Cheese, Chocolate & Rolexes

Two Revolutions

2009-11-06T04:33:00.001-08:00

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

2009-10-19T03:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-15T01:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-12T04:59:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-10-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-24T02:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-13T03:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-10T04:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-26T01:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-22T01:04:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-19T01:02:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T06:35:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-15T03:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-14T06:15:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-05-10T14:07:00.001-07:00

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

2009-03-31T19:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

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...

Snowballs & Wipeouts, Pt. 1

2009-03-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

Before this year I had forgotten that skiing was such a workout, especially on longer and more demanding runs. Although our skiing fitness continues to improve, imagine my embarrassment when Steph snapped this photo of me between runs on the slopes several weeks back. Right in the middle of changing my shirt, too! At least I had my sunglasses on.

Hardly a ski weekend passes without some unexpected craziness. Let's see if I can catalog our adventures. As background, ski runs are called pistes in Europe (the French name) and their difficulty ranges from category Blue (easy / shallow grade) to Red (medium / shallow-to-steep) to Black (difficult / roller coaster-plunging steep). Additionally for truly athletic hazard seekers, free or off-piste areas of non-groomed snow are available for cutting one's own trail in red and black-graded catgories. Our destinations so far in order of attack:

Flims-Laax-Falera (Dec 6-7)
No it's not a degenerative nerve desease, it's a string of three Swiss towns sharing marketing rights for a huge swath of mountainside with pistes as wide as highways. For this our maiden Alpine ski voyage, we joined a loosely organized group of 20(!) ex-pat Zürich friends and acquaintances, heavily tilted to the U.S., Australian and British persuasion. On my very first not-so-bunny-hill practice run with the new skis, I fell traveling about 5mph and twisted my knee quite painfully. Great start (and still my worst injury to date). The good news now is that it only hurts when I fall skiing and twist it again in the same manner. By the end of the weekend, however, I was managing down the red runs.

Our group of 20 reserved dinner Saturday night at a classic Swiss chalet, positioned slightly uphill from a final ski run into town. We all struggled more or less slipping up the rather long, steep slope (depending also on whether one wore nightclub footware or boots, I chose the latter), eventually arriving at the restaurant for cheese fondue, bottomless caraffes of wine, and drinking the proprietors completely out of Kirsch (cherry schnapps); everyone imbibed somewhere between three to six shots. Our group's raucous tumble down the slope back home included a massive snowball war, insofar as the targets could stand and weren't already rolling downhill. Grade: A

Hoch-Ybrig (Dec 21)
One can only pronounce the name of this smaller, more local ski area after living in Switzerland for a year; it's a tongue-and-throat twister. Steph and I daytripped it one Sunday for more solo practice and for the joy of being overrun by punk teenage snowboarders. We faced an unfortunately constant rainy drizzle, which without the aid of goggle windshield wipers made it quite tricky (and occasionally nerve wracking) to perceive if the run was heading down or up and how steeply. By day's end we were thoroughly dampened and chilled for the train ride home. Grade: B-

Flims-Laax-Falera (Jan 10-11)
Our second excursion to many Swiss ski snobs' favorite destination was a slightly more sober affair. We were flattered to be the only native English-speakers (of course everyone's English is nevertheless perfect) attending the birthday celebration of a German friend, a group of 10 mostly Germans with a sprinkling of Swiss and Finns. This group was all about skiing (not drinking) and Steph and I and two other casual skiers maintained a sensible Blue & Red itinerary, rendezvousing with the others after their Black & Off Piste missions. Après-ski and dinner were sensibly fun if not wild and crazy affairs. Grade: A-

Make sure to tune in for the exciting Pt. 2 post coming soon, where Stephanie nearly knocks Vladimir Putin off the chair lift..!

Swiss Ski Season

2009-03-04T12:43:00.000-08:00

With spring right around the corner (perhaps?), Switzerland continues to enjoy its coldest and snowiest winter in over 40 years. In early November the snowfalls started in earnest and have barely relented since, piling up to twice the average annual depth. But don't worry about us (were you?), because to say that Switzerland is enjoying this winter is no euphemism--everyone here is ecstatic. Although the snow melts quickly in the city flatlands near the large lakes, such as Lake Zurich and Lake Geneva, it continues to accumulate across the vast Alpine heights and create possibly the best ski season anyone here can remember. And as we're finally learning this year, forget entirely about cheese, chocolate and Rolexes...this country is absolutely all about skiing.

As new arrivals to Switzerland in Nov 2007, we prioritized settling a few million lifestyle items over skiing that first winter. Without skis, friends, a car or a clue where to start, the thought of a weekend in the mountains instead of, say, drearily searching for new furniture, seemed a touch ludicrous. Ah, but the game had changed come Nov 2008, eh? After a year in Europe with our feet replanted partially-solidly underneath, we laid the groundwork for investigating the hubbub. Still carless but now comfortably employing the bus and hourly rental car service, we found a far-flung suburban discount ski outlet (discount is still an oxymoron in expensive Switzerland, but we saved 700 Francs at the very least) and each bought the whole kit--fancy composite carving skis, boots, pants, ski socks, goggles, gloves, helmets (very trendy), you name it.

So adorned, we sat around the apartment waiting for snow to fall and the phone to ring--and wouldn't you know, they did. Repeatedly. For reference, the last time we skied was two days over Thanksgiving weekend 2004 (an awesome trip to Whistler, British Columbia) and, at least for myself, less than half a dozen days prior to that in my life (Steph grew up skiing in MN and is much more experienced) . Now in the last three months, I've been out 10 total days on six occasions, still mild by Swiss standards, with at least two more excursions in the works.

This tiny country--half the size of South Carolina--features 157 distinct ski resorts. In the winter, it's not a stretch to imagine the entire Swiss transportation infrastructure built to accommodate their national pastime. Even reasonably-popular ski areas situate one or more lifts directly adjacent to or a short walk from a main train station; buses fill the gaps between resorts and several towns are even completely car-free. It's therefore quite commonplace (and we still find hilarious, although we'd like to try it soon) to see people fully geared-up on a weekday morning, clunking out of their city apartments in those terribly awkward ski boots to a local bus stop, then clunking through the busy Bahnhof, clunking onto any number of trains and then off in some resort town--100 miles door-to-gondola, no street shoes necessary.

I'll try to tell some slope stories next time, we have a few. In the meantime, here are some pics from several outings this season: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=2hd8fyj.cljaeiaj&x=0&y=1pik12&localeid=en_US

One Clear Day

2009-02-12T00:11:00.001-08:00

I'm back in Lausanne this week, naturally, for my requisite three day/two night stay. I battled a second touch of the flu this past weekend after a tough week in Italy, not nearly as bad as my flu encounter in January but enough to slow me down. The weather on both ends of Switzerland (and also apparently northern Italy) this winter has been cold and wet, rain and snow. Fairly typical I believe, although a touch colder and snowier than last year.

I took advantage of a rare crisp mostly-sunny day yesterday (3ºC or about 37ºF) for a walk at lunchtime. I must interject that in German, "I went for a walk" is "Ich bin spazierengegangen", one of my favorite words. The only downside to our excellent office cafeteria (boiled beef in a red wine vinaigrette sauce yesterday - très bon!) is that one tends to be cooped up in the same building all day. That was a nice thing about working in the Wrigley Building in Chicago, you could walk outside everyday to a bustling different world.

Lac Léman or Lake Geneva is only about a 15 minute walk from the office, I discovered, just outside the crane and concrete borough. My nifty non-Blackberry but fancy camera-enabled phone captured a panorama of the lake with its swans, mountains and looming clouds. I had a feeling the views around here were spectacular, if you know when and where to uncover them.

Fruits of the Sea

2009-02-11T08:59:00.000-08:00

OK, the final chapter of last week’s saga resumes with our barely grateful customer hosting the service rep and me to dinner on Thursday night. Seven of us--namely Mario, Fausto, Alessandro, Guglielmo, Claudio, Giuseppe and me--rendezvoused again in Savona at a seafood-only mom-and-pop joint with a rustic chaotic decor. The place was about as real Italian-Ligurian as they come, I suppose, given a cold rainy Thursday night in early February in little Savona; certainly no servers or other diners spoke English. As a double-Ausländer (German for foreigner), i.e., an American from Zürich, I was sort of the guest of honor. Meaning that courteous attention was given to inform me exactly what was being ordered, and then slyly inquisitive attention was given to exactly what I ate and how.

International business travelers know the key to a successful transaction depends not at all on their company’s offerings or service or technical details or contracts or whatever. No indeed, the key to a successful international business transaction is eating and drinking like your host. For example, in Mexico, eat breakfast from 10am-1:30pm including lots of corn tortillas, picante sauce and raw onions; in Korea, eat marinated BBQ’ed beef until your colon cries uncle (right, Jeff?); in Japan, eat eel sushi as long as your arm and wash it down with warm sake (right again?). Although I’m no master of authentic Asian cuisine, thanks to Steph’s and my Euro gastronomic adventures I’ve acquired a hand at chowing down like an Italian, Frenchman, Spaniard, etc. In my Savona case, I knew that one must sop up all remaining sauce or juices on every plate with the spongy rolls provided, one must twirl one's pasta with one's fork against a spoon, one must serve oneself slippery pieces of fish with fork nested into spoon like a European version of chopsticks, one must eat like he or she hasn't seen food in three days, and one must imbibe wine like Prohibition just lifted.

The first course consisted of five types of cold fructe de mare antipasto (think tentacles), followed by fish ravioli, followed by seafood linguini, followed by gigantic mussels in the shell, followed by the most enormous quantity and diversity of battered fried nautical fill-in-the-blank you can imagine, followed by dessert and naturally, espresso (the easiest rule is that not ordering coffee at the end of the meal insults the whole country).

The trickiest mealtime test, however, really challenged me--the dreaded gamberetti test. Each portion of seafood linguine came adorned with two enormous fully-intact shrimp, the gamberetti. I mistakenly left them for last, and when I glanced around at other plates for a clue on proper dismemberment protocol, everyone had already finished (please see, “Hasn’t seen food in three days” rule, above). So I attacked these treacherous gamberetti with knife and fork, succeeding only in halving them horizontally without piercing the hard shell underneath. Without breaking conversation, I noticed several tablemates peripherally glancing at my plate, awaiting my conclusion. Sweat bead on brow, I rested the utensils, grabbed a roll and sopped up some sauce to buy time. Was I finished? Throwing caution to the wind, and because the shrimp indeed looked quite delicious, I snatched up one slippery tail portion, ripped through the shell, extracted the meat and popped it down the hatch. I repeated with the body portion--slightly gunkier inside, eh?--and likewise the other shrimp, finally licking the oily sauce off my fingers as subtly as possible, wiping a napkin and pretending nothing had happened. Apparently I passed with flying colors and did not mistake my colleagues’ curiosity, as one laughingly mentioned in Italian and my service rep translated, “He doesn’t speak Italian, but he eats like an Italian.”

Alongside the food, plenty of prosecco sparkling wine and the local white were repeatedly poured into tiny glasses throughout the meal. The overall serving quantities blew past "All you care to eat", surpassed even "All you think you can eat" to stop somewhere near "All you can do not to lose it". Without much exaggeration, I had problems breathing because my stomach had expanded where my lungs usually are.

I bid them Ciao! after working again Friday morning, catching the 12:30pm train from Savona to Milan and then boarding the despised gimpy Scheiss-alpino (SwissGuy thankfully corrected me, the Cisalpino is an Italian- not Swiss-maintained train line) again missing its connection for another 90 minute delay, finally depositing me home--exhausted and still bloated from Thursday--at a relaxing 8:30pm. Work trip completed.

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Of Frittata and Farinata

2009-02-10T00:59:00.000-08:00

I must finish last week's story and also provide additional color commentary on that substance so near and dear to every Italian's (European's?) heart--food. This business trip made my fourth and longest visit to Italy (all in the last twelve months, can you believe it?) and provided a certainly more authentic glimpse of everday life than any vacation could (or may want to).

Our daily cafeteria lunches continued to amuse me much as my company's lunches do with their regional loyalty--frittata, pesto linguini, saltimbocca, etc., and always a first course of pasta followed by a second course of protein, either of them alone large enough for a lunch portion. I still have to give the slight edge to our Lausanne kitchen, however, both for quality of preparation and portion sizes large enough to stuff a water buffalo.

My service rep and I dined Tuesday evening at a popular Savona staple called Farinata, which serves a mandatory and fantastic appetizer of Ligurian-specialty yellow-flour flatbread, also called farinata (funny how that works). The rest of the evening featured various forms of seafood, of which I recognized not a single fish name, all delicious. The wine also flowed freely, as we had suffered several setbacks during our Tuesday troubleshooting.

Wednesday was "do-or-die" day, but our technical luck improved enough to survive Thursday afternoon's cross-examination of results; we weren't sure if we'd be kicked out of the plant, that's only happened to me once before. For some reason the Italian Technical Director kept aiming pointed questions at me, despite repeated protestations that I'm the new guy. Ultimately we represented ourselves well enough that our customer hosted us out for dinner on Thursday for our hard work and 11-12 hour days. But there was enough entertainment during dinner that I think I’ll expound in another post…

Mediterranean Mocha & Molybdenum

2009-02-04T03:07:00.000-08:00

I’ve mastered the art of pinpointing ugly industrial pockets in otherwise gorgeous locales. First my crane-and-concrete suburb of Lake Geneva in the Swiss canton Vaud--featuring otherwise stunning views of mountains, lakes and vineyards--and this week’s business trip to the refinery skyline and container-laden Italian port town of Vado Ligure--on an otherwise elegant sweep of hillside villages and beachfront cafés overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Hey, I’ll take what I can get. Monday’s miserable cold and rainy conditions gave way to clear and cold on Tuesday, which at least improved the views.

I’m providing more moral than technical support as my company’s service rep wrestles with his toughest installation in 10 years. I’m attempting my best salesperson-y effort to sometimes charm the various managers and supervisors to keep them at bay (charming is easier when you’re an exotic foreigner like me). An occasional cultural intermission breaks up our tedious 12-hour workdays in a dated laboratory staring at a computer monitor. In the lab’s back cubicle, the technicians (or “lab rats” as they’re affection- ately known) prepare authentic Italian mocha coffee and educate me on its finer points. There is no chocolate added to mocha, heavens no. Mocha is a particular type of coffee bean, renowned for its naturally chocolaty flavor notes, ground coarsely and prepared in a special stovetop chrome Italian percolator (there are plenty of hotplates in a lab); barely an ounce is served to each person and most importantly, it must be enjoyed while sitting. The second type of Italian coffee, espresso (maybe you’ve heard of it), is finely ground, prepared with hot water under 6-7 bars of pressure (never in the stovetop percolator) and can be enjoyed while standing. The third and final type of Italian coffee is Napolitano from the south, somehow very different but we didn’t go into the details. I’m served on average two mochas per day during breaks waiting for data, unless we want to walk three flights of stairs down to the espresso machine, which we also do on average twice per day.

The plant’s slightly dingy cafeteria is a funny cousin to our spotless Swiss kitchen in Lausanne. Yesterday’s fare was naturally Italian ravioli and osso bucco instead of French rabbit or pheasant. Everyone eats packages of thin grissini breadsticks, and two types each of olive oil and vinegar sit on every table to dress salads, cold cuts or vegetables; we have neither breadsticks nor olive oil in Lausanne. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow offers. Dinners at night between the service rep and me have been fish, fish and fish in various forms and wine, wine, wine, also in various forms.

Also in case you were wondering, molybdenum is element #42 on the Periodic Table and if we’re really lucky sometime today or tomorrow, we’ll find some in our customer’s samples like they’re requesting. Ciao for now!

On The Road Again

2009-02-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

The adventures continue to unfold unfortu- nately too rapidly to catalog. I haven’t yet completed my description of apartment living in an industrial park with my new executive roommate, or how I contracted the flu sledding recklessly down a ski slope in pitch dark with a flashlight on my head, or how we just completed our eighth ski day this season in Davos during the World Economic Forum, and now I’m already on my first Euro business trip, solo to Italy to visit an angry customer.

I’ve perhaps mentioned in the past how Italy--despite its doubtless worldwide popularity and ample blessings--is not my all-time favorite European country. Perhaps we’re spoiled by the prim facilities of the bubble of Switzerland, but particularly on 7+ hour train rides, one becomes accustomed to spotless stations, stopwatch-precision arrival and departure, and odorless and temperature-controlled cabins. In Italy, not so much. Good thing I’m traveling first class.

After six weeks on the job I presented my results to date--primarily market research-type stuff gathered from various sources chairbound at my desk--to the GM and some other managers last week. They seemed satisfied, but I’m nearing the end of gleaning useful information by sitting still. So I jumped on the opportunity to weasel into an important new customer that’s having problems implementing one of our products. Under the guise of providing technical support (in an industry where I have six weeks of experience--ha!), I’m harboring the larger goal of witnessing firsthand their industry niche. I met the customer previously in our Lausanne office and I’ll join my company’s Service Rep on-site, so I’m not flying totally blind. But I arranged the travel on a shoestring timeline, half-confirming the trip Friday afternoon, trusting my Italian service rep (whom I’ve never met) to find me at the closest train station in a nearby village, and booking my international train ticket at the Zürich station at 6:45am Monday for a 7:02am departure. I haven’t even booked a return trip, uncertain how long my “services” are required.

So I’m currently traveling to Vado Ligure, Italy, on the Mediterranean coast about two hours south of Milan. I would be working instead of blogging, but I can’t find an Internet connection since leaving Switzerland. Northern Italy is blanketed in snow, pure white and flat since emerging from the Alps. The notoriously unreliable Swiss Cisalpino train line that services Italy is suffering further delays after recently finding mechanical problems on aging trains, requiring slower travel until the fleet can be repaired. So my planned 6:15 ride duration is now closer to 7:45, with an extra connection in Genova. Ugh. Still much cheaper and flexible travel than a plane, though.

Do you know the myth about international work travel? That it’s almost like a vacation, fun and cool to see new places on your company’s dollar. My opinion is that it’s usually quite wearying with precious little resemblance to vacation. If you’re lucky enough to have a desirable destination, occasionally there’s a little time to see the city. More usually it’s like a tough work day with difficult logistics.

But on the bright side, the novelty remains entertaining for now and I’m visiting a new region…currently looking out the train window on the rainy Mediterranean. Only thirty minutes more until my (hopeful) rendezvous in Savona. Then the hard part begins. Besides, it could be much worse—I could be traveling to Lagos, Nigeria, like I probably will sooner or later or, like Stephanie in two weeks, to Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The world is our oyster…wish us luck!

Bachelor Pad

2009-01-21T12:44:00.001-08:00

Checking back in, it’s a bit hard to keep up with the pace of change lately. What else is new, eh? So just after four weeks of finally comfortably establishing my work week routine based from the same Lausanne hotel, driving to and from the office, health club, etc., we encounter one additional--and presumably the final--change. The office apartment was more or less ready this week for inhabitants. Namely, me.

Recall the apartment is literally next door to the office, an office that also houses a production facility in an industrial park, which by the geometric Transitive Property of Equality means that my new apartment is in an industrial park. The building is old, better not to ask how old (this is Europe after all), but safely sometime post-Renaissance. From what I gather, the apartment’s recent history was near-abandonment, yet inspired primarily dare I say by me and my new marketing counterpart, who lives in San Jose, CA, but will be visiting the office for extended stays, the apartment’s interior has been completely redone. All new furniture, new double-paned windows to keep the winter breeze at bay, even a new Nespresso coffee machine. We’re only still lacking a new TV, couch, and DSL connection for television programming and soon-to-be wireless Internet. So I moved in Monday afternoon.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, quite helpful to my acclimation was the fact that over Sunday evening to Monday morning, I rapidly became sick as a dog. These European germs still really knock me for a loop (the main contributor to my sickness is also an interesting story, maybe I’ll try to recount it next). Nonetheless my suitcase was already loaded, so as the diligent still-new employee trying to make a good impression I simply swapped out my workout gear for an arsenal of cold medication and caught the 7:30am train Monday morning. Turns out I misjudged the early symptoms and was instead racked by alternating hot and cold spells and intense full-body aches during the two-hour packed train ride--aha, the Euro flu, no doubt! As a funny twist of fate, my new commute again forsakes the car for the bus, and thus includes a 25 minute layover at a Lausanne-satellite train station outside in cold rain (under a shelter of course). I’m sure it’s nicer in the summer and there’s a pleasant bakery there if you have an appetite.

The good news is after trouping through that Monday work day (good American work ethic!), I was in no shape to question the comfort of the new pad. When I finally pleaded uncle around 5pm, my boss graciously drove me to the nearest grocery, since there’s no other way to get there, for the week’s supplies. This was also supposed to be my first week of 3 office-days instead of a full 5, so fewer supplies needed. I baked a pizza, hit the sack a little before 7pm and slept over 13 hours. Tuesday was better, although I felt unable to form a coherent sentence through the haze of cold medicine, yet gave my first formal presentation to coworkers that afternoon. I slept only 8pm to 8am that night. Today, Wednesday, I’m about 80% of normal, thanks very much. That’s one superior thing about the flu--no long, drawn-out relationship like with a cold.

Sorry, have to end here. I’ll have to describe the remainder at next opportunity. It’s 9:40pm on Wednesday night and guess what?! I’m in the apartment again, so much for sticking to the 3-day week (special circumstances, customer crisis, etc., etc.). Although today I watched several guys argue in Italian while other guys were arguing in French--an argument finally settled by espresso--and at the end, they asked me to write the meeting minutes in English. You can't pay admission to an event like that.

Gotta go. Feeling guilty. To post this whole account, I’m “borrowing” Internet from the very nice neighbor downstairs. I haven’t even introduced myself yet. How rude.

The United States of...

2009-01-08T11:01:00.000-08:00

The United States of Awesome. That phrase was coined by one of our (American) Zürich friends during his recent Thanksgiving U.S. holiday. Not only did I just shamelessly pilfer it, I turned it into the theme for recounting Steph's and my return for Christmas 2008. And we generated ample variations to amuse ourselves throughout the week of our stateside return between Christmas and New Year's.

It's no secret that a trans-Atlantic journey via frequent-flier miles at holiday time is an exercise in compromise. Compound that with some unavoidable, relatively last-minute changes to our internal travel plans, plus some relatives in slightly hard-to-reach places, and a crazy itinerary results.

We left Zürich on Tuesday morning, 12/23, for a four-hour train ride to Milan, spent the night at the Park Hyatt (very nice), took a loooong flying day to JFK airport followed by a connection to BWI (Baltimore) airport, drove 45 min. to Washington DC (spending 2 nights with Steph’s sister’s family, one night at the Park Hyatt DC, awesome restaurant), back to BWI via Amtrak and wow! it’s different than the Swiss rail system, flew to Charlotte NC (1 night at the new Hyatt Place), drove to Aiken SC (2 nights with my parents), drove to Atlanta GA (1 night at the Grand Hyatt), then flew back to JFK and—well airborne when the Times Square ball dropped--on to Milan, and a four-hour train ride back to Zürich to arrive home the afternoon of 1/1. Mostly traveling free of charge, if not totally relaxed.

The weather treated us right, with temps ranging from the forties in DC to low sixties in Aiken (!), much better than what either the Midwest or Switzerland have dished out lately (although Zürich has certainly been more comfortable than Chicago or Minneapolis, but then so has Siberia). Christmas day was wonderful, there’s nothing like watching nieces and nephews tear into the present pile.

Without further adieu, here are a handful of rejiggered acronyms for the homeland after now 14 months living abroad…

United States of Affordable. Thank God for U.S. consumerism. Virtually everything costs 50-70% less than in Switzerland, no lie (have I mentioned that before?). True to form, we brought large suitcases nested in gigantic suitcases in order to each lug 75 lbs. of goods back to Zürich. Tiring work when you move around as much as we did. But we haven’t forced ourselves yet to bite the bullet and pay 17 Francs for a $5 bottle of shampoo, or 300 Francs for a $120 GPS, etc., etc.

United States of A, B, C, D… The selection of products in the U.S. is also vastly superior, by the way. Flavors, colors, sizes, styles, and on and on. Not just something for everybody, something for everybody and their mood.

United States of Aktion. Aktion is a German term for “Sale”. Although it was just after Christmas, it was hard to find an item not marked down. There were still lots of shoppers, but things did appear a bit subdued from the outright shopping mayhem of the past, say, five years (although it galls me to acknowledge even one iota the ceaseless slew of economic doomsday media reports).

United States of Automobiles. If after the summer’s fuel price scare and recently increased environmental consciousness Americans are driving smaller vehicles or driving less frequently, good lord I couldn’t tell. Big cars, cars everywhere, everyone driving big cars everywhere. Although there's so much more wide open space to cover in the U.S. Much to the horror and extreme financial detriment of Detroit, we took Atlanta public transportation from Buckhead to the airport and it was surprisingly clean, fast and convenient.

United States of Adobo. We ate Mexican food three times. Muy delicioso. And lots of great bagels, too, but unfortunately 'bagel' doesn't start with an 'A'. And most importantly…

United States of Angus. When we weren’t eating Mexican food (and when we were), we ate beef. A steak the size of my head in Washington DC. A burger the size of Stephanie’s head at JFK. Christmas ornaments made from meatballs. American beef is hands down the best in the world. If you haven’t tried beef outside the U.S., don’t. You’ll only disappoint your palate and/or damage your jaws and always insult your wallet. In Europe order pig or chicken instead—it’s often noticeably better than in the U.S., the flipside of beef. So since my return I’m eating all meals with a side of flax seed oil until my cholesterol returns to normal.

So there you have it! A whirlwind trip, but one we really enjoyed. It always makes us appreciate the good parts of both continents. Our next planned trip stateside isn’t until June, so if you want to see us before then you’ll have to find or forge a cheap ticket to Europe. Good luck!

Also some pics: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=2hd8fyj.6mpvp243&x=0&y=fb0zz6&localeid=en_US

Some Kind of Groove, Pt. 2

2008-12-30T11:35:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-21T11:18:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-17T09:19:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-16T09:18:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-10T11:58:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-09T12:32:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-01T01:53:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-26T04:27:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T03:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-13T01:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-07T13:13:00.001-07:00

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!

2008-09-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

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

Back in the U.S.A.

2008-09-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Our nearly two-week trip back to the Midwest in July started like a whirlwind and eventually settled down. Steph and I conveniently flew together direct from Zürich to Chicago, actually the return leg from our original outbound tickets from Chicago in November (lacking our final visas, Switzerland hadn’t allowed a one-way flight in without proof of return, sensible enough). Without delving into detail, we saw as many friends as possible during a short stint in Chicago and spent the most time at Steph’s family’s lake cabin an hour outside of Minneapolis. As happy as we are seeing a few friends during our too-short return trips, we’re equally disappointed for the majority we don’t see. Coordinating everything is tremendously tricky and we now realize that our expectations should revolve around seeing everyone once every three years, not every year (of course, not including people visiting us in Europe!).

This blog’s primarily U.S. audience certainly doesn’t want to read about Steph’s and my somewhat altered perceptions of our home country after nine months away, right? Such platitudes, however mild, simply aren’t entertaining. Suffice it to say that our culture is consumerism, for all the benefits and drawbacks that insinuates. Since the prior blog entries revolved around a favorite activity--hiking--I’ll stick in that groove and focus on recounting an ill-fated adventure during our U.S. return. You’ll recall that Sven and I partake in an annual backpacking group excursion that includes my two brothers and several college friends from U of Madison. The excursion is dubbed UHR—the Ultimate Hiking Reunion—and as one could expect with guy-only trips, it’s usually planned with equal doses of hardened experience and local geographic ignorance to challenge the group; we jokingly call it hard core.

Backpacking isn’t hiking per se (like a day’s nature walk) and it’s not camping (with your car ten feet or a mile away); we trek everything you’d need to survive outdoors for three nights or so, 30-40 lbs. each, into remote areas seeking solitude. Planning revolves around geography, distance and water. We’ve been slightly lost and removed from water sources in Death Valley (in 2001, not so funny), snowed in at 10,000 feet in the New Mexico Rockies (2002), traversed the rocky Joshua Tree desert in California (2003), soaked by a weekend of rain in waterfall-laden Red River Gorge, KY (2004), broken down weeping at the expansive granite cliff beauty of Yosemite (oh wait, that was the Mariposa battallion in 1851, not us in 2005), covered nearly a half-marathon per day across the forested rolling hills of the Superior Hiking Trail, MN (2006), and kayaked between islands across frigid, choppy Lake Superior until our arms fell off (2007).

With too many competing schedules, budgets and home bases among the group, UHR 2008 consisted of just us three brothers for three days and two nights on the Glacier Trail (GT) in the forests of northwest Wisconsin (Sven claimed our Faulhorn ascent as European or ‘EUHR 2008’). Our largest worry was not the sketchy GT trail information (especially unclear campsite/water possibilities) but the region’s wet spring and early summer—read, mosquitoes. But what’s a UHR without some risk?

The brothers rendezvous’ed Friday noon (Steph wisely stayed at the lake cabin) in the nowhere town of McKinley, WI, positioned between homesteads of Minneapolis and Madison. Interestingly, while Gavin and I waited for Billy (yes, aliases) in a Subway parking lot, a local sweet corn saleswoman in a pickup truck on the corner recruited me to stand in briefly while she used a restroom and grabbed coffee. At first I believed she had sensed from afar my MBA business savvy, but quickly I realized that her street-smart, Trump-style “Apprentice“ approach rendered my talent moot; her perfect location, location, location at the town’s main crossroads would have enabled any drooling fool to sell, as I did, $24 worth in five minutes. While I realize U.S. food prices have skyrocketed, her $6 price for a bag of 14 ears handily beat Switzerland’s usual $4.50-for-2 ears. My commission was a free bag of farm-fresh sweet corn, for me a $31.50 value or $378/hour!

As always happens, organizing our departure consumed most of the afternoon. Amidst a passing rain shower (bad omen?), we left one car at the planned endpoint and then carpooled with the gear to the trailhead 30 miles away. We divvied up items as equitably as possible, with tents, food and cooking equipment being the usual heavy culprits. A bright hot sun followed the rain showers, creating an instantly sweaty, steamy atmosphere that softened our precious king-sized Snickers bars before we even fully packed them. Leaving nothing to chance, Gavin had procured plenty of DEET and Deep-Woods OFF! as well as anti-insect head nets AND nifty full torso nets in case of extreme emergency. The forest-edge trailhead hosted a few buzzing mosquitoes, so we donned the head nets and doused our exposed arms and hands with OFF!. Thus charged, we entered the woods...

Pictures next time.

The Descent - Kinda Faul

2008-08-23T03:39:00.000-07:00

We woke the next morning in the cold Faulhorn bunkroom to silence, i.e., no rain. Within ten minutes we were groomed (no shower) and packed and stepped outside for the short, slightly chilly jaunt to the dining room. We paused to admire our same panorama view but of the Alps in a different mood, a deep gray backdrop to impenetrable pools of clouds lying below and between the numerous peaks. Our simple breakfast consisted of bread, a few small packaged cheeses and various condiments with coffee and tea. We settled up with the hostel's courteous caretakers, purchasing bottled water (?!) to refill our Nalgenes (the hotel collects non-potable rainwater for its plumbing), and descended the switchbacks into the cool, damp morning.

The presumably breathtaking views from the ridge we planned to follow were unfortunately completely obscured by clouds. Within five minutes of departing a thick fog rolled over us, and I snapped the above picture of the Faulhorn's protruding summit with the hostel and its helicopter landing pad in profile. The mountain's rough, rocky, snowy northern-side terrain contrasted sharply with the prior day's southern smooth ascent. We hiked an hour through the rugged, spooky cool landscape without encountering a soul. Ever descending, we hit our next landmark, the Berghaus Männdlenen Alpine hostel tucked into the ridge's folds. Not particularly thirsty but just because we could, we stopped for a coffee, unintentionally ruffling the hostel's slightly oddball three-person crew who pretended to straighten things up in our presence despite being near no-occupancy. Um, thanks, but reallly we don't care. Our brief respite ended in more ways than one, as a fairly pelting rain greeted us upon exit. We donned our rain gear and continued walking.

Sven claims to particularly enjoy backpacking in nasty weather as a good chance to enjoy the elements and test his gear. Since we had expected rain from the beginning, I was more or less in the same mind frame and we gleaned some slight masochistic glee from finally "roughing it" a bit as the rain and wind picked up, whipping through the canyon valleys and dousing us pretty well. By late morning we finally began passing a few ascending hikers, some properly outfitted and some just ignorant or dumb, already soaked and looking chilled in cotton sweatshirts, no hats and wet running shoes instead of boots. As SwissGuy's comment on the last blog entry wisely points out, don't mess around in the mountains. These kids were already looking at catching a week-long cold or worse.

The rain lessened its sting after an hour and more or less abated completely 30 minutes after that. We were entertained by first one, then several, then eventually dozens of jet black, shiny 6-inch-long Swiss salamanders across the trail--some motionless, some skittering along, and more than one pair openly engaged in what we first thought was wrestling, but later realized was copulating (truly embarrassing for all parties). The ridge path stayed high above the now green-pastured valleys below, active farms with grazing livestock dotting the landscape as only Switzerland can provide; nearly every hike here feels like an idyllic postcard walk.

In fact, during the final quarter of our hike, the livestock became downright, hm, shall we say, in-your-face with more than a few 1,000-lb ladies flopped down right across the trail, indolently observing our approach. The scattering of bulls present--as evidenced by their short but pointy horns--was not so amused and eyed us quite steadily. I'm not sure if "American Hikers Gored By Swiss Dairy Cows" would make CNN Headline News but, opting for discretion, we carefully picked our way off the path, tromping further upward though long wet grass and mud to avoid any international incidents. As backpacking luck often has it, our move proved rewarding as through a break in the clouds we thereby caught a view completely over the ridge's back side, a sheer drop thousands of feet above the bright blue Brienzersee lake flanked by cliffs. Unbelievable. We arrived at the Schynige Platte cogway rail station amidst a renewed steady drizzle. After the morning's wet, rocky, six-mile and 2,000 foot descent, we gratefully peeled off the rain gear aboard the historic cogway train that carried us the final wooded, sharp 5,000 feet down to Interlaken.

So what was our review overall? Well what can you say? True backcountry backpacking with days of solitude it ain't. But the nonstop panoramas and vistas provide the most spectacular scenery you could hope to lay eyes on. And a thought just dawned on me. Maybe removing 20 pounds of gear and eating fried eggs and sausage with beer instead of dehydrated spaghetti sauce isn't a bad way to go after all. Those Swiss, they've thought of everything.

GPS & Google Earth representations of the hike (click to enlarge):

Day 1 - Ascent from First past Bachalp lakes to Faulhorn

Day 2 - Ridge descent from Faulhorn to Schynige Platte with Interlaken (between the lakes) below

The Ascent - Not So Faul

2008-08-19T10:31:00.001-07:00

Prior to the July 31 completion of his two year ex-pat venture, Swedish Sven (actually from Wisconsin now residing in North Carolina) visited Zürich for a long weekend in mid-July. Since Sven and I had reconvened annually the past seven years for a group backpacking tradition, we planned to extend that theme during his visit via an overnight hike in the Jungfrau Alps above Interlaken. Bless his soul, Sven arrived bearing the most spectacular gift possible—his espresso machine (mine broke in January, was dubbed unfixable by a Swiss expert and went un-replaced); it naturally requires 220V input, perfectly suitable in Sweden or Switzerland but unusable in the U.S. Overwhelmed with emotion, I blubbered my heartfelt gratitude and ruined a few Kleenexes upon regaining home-espresso capabilities.

That Thursday evening we organized our backpacking gear for our Friday-to-Saturday hike. This being my first overnight hike in Switzerland, I wasn’t sure what to expect. For a normal U.S. backcountry trip, we’d carry a tent and sleeping bags & pads and stoves and pots & pans and fuel and a water filter and all our meals pre-dried; each pack might weigh 30-35 lbs for two or three nights out. But per my limited understanding based on some (mostly German) research, Switzerland doesn’t really allow backcountry camping. Instead various huts, hostels and hotels are scattered amidst the network of hiking trails that covers the country-- even in “remote” hiking areas--so basically you’re never really that remote. In a tiny, densely populated country whose most precious natural resource is its beauty, hiking is not a pastime but an industry.

We planned to start above Interlaken and mountain-village Grindelwald and hike up to the local peak, the Faulhorn (8,800 ft.), stay Friday evening at the hut/hostel Berghotel Faulhorn—Europe’s oldest mountain hotel established in 1830--and hike down an adjoining ridge the following day. The plan’s only wrinkle was the weather forecast: nice for Friday’s ascent but rain blowing in for our “hotel” night and Saturday descent. Via phone a week prior in broken German, I had booked two bunks in the Berghotel’s 60-bunk Touristenlager (still not entirely sure of the amenities) and then let the cancellation date pass on Thursday. Rain or no rain, we were going hiking...

But like a doomed Everest expedition, disaster nearly struck before we could leave base camp. Disaster in the form of two extremely chatty Irish women (sorry, chatty and Irish is already redundant) who somehow stole our window table at the neighborhood bar Thursday night as Sven and I were responsibly finishing up our second beer, and then proceeded to buy us several additional large beers solely to suspend our departure in order to harangue me for being unemployed, for my woeful knowledge of Zürich dance clubs, and our U.S. politics in general. Actually they were pleasant enough--and it's occasionally relaxing to not say a single word for two hours--but we wisely let them hop a cab for unknown clubs while we stumbled home to catch our early AM train.

We blearily grabbed our packs and caught the bus to the train station Friday morning, the hangover not really kicking in until halfway to Interlaken and in full swing as we cogwheel-trammed and ski-lifted ourselves to Grindelwald and then First, our trailhead at 7,100 ft. Our small daypacks were light, perhaps only 10-12 lbs, carrying little more than a change of clothes, toiletries, light blankets, snacks & emergency rain gear, having forsaken nearly all backcountry equipment including sleeping bags. The hike was not long but fairly steep at 3.5 miles and 1,700 ft. gain; we progressed slowly to appreciate the absolutely gorgeous weather and scenery, passing the classic Alpine Bachalpsee lake on the way to the Faulhorn.

Steph and I had dayhiked the same route to the Berghotel Faulhorn two years prior on vacation but not explored too much. Management maintains the small establishment's interior quite well for its considerable age, although signs of antiquity abound. Despite all supplies requiring helicopter-lifting to the hotel's concrete landing pad once or twice a week (a spectacle Steph and I observed on our first visit, really amazing), the tiny restaurant's menu was impressively complete. As Sven devoured a nice sausage-in-homemade-pea-soup for late lunch, the proprietor explained that the bunk reservations had been fairly full that evening until every party except us canceled due to weather; luckily we had all 60 bunks to ourselves.

We spent the late afternoon at the Faulhorn's peak, perhaps 50 ft. above the hotel itself, gawking at the amazingly clear 360° views including the region's famous triple feature of Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau peaks. We unpacked onto the best two bunks available (the Berghotel also features six small private rooms, of which two remained booked that evening, so Sven and I were not the sole guests present a la The Shining's Overlook Hotel). Dinner was spectacularly mountainous cuisine: Alpine macaroni in cheese sauce for Sven and classic Rösti hash browns topped with Spiegelei fried egg for me, washed down (gingerly this evening) with a single beer.

The expected storm arrived as dinner ended, rattling the old dining room. Violent wind and rain lashed in as I cracked open the exit door, slamming it shut again to regroup like in some melodramatic movie. Laughing in disbelief, we sprinted outside and up a flight of stone steps to the bunks, drenched, cold and panting after 15 seconds' exposure. The bunk room temperature had plummeted amidst the approaching cold front at 8,800 ft. to perhaps 40-something degrees. We bundled up with the lightweight fleece blankets we'd brought, reinforced by several heavy wool blankets provided with the bunks, and allowed the angry, pounding rain to lull us to sleep, dreaming of tomorrow's adventure...

Some scenic pictures: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.595lcmoz&x=0&y=dv5ybu&localeid=en_US

Rehrücken of the Year

2008-08-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

Stop the clock! Fantastic news! As of Saturday night, both Steph and I have achieved our dinners worthy of Meal of the Year 2008 honors. Blog followers may remember Steph nailing hers in June at a French bistrot in Lucerne. I found mine last night--in none other than Zürich itself (gasp!)--at the hip Blaue Ente or "Blue Duck" restaurant (those foggy on Meal of the Year may review the protocol here).

Dining out was probably our #1 pasttime in underrated but undoubtedly world-class restaurant city Chicago (judged by both restaurant quantity and high-end quality), but in Zürich we've unfortunately been shaken from that favorite hobby by ridiculous prices for less than top-notch cuisine. Not that Chicago didn't have its share of duds, but at half the cost on average vs. Zürich the "risk" was easier to stomach. And the grocery store food here is so phenomenal that our home kitchen results make rampant restauranteering less necessary.

So how did we discover this Zürich gem? Ha ha, we didn't! After some assiduous Web research, my younger brother and sister-in-law T&A sent us a very generous Blaue Ente gift certificate way back in December (they claimed we did something nice for them in the past to deserve it) during our down-in-the-dumps Kloten apartment hunting phase. After surviving that, Steph and I waited nearly nine months for a special occasion to use the gift, in this case the occasion being our first open weekend since early May.

As with all romantic dates, ours started with a bus ride to the restaurant, a block off the lake. The restaurant's contemporary decor included a refurbished large mill of some sort, smack in the middle of the dining area. We started with glasses of prosecco (Italian sparkling wine) then--determined to quickly dent the gift certificate--pulled out the big guns ordering our first-ever bottle of Barolo, the purported king of Italian red wines (it did not disappoint). Our starter selections of signature duck confit ravioli (me) and gazpacho (Steph) were solid if not spectacular. Then came the best decision I've made all year--Rehrücken aus der Sommerjagd, Eierschwämmli à la crème mit hausgemachten Schupfnudeln und Preiselbeerjus. Luckily we procured one English menu along with the standard German to aid translation: roast saddle of venison in cranberry sauce with accoutrements. Simply amazing, forget about it. Steph's gebratenes Lammcarré, or ribs of New Zealand lamb, also ranked highly but not quite equal. For dessert, we finished the wine of course.

We capped the excellent evening (after another bus ride) with two final glasses of wine at a normally packed wine bar, on this Saturday night nearly empty, mirroring much of Zürich so far this August, Europe's primary vacation month. And as proof of the interconnectivity of the cosmos, our Chicago Meal of the Year co-conspirator Sasha achieved her 2008 MOY the same Saturday night (OK, maybe eight hours later) at restaurant Fuego in Santa Fe [food photo courtesy of Moises's iPhone]:

A huge debt of gratitude to T&A for the gift certificate that, even after the passage of time, indeed proved quite uplifting--specifically by removing that pesky MOY monkey from my back. They can pick my restaurant from 4,000 miles away any time.

Back on the Wagon

2008-08-12T01:23:00.000-07:00

Good grief! Here I go again with feast or famine complex--22 blog entries in June (thanks, Europameister!) and since then only four posts in six weeks. In my (weak) defense, nearly two weeks were spent in the U.S. without much Internet access, sufficient to knock me off my game. So today's is a quick placeholder entry, an overdue notice of resuscitation for my perpetually disappointed fan base. What on earth has our faux-Swiss family been up to??

The weekend following our July 4 visit from M, we hosted Swedish Sven's reciprocal visit to Zürich from our Scandinavian excursion in June. Since Sven and I usually reconvene annually through a group backpacking tradition that started in Death Valley seven years ago, an overnight hike to the heart of the Alps in the Swiss Jungfrau region seemed only fitting for his visit. That's the first story to recount, the tale of a mountain's moods and my first experience roughing it Swiss style. Next came Steph's and my nearly two weeks back in the Midwest U.S., of which I'll rehash only part, the most ridiculously noteworthy being another backpacking trip--pitifully ill-fated--this year's installment of said group's backcountry excursion to the forests of northwestern Wisconsin.

A mere two days after returning from the U.S. to Switzerland, still fairly jet-lagged, we hopped a 7-hour train to Adriatic coastal beach-town Rimini, Italy, for a trial weekend of who-knew-what with 8 strangers, other friends of new Europameister acquaintances. And just last weekend then featured Zürich's annual Street Parade, one of the largest techno/rave parties in the world and the biggest in Europe, bringing nearly 1,000,000 people to little Zürich on an August Saturday to do what ravers do best. Yes, we participated.

So there are the teasers, now all that remains is making up yet again for all my lost blogging time. Be back soon...

July 4, Swiss Style

2008-07-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

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

The Secret Life of Hans

2008-07-15T11:31:00.000-07:00

Although I fairly recently updated the peanut gallery on the SOTD (State of the Dog), we accum- ulated several more pictures for a brief post. You may remember Hobbes--alias Hans--battling swans for position some mornings in the Zürichsee. On less combative days, rather than downhill to the lake we occasionally head uphill via tram to a stream feeding it. Zürich's attention to green space is superb, so a ten minute trip from our front door grants access to several miles of rolling, forested streamside path that feels more like North Carolina wilderness than a metropolitan periphery. Hobbes of course has "discovered" and committed to memory (that oh-so-selective canine memory) several excellent stream access points near which he now can't be contained.

So here are some extra pictures of tennis ball fetch in his favorite waterfall lagoon, just an average day in the super secret and spoiled life of Hans. http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.ciho81u3&x=0&y=8o2fv5&localeid=en_US

Happy Belated July 4!

2008-07-14T06:57:00.000-07:00

Happy belated 4th of July to all you patriots! Or as nobody says in German because it's not a holiday over here, Frohe vierte Juli! Looks like the weather cooperated for the long weekend in Chicago at least.

Keeping with the theme, I'll share two pieces of Euro-Americana from the past few weeks. To facilitate complete study, please feel free to click on either picture to examine more detail. Americana Exhibit A lies as close as our neighborhood grocery store, another inimitable U.S. contribution to cuisine--that's right, the bun! You might think that ubiquitous corner bakeries and a huge variety of freshly baked artisinal items in every grocery would have snuffed out the standard U.S. white bread hamburger bun long ago. Well, think again! It's BBQ season and while some fancy Kaiser roll or potato roll or whatever might seem more interesting, the world acknowledges that with most grilled protein, bleached spongy white bread remains a necessary accompaniment--topped with sesame seeds, of course.

Exhibit B comes from a Swedish bar bathroom poster, an exciting Southern U.S. themed July 4 "Day at the Races". The poster's ample English promises delights appealing to grease monkeys (Cadillac, Corvette, hot rods and Harley Davidson) among other highbrow evening entertainment elements (line dancing, Jack Daniels and rockabilly music featuring the band 'Rednex') with ever-popular American cuisine and sport (hickory smoked spareribs and football). Alas, the poster's Swedish words are mostly unintelligible (I'm learning German after all) but Galopplöpningar must be horse racing, although Elektrisk tjur (guitar?), Appaloosa, Westernprylar and Curly are beyond me. One should mean 'mint julep'. The event also boasts och mycket mycket mer!, but I can't fathom what more I'd like to see. Who'd imagine Sweden could host an Americana event where we'd feel like foreigners??

It just proves that given today's rapidly shrinking globe, home is closer than ever even 4,000 miles away. Returning to the U.S. later this month, we wouldn't bat an eye to discover the hip new trends include dried cod, dill schnapps Älplermagronen and yodeling.

Germany on our Power

2008-07-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

Strange how the more things change the more they stay the same, eh? Just as Chicago's reticent yet inevitable summer eventually does each year, Zürich's has already justified our 7-1/2 month wait. And although my ADD certainly doesn't need another addiction to add to my/our existing list of traveling, cooking, running, swimming, hiking, learning German, blogging, looking for employment and acting as daily tour guide for the golden furball, that's too bad because I've got a new one--biking!

Since my Nov/Dec near-daily townie-biking to the grocery store in Kloten, which didn't exactly count as much exertion, I'd only road-biked once this spring and Steph not at all. The sketchy weather combined with lingering disorganization since our move(s)--because road biking unlike running or swimming requires a modicum of organization--not to mention a zillion other things going on blunted any progress on two wheels. Moreover, although we enjoy it OK, biking was admittedly never a great love in Chicago; perhaps blame the urban concrete jungle with its only viable extended bike path along the lakefront usually crammed to the gills with moving and stationary human obstacles in all forms, sizes and speeds. But now...Enter: Switzerland.

As its countless guidesigns make apparent, Switzerland is not only a hiker's but also a biker's paradise, a fact registered somewhere in our brains but as yet unexploited. So last week Tuesday, I finally organized the bike equipment (living on the sixth floor doesn't help) and Steph and I rolled outside with no particular destination on a nice evening after work. Within five minutes, we bumped into a roadsign for a regional biking path and followed it out of Zürich. An hour later we returned home wide-eyed from our first-ever European biking experience--brutal climbs (for us), rapid descents, cobblestones, quaint churches, vineyards and awesome lake views. Yes, just like that we're hooked.

Newly armed with a highly-detailed regional Velokarte (biking map), we decided to up the ante for the following weekend. But where to go? As our various short train trips to northeasterly Schaffhausen had indicated, Germany lies nearby just over the Rhine, but we didn't expect the map to show the river dipping so close to Zürich to the northwest. So that's it! An international biking daytrip! The official route guide measured the trip one-way at 19 miles and an 'easy' grade (of choices 'easy', 'medium' or 'difficult').

Unsure if we had the legs to make it to Germany and back (19 miles isn't too bad but 38 is fairly significant), our peloton of two hit the road mid-morning on an already hot sunny Saturday.

A hundred sweaty minutes, 23 miles and more hills than we'd seen in 13 years (above) later, after taking only one wrong turn that cost some time to correct, we coasted down through tiny Kaiserstuhl am Rhein, Schweiz, over the Rhine river, past a lackadaisical German border patrolman who barely spared us a glance and up into little Hohentengen an Hochrhein, Deutschland! (Click on the top Google Earth map to enlarge the whole path.)

We picked one of the several local restaurants with an outdoor patio, parked the bikes and shuffled our tired legs to a table. We ordered two grosse Biere and merrily perused the German menu and prices in Euros instead of Swiss CHF. Gigantic mixed salads, double schnitzel with fries and a huge omelette hit the spot nicely. The food tasted the same, the ambience felt the same, the local accent sounded the same, but the relatively inexpensive bill was a welcome foreign element indeed.

Chuckling at the prospect of biking our distended stomachs 23 miles back to Zürich (we never really thought we'd make it anyway), we pedaled back across the river to the Kaiserstuhl station and kicked back with espresso at a neighboring café waiting for the train (my exercise recovery drink used to be Gatorade, but when in Rome, etc.). Funnily enough, the less-direct train ride home took almost as long as our bicycle jaunt. So as I'm sure will gratify all the pundits out there, Europe's summertime benefits are finally, rapidly and gratefully erasing the horrible vestiges of culture shock and months of frustrating readjustment from our winter move. But no, it doesn't mean we'll be biking to France or Italy anytime soon.

A few Saturday biking pics are here. Sunday was the Europameister final game, Germany v. Spain, with final pics as well: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.9kl12zsr&x=0&y=dtb5y1&localeid=en_US

The Reign in Spain

2008-06-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

If you care one iota about international soccer then this late, last Europameister post comes as no surprise: the best team won. Felicitaciones to Spain--European Champions 2008!

Spain never played a bad game, tied only defending world champs Italy and beat everyone else, scored a total of 12 goals and gave up just 3 in six games. In last night's final, Germany started stronger but Spain quickly took over and never looked back, keeping sufficient pressure on the Germans even after a nifty first-half goal by phenom 24-year-old striker Fernando Torres (only his second goal in six games but ultimately the tournament winner). Oh, and did I mention Spain played without their injured other star striker who finished as the tournament's scoring leader? Talent to spare. Finishing 1-0, the final was no barn burner like Germany vs. Portugal or Turkey but a nonetheless satisfying end to an unbelievably awesome three weeks of European soccer.

Our gathering Sunday night at the same Zürich riverside viewing area with the usual, mostly pro-Germany group saw a minimum of raucousness. I think we're all exhausted from three weeks of viewings. The thousands of Spaniards in Zürich had apparently reserved one extra night of energy, however, as evidenced by elated cheering and singing and dancing in the streets. And following the one Europameister nightly tradition we won't miss much, the victors drove all over the city honking and shouting until 2am.

So what now? Post-Europameister depression sets in, naturally. We'll lament the departure of the Big Boy Swiss smoker serving thousands of pounds of pulled pork. I'll sorely grieve the disassembly of the 'Aktion-Bier!' tent outside the neighborhood train station. We'll bemoan the dissipation of the grandiose multicultural "One Giant Beer Garden" aura over usually-more-reasonable Zürich. But there's a bright side too. For example, we'll probably return to drinking wine instead of Carlsberg. We'll pay much more attention to European club soccer this fall. And there may be one incredible, unanticipated beneficial long-term effect to beat all--we already have plans to see our new friends again soon. Who would've thought we'd end up with friends in Zürich?? Vielen Dank, Europameister! Bis 2012!

EM Days 19-20 - too fun

2008-06-28T03:59:00.000-07:00

Europameister 08 continues delivering on every level. After a much-needed two-day break from games--the first break in 2-1/2 weeks--we reconvened Wednesday night for the first semifinal: Germany v. Turkey, played in Basel. Our United Nations gathering (primarily again the ABB group) consisted of two Germans, a Mexican, Australian, Spaniard (Barcelona), two Swiss, a Venezuelan, and two Americans (us). We arrived 90 minutes early to an already-crowded viewing area in central Zürich alongside the Limmat river. Germans must constitute the most populous ex-pat group in Zürich because they were out en masse. More than a few Turks turned out as well.

Most people expected a romp: Germany was the tournament favorite and Cinderella-team Turkey had doubtlessly overperformed thus far, snatching literally last-minute victories from its last three games to advance. I suppose that's why they play them, as the match was the tournament's best so far. Turkey turned Germany inside out for the opening 20 minutes and was unlucky to score only one goal instead of two. Every time Turkey built up and then narrowly missed a chance on goal--about five times--a rabid fan immediately behind me shouted YI-YI-YI-YI-YI-YIE-YIEEE-NEI-NEI!!! directly in my ear. Unfortunately for him, Germany tied it only four minutes after Turkey's first goal. The game seesawed with more unbelievable last minute heroics from Turkey to tie 2-2 with only four minutes remaining, until Germany turned the tables with a marvelous goal in the 90th minute to steal victory and advance to the final. The hundreds of Germans in our viewing area went completely batty, singing and dancing and drinking for the next several hours; we behaved only marginally more respectably.

We met a different couple of friends, a work colleague of Steph's, at a different city viewing area Thursday night for Spain v. Russia, played in a Vienna downpour. Both our behavior and the game were considerably more restrained, with a tight scoreless first half followed by Spain later opening a clinic for a 3-0 romp. Reminiscent of Spain's 4-1 cakewalk over them in the first round, Russia never showed the confidence or form they demonstrated when dominating Holland.

The final game of Europameister 2008--the most wildly entertaining major soccer tournament anyone can remember from the last 20 years--is set for Sunday night: Deutschland vs. España. Should be excellent. Yes, we're going out to watch it.

Check out a few event pics http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.by3024uj&x=0&y=mym95q&localeid=en_US and brief video sample of the Deutschland victory celebration over Turkey:

Get Your Frog On

2008-06-27T02:50:00.000-07:00

Exactly paralleling old home Chicago, Summer 08 didn't arrive in Zürich until about June 20. Let's hope it stays a while! But our collective impatience for summer is nothing compared to Sweden's. After suffering through long, dark, cold winters, the Swedes embrace summer's onset like nobody's business. So much so, in fact, that the summer solstice weekend of June 21 is arguably their most important holiday, featuring a traditional Midsummer celebration nothing short of wacky. As Sven found online recently from an English-Swedish newspaper:

'I've been invited to a Swedish Midsummer party, and frankly, I'm terrified. I've been told it involves eating raw fish, drinking copious amounts of vodka and dancing around a big phallus while I pretend to be a frog.'

If this piques your interest (how could it not?), digest the fascinating full article here: The Lowdown on Swedish Midsummer. Or dare to take the next step and check out the hilarious banned IKEA spoof on the celebration. An invitation for a non-Swede to such a private, close-friends affair is a rarity, and even after working several years with good relationships with several Swedes, nobody remotely considered broaching the possibility with Sven this year. Rats! Maybe it's a good thing because the hangover from this party purportedly lasts a week.

Our Skåne County tour across the windswept Swedish(-Wisconsin) plains on Thu-Fri lead from Staffanstorp village to nearby Lund and Malmö, Kullaberg and Helsingborg. Heard of those? Capital city Stockholm is nearly 400 miles further north and we weren't about to attempt it. Copenhagen, Denmark is actually the closest big city, we laid siege on Saturday.

Lund (below map, 'A') is a cute Swedish town with an awesome cathedral, much cooler inside than our more fabled but austere Zürich churches, with an intricate 600-year-old astronomical calendar clock and a spooky 900-year-old crypt. Malmö ('B') is the capital of Skåne and Sweden's third-largest city (not large by U.S. standards, less than 300,000 people) with an active Old Town plaza nightlife scene where we took in several Europameister games. Kullaberg nature park ('C') sits atop a sharp peninsula jutting into the Kattegat sea between Sweden & Denmark; we hiked down a steep rocky trail to a craggy seaside viewpoint and later to the peninsula's tip for expansive views and a healthy dose of windburn. Kullaberg claims infamy as the birthplace of "Swedish Sin", Europe's first resort area to allow mixed-sex bathing in the late 1800's (scandalous!).

Hiking out we saw groups of Swedes heading to an already-swelling Midsommer party gathering at the peninsula's lighthouse (invite only, regrettably) preparing to get their frog on. We stopped in Helsingborg ('D'), the closest point between Sweden and Denmark separated by a narrow strait, another nice town with several interesting fortifications given the proximity of the historical enemy. Due to their proprietors and employees downing dill schnapps in the woods all Midsommer weekend, most shops were unfortunately closed but we located an open Turkish-run café for mandatory Kaffee + (really good) Kuchen. Although Sven claimed his wife would never believe us, the weather particularly on our hiking day stayed mostly miraculously sunny (yes, even one sunny Swedish summer day is newsworthy), although frequent rain squalls also chased us.

Saturday we crossed the big bridge for a day in Copenhagen (København in Danish, pronounced SHOPE-en-hahm, which I quickly confused with Schlagrahm, German for 'whipped cream'). Once off the kitschy crammed main tourist avenue, we found Copenhagen quite pleasant, with fairly grand squares and neighborhoods and architecture somewhat reminiscent of Paris (admittedly I know zilch about architecture). After a shaky start the weather cooperated admirably and we enjoyed strolling around the city, a patio lunch complete with lingonberries, and another Kaffee + Kuchen diversion. My only regret was not sampling more Danish pastry and kringle, with bakery windows presenting a much different selection than our usual French/German/Swiss variety. Sven hails from Racine, Wisconsin, and don't believe for one second that his ex-pat assignment to Scandinavia was randomly dealt as you examine the eery relationship between Racine and kringle.

Heavy rains finally chased us away on Sunday with our journey from overcast 60°F Sweden to sunny and nearly 90°F Zürich shocking our unaccustomed systems. Where did that sudden summer weather come from?? We didn't even dance around a Maypole to earn it.

The usual routine here. Map. Pictures. http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.2ne0e0sr&x=0&y=9zsl37&localeid=en_US

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Midsommer in Scandinavia

2008-06-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hej! Continuing rendezvous'ing with old friends soon not-to-be-living in Europe any longer, we traveled to Sweden last week to meet college friend Sven (guess whether that's his real name) before his ex-pat contract terminates and he returns to the good ol' U.S. of A. on July 31. Last Wednesday evening during the critical Sweden v. Russia EM match, Steph and I flew from Zürich to Copenhagen (Denmark, but the closest airport to Sven) with the flight's captain announcing Sweden's 2-0 loss and elimination just as we landed. So much for victory partying with the Swedes. Sven met us, smoothly manipulated the train ticket machine (always tricky in a new country with a line of impatient locals behind you) and we crossed the impressive Oresund Bridge--Europe's longest bridge and the world's longest border crossing--to the Swedish city of Malmö and subsequent short drive (yes, he has a car like normal people) to his house in nearby tiny suburban town Staffanstorp.

Steph and I were excited for our first ever exploration of Scandinavia; furthermore an opportunity to over-analyze a new culture always interests me in particular. For example, who knew that Northern Europeans differentiate Scandinavian (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) as a subset of Nordic (also including Finland, Iceland)? From ex-pat war stories previously exchanged with Sven--living with his wife and young daughter in Sweden for 16 months--life for uninstructed Americans in Sweden and Switzerland appeared to share interesting similarities, e.g., astronomical prices, despite the wide latitudinal difference. Fodder for much discussion during the weekend, we eventually chalked up our similar adjustment experiences to the European lifestyle in general and, more specifically, small wealthy trade-protected neutral proud rugged stoic countries intelligently yet reluctantly adapting ever-so-gradually to the realities of the EU and shrinking globe (EU member Sweden, despite retaining its own currency, is changing more quickly).

In an important, "Ahh, so we're not crazy" moment, we agreed that particularly difficult to assimilate given our Midwest U.S. puppy-dog personalities (recognized in Europe as among the unabashedly friendliest people in the world) is these countries' fierce independence manifesting itself not nationally but individually. As Sven recounted, if an elderly lady's groceries topple to the ground, or the closing train doors threaten to crush a pregnant woman wrestling on board a 40-lb stroller including baby, or a man is drowning, a Swede won't help unless specifically asked; to provide aid unasked compromises the struggling person's assumed strength and autonomy. Sven called it their "Viking roots". The Swiss often (not always) behave similarly, and it requires a huge mental adjustment for us not to perceive such behavior as rude or insensitive or unchivalrous. Take Sven's example of being tentatively approached late at night in a near-empty, frozen train station parking lot by a man ultimately needing a battery jump; after inquiring something in Swedish and Sven requesting English, the man said, "Oh, good, you're American, that means you'll help me!"

Where the countries differ dramatically (other than tax rates) is countryside landscape--Switzerland is hilly or mountainous virtually everywhere, while Sweden is the spitting image of Wisconsin. I mean you'd swear that you were driving through Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michigan. Wide open spaces, flat Midwest farm fields, sky everywhere. No wonder so many Swedes, Danes and Norwegians settled there, it must've felt exactly like home. Sweden's climate is trying: constantly windy with sun/rain combinations even more schizophrenic than Switzerland's, i.e., if you don't like the weather (or do), just wait an hour, coupled with seasonal extremes of dark and light--a mere six hours of wintertime daylight and hardly ever dark in summer. A streak of generally crummy weather over their 16 month stay, plus new house construction finishing early (surprise?!), sent Sven's wife and daughter back to the U.S. several months early while he finishes his work contract.

All right, enough cultural notes already. Amazingly enough, our visit coincided with none other than the summer solstice itself, June 21, longest day of the year, day of the Midnight Sun, heralding the infamous debaucherous Sweden Midsommer celebration. But I'll describe that crazy event and our exploration of Sweden's Skåne county (the best part about traveling is using new alphabet symbols) and Copenhagen, Denmark in the next blog entry. For now, suffice it to say that although we drove for hours all up and down Skåne (highlighted blue), it actually isn't much in the grand geographical scope. Quick, which is bigger, Sweden or Texas?

EM Days 11-16 - whew!

2008-06-20T02:27:00.000-07:00

Well, we're exhausted from Europa- meister action and grateful for the first two non-game days, Mon-Tue, since the tournament began over two weeks ago. Too much to recount (professional recap here) but here's a synopsis:

Highly anticipated Italy v. France fizzled, with France's equal measures of bad luck and bad play costing them their most dynamic player and a penalty goal in the first 10-25 minutes; Italy nauseatingly caroused to victory. Steph and I touched down in Sweden on Wednesday night (details to come) in time for the flight's captain to announce their unfortunate elimination. The final four consists of a re-righted Germany--confidently dispatching Portugal 3-2 in a marvelous game, Cinderella team Turkey--making a habit of unlikely last-minute heroics, resurgent Russia--running all over previously-sparkling Holland, and Spain--deserving the most emphatic congratulations for their resolve in dispatching always despicably frustrating Italy via penalty kicks after 120 scoreless minutes (no fault of Spain's).

On a final rant against the vanquished previous world-champs, this isn't a case of simple rival hatred, such as the Swiss cheering for Switzerland and whoever is playing Germany. One can justifiably love Italy's charming culture and wine and food and people and landscape. But you really must detest their soccer team, who consistently attain the pinnacle of disingenuous sport. Physically powerful yet oh-so-delicate (comical against the much slighter Spanish team), highly-skilled and occasionally brilliant yet more often flouncing hypocritical primadonnas, playing solely for results rather than entertainment or even pride, prattling in opponents' ears like mean housewives after every legitimate attempt on their goal and wailing dramatically skyward to cruel gods who unfairly deny their infrequent attempts at the same. Love Italy but please not their team. Auf Wiedersehen.

Only three games remain with the tournament ending on Sunday. Sad, but a necessary component of renewed clean living.

Repentant in Rioja

2008-06-19T02:37:00.000-07:00

The second half of our northeast Spain excursion with Guillermo and Amada in late May was thankfully more subdued. From San Sebastián we drove to modest Haro, capital of Spain's famous Rioja wine region.

As we subconsciously knew but didn't behaviorally adjust, New World and Old World wine regions treat tourists much differently. New World wineries strive for worldwide recognition and buzz and host extravagant tasting rooms at all hours within merchandising palaces, in regions such as Napa/Sonoma, Australia, New Zealand & Argentina. Old World wineries have grown and stomped the same difficult half-hectare plot for 2,000 years, aren't trying to impress anyone and produce bottles primarily for the township instead of international tour groups, in regions for example in France, Italy and yes, Spain. Of course Old World proprietors welcome visitors, but visits are typically pre-planned, deliberate and personal, not a giggling tipsy tour down winery lane. So no surprise when we failed to arrange a tipsy tour after a late start Sunday.

Instead we explored Haro (last entry's map, 'C') one rainy evening and following day, the craziest darn wine capital I've ever seen. Unable to locate even a wine-tasting shop, with gruff if not impolite waitstaff and clientele milling in the eating and drinking establishments, amongst the dilapidated hilly haphazard plazas and narrow alleys, the centuries of wine profits must have diverted somewhere else. Unable to reconcile our mediocre Haro perceptions with the charm espoused by our several guide books, we chalked it up to bad weather and headed downroad to larger Rioja neighbor Logroño ('D'). A break in the rain, more pintxos bars per capita than any other Basque town and a lively Sunday locals-carousing scene were big improvements, although Rioja wines again seemed a sideshow at best.

Perhaps presaging our pintxo bar exorbitance, we planned to spend a repentant Sunday night in a remote hospice monastery, El Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de Valvanera, tucked into the mountains south of Rioja ('E'). Our reward for surviving the snaking and precipitous ascent into the forested foothills was garnering strange looks upon arrival from the local gathered congregation, chatting and fragmenting and departing from Sunday evening service as we parked and unloaded the car. Despite the hospice being a common overnight stop for wayfarers on the Pilgrimage to Santiago, we apparently hit them low-season as the only pilgrims that evening and received courteous if understandably exasperated service from the no-English skeleton crew staff during our stay. We inhabited the monastery's attached bar (those monks love to brew and drink!) just long enough to sample the local distillation, a sweet anise liquor (much better than Jäeger!) and purchase a bottle each of the monks' unlabeled rosato (dry rosé) and red wines from the affable, thick-accented bartender before closing. The wine was our only company in the sparsely ornamented hospice, the visit to which ended up being somewhat fun in a wacky, weirdly sequestered way.

Steph's and my portion of the Spain adventure ended (or so we thought) with the following day's visit to Pamplona ('F') before our flight out, Hemingway's old hangout with its annual running of the bulls fiesta as he immortalized in The Sun Also Rises. With no particular expectations, we found Pamplona lovely enough with a tasteful blend of antiquity and modernity and a different Basque style to its yet again out-of-this-world gourmet pintxos.

After bidding Guillermo and Amada farewell and more fun during their final days in Spain, Steph and I sat depleted in the small Pamplona airport, more than ready for our own bed that evening and a dose of Swiss sobriety. Alas, a brief rain squall and highly dubious Spanish logistics threw us a curve, canceling our flight and sending us via a packed two-hour bus ride to "nearby" Vitoria, from where we eventually flew to Madrid morbidly laughably late for our "assured" connection to Zürich. Sparing the details (no pictures either), we spent our final unplanned 18 bonus hours in Spain amidst a hundred squabbling irate Spanish and German tourists, jammed in lines for various shuttle buses and a free cheapo Madrid hotel night and dinner. But forget that garbage, Spain was awesome!

Second set of pictures: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.51usqvsj&x=0&y=grm8j4&localeid=en_US

Bombed by Basques

2008-06-18T05:15:00.000-07:00

Let's see, what else happened in May besides Steph's parents' visit, a weekend in Strasbourg and my parents' visit...hmm, what was it now again..? Oh, yeah, nearly a week in northern Spain with my younger brother (three years younger, not eleven minutes) Guillermo and wife Amada (their Spanish names). Just another slow month for us in Europe. No wonder I wasn't blogging.

Guillermo and Amada toured Spain for three weeks in May, a longer version of their 2003 two-week tour of Spain. What can you say, these kids love Spain. You want something crazy, here's their travel map:
They initially traveled with both sets of their parents (big group!), then my parents continued through Provence to Switzerland. After Amada's parents split, Steph and I met Guillermo and Amada in Bilbao (below map, 'A'), the Basque country's largest city. From there we planned to canvas northern Spain via rental car, from Bilbao to San Sebastián to the Rioja wine region to Pamplona.

The Basque region is an historically- and again today mostly-autonomous territory in northern Spain dating back to ancient Roman times. Possessing its own particular culture & second language (Basque) within greater Spain's patronage, it's unfortunately infamously recognized for civil bombings by its still active "disenfranchised" separatist extremists (everybody's got 'em, huh?). How did that knowledge affect us as obvious tourists? Well, as smart tourists know, preparation and awareness are the keys to prevention, so we prevented potentially slow bar service by learning the Basque word for tapas, which is pintxos, (pronounced PEENCH-ohss) and using it exclusively. Indeed, we miraculously avoided problems!

Guillermo's, Amada's and my fairly intensive Spanish distance-tutoring program taken 2006-2007 coupled with their two-week immersion in Guatemala last summer (and Steph's general ear for language) served us well throughout the trip. Although still not fluent due to comprehension remaining frustratingly difficult due to velocity and accent (the Spanish lisp!), our communication abilities proved sufficient to garner significant acceptance by the locals.

In both our first days and night in Bilbao and subsequent two nights in San Sebastián, eating and drinking consumed us. Many people are familiar with tapas style dining, i.e., appetizer-sized portions of various traditional Spanish dishes. If you've visited Spain, as Steph and I had briefly hit Madrid (central) and lovely Sevilla (southern) in 2005, you know that like the world's every great gastronomical style, tapas as experienced locally are irreproducible; anywhere else--no matter how authentic--provides only an interpretation. Primarily because of the preponderance of tapas bars in Spain, only there can you wander from bar to bar sampling the specialty from each. As a bonus, conventional wisdom regards San Sebastián's offerings including its pintxos as Spain's gastronmic frontrunner. You'll see in the attached pictures.

Perhaps overly anxious to reunite with family (again) and sample the local fare--and probably astounded by the sheer volume of bars and food--we were served early and often and then overserved late and often in downtown Bilbao our first Wednesday afternoon and evening together. We probably haven't consumed like that since our early 20's at the U of Madison, but this time add a rich food element. Sardines, anchovies, green olives, black olives, peppers, oil, ham, sausage, eggs, octopus, foie gras, shrimp, mayonnaise, lamb, goat cheese, blue cheese, on and on. Washed down over and over with cerveza and vino tinto and the local specialty sidra (hard, dry, slightly sparkling cider). Amazingly delicious food and drinks alike so inexpensive, especially by Swiss standards! I'm not sure how to say it delicately, but before 2pm our first full day together, 3/4 of the group had unfortunately already experienced an abrupt visceral reversal (and not me, amazingly, ha! How's that for giving up the secret??).

Despite Bilbao's industrial reputation, we found it quite charming although not so much as smaller seaside San Sebastián (B). They say smart people learn from their mistakes and wise people learn from other people's mistakes; we were neither as, fooled partially by a false second-wind but mostly by the world-class, five-star cuisine (Chicago-ites, think 'Charlie Trotter's' or 'Tru' on a small(er) plate), the town's Friday evening pintxos scene swept us up and we repeated an almost-as-extravagant performance as in Bilbao. One narrow, shoulder-to-shoulder bar in particular serves as training ground for young up-and-coming international chefs (I forget the name); they feature only about eight dishes but every one is spectacular. I controversially proclaimed our 45-minute stint there as Comida del Año (MOY) worthy, although admittedly the first MOY without a restaurant bathroom and, for that matter, barely any oxygen.

Needless to say, by Saturday our roiled stomachs (too much dried cod and sardines?) and weary livers were ready for a more low-key endeavor, specifically Spanish Rioja wine country. So who needs militant separatists to critically damage our beloved bodies? We'll allow the Basque restauranteurs that honor, muchísimas gracias.

Travel map below and lots of food pics: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.91mwyhdf&x=0&y=-yfwd4x&localeid=en_US

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EM Days 9-10

2008-06-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Everyone's talkin' Turkey since Sunday's unimaginable 3 goals scored in the final 18 minutes to win 3-2 against an understand- ably stunned Czech team, now sent home. Switzerland salvaged pride from a mean- ingless 2-0 beating of an already-qualified Portugal team of second-stringers, everybody happy there. Now we can observe the poor relieved Swiss coach age ten years in four weeks' time as the stress dissipates from the hosts' several years of monumental expectations.

We frequented our favorite neighborhood coffee house/bar/salsa dance parlor (it's an eclectic place) last night with our new German/American friends to watch Germany beat Austria 1-0 as scripted. Of marginal interest other than the futile ferocity of Austria vs. their "big brother" was Germany's still-sputtering offense, to be tested in earnest vs. a fully-manned Portugal as the tournament's first big Round 2 game. Latest physiological news is that Steph and I each drank two beers last night and our bodies didn't totally reject them, probably because they're too tired to do so. Another observation from trying to watch TV screens amidst the bar crowd: Germans are tall (present company excluded).

France v. Italy play in about an hour, winner advances and loser goes home as extra drama for the already long-anticipated titanic fixture of the tournament's first round. We were invited out to watch by Steph's work colleague but simply must stay home tonight or risk "Death by EM08"...

Swiss/German Homecoming, Pt. 2

2008-06-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

So why the title 'Swiss/German Home- coming'? Good question. Because our family roots are German from my dad's side but a mix of German & Danish & some Swiss heritage (!) on my mom's side, believe it or not, from the Alpine village of Mürren above Interlaken in the Bernese Oberland. Every time a European acquaintance begins politely rolling on the U.S. as an indelicate, myopic and peregrine superpower--with which I don't entirely disagree--I nonetheless raise that Americans are really mostly a mix of European backgrounds, salient point being the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. This almost always causes a significant pause for consideration. If you've traveled in Europe, have you had that feeling, a slightly curious but comforting nostalgia? My first time in Germany ten years ago, within moments of stepping off the train, a weird sensation of "home" hit me. The people and I looked kind of alike, I thought--same complexion, similar features or bearing, mostly something slightly beyond perception. Maybe I'm making it up, but I had no predisposition or grand anticipation for visiting Germany, so the feeling came as a surprise not a premeditation. Probably I just think too much. And I needed a title for the blog. But my mom loves the notion of being from Mürren.

We chose nearby Lucerne's (Luzern in German, not to be confused with Swiss-French Lausanne) offerings for our Sun-Mon excursion. Only an hour from Zürich, Steph and I spent a few hours there during our original July 2007 Switzerland reconnaissance trip prior to agreeing to move. Apart from being a lovely classic Swiss-German town in its own right, Lucerne (map below, point 'B') lies nestled beneath Mount Pilatus, on the Alps' northern edge, on the picturesque Vierwaldstättersee, or Four Forest Haven Lake. We opted Sunday for the "Golden Round Trip" tour--ascending Pilatus via ski lifts, descending via the world's steepest cogwheel railway, then returning to Lucerne on a lake cruise.

At only 7,000 feet, Pilatus ranks as more of a "local maximum" of topography than a towering mountain peak, but views are nevertheless spectacular. Experiencing Swiss Alphorn players on the ascent, bratwurst (ever more) and beer at the observation summit, and the engineering marvel cogwheel railway on the descent was an excellent precursor to the lovely, nearly three-hour cruise zigzagging between serene lakeside towns. Highest marks to our subsequent stay at Lucerne's art deco Hotel Montana whose patio views and staff were equally generous for reasonable rates.

Dare I say (dare, dare!) that topping Sunday's occasion, Stephanie unexpectedly achieved her first Meal of the Year candidate for 2008 at the Brasserie Bodu in Lucerne's Old Town?!? Everyone enjoyed a superb dinner, but the chefs hit her classic selections of quiche lorraine and steak-frites squarely in the crosshairs--simple but fantastically good (wine and dessert were also solid). Mine qualified as best meal so far this year, but not equal to Steph's and not quite MOY caliber. The pressure is off her but I'm left slightly anxious, a reversal of 2007's mid-year fortunes. The infinitely mind-boggling puzzle of why similarly excellent, affordable French food remains apparently absent in Zürich (we've looked!) continues to exasperate us, but we promised ourselves a return dinner trip to Lucerne this year, bugger the train fare!

My parents retired to the hotel after the late dinner, Steph and I delayed only to down a Guinness at a lively lakeside British pub hosting a birthday party featuring 30 Dutch revelers singing together merrily and quite soddenly (such action is rare on Swiss Sunday nights). We chatted with a nice couple at the neighboring table, on vacation from Saskatoon--it never fails to amaze me how North Americans (especially in this case sharing middle-west continental sensibilities) mutually latch on to each other in Europe. Canada, U.S. and Mexico, we're cut from the same social cloth, globally speaking.

We spent early Monday in Lucerne's Old Town, my parents and I chilling with Kaffee + Kuchen at an outdoor café while Steph capitalized on Lucerne's much more reasonable haircut prices. My mother was tickled with pride (Moms are awesome!) when the waitress in parting complimented (in English, of course) my various attempts at ordering in German, saying she initially mistook us for German visitors. On the return to Zürich, we stopped for lunch and spent the afternoon in cute nearby Rapperswil ('C'), touring the local church and castle--impressive for such a little town. We sadly bid my parents Tschüss! the following morning and continued luck on their European adventure, just warming up. We're already anxiously anticipating seeing them at Christmastime in South Carolina and their imminent return to Switzerland!

Travel map below and continuation of pics here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.6xpeet43&x=0&y=-361zx6&localeid=en_US

Swiss/German Homecoming, Pt. 1

2008-06-14T03:30:00.001-07:00

When it rains, it pours! Continuing with our fortunate abundance of visitors in May, my parents spent four days and nights with us in Switzerland as one segment of a grand month-long European tour in May and June. They conducted a similar trip three years ago, their first-ever visit to the continent on a whirlwind tour (you know the type, every day crammed, Americans excel at them) of as many European cities and countries as possible. Ready for a second go around with new destinations, this trip included Spain, southern France, Zürich (yay!), Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany (twice), Poland, Czech Republic and Romania. Nuts!!

I welcomed them at the Hauptbahnhof on a Friday afternoon rush hour, a slightly surreal feeling at first. They loved their first 10 days in both Spain (spending time with my younger brother, sister-in-law and her parents, a full group!) and France's Provence region before arriving in Zürich. We enjoyed the apartment patio view with a few beers catching up on their stories to date, and laughed it up opening their various wonderful French food gifts for us once Steph arrived home from work (they know the way to our hearts). We cooked at home and relaxed that evening, grilling the same fare as for Mr. Mssrli the prior week (hey, if it ain't broke don't fix it).

Sleeping well in (my whole family excels at it), we began our assault on Zürich late Saturday morning beginning with the serendipitous discovery of a fantastic café on the way to Zürichhorn park on the lake (Hobbes's favorite swimming spot) for the absolutely mandatory Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and baked items); we over-ordered about 10 items for four people including the Swiss signature Schoggigipfel (chocolate croissant), Chäschüechli (savory warm cheese tart, forget about it!) and müesli cereal to accompany the apple tart, pretzel sandwich and whatever else. Definitely a worthy addition to my discriminating and ever-growing list of top Kaffee und Kuchen establishments.

Always interested in shaking up our city tour methodology, we boat cruised from the southern Zürichhorn up the lakeside and river to the city's northern part--an excellent sightseeing option and freely accessible like any other bus or tram. Nice system! We meandered through Old Town Zürich's shops and sights, earning a halt at the city's only expansive traditional German beer garden for said beer and additional Kuchen but grimacing at the live lounge-act band on stage. Not yet satisfied, we hit the best sausage stand at Bellevueplatz for out-of-this-world bratwurst (my parents appreciate the nuances after living in Wisconsin for 20 years).

We couldn't resist a stop at gourmet food temple Globus, but isn't it funny how parents can always embarrass the children regardless of age? That's the enduring prerogative of the parent in exchange for raising the kid. For this European trip, learning from previous experience, my father had bestowed upon my mother her very own camera to allay her ad infinitum requests of him to snap pictures. The displays at Globus are truly grand, and with her camera's flash stuck in the 'on' position my mother enthusiastically descended on the produce, meat, fish and every other food counter like a one-woman paparazzi. As my father and I toured in a separate circle, we noted the sudden absence of the peripheral flashing and figured something was up. Sure enough, after disappearing for fully five minutes, my mother returned sporting her Official Photo Pass as newly granted by store security. Politely accosted by an employee after generating her initial light display, she was escorted to the service desk. After verifying the woman spoke English, my mother said, "I was told I need a photo pass."

"Yes, you do!" answered the service woman. "What's the purpose of your photos?"

"I'm a tourist," said my mother.

"Ah. Personal...," wrote the woman alongside the date on the Official Photo Pass, handed it to my mother and released her to flash anew. Steph and I got a kick out of the very Swiss regimen--every activity is enhanced by an authority's certification--that is, after I recovered from my mortification.

Scrapping our restaurant dining plans that evening, we instead purchased and ate a smorgasbord of Globus Swiss cheeses, breads & antipasti and grilled more bratwurst (not the first visitors to develop an instant addiction) back at home.

Part II will encompass the weekend's subsequent ventures outside of Zürich to nearby Luzern (Lucerne) and Rapperswil, for which you'll see a sneak preview in the first group of pics here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.cepsmmw3&x=0&y=dlrgqf&localeid=en_US

EM Days 7-8 - kein Bier

2008-06-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

Wow! Amazing Group of Death action on EM Day 7, with an en fuego Holland administering another spanking to France 4-1 after similarly dispatching Italy 3-1--those are the last two World Cup champion teams, by the way--to emphatically win the group. France was both inept and unlucky in that order and now battles an equally struggling Italy, held tied 1-1 with impressively resilient Romania, with the winner likely taking the remaining second round berth. That's a grudge rematch of the World Cup 2006 final to see who limps through. Day 8 saw Spain clinch their group with a couldn't-be-more-last-minute goal to win 2-1 against a previously content Sweden, whereas Russia ponderously eliminated defending Euro 2004 cinderella champ Greece. The tournament so far could not be better.

With Steph tied up at a work training event Friday and Saturday evenings (uh, bad scheduling, yes?), I gingerly visited the FanZone alone Friday evening after a tough recovery day. At their FanZone booth backdropped by their enormous "Big Boy" rotisserie smoker, World Barbeque Team Switzerland is aiming for a world record 600 hours (25 days) non-stop BBQ'ed pork & beef during the month-long EM tournament, or 20,000 portions or about 7 tons; it all must be eaten for the record to count. We tested them Monday and these guys give the Texans and Carolinians a serious run for their money--really good. I dined there again Friday night during Holland v. France, then made the mistake of trying to drink a beer. My body would have accepted paint thinner more readily. Serves me right. Kein is negation in German; kein Bier means "Not any beer!" My mantra until at least Day 9.

The funniest part (to an American) of the BBQ is the wondering crowd it attracts--Swiss and other visiting Europeans crowding and gawking at the display, inquiring amongst themselves and questioning the proprietor shredding the meat by hand, "Schwein oder Rind (pork or beef)?" (answer: both). The spectators taste a sample and their eyes widen, "Ooh, ist gut!" It's the only BBQ we've seen in Europe in nearly eight months, so its exotically delicious stature shouldn't be a surprise. But we giggle anyway. Take that, international cuisine, still sneering that all we got is McDonald's??

EM Day 6 - ouch

2008-06-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

Thursday was another rough one. Met the German/American couple (our new friends from EM Day 1, a.k.a. Saturday) at the FanZone to watch Germany v. Croatia on the big screen. Also rendezvous'ed there with the Swedish & Mexican guys and met a new German girl, all connected through work at ABB. Germany couldn't put it together all night and lost 2-1 to a deserving Croatian team, the first upset of the tournament. Wait to see which school of thought proves correct--an unavoidable bump in the road for a German team that will regroup and push to the final (my guess) OR evidence of real cracks that will be exploited in the second round.

Unfortunately for me, Thursday night ended up similar to Saturday. The group hit a neighborhood bar to watch the second game; all the people working Friday left at a fairly responsible hour (albeit well-quaffed) whereas those not working--the Swedes, a Mexican guy and me--stayed around way too long solving the world's mysteries (too bad I can't remember the solutions). The bartender kicked us out at closing time after generoulsy (ha!) providing a shot of some sweet pink liquor. Blech! Everyone is very nice, and the concept of possibly making friends in Zürich is still so foreign to Steph and me that we can't yet even grapple with it.

The Swiss have a pretty good sense of humor. Check out these bags from the local grocery (click to enlarge): Swiss-, Greek- and Spain-indicative food items decked out like soccer teams for the Europameister. Hilarious! Spain is the best.

Meet Hans

2008-06-13T08:00:00.001-07:00

Time for a Schweizerhund update! Last October, I'd characterize Steph and I as fairly confident and unconcerned about tackling the challenges of our impending trans-Atlantic move, but worried sick about how Child #1 would adjust. If you had issued the true/false question stating the parents would wind up fairly frazzled but Hobbes would sink right in the groove, I'd have marked 'False'. That's why I always fail the true/false test.

Yes, the little boy has taken to Switzerland like a Wisconsinite to bratwurst. From the original farm fields of Kloten to our concrete neighborhood in Zürich city, he hasn't missed a beat. Perhaps primarily because he has constant semi-canine company (me) during his daytime naps, which appeals to his extraordinarily strong family pack instinct. But also because whereas Chicago was virtually limitlessly urban, the primary beauty of Zürich is its proximity to nature; we're 10-15 minutes by foot or tram to a choice of trails, trees, streams or lakes.

And since spring's onset, we've added to the regimen his all-time favorite activity--schwimmen! He loves to scare Lake Zürich's swans and ducks in the AM endlessly chasing a tennis ball into the water. Also important to his and our sanity, we've finally assembled his care network including dog-sitters, groomer, and vet; those are perfect examples of difficult elements to locate in a foreign city that keep one frazzled for a while. His new dog-sitter, a perfectly wonderful woman from Mexico we found through a Yahoo ex-pat exchange, loves him to death after he saved her from being bitten by an aggressively territorial dog by laying on the smack-down; don't mess with the golden 90+ pounder. By the way, this happened in St.Gallen--an eastern Switzerland city that we haven't even visited yet--during our recent Spain visit. So he's getting around and winning new friends.

He's also adjusting better to German than when I tried to teach him Spanish in Chicago. More direct cognates, I think, such as sitz! for sit!. He likes German food, too, such as little bites of bratwurst, cervelat sausage and crusty roll he's occasionally furnished when visiting our favorite sausage stand. The best part is his new German alias. On our morning walks, we often encounter groups of kids at recess or in parks, and it's so cute when they always ask "Wie alt?" (How old?) and "Wie heißt?" (What's his name?). But when I answer, "Er heißt Hobbes", they never really understand that English name and give us a weird look. So I started answering, "Er heißt Hans" and they LOVE it! And it's similar enough that he responds. Brilliant if I say so myself!

Warning: no humans appear in the following set of pictures: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.a4286wgz&x=0&y=mjwvss&localeid=en_US

Don't Blink

2008-06-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

This photo arrived in the mail this week from the Winterthur race photographer trying to entice me to buy more. I thought it was funny so I'm posting it. The guy must have great reflexes; I'm amazed he captured me, given my blistering speed. My favorite part is the caption--the event also featured a full marathon and they didn't print the "Half-" part on the photos. That's an extra 13.1 miles for free! We're still waiting for Steph's photo to show up...

EM Day 5 - Turkey and Swiss

2008-06-12T06:09:00.000-07:00

Europa Meister update, Day 5

Switzerland scores!

One usually doesn't hear the words "poor" and "Switzerland" together, but today it's apt. The likeable tournament co-hosts gave up the winning goal to Turkey in the game's final minute to lose 2-1 after leading 0-1 (video) at halftime during a monsoon in Basel. Coupled with their similarly unfortunate opening loss to the Czechs, Switzerland is already eliminated from a second-round berth and have crashed out of their own tournament (other host Austria stands to fare the same after tonight). One game remains against group powerhouse Portugal, making salvaging even a shred of pride difficult. The German press calls both games sehr unglücklich (very unlucky) which is true, but as my should-be-a-professional-soccer-writer brother says on his blog, "...the Swiss were unlucky, but they were also not good enough." On a final note, this blog entry's title was shamelessly stolen from good friend Zeus Magee back in Indiana, who emailed, "I usually like The Swiss on top of the Turkey, but I'll eat the sandwich any way it's prepared."

Also yesterday, Portugal schooled a good Czech team in Geneva solidifying their bid as a tournament contender. The Zürich FanZone was packed to capacity last night, so Steph and I wandered the crammed streets taking in the atmosphere. We're extraordinarily lucky to live in a host city for a tournament most Europeans would die to have, but as I always say, timing is everything...

Franco-German Fusion

2008-06-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

You're probably familiar with the Pareto principle, more commonly known as the 80-20 rule, that says 80% of effects are obtained by only 20% of causes. I love this rule and mis- and over-apply it whenever possible regarding all manner of mundane issues. A perfect application for it struck me again during our mid-May weekend excursion to Strasbourg in France's Alsace region.

The Alsace may ring a bell as a culturally mixed French/German area, a strip perhaps 100 miles long riding the border midway between the two countries (but lies in France). Reviewing my history, it traded hands a few times over several hundred years; France ultimately kept it, but the German roots remain fixed. Steph and I were familiar with some Alsatian recipes and wine, had it on our "short list" of nearby places to visit, and jumped at the chance for a weekend rendezvous in the Alsace capital of Strasbourg with two of Steph's college roommates when proposed earlier this year.

Not surprisingly, Strasbourg is yet another gem in central Europe's embarrassment of riches. Have I mentioned that one of Switzerland's biggest advantages is being central to everything? 2.5 hours on the train and we're there, arriving almost simultaneously as college buddies M (from the couple M&M living in Germany for a year, whom we've already seen in Heidelberg, Zürich and Rome) and newly arrived T, visiting from Chicago and admirably shaking off both her trans-Atlantic jetlag and pre-flight hangover from an extended work bash (we apparently all operate the same in Chicago).

We toured through Strasbourg's lovely and huge Old Town center all weekend, mostly eating and sometimes drinking, with no real additional purpose. Here's where the Pareto part comes in: although you might expect a 50-50 split, roughly equal French and German influence, the tilt was decidedly French. But they latched on to the 20% German that provides 80% of the benefit, namely, beer, sausage, pretzels, spätzli, and some cute rural architectural elements. That's not a knock on Germany, which I greatly enjoy, but let's face it, their traditional cuisine isn't exactly stellar. German signage and menus were fairly prevalent, but the rest was happily undoubtedly French (read, pastries).

The town's historic center is actually a large "Grand Island", or Grande Île, with a maze of quaint restaurants, cafés, shops and tourist fare. Towering above as the town's prevalent feature is the world's fourth-largest church, the Strasbourg Cathedral, enormous and ornately adorned in Gothic style akin to, but not quite as jaw-droppingly amazing as, Cologne's Dom.

The region's gastronomic specialty is tarte flambée (or Flammkuchen in German), a thin pizza-like crust topped with crème fraîche (a thick sour cream), onions and bacon. It goes equally well with a locally-grown dry Riesling wine or beer, I tried them both. Most restaurants offered a dozen tarte flambée variations with various toppings, perhaps reminiscent of pizza but richer and more complex. We also ate dinner in a perfect town-center riverside patio local at a restaurant specializing in spätzli (mine came clustered around a gigantic ham hock) and stopped at a Paris-chain pâtisserie providing the absolutely most fantastic apricot pastry in my known galaxy (T ordered it, not me. Rats!).

Great weekend for all in another dynamite location and a further reminder of what a blast it is touring Europe with friends!

Map below and a few pics here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.73zm66dv&x=0&y=-ailnw3&localeid=en_US

Undertrained, Overcommitted

2008-06-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

If you're superhumanly attentive or monumentally bored, you may notice I sometimes attach a label or 'Category' to the bottom of blog entries. Honestly I haven't the foggiest idea why readers might filter this blog by category but nonetheless, it's easily facilitated by blogging technology. There's one category in particular you haven't seen in a loooong time. You've seen lots of 'Excursions'. You may remember seeing 'Housing' entries before and after we moved. Yet although we consider it a major component of our lives, 'Exercise' hasn't made a blog appearance since way back in Sep/Oct for my/Steph's last big triathlon/marathon, respectively.

Not belonging to a health club here (insufficient value for the Franc), we mostly kept in a shadow of shape by running the nearby farm fields in Kloten in Nov/Dec and running (weather allowing) or swimming in Zürich during Jan-Mar. Maintaining our customary regimen was nearly impossible, since due to initial stress and/or new germs or climate or something, I've been sick literally once every month since moving to Switzerland in November, after not contracting so much as a cold for over a year in Chicago; Steph hasn't fared much better. And this is without our much more frequent Chicago (often late) nightlife activities; we're teetotalers in comparison today.

Naturally, our exercise schedules themselves become less flabby once a goal is set and our bodies follow suit; therefore we had targeted the Winterthur (next big city over from Zürich) half-marathon in mid-May--13.1 miles. We enjoy the half-marathon distance for requiring some (but not too much) organized training, yet ending well before the marathon's masochisitic brutality begins in earnest.

Nonetheless, our demanding European vacation travel schedule (sympathy probably not forthcoming) combined with schizo mountain weather this spring rattled our training schedule. You're perhaps familiar with the endurance-training concept of tapering, that is, pushing yourself to the desired performance level and then relaxing or "tapering" in the week or two approaching the event? Well when Sunday, May 18 rolled around, I considered us extremely "well-tapered". That morning we rode the train (of course) from overcast Zürich to Winterthur, about 25 minutes, then found the registration area within the city, about a 15 minute walk, then obtained our race numbers and stored our extra gear (despite all-German and patently unclear signage), then lined up with another 1,600 fitness freaks at the starting line (1,600 is quaint compared to Chicago athletic events, which always unfortunately attempt the "World's Largest (fill-in-the-blank)" because of Second City syndrome).

Good news was miraculously avoiding rain despite every forecast all week predicting the opposite. Bad news was that every single other competitor had apparently not been gallavanting around Europe all spring and were already accustomed to Swiss germs and were teetotallers and have trained on mountains all their lives. That is, at least not trained on the world's flattest largest glaciated lake bottom for the past 13 years. Still not fully accustomed to Swiss topography, we'd term the race's first half as "rolling"; the entire second half was inclined with the only variation being a gradual burn upwards vs. occasional steep killer hills. Admittedly we never tried for a personal best and would have posted a lackluster result on flat terrain, but could only chuckle finishing in the bottom 10% instead of our Chicago-usual top third. The highlight was undoubtedly the charming Swiss spectators, scattered thinly but conspicuously along the entire course, spiritedly cheering even the dregs like us in their inimitable trilingual fashion, "Hopp, hopp, hopp!" (Swiss-German), "Allez! Allez!" (French), and "Bravo!" (Italian).

Now here is where I maintain that Steph and I, despite all our adjustments and obstacles the past seven months, must finally be clawing back to a semblance of our true social form. In addition to the race, we had several weeks back also planned to entertain our original Zürich relocation guide, the peerless Mr. Mssrli, for dinner that evening. In our Chicago heyday, a random weekend might include an endurance event, dinner party for eight, Chicago bar-hopping until 2am, an impromptu wine and cheese pairing for friends Sunday afternoon, and then baking pastry from scratch Sunday evening for everyone in the office Monday morning. Well maybe not entirely, but our deliberate overcommitment to Mr. Mssrli must mean we're feeling slightly closer to normal.

As further evidence, we insisted on grilling outside as originally planned (our imported U.S.-Weber grill was brand new and, yes, we bought the largest American-sized one available from a Swiss retailer and, no, I won't tell you how overpriced no matter how much you ask) under the new big patio umbrella despite the downpour that evening. And might I add, although we're usually befittingly humble, we nailed all three courses with possibly as good a meal as the best we've enjoyed in any Zürich restaurant to date. Our culturally-comparative conversations with Swiss/British Mr. Mssrli were as entertaining as always and before leaving at 11:30pm (one positive sign) that Sunday night he suggested (unaided) that we meet out for dinner again in the near future (another positive sign).

Thus completely exhausted and probably on the verge of our seventh sickness, we toppled into bed perhaps a touch more satisfied that someday soon our general overall performance in Europe--athletically, socially, psychologically, (linguistically?)--will improve a hair past that bottom 10%.

EM Pics (days 1-3)

2008-06-10T02:47:00.000-07:00

A quick Europa Meister update as of Mon, Day 3, when we bought evening seats in Zürich's temporary FanZone stadium to watch unfortunately the dullest match of the tournament so far, flat France against a bunkered Romania. The late game (watched from home) more than made up for it, however, as a Dutch team played their opening match more like a final game and completely outskilled, outhustled and abused defending whiner world champs Italy, 3-0. Italy's luck finally completely deservingly deserted them, and we'll see how the diving, overdramatic, cheap-shot-artist jerkfaces fare without a complete cake walk to the semifinals like in WC 2006.

Various pics from Saturday's (Day 1) and Monday's (Day 3) craziness here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=2hd8fyj.42v3k5hv&x=0&y=nzqgje&localeid=en_US