EM Days 7-8 - kein Bier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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%.