alone in the dark

on our second day in spain, we ended up in a nature reserve where the camping season had already ended. the nice lady at the office (after we spent about an hour asking her questions about nearby hikes) said we could camp there for one night anyway, since it was obvious that we had come for "el camping." BUT, as we lay in the tent that night, we kept hearing noises in the night and i was super jumpy. we were alone in the park... or hoped we were! tooooooo scary. in the end, we decided that there was too much potential for a really bad situation. so less than two hours after the tent went up, it was folded up again and we were walking down the dark road to the next town, about 7 km away. a grim situation.

after only 15 minutes though, we came to a little bed and breakfast. we weren't sure they would be awake, but they answered the door and there was the nice lady from the park office! we heard her say to her mom, "these are the girls i was telling you about!" it was pretty hilarious, but i was so overwhelmed with relief that i didn't appreciate the humor until later. i've never been filled with such gratitude and comfort by the sight of two beds in a little cabin...

just can't get enough

day (night) 1 of our spain trip. what do you do during a one-hour layover in paris? if you're me, you run as fast as you can to falafel alley and hope desperately that you don't miss your next train... it was a crazy sprint to the marais and back, i wolfed down said falafel in seconds due to the adrenaline, and s laughed out loud at my red face, vein popping out of my forehead, and hand-fanning-face-while-saying-"la stresse! la stresse!"... but it was worth it! YUM!

updated: i stand corrected! from s: "the vein was in your neck, not your forehead! not even gaston's veins bulge in his forehead! hahahahaha!"

off again

oh goodie, more visitors! s&j are coming tomorrow, then i'm going with s on some kind of tbd adventure in northern spain. we haven't figured out yet how to balance out city/beach/nature time, but we're just going to wing it. so what about all you people who haven't visited me yet? when are you coming??

hagelslag

one of my dutch coworkers brought back a box of hageslag from amsterdam. in his words:

"Hagelslag is the Dutch contribution to world cuisine, much ignored by the rest of the world (except for decorating cakes) awaits you in the kitchenette near the espresso maker and consist of very small pieces of chocolate to be put on bread. For the uninitiated, you have to put enough butter or similar on your bread lest the chocolate pieces will fall off again. It works also great with peanut butter. Maybe next
time."

basically, they're chocolate sprinkles to be eaten with buttered bread. but oh my goodness!!! it's delicious!!! dare i say, even better than chocolate croissants! because you can control the buttery-ness and chocolatey-ness. i've eaten way too many pieces today... YUM!!!

new country

one of my aforementioned hikes was on the east side of switzerland, near a gateway city to liechtenstein. i finished hiking pretty early and figured i may never be in the area again, so i hopped on the "liechtenstein bus" and ended up on my first journey (since moving here) to a country i hadn't visited before!

but actually, it wasn't too exciting. they use swiss francs, speak a similar dialect to swiss german, and it's an open border. in fact, i tried hard both ways to spot the "welcome to liechtenstein" (or opposite) sign, to no avail. no clue where the border was. anyway, at least i can say i had a meal in a new country!

you (swiss engineers) raise me up

i've gone on three great hikes in the past couple weekends in different parts of the country. (including my first real hike in the alps -- i look at my pictures and still can't believe i was actually in such a beautiful place) all of these recent hikes involved those famed feats of swiss engineering: mountain railways and aerial lifts! i.e., cable cars, gondolas, chairlifts, and sturdy trains that go up and down impossibly steep inclines.

these rides provide stunning views and take the most difficult part out of high-altitude hikes. but even more importantly, the closed-compartment ones provided me with something i've really been missing: a place to sing at the top of my lungs!!! it's not something i can do in my quiet swiss apartment, and i don't drive here, so i've really been repressed. but not anymore! sure, the cars aren't completely sealed so people traveling the other way or people on the ground may catch a bit of it, but not nearly enough to be painful and i simply beam at them so they'll just think i'm ridiculous more than a disturber of the peace. hee hee!

rheinfall

after p&b left, i spent one day recovering then went right back to my solo traveling ways. this time off to schaffhausen to visit europe's biggest waterfall (due to width, not height). it's no niagara, but there's a viewing platform *right* next to the falls so i hung out there for a while -- glorious! all i really want in life is to live near water.

my friends!

the whirlwind trip through three countries was just fantastic, but it was even better being with friends from home! i miss you guys!

the whole week's worth of adventures would be too much for a single blog post, so i'll just mention some of the most memorable things:

• our first night, sharing a sleeper train cabin with loudly snoring korean guys. a foreshadowing of things to come?
• really, really great falafel in paris! so good we had it two days in a row.
• everything is closed in europe in august!
• i can't get enough of chocolate crêpes and gelato! if you know how extremist i can be about some things, well, yeah -- it was gross.
  
• small treasures can be found in cheesy street markets.
• i can now order radler in five countries.
• p loves the durian bear!
• rick steves is a pretty good guide.
  
• who wants to go to venice with me in the off-season?
  

the embargo on people pictures is now being lifted. enjoy! (collage courtesy of picasa)

outta here

p & b are in town as my first visitors, so we'll be traveling around france and italy for the next week or so. woo hoo! this is especially good timing because this weekend is the zurich street parade, "the largest house and techno parade in the world." we'll be escaping just before over a million crazies descend upon this usually tame city. yow!

charming, sexy ewan is irresistible

OH MY GOODNESS!!! at the end of a long series of misadventures, i actually got a ticket for guys & dolls on saturday and saw earnest ewan from the THIRD ROW! there were moments when he and his brilliant smile were no more than 15 feet away from me... aaaaaahhhhhhhh!

curry curry

swiss food is notoriously uninteresting, so i was excited to be called to london for a short work trip. i had the BEST bhengan masala ever on wednesday night. yum!!! i found a korean restaurant on the way to the indian place, so i'm going to get some db3 today! hooray for london!

but there's some sad news too. i just found out that my great love ewan mcgregor is playing in guys and dolls right now in london! but they're sold out for the rest of my stay -- alas!!!

germany, swiss national day, and message from mom

we had a 3-day weekend last weekend so i braved the 8-hour (each way) train journey to osnabrück, germany to visit j. he was the consummate host! except that he forgot that you're supposed to let your guests beat you in chess. it was nice to hang out with a "local" (my zurich life is full of temporary ex-pats), and i enjoyed seeing j in his native habitat. i realized that my german hasn't improved at all in the last month. also, i discovered that i like radler (beer + sprite), though i still drink it at the same rate as regular beer -- last estimated to be one every five hours.

got back monday night in time for a nice swiss national day bbq on a roof. we saw lots of little fireworks shows from a distance and it reminded me of july 4 from our roof at home. i tried quorn for the first time -- not bad!

and to preclude further comments from bored fans, i will end with a quote from a birthday email from my mom (with age obscured to preserve the illusion of youth):

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I can't believe you are already XX!!! It's time to look around seriously for you know WHO."

laundry day

last friday, after passing my 3-week anniversary here, i decided it was time to attack the laundry problem. (yes, i have a LOT of underwear -- i wasn't even running out.) downstairs i went with my newly bought detergent and big blue laundry bag. there were a few german-french-italian instructions on an open flap at the bottom of the washing machine, so i tried understanding them, loaded the machine, pushed some buttons, and let it start. did i say open flap? all of a sudden, the machine was barfing large quantities of water out the front. this didn't seem quite right, but i wasn't sure, since there was a drain in the room where the water was properly headed, so it could have been some weird swiss thing. i was worried, though, and thought maybe i shouldn't have put ALL my essentials in that first load. after a few minutes, the machine gave an error code that indicated (surprise): no water. i tried again, this time attempting to close the flap. however, right behind the flap was a large open pipe, so when the spewing began again, the flap was no help in holding back the deluge. i looked around helplessly. conveniently, the instruction manuals (three versions of each) for the washer and dryer were in the room. i found the french one since i had the best chance of understanding it, and saw some pictures of a removable part that plugged the offending pipe. of course, the plug thing was sitting just to the side of the machine, right in front of me where i was sure to not see it... i screwed it in place, started the thing up again, and heard the satisfying sound of water collecting in a basin. success at last!

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!