the gentle downhill slope

it's official!

i love this place

most things are closed on sundays, so it's the perfect time to go hiking! just like the last time i went hiking, every time i turned a corner, i found the scenery so beautiful that i had to take a picture. then at home, i realized i had a million pictures of green countryside, cute farmhouses, blue lakes, dramatically cloudy sky, and this time, snow-capped alps in the distance. the photos are almost boring in their similarity, but when living through it, every turn broke my heart again with its beauty.

milan!

i was thinking of making my first trip out of the country a visit to my long-lost beer-brewing cousins in belgium, but the train planning proved too difficult for this novice, so i opted for the easy direct line to milan instead. even though the day involved waking up at 5 and getting home at midnight, i had an incredible time!

i emerged from the subway stop in one of the main plazas at the same time as a loud american guy. as soon as he came out onto the square, he started shouting, "oh my goodness, LOOK at this place!" and generally being loud and flailing his arms. i was embarrassed for him, but inside i was screaming the same thing. wow!

il duomo is the most intricate cathedral i've seen -- i guess that's what they mean by gothic. it was a little much for me, but the scale of it is amazing. i walked through the glass-roofed galleria, passed by the la scala opera house, then a stroll through the ritzy fashion district. i thought i wasn't a museum type of tourist, but i must be changing. (g, will you ever travel with me again?) i spent a couple hours at the pinacoteca di brera and emerged with a few favorites from the afternoon. then i walked over to the castello sforzesco and the big park behind it. then on to the church where leonardo's "last supper" is housed. apparently you have to reserve way in advance to get in to see it, so i just looked around the church proper and snapped a picture of the entrance to the last supper area. after that, i had just enough time to get slightly lost on the way back to the train station and hopped on the last train to zurich. whew!

overall, the city is grungier than zurich. people kept telling me before i came here that switzerland is so clean, but since it's all i've known so far, clean is normal to me. italy? not so clean. i took my bathroom break at the four seasons hotel while i was hanging with the fashionistas -- that was clean!

language-wise, even though i had my canzoni going full-time on the ipod to get my brain in gear for italian, i didn't have a chance to drop any lines like "the gently blowing breeze is changing my destiny tonight." i did manage to successfully order a couple gelati though.

it was so much fun!

i was blonde too

i forgot to mention a story from last saturday. in the cab from one club to the next, my slightly inebriated companions got into a conversation about how they were all really blonde when they were kids. (they're mostly in the darker blonde / light brown hair camp now.) comments such as "i was a blonde angel" and "i was really, really blonde" abounded. i was thoroughly amused by how the demographic of people i hang out with has changed so dramatically in just a couple weeks...

lakeside

when i found out s was going to the zurich office a long time ago, i was so jealous and just kept picturing him strolling around the lake. even more than yodeling through the alps, it's my mental image of switzerland. i was a little bummed that i didn't get a chance to escape the city this weekend, but i did walk all over town, visiting a bunch of parks on both sides of the lake. it was hot and humid, and the whole city was out sunning and swimming. and ironman switzerland was going on! those people are amazing. i spent a good amount of time just admiring them! p called me on my new cell phone and it was my first contact with home since i got here. sniff sniff.

my lungs! my lungs!

did i say i was coming out of retirement? jazz last week was pretty nice, but this saturday i found myself at a techno club, and although i felt like i was "experiencing europe," it wasn't really me. we didn't stay there too long, instead making our way over to a place that sw calls a hellhole... as you can see, it was a great night out! and although the people i was with were nice and i'm getting to know them better, boy do they smoke a lot. yup, europe.

snickers on pluto

i did my first hike yesterday! started a short tram ride from my house, climbed up a bazillion stairs to the top of uetliberg, then started down a path called "Planetenweg": the solar system at a 1:1,000,000,000 scale.

first, the sun, followed by mercury just a short distance away. looking at the second picture, you can see the sun in the back left and the stone marking mercury in the foreground. mercury was about the size of a bb. although i passed venus, earth/moon, mars, and ceres (what?) pretty quickly, i knew it would be a while before i got to the end so i decided that i'd take a break and eat my snickers bar when i got to pluto. well, despite the lessons imparted to me by dr. ω about the unexpected scale of things, my poor snickers bar got increasingly warmer in my pocket as it took me -- walking at a brisk pace on an easy path and stopping only to snap pictures of the planet markers -- a full HOUR AND A HALF to get pluto! yow!

of course, it was all gorgeous and i loved every minute of it.

heeding my lesson from the night before, i ate a nutritious dinner (including multivitamin) and slept a solid 15.5 hours! whew, i'm back to normal!

hungrybee

you may be wondering why this suissebee is posting at 7 am on a sunday! i thought i woke up early yesterday (6:30), but today i was up at 3 am!!! this is VERY unusual. after all, it's been said that i should be on the show "man versus beast" to see who could hibernate longer: me or a bear...

i think i'm over my jet lag, so my only guess is that i was too hungry to sleep. my stomach was bothering me last night so i skipped dinner (and have generally been eating poorly -- the hpb is temporarily on leave). i think all this dairy is starting to get to me, and i ran out of lactaid yesterday. (side note: this is worrying me quite a bit. i think the shipping people lumped my box of lactaid pills in with the contraband vitamins they removed from my boxes... so now what? somebody better visit me soon!) anyway, these swiss people sure like their alpine milk products. i don't have any food at home so i came to work to eat breakfast. and what did i just eat? cereal with whole milk, yogurt, and an ice cream bar! if i never post to this blog again, you'll know what happened to me...

parking in bern

i got up insanely early on saturday so i walked around zurich before meeting up with my fellow daytrippers at noon. alas, i confirmed that outrageously-cheap-in-the-states h&m is about-normally-priced in switzerland. finally got some francs! then spent a good 45 minutes exploring every aisle of a grocery store. my family beer does not seem to have penetrated mainstream zurich yet; i'll have to start pushing it with the locals. and i was disappointed in not finding my favorite kind of milka in the chocolate aisle. where will i get my BUTTERKEKS! BUTTERKEKS! ?

so anyway, four of us drove to bern, the capital. we had absolutely no plans so most of our time was spent aimlessly walking around, getting food, then getting drinks. not the most exciting trip, but there were a few redeeming factors. it's a medieval city, so it's very cute. fast river, unique city layout. and the parking lots are very safe:

the other funny thing about the parking lot in bern was that there were all these spaces marked "reserved for women". our german driver (female) claims that these spaces are wider than normal. take that as you will.

we took the scenic route home via thun, interlaken, and luzern. translation: we drove through a lot of incredible lake and mountain scenery. wow! can't wait to spend some quality time with the alps.

time for some ice cream

i'm having fun! met a bunch of people last night from all over, including my first sb! haha. we went to see war of the worlds. i wasn't really paying attention because i was trying to read the double (german & french) subtitles the whole time. and i was introduced to a truly bizarre swiss custom: they abruptly stop movies in the middle -- sometimes even mid-sentence, i hear -- and you see a little commercial for ice cream, followed by a 10 minute intermission! apparently, this is truly tragic when the movie is good. but it seems to work -- of the four of us, two people got ice cream!

it was a fun night full of firsts. first tram ride, first time down the city's main street, first time seeing the river and the lake, first time walking around the city at night, first time ordering at a restaurant, first time going out (bar then jazz club),... this bee is coming out of retirement!

i'm new here

a few things have happened since last night that have been reminding me that i'm still new here.

1. since i'm still franc-less (recall euro blunder), and didn't manage to remedy that yesterday, i was driven to taking a roll of toilet paper from the office bathroom (since i'm running low at the apt). my laptop bag was quite poofy as i left last night.
2. i couldn't find my way out of the building yesterday. this is not a large building.
3. i discovered, to both great delight and dismay, that i can indeed take a hands-free shower. that's right, the attachment thing pivots downward. okay, you can stop laughing at me now.
4. once again because i'm franc-less, i need to borrow money from a coworker for dinner/movie tonight. sadly, not much has changed from my mv days.

that's right, i'm hanging out with my coworkers outside of work! so i guess some things are changing. so i need to run now. but not before leaving you with a picture of a cuuuuute dog that came to work today. she was SO well-behaved all day, until we left her unattended with the leftover cold cuts from tgif...

smells like europe

i miss you guys already!

i stopped in london on my way over, which was fitting because it was my spring london visit (+ lunch with g) that got me started on this whole zurich thing. i was watching the news with a huge crowd of people when they announced that london would be hosting the 2012 olympics. cheers and applause all around! i cried a little. everyone was so happy... and today it's so sad.

i got into zurich and found my apartment all right, even though i was a dork and got euros instead of swiss francs before leaving. (too tired!) good thing the taxi driver didn't mind, with a generous exchange rate. the apartment is all blue and green and turquoise, with a hint of that artificial fruity smell that reminds me of europe -- something in their soaps and detergents. i'm not sure i'm going to like this living alone thing. what if there are silverfish???

i unpacked just the essentials. (can you spot the two familiar friends on my bed?) where are my boxes? i need my hangers. the shipping people busted me for trying to send vitamins and a swiss army knife. oops! the fact that my boxes aren't here yet makes me feel justified in bringing so much in my luggage. too bad the "north face" bag couldn't make it to europe before dying. that was worth it just for the laughs.

i had an hour of daylight left so i walked around randomly / got lost a little. passed some tourist destinations without realizing it. my ears are starting to recognize swiss german. i hope i can pick some up in addition to german german. at night, i discovered that my shower is either made for a giant or is only meant for handheld use. it really could be either. on my first day at work, i confirmed that it is indeed an office (mostly) full of tall white men! from all over europe, and they all speak way more languages than i do! i love it. one of the snack rooms is all chocolate; not a snack room like in mv, but i think i'll live.