphatic four paws up for this latest neighborhood expansion project. It's now completely unnecessary to walk four minutes downhill to the existing local bakery; it sits on a different Platz after all, practically an altogether different neighborhood!

But our major life change in Zürich this summer appeared as another local business transformed itself. We're incalculably lucky that a Tiersbedarfladen (animal care store) opened up the street (about as far away as the Hungarian bakery) soon after we moved into the neighborhood. Neither groomers nor pet stores are plentiful in Zürich, so lacking a car means a cross-city tram ride trying to rein in Mr. Golden Personality for a grooming, or a return trip from the city's only mall lugging 33 lbs of dog food on one's shoulder. Lamentably our local shop's full potential never quite materialized, instead providing a frustratingly perfect display of typical Zürich customer service: although we tried to buy the exact same specialty dog food every month (and the owner recognized me as a montly customer), she never stocked it but instead asked me to special-order it every time with the lead time varying inexplicably from 3 days to 3 weeks (except when they forgot completely), and at 100 CHF per bag I didn't feel like stocking up. Invariably I'd buy a sometimes similar but usually different food every month, wreaking havoc on poor Hobbes's stomach. So I recently resorted again to the cross-city mall trek, viewing the haul home as good backpacking training.

Apparently that particular service model earned scant repeat business, because the store changed motif significantly a few weeks back. New signage and rearranged decor features the storefront prominently now as a Hundecoiffeur, the dog barber! Details forthcoming!

Abwasserreinigungsanlage, Pt. 2

Ha, I bet you thought I was kidding about that German word until you saw it pictured! You can find anything on Google these days.

Sometimes my inexpensive, nearly-retired, very sweet, gratefully patient Zürich barberess tries to converse with me. It's happened twice now. Of course, I've seen her well over a dozen times already but Zürichers often take a while to warm up to strangers. It didn't help that early in our "relationship" I could barely schedule an appointment via phone in German, so she understandably mistook me for another hapless ex-pat short-timer. But perseverence pays dividends.

Have you ever ordered up a haircut in a foreign language? My initial vocabulary with her consisted of pointing to various areas on my head and instructing kurz (short) or nicht so kurz (not so short). That's actually a big improvement from my first-ever Swiss haircut 20 months ago (!) in Kloten where I communicated through a written note. But she's a professional so the results are always top notch anyway.

I may qualify as her only Under-40 Male in both the age and gender categories. Her clientele consists primarily of gossipy grey-haired ladies using that old-fashioned hair-dryer thingy that sits on your head for 45 minutes (I always politely refuse the hair wash). But once after a particularly lively Schwiizerdütsch gabbing session with a longtime client and subsequent lowering of the hair-dryer thingy on those silver locks, her good mood continued unquenched and she struck up a conversation with the strange new boy. Her Hochdeutsch is quite good, with only a trace of the oftentimes heavy Swiss accent. Both times I unbelievably more or less kept up my end of the conversation. The only problem is that I get nervous and sweat like crazy while she's chatting and cutting my hair. It's excellent real-life practice for me but quite nerve-wracking; my T-shirt feels nearly soaking wet when I finally leave. So what do we talk about?

Well, here's the long answer. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is a standardized system that defines foreign-language aptitude by stepwise levels. The levels advance from A1 (beginner) to A2, B1, B2, C1, up to C2 (indistinguishable from a native speaker). So just for kicks, I'm preparing to take the CEFR 'B1' exam sometime this fall, a level usually requiring about 360-400 hours of study to attain. It's defined:

B1 - Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. Can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken. Can produce simple connected text on topics which are familiar or of personal interest. Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

Amazingly accurate for what I currently can and can't do in German. My barberess and I talk about my original home, how Steph and I came to Zürich, how long we've been here and how long we expect to stay, where we work, vacation plans, and lots of general thoughts on dogs. She has no children and when we start to address the pros and cons of kids vs. dogs, her conversation rolls too fast and I can't maintain comprehension; I end up saying something vacuous at the end like, "Um, ja." That B1 level gets stuck at 'brief explanations of opinions'. B2 is truly fluent 'work-level' aptitude requiring an additional 200 hours of study (five hours a week for almost a year) and I ain't there yet.

So hopefully I'll persevere on the exam this fall. Two English-speaking friends have already experienced the ordeal; the test lasts all day with reading comprehension, listening skills, one-on-one conversation and written grammer sections. I'm a grammar whiz but struggle sometimes with hearing comprehension, especially when they record a voice over a loudspeaker or children talking quickly or traffic noise in the background or something similarly ridiculous. On that note, I should probably sign off. I have some studying to do.

By the way, this post title is Steph's favorite German word as seen on a passing sign during her daily train commute; it means "wastewatertreatmentfacility". My favorite word is ausgezeichnet!, it means "excellent!"

Abwasserreinigungsanlage, Pt. 1

Grüezi mitenand! There's a bit of Swiss-German dialect for you, meaning basically "Hi, everybody!"

In all our 21 months (!) now in Switzerland, I've never blogged on German. But learning Deutsch occupied a major portion of my time particularly in the months before landing a job; a fairly regular lesson schedule kept me sane by providing measurable progress during a difficult adjustment period when everything else seemed in the air.

A long time ago on a work-trip train ride to Milan, Steph randomly chatted with another U.S. ex-pat who recommended a long-distance tutoring program conducted via Skype. Inexpensive at $20/hour and much more flexible than classes, the service hooked me up with a Russian linguistics teacher who spoke six languages, including perfect German after working as a translator in Germany for several years, and former host of a German-food cooking TV show in Russia (?!), now living in North Carolina. We conducted one or two hour-long tutoring sessions per week for over a year, although we unfortunately canceled the lessons recently when her life became too hectic with one feisty toddler and another baby on the way.

For whatever reason, I pick up grammar quicker than most people (German has loads of grammar, rule after rule after rule) but struggle a bit with comprehension; vocabulary requires lots of memorization and speaking smoothly takes lots of practice. Although everything in Zürich and German-speaking Switzerland is written in standard or "high" German, Hochdeutsch, including newspapers, advertising, etc., the Swiss strongly prefer speaking their own dialect, Schwiizerdütsch, a rather unbecoming sing-songy guttural unwritten language unintelligible even to most native Germans (imagine the Muppets' Swedish chef choking on phlegm). Speaking Hochdeutsch is a touchy political issue in Switzerland; although Swiss learn Hochdeutsch in school (to read the newspaper, of course), most locals respond in English if addressed in German so daily "immersion" gains from hearing spoken German are largely unavailable.

The subject is on my mind only because after more than a year, I must be making progress--more or less successfully conducting a full 30-minute German conversation with my barberess last week. She's not shown in the picture above; that's from my still-jobless last summer when the family believed we couldn't afford the average 60 Franc ($55) men's haircut. As evidenced by her concentration, Steph gave the task her best shot but the result still earned a quizzical look from my old Chicago barber when we returned once last summer. Keeping my eyes peeled, I finally located one storefront with the rock-bottom haircut price of 28 Francs, the place I've frequented since. There's only one catch... the barberess doesn't speak English.

OK, I'm cheating now and going to break this post into two parts, although maybe it doesn't deserve it. I'll try to turn over a new leaf: shorter posts more often. You'll have to wait with bated breath to know what Abwasserreinigungsanlage means.

Pictorial Evidence

Hey, free pics are posted from the Zürich Tri- athlon! Since I don't care enough to purchase the actual pics, the copies here are besmirched (how often can you use that word?) quite effectively by the photo company. In this first pic, it appears I'm beating two worthy but slightly less gifted competitors across the finish line. That's how I choose to remember it, when in fact the bike course was probably nowhere near completed. Perhaps they were lapping me, I don't recall.

Second picture looks like an individual time trial, pounding out a breakneck speed against my perpetual enemies: the clock and my own uncompromising sense of achievement. Actually I don't know where everyone else is in this photo. But look at that expression of pure concentration.

Last but not least, the picture cresting "Heartbreak Hill", although I'm not sure which of the three iterations during the race. Other similar pictures were posted where my grimacing, spitting and cursing appear more clearly, but the photo logo unfortunately lies even more directly over my face. Check out the scenic overlook behind. That was my private joke (also during training) every time I reached the top, unable to breathe but panting, "Nice...view...Nice...viewww!" But why are all the spectators facing the wrong way?

So I've got at least one more event in me this season, hopefully two (a long and a short). Lausanne, the city near which I work on the French side, hosts their Olympic triathlon in about five weeks and down in the crazy Swiss-Italian canton of Ticino (do you know the name Fabian Cancellara, early yellow-jersey wearer in this year's Tour de France? He's from there...) they host a half-IronMan and a sprint (yes, I'll be doing the sprint).

Speaking of the 2009 Tour de France, I have some additional pictures to post soon.

Swim, Bike, Fall Over, Pt. 2

Now that we're well-informed on my amateur triathlon career, how about Saturday's result? As expected, the Züri Tri possessed a different atmosphere than my previous conquests, specifically as we learned with our half-marathons last year, the Swiss only engage in athletic events they want to win. The Midwest laid-back, newbie-friendly, just-training-to-lose-a-few-pounds mentality simply ain't there. With all my travel this spring, I had trained perhaps 5 hours per week instead of the group average 15 hours. And as Olympic events always attract the serious crowd vs. sprints, I planned to mostly suck fumes the whole race. Yessiree, I was dead on.

The other new twist was a topographical one...hills! The cycling leg consists of 3 loops of about 8 miles each, mostly flat alongside Lake Zürich, but then each featuring a detour up the affectionately coined "Heartbreak Hill" (apparently no German translation) on the lake's west side. Let's review my experience from this perspecitve (you'll have to click on each graphic to examine in detail)...

Chicago Triathlon. Pancakes ache to be this flat:




Lake Geneva (WI). I used to think a brief 2% grade was a hill:




My "training course" from home in Zürich to the next lake over. I unfortunately only completed it once this year prior to the big event. Basically uphill or downhill for 2+ miles at a time, a fairly consistent 5% but up to 8% grade. If you're currently watching the Tour de France, this would barely earn an extra heartbeat per minute for those guys, but rookies may experience a fair level of discomfort:




Züri Tri. Heartbreak Hill is shorter but as steep as the worst parts above, from 5-7% for about 1/2 mile. The third ascent usually earns a few grunts and/or curses, especially after swimming a mile:




Regarding the run, no surprise that Chicago is flaaaat, Lake Geneva is actually murderously hilly and Zürich is mostly flat. So there's the background ad nauseum.

So Saturday. Checked my bike into transition at about 9:00am for a 10:40am start. The only amatuerish-looking people are already competing in the early sprint event. Everywhere else the eye beholds only relaxed, tanned, beautifully sculpted all-around athletic bodies and $8,000 tri bicycles more aerodynamic than an F-117 Nighthawk jet. Due to a cool cloudy workweek, the lake temperature measures slightly less than the regulation 21.9 C or 71 F, not really cold but enough to allow wetsuits, a major gift as wetsuits drastically improve buoyancy for sinkers like me.

With a group of slightly under 300 men sporting identical baby blue swimming caps, I run down the short beach and splash into Lake Zürich at 10:40am. My swim proceeds predictably poorly for the next 42 minutes over 1,500 meters, a tricky course with lots of turns; I'm not the absolute last competitor out of the water but not far ahead of him. My faithful cheering section of one is there at the transition fence to root me on, but I'm so discombobulated from the long swim I can barely locate her voice. The benefit of the wetsuit is typically partially negated in transition as it inevitably frustratingly refuses to release my legs. I don't own a tri "onesie" like the pros so I waste precious time actually donning a shirt. My transition lasts a lousy 3:50 min. So far no surprises.

On the bike I measure my pace trying to assess how much juice the ol' legs contain today. I settle into a 18-20 mph pace over the slight undulations on the somewhat windy flats and watch all the expensive bikes sail past with their aero tires humming like small engines. First time up The Hill goes surprisingly OK, I can almost hold my own on the ascent due to my slight "climber's" frame. Second time up is a little tougher but also OK. I bomb the descent hitting 41 mph, thereby almost missing a tight turn on slick blacktop, hopping a curb and nearly pitching over a fence, but recover in time. I see my cheering section, now two people, twice during the ride. Third time is up is decidedly painful and slower but successful, with energy ebbing from the legs during the final 5 miles of the 25 mile course; total cycling time 1 hour 26 minutes. Second transition lasts a mere 1:33 min., my best performace so far.

As a longtime runner I usually perform a bit better, but it never matters because the advantage in triathlon is won in cycling (and for me, lost in swimming). Nonetheless I manage to pass about a half-dozen people and keep both quadriceps from cramping over the final 6.2 miles and 52:44 min. My cheering section has grown to six people but unfortunately I don't see them until the bleachers at the very, very end. Inspiring nonetheless. Total time 3 hours 7 minutes, actually a pretty good result for me considering the conditions, but not so competitive. For an early summer result, I'm happy.

Sound miserable? Actually the opposite is true, I love these events. I think I've got one more late summer Olympic in me this year and maybe a sprint for good measure. But I really have to work on that swim. Oh yeah, and the bike too. Oh yeah, and the onesie...

Swim, Bike, Fall Over, Pt. 1

Yesterday was a big day, the thirteenth annual--and my first--Züri Triathlon! For those unfamiliar, triathlon consists of swimming, cycling and running (in that order) over more or less standard distances from short to long, culminating in the well-publicized IronMan events lasting 8-12 hours or longer. Triathlon ranks as my sport of preference the past seven years or so since I found training for my one and only (thus far) marathon in 2002 too monotonous, and since my introduction and illustrious beginning at the infamous if not famous Magee 3 Triathlon in Plymouth, Indiana, annually organized and hosted by our good friends.

For this first generously informal event of around 40 competitors, mostly friends, I "swam" the short 400 yard swim the first year with a flotation aid (a noodle, I think, not water wings) and the second year just as slowly without one. While some consider me lucky due to my absence of body fat, a short thin build is not a swimmer's gift; my body (especially my legs) sinks and drags through the water, making efficient progress a real struggle. With two years of study and practice, I improved my form and balance enough to qualify as a below-average competitive long-distance swimmer. Steph and I also "competed" that first Magee 3 on mountain bikes with fat tires and heavy frames akin to dragging a piano vs. a road bike; I subsequently invested in a decent entry-level competitive road bike a year or two later.

The shortest "Sprint" distance triathlons consist of around a 400-800 yard (meter) swim, 13-15 mile (22-25 km) bike and 3 mile (5km) run, requiring for me around 1:15-1:30 hours to complete. I primarily stuck with the Magee 3 and Chicago Sprint triathlons each year until pushing the endurance a bit farther to "Olympic" distances, i.e., the same distance competed in the Olympics, a 1 mile swim (1600 m), 25 mile bike (40km) and 6.2 mile run (10km), about double the sprint distance and lasting twice as long, for me 3 hours (the winners finish in 2 hours and Olympics are one-quarter of an IronMan).

From 2005-2007 I successfully completed two Olympic autumn triathlons in Lake Geneva, WI (ironic name, eh?) in under 3 hours, and limped and cheated through one disastrous early summer 2006 Olympic event in Elkhart Lake, WI; undertrained in the spring (perhaps due to crummy Chicago spring weather?), I couldn't complete the full mile swim (guiltily ducking under a buoy 3/4 distance out to join others already swimming back) or the oftentimes brutally steep hilly bike course (I had never experienced a single real biking hill in flat Chicago). We were headed to the World Cup in Germany the following weekend, and I still remember panting and swearing, a complete wreck on the bike, "I don't need this crap, I'm going on vacation in a week!" Not so mentally tough that day, eh? Steph jumped in bandit to help me--completely physically and psychologically exhausted--finish out the 6.2 mile run after I tried to sneak onto the 3.1 mile run course but took a wrong turn. I still love that story (and learned a lot that day!).

I completed my last U.S. triathlon in early Septmber 2007, an Olympic distance in Lake Geneva (fair and square, might I add) about six weeks before moving to Europe. Last year despite not working and training fairly consistently, my lack of Swiss pre-planning and one day of terrible weather negated all my planned races. Zürich's and another nearby sprint were fully booked by the time I applied (the completely German web sites slowed me down as well), and after I signed up (on a French website) and paid a nominal fee for an early September Olympic event in the French-side town of Aubonne near the actual Lake Geneva, an all day thunderstorm washout (we get some nasty ones in Switzerland) combined with some common sense kept me from traveling 3 hours across the country to a completely unfamiliar French-speaking village to attend. I instead finished the season and placed well in a perfectly enjoyable half-marathon in Basel in late October.

So the Züri Olympic Tri made my first triathlon in approaching two years, my first in Europe, and only my fourth longer-distance event ever. And several work and vacation trips to the Caribbean, Asia, and the U.S. in the ten weeks leading up to the event wreaked some havoc with my training schedule. How did I fare? Tune in again please soon!

Summer Summary

Whew! I simply must stop trying to make up for lost time and just recount where I can. Short and sweet, that should be my new mantra. Again sitting this evening in my industrial apartment outside of Lausanne, let's see what's happened since I returned from Singapore way back in late May...

• I forgot to mention the late May, 105th annual (my second straight) exploding of the gigantic snowman's head in Zurich to celebrate spring. Much better than last year's extended rainy episode, the Böögg's head completely exploded in under 8 minutes on a beautiful sunny day.

• A visit from Steph's parents, their second (!) in 18 months, way ahead of most people (hint). I have some excellent pics I really will post, from our consecutive weekend trips to Strasbourg, France and Mainz, Germany, including an historic boat cruise down the Rhine with nothing but castles and vineyards.

• Hosted the European equivalent of our annual blowout wine party, including nearly 50 guests and as many wines, food from six countries to match the wine (especially proud of the from-scratch empanadas), and the same messy result at evening's end. Guests from all over the world, kinda fun, and a big boost to our local popularity (because it really needed a boost).

• Returned all too briefly to the U.S. in June, primarily to attend my 20-year high school reunion back in good 'ol Green Bay, WI, with some brief time thrown in for Chicago (for Mexican food and iced tea) and Madison (for my new nephew! only six weeks old). Highlights included a GB sub-reunion of soccer buddies from so many years playing together, a 4-on-4 scrimmage that made me feel simultaneously young and old.

• Participated in a subsequent "try out" scrimmage of sorts with my Zürich-Mexican buddy on his predominantly Swiss soccer team. Ouch, didn't go as well but I met minimum requirements. Did I mention everyone is about 10 years younger? Am I crazy enough to play in a league in the fall? Sounds like an injury waiting to happen.

• Witnessed the phenomenon of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on stage in Bern, Switzerland, on Tuesday evening, about an hour train ride from Zürich. Truly a living legend, the guy just keeps getting better. He almost managed to shake an unbelievably lethargic Swiss crowd out of its stupor. Steph and I made quite an American spectacle of ouselves from the opening song. Wednesday was a long, "sleepy" day. We're voyaging to Vienna this weekend to see them again (do we qualify as groupies?)...can't wait!

• Swam across Lake Zürich yesterday evening with a few thousand others, a typically-fantastically organized annual Zürich event. Just under a mile in length, and I swallowed just under a third of the lake as a final bit of open-water training for the Zürich Triathlon next weekend. Wish me luck there. The picture up top is from hundreds of swimmers conducting an aerobics "warm-up" before entering the water. Fantastically bizarre. I was laughing nearly out loud to myself thinking, "Well, there's something you wouldn't see in Chicago." But they're Swiss so they follow the rules, and the rules said you should warm up before swimming. This closer picture shows the end of the event, or Ziel ("goal") with everybody in their red swim caps (don't try a "Where's Waldo", I'm not actually in the picture)

Sorry again for my anemic blog output, it's tough work trying to stay current. Hopefully I'll be able to fill in some of the past gaps!

Lion City

My five days in Singapore last week passed smoothly enough, visiting customers Mon-Wed after the weekend rest. I didn’t explore much Sunday, preferring to relax at the lovely Grand Hyatt. I did sample the reportedly authentic Malay breakfast one morning called kaya toast, thin squares of buttered and sugared toast made with coconut milk, served with barely-touched-the-boiling-water, runny-as-can-be poached eggs…not bad. A wealthy, sweltering Malaysian island-city-state of almost 5 million people, Singapore’s fame derives mainly from its strict societal organization, e.g., immaculately clean, no gum chewing, extremely safe, brutally caning vandals, etc. (Singapura means "lion-city" in Malay). No surprise then that the authorities relegated heavy industry, of which Singapore as a major historical trading hub hosts plenty, to a fascinating place--a series of small islands off its south coast.

On both Monday and Wednesday we dutifully jumped the paperwork hoops through the crowded, boring security checkpoints to enter Jurong Island (pictured above); Wednesday we entered a sub-industry campus called the Singapore Petrochemical Complex, a compound containing the enormous plants of eight major petrochem companies. The complex maintains its own police force, security measures and driving regulations. Massive parallel and diverging metal pipes sprawl everywhere, also bending upwards amidst mazes of scaffolding, peaking as spikes of towers across the horizon. Kinda cool in a massive industrial way. Too bad our attempt to close a sale there turned into a way-too-technical 4-1/2 hour long meeting.

Tuesday required registering, queuing and waiting for a 10-minute ferry to Pulau Bukom, a smaller island entirely owned and run by Shell Oil, their single largest worldwide oil refinery. The ferry that transports thousands of workers, contractors and visitors (like us) back and forth to the refinery every day reeked incredibly of diesel fuel (workers used to live on the island, but no longer). One of many shuttle buses drove us to and from our appointment. Funny that after fifteen years as a chemical engineer--a profession born from the petroleum and petrochem industries--I finally visited my first refinery and first petrochem plant, in Singapore and in fine fashion no less.

A few industrial pictures are attached, snapped at great risk from my cell phone, but actually nothing too exciting: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=2hd8fyj.3s224cyn&x=0&y=4ot1va&localeid=en_US. Overall, Singapore and especially the people receive high marks, nearly every bit as friendly as the world-friendliest Thais. As I type, we’re nearing the end of our 13 hour flight from Singapore to Frankfurt, where I catch puddle jumper to Zürich. Back to the continent of espresso over tea. Nice indeed to be home with NO international travel plans for all of three weeks, although I must admit that a guy can get used to hanging out at the Grand Hyatt Singapore.

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Otherwise Unavailable, Part 2

Touching down later Sunday for my first-ever Houston visit (somewhat unbelievable as I’ve experienced Dallas, El Paso, College Station, Austin & San Antonio), I drove a solid 45 minutes at 80 mph from the north-side airport to a southwest suburb. Why? Because everything is FAR AWAY in Texas because it’s all BIG and because everyone else drove 95mph in blatantly oversized vehicles to stimulate the local Big Oil economy (oh, and because that’s where the office and hotel were). Have you noticed the complete absence of city streets in Texas? That’s right, because everything is actually highway. Exit the 80 mph expressway only to drive 60 mph on an access road to screech into the hotel parking lot. Bigger, farther, faster, better. Houston is a generally OK town, though, a big improvement over that enormous blotch Dallas-Fort Worth.

I feasted on an IHOP good ol’ American club sandwich that evening with fantastically delicious unsweetened iced tea; I drank a gallon of refills. Club sandwiches in Europe range from fairly good to kinda weird, but they never use the right deli-sliced ham or turkey, the toast isn’t quite correct and they include a fried egg (no complaints) and use some pink salad dressing sauce instead of regular mayo. Perkins or Denny’s couldn’t have done it any better, this one was sublime. Ooh, and with onion rings too. Fries are generally excellent in Europe but no onion rings, so I scarfed those suckers.

Monday with work colleagues again was forgettable, lousy Jack-In-The-Box lunch (huh?) and OK steak tenderloin for dinner, with a baked sweet potato the size of Mars and more dry iced tea. The bleu cheese drenched wedge salad was a winner though. Tuesday on the road featured McDonald’s lunch (huh?) and a solid Mexican-ish dinner with fish tacos, spicy black beans and surprisingly the best guacamole this side of Frontera Grill. Wednesday: dinner of so-so fried soft-shelled crab but another nice wedge salad.

Thursday made the entire trip worthwhile. Temporarily freed from colleagues, I walked a short distance from the hotel for lunch at the classic American Mexican-run Mexican restaurant, Las Haciendas. See picture above…tacos baby, feed me then shoot me, enough said. Then with time ticking away, I grew conservative and started repeating myself. Thursday dinner featured another IHOP club sandwich/onion rings/iced tea extravaganza, and then a final fantastic farewell lunch on Friday at Las Haciendas, exact same order, same quest-clinching experience. Friday afternoon I loaded my salsa-breath self onto the plane home, but not before pausing during the 45-minute drive for an unsweetened iced tea for the road.

Otherwise Unavailable, Part 1

I really must dust off some half-written blog material from my recent unproductive past regarding my U.S. return about six weeks back. Remember that trip, to Miami and Houston? Is it surprising that my only notes from the trip concern food? If the following culinary travelogue seems at times…um, mundane, recall that nearly every food item is generally otherwise unavailable through normal channels in Switzerland. Now, I believe I left off just after bedtime in Miami on a Wednesday night after arrival…

That sunny, warm humid Thursday morning required an hour-long drive from Miami north to the West Palm Beach office (by the way, don’t let the name fool you, WPB has plenty of palms but no public beaches). Strange to say--although it certainly ain’t real Mexican food--I was regretting passing Taco Bell for dinner on the prior evening’s short drive from the airport to the hotel. Simply to amuse myself, I rolled into the parking lot at 10am on the outside chance they’d be open. The “restaurant” didn’t open until 11am (rats!) but, lo and behold, the drive-through stays open 24 hours. Of course it does! It’s America! I’d almost forgotten the concept of drive-through. Soon happily eating my pseudo-desayuno, I was suddenly slightly dismayed discovering they’d passed me an iced “tea” as enormous as it was atrociously sweet (they should call it Iced Sugar). I reentered the drive-through (it wasn’t busy) for a trade-in, only to find no unsweetened tea available. I washed down the 7-layer burrito with hot sauce.

After work that day (details unimportant), my new U.S. colleagues led our group to a wildly popular, wildly overrated seafood restaurant on the docks in WPB; the sesame seared tuna was fair but not fantastic. Friday evening saw me solo at some popular WPB sprawling outdoor mall/entertainment complex a short walk from the hotel. I held high hopes for the fancy-ish looking wine bar, but the chef’s special roasted lamb looked much better than it tasted, although the goblets of sauvignon blanc and especially the zinfandel (not white zinfandel please) were excellent. Quite a refreshing change from Switzerland where every restaurant measures wine in exactly 1 deciliter pours, little more than a large mouthful. Alas the two big glasses combined with jet lag hit me like a prizefighter to end that evening early.

WPB hosted a boat show Saturday, filling the hotel and town-at-large with the cream of Florida’s beach loafer crop. A pre-lunch heavy dark beer at the mall’s requisite local brew-pub didn’t jive with the comfortably muggy weather, so I switched to Bud Light but almost mistook it for carbonated European mineral water (ha!). I finally bulls-eyed the beer at lunch, pairing a fantastic 16-oz. diner hamburger--topped with onion rings no less--with a Sam Adams for a mere $9.60, a laughable third of the price at home (when even available).

I partied like a rock star Saturday evening, pocketing a cigar en route to my reservation at the Steph-researched (she never fails) trendy Cuban restaurant on the apparently only happening block in WPB. My sidewalk patio dinner progressed from a mojito to two glasses of awesome Oregon pinot noir with a fantastically delicious starter of stewed mushrooms with Cuban garlic bread (easily individually DOY--Dish of the Year--so far) and a fantastically thin and long Argentinean-style churrasco garlicky steak. Smoking the cigar on the way back to the hopping mall complex, I knocked back a Bud Heavy (much better) listening to the plaza rock band before stumbling into bed. My tongue tasted like asphalt during Sunday’s return to Miami airport, near where I met a Colombian ex-work colleague and hubby for lunch at an old-school Cuban restaurant for house-specialty roasted pork with fried plantains. Nice! Next stop: Texas.

So I’ll finish later with Part 2 (or is it Part 3?) and the Houston portion. Do you know which country is near Houston??

The Big Reboot

Conventional travel wisdom suggests one recovery day for every time zone traveled before the body fully adjusts. That's pretty close for me, but my physiology is perhaps a bit faster: I usually top out at five recovery days even on a seven-hour time zone change as with this current trip.

The usual symptom of course is disrupted sleep patterns, especially for me waking up way too early. I'm more of a nightowl and love my sleep, on average requiring eight hours per night. So imagine my chagrin waking in Korea at 5am Wednesday, 6am Thursday, 7am Friday, etc. Wednesday I popped a 1/2 Ambien to sleep three hours more, Thursday I went for an early-morning run (a sure sign something is amiss), Thursday I read in bed (another oddity). Saturday's early flight to Singapore required a 7am airport arrival, again too early for my liking. Korea and Singapore aren't close: the flight lasts 6:15, like flying from Chicago to Bogota, Colombia. So today Sunday was my first real chance to sleep in. Before hitting the sack at midnight last night, I ratcheted the shades up tight, inserted the trusty earplugs and set no alarm.

I was quite annoyed waking Saturday feeling still groggy in the dimly lit room. I shut both shades even tighter, so not even a crack remained and returned to bed with a pillow over my face, only to toss and turn. I finally got up, resolving on a nap later in the afternoon. I was slightly confused checking my watch...yes indeed, 1:30 in the afternoon. The hot post-noon sun flooded the room upon finally cracking the shades. OK, well...over 13 hours of sleep, mission accomplished.

To complete my recovery, I ate an entirely Western (British) breakfast...um, brunch that is, here in the excellent Grand Hyatt Singapore (Steph's work favors are treating me right). Billed as afternoon tea, the small but exquisite buffet was quite phenomenal, including a "starter" of the best scones on the planet. Imagine the best scone you've had (not so great, right?) and multiply by 10 just to get close. They more resembled an upper-class buttermilk biscuit but with currants. The baker in me was extremely jealous. I hit the fitness center later, another key component to feeling whole again. Dinner with our local host seemed to arrive quite early, but he chose an excellent Japanese restaurant, probably the best start-to-finish Japanese meal I've had (admittedly I haven't had that many) including a very good warm sake.

From what I've seen, Singapore is quite a nice town. Hot and humid as can be, and rich in a way that just exudes rich, doesn't hit you over the head with it. Every square meter is immaculately groomed. A blend of East and West with an ingrained emphasis on the West, still with a large British presence vs. say, Hong Kong, another East/West blended city but one leaning much more towards the China side. With limited experience to date I prefer Southeast Asia, i.e., Malaysia and Thailand, to East Asia, i.e., Korea, China, Taiwan.

So consider me now mostly recovered three days before returning home and repeating the process. That's just the way it works. A few minor pics from the trip: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=2hd8fyj.6n3rbx73&x=0&y=1540tc&localeid=en_US

That Spicy Garlic Aftertaste

As anticipated, the food here in Korea has been…well, fairly weird by Western standards. But my previous trip has helped with expectations. Exactly what does one think of, when one thinks of Korean food? Kimchi primarily, then barbecue. If you’re unaware, classic kimchi is pungent fermented chilied cabbage, with a sour, spicy hot taste and cold, crunchy squishy texture. Mouth watering yet? It's a bit of an acquired taste, and I'm still working to acquire it. The Korean national dish, kimchi comes in dozens of forms, sliced or shredded or fried or wrapped in cucumber or use your imagination, eaten aside breakfast lunch and dinner.

More to outsiders’ liking is Korean barbeque, which we’ve enjoyed for both dinners so far. The party sits at a tabletop charcoal/gas grill and cooks thin slices of marinated pork or well-marbled beef in the center. The first night the Swiss couple and I muddled through, grilling beef strips accompanied by bowls of spiced green onion salad, spiced hard-shell crab, spiced tofu, fibrous greens in spicy cold broth, garlic, shredded shoots, roasted corn, white radish and several (spiced) kimchis. The second night with Korean hosts, we grilled 1/2-inch thick, 8-inch long bacon slabs, which are then held up with tongs over the grill and cut with kitchen scissors into 1-inch chunks to cook longer; the fatty meat is then dipped in salt, topped with chili paste, grilled garlic and onions and shoots, wrapped in a lettuce leaf and eaten in one enormous bite. Different, but quite good. Dessert was piping hot spicy soy soup with vegetables and tofu ("good for the health!") and also somehow strangely good.

Lunch Wednesday was forgettable, our hosts talked me out the spicy noodles ("too spicy!") for noodles in a bland black gummy mushroom and roasted onion sauce. My Swiss colleague and I ate the slippery noodles with metal chopsticks, a feat that brought the waitress running with two forks. We persevered however, bearing the badge of honor: noodle-splash black stains on our dress shirts. Lunch Thursday was much better, a traditional mixture of hot sticky rice over unidentified crunchy vegetables garnished with lots of red chili paste; three types of kimchi available along with pickled sear-your-tongue peppers (I volunteered unbidden, then kept a stiff upper lip) and spicy tofu. All in a throwback ancient Korean wood-timber and red clay hut, no less.

I won't say I'm not looking forward to more cosmopolitan Singapore (my first visit) on Saturday, as waking up every morning with Godzilla breath and the garlic-and-chili burps wears thin fairly quickly (like in two days), but at least we enjoy a palate-cleansing Western-ish breakfast at the nearby truck stop cafeteria each morning. The nice waitress/cook emerges from the kitchen and says "Toast!" and we say "Egg!" and everybody smiles and it arrives: toast, fried egg, single slice of plastic-wrapped processed American cheese (insults the Swiss), dishwater coffee, some tangy juice conconction and a surprisingly tasty hot creamed rice porridge with corn. What, no müesli? All in all, Korea has been not stupendous and not terrible, almost exactly what I expected, which is why my fourth and final day Friday feels like a perfect fit.

Power Monger

Since my first work trip three and a half years ago, I found myself Tuesday a second time arriving into Seoul, South Korea. The first trip had amounted to a three day long low point in a three week tour of Asia, not unpleasant but perhaps a tad dull compared to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tokyo and China. Expectations this time around were not necessarily much higher, as the entirety of trip #2 is spent in industrial Dangjin instead of bright blinking Seoul.

Other than my already diminutive butt now resembling a pancake after too many consecutive long airplane hauls, the total 17-hour journey from Zürich to Frankfurt to Seoul transpired without mishap. Lufthansa opted for Korean fare over Schnitzel in-flight, so I tried the Bi Bim Bap (simply for the name alone), fairly tasty ground beef and vegetables mixed with rice which I adorned with a healthy dollop of garlicky Korean chili paste. I avoided the pre-packaged kimchi, however, and later gratefully received a Western in-flight breakfast, anticipated to be my last fermented-cabbage-free meal for some time. After rendezvousing at the airport with my previously-arrived Swiss technical colleague--traveling for work in Asia for six weeks with his wife--a mere two hour bus ride deposited us in Dangjin.

In a case of the blind leading the blinder, my company sent the new marketing guy (me)--as yet officially untrained on our products and studying the petroleum market for all of five months--to a Korean power plant to give a technical seminar to other 15 other power plant prospects. Did you catch what power plants have in common with petroleum? That’s right, nothing. Except a new market opportunity for us. So arriving Wednesday morning with some scattered info and not one presentation slide prepared, I only needed to prepare a two hour technical talk, final copy for submission first thing Thursday morning and seminar Friday; my technical colleague plans only to fiddle with our product in the lab for a few days, no help on the seminar. No sweat. I arrived wielding an outsized weapon already paying huge dividends while conducting business in Europe--you guessed it, English as the mother language. Thus I lounge now in the power plant Thursday afternoon, mission accomplished and blog authoring. My best blogging minutes this year come during downtime at customer sites (a la Vado, Italy).

So this power plant is monstrously HUGE (the pic above is about 1/8 of it), a cool site especially upon arrival after crossing a miles-long dam. Our hotel in rural industrial Korea is not quite as cool, but not terrible. The hot water is hot, the cold water is tasty. I’m not sleeping on a bamboo mat, although I wondered when we checked in. English out here is nearly non-existent, which I didn’t remember being the case nearly so much in Seoul. We’re resorting to more pointing, gesturing and shrugging than usual and even our hosts’ English is marginal at best (although I now know painfully how that feels with German). The Korean countryside feels relatively still rather crowded, a hodgepodge of unkempt small towns plastered with chaotic blinking advertising, broken up by enormous industrial sites (a Hyundai factory is the largest single manufacturing facility I’ve ever seen, miles long) and the remaining land patches divided into ponds of shallow standing water and mud for rice farming. Korean culture feels to me like a paradoxical mix of high- and low-tech with an inexplicable childlike quality just below the surface.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post when things really get interesting...as we strap on the feed bag.

Waking Up Where?

View Crazy Travels, Jan-Apr 2009 in a larger map

Work sure has cramped my blogging style. Perhaps not work per se, but the recent deluge of travel associated. Yes, I've recently exited Work Phase I (Sit at Desk Reading & Learning) and entered Phase II (World Travel To Visit Customers). These are exactly the phases that I anticipated after accepting this job, and called them out as such during the interview. Also as predicted, Phase II is starting to tax me ever so slightly, especially having to show up in Lausanne whenever I'm not otherwise flying around. I've refrained from saying "I told you so" to senior managers, as conventional wisdom dubs this a not-often-career-furthering move. And when I'm not traveling for work, we seem to be jet-setting on vacation. That's a nasty one-two punch to blogging, no doubt.

Since my last half-finished blog entry regarding my ten days in Miami and Houston in early April, I spent a week in Belgium for work (Belgium rocks!), London over a four-day Easter holiday for vacation (shopping, shopping, shopping and a Meal of the Year candidate!) and then ten fantastic days vacation in the Caribbean, flying into NYC for an afternoon and evening, then to St.Thomas and sailing the British Virgin Islands for a week on a catamaran (every bit as fantastic as it sounds, run don't walk and book your trip for 2010), a quick overnight at the Ritz-Carlton St.Thomas, and finally flying out of San Juan, Puerto Rico, after finding the undoubtedly best mofongo (fried plaintain) and Argentinian-style churrasco steak on the island. Now I'm headed for work again to Korea (no worries, the southern one) and Singapore for the next ten days. Because I like to calculate such things, I've calculated over 70% of my days spent on the road in one form or another since starting work in December. Tugging your heartstrings yet?

Ah, it breaks my heart how mightily the blog has suffered. It's a fun method for us also to recall our various crazy experiences. Since I've slacked off, Steph has visited Duchanbe, Tajikistan and Johnnesburg and George, South Africa (the map above shows our travels so far in 2009, yellow for Steph, red for me, blue for both). I never finished our skiing stories from St.Anton or during the World Economic Forum in Davos. We squeezed in weekend trips to Paris (yet again!) and Colmar, France. We've seen Oasis (surpisingly so-so), The Killers (surprisingly awesome) and The Gaslight Anthem (surprisingly loud) in concert. I'm continuing studying German--my abilities now steadily approaching the scant edge of decent--and I ate tongue for lunch at my beloved work French-cafeteria (tastes like beef, oh wait, it is beef). And since my income after four months now appears dependable, we've subsequently bought wine, furniture and garden patio supplies like crazy. Most excitingly, we welcomed my wonderful nephew into the world last week, the first child of my younger brother!

We have been collecting a decent number of pictures over the past months, hopefully I'll have some downtime in Korea to caption and post those with a quick recap. That wouldn't be a bad review of the year. Wish me luck!

Overseas Business

I embarked upon my first overseas (from Europe) work trip last week, a ten-day excursion to a strange, exotic and faraway land… none other than the southern coastal United States. I departed last Wednesday afternoon from cold, rainy, not-quite-done with-winter Zürich on a direct 10-hour flight to steamy Miami, where the war of man’s air conditioning vs. nature’s humidity never ceases. There began the first phase of my trip’s mission to meet and greet some key sales managers and a few customers, and begin the arduous process of assessing and planning our eventual attack on the U.S. petroleum market. Phase 2 of my trip was Houston, oil central, but that will come later.

My company hosts a demo laboratory about 90 minutes north of Miami, where customers come to evaluate or train on our products. The lab sits quite strategically in a locale people don’t mind visiting, thus fortuitous for me as well. So I engaged Thursday and Friday in my various work-related politicking and marketing-schmooze talking activities; I think it’s called “a job” in other vernacular. But doubtlessly more important were my various cultural explorations and re-introductions to that smorgasbord of uniquely American goods and services after now nearly 1-1/2 years (can you believe it? us neither.) living in Europe. Yes, Steph and I truly have two worlds of entertainment--still discovering Europe and now re-discovering America, no kidding.

Let me begin unfortunately with one or two negatives. The world economic crisis apparently forced all airlines (or at least American and Swiss Airlines) to economize and reduce already-cramped coach-class legroom by an additional four inches (or maybe I’m just a rusty traveler). Although an unexpectedly nice side effect is the laptop screen keeping my nose and cheek so warm while I type this blog entry in luxurious seat 27C. The other observation is what a car culture we are. If consumerism (which I think has largely positive effects) is first, cars are a close second. Since my years-long daily miserable suburban traffic-jammed commutes in Chicagoland way back when, I lost any zest for automobiles, and not driving now for 17 months has certainly bolstered that sentiment. So the vast quantity and size and speed of the vehicles, and the admittedly Southern regionally ridiculous preponderance of oversized pick ‘em up trucks, and the virtual total absence of any other transportation option--unless you count the airport group shuttle to the massive rental car complex as public transportation--tends to stick more than usual in my proverbial craw. But off that soapbox...

I landed in Miami last Wednesday evening, rented my car, drove to the nearby Hyatt where Steph finagled me a nice rate, checked in and then tumbled into the small, informal bar for a bite before bedtime. The Cobb salad was quite satisfactory, but not as delicious as the ice-cold Sam Adams--we have plenty of lagers in our Swiss neck of the woods, but none in the Boston micro-brew category. Luckily (?) everyone in the bar was mesmerized by that evening’s installment of American Idol, bantering amongst themselves after each performance as if each one held some enormous gravity. So silly. It was lights out after that for me, toes up into my oversized bed to start work in the morning.

Where in the World

A recent note from a disgruntled member of my probably ever-dwindling fan base:

"I am quite sure that whomever is running this site must have had some type of accident, possibly a skiing incident, to his hands and therefore has impared his typing and communication ability. I assume then that he is now incapable of continuing to post 'NEW' items to his site.Therefore, I am preparing to bid adieu to this fine piece of European literature, unless I hear of a miracle recovery."

Indeed. Sorry again for the absence. The question is not so much have we fallen off the end of the world, but where in the world we are. I am halfway through a 10-day international business trip to Miami and Houston, and Stephanie finds herself in Johannesburg and George, South Africa, this week. Back in touch ASAP...