swiss cheese and efficiency

although recent political events have left me less enamored with my adopted country than before, i still find myself reacting to it positively now and then.

last night i went out for my annual fondue. i can only handle it once a year because it's so horrifying how much cheese gets consumed. there's only one place to do it: le dézaley by the grossmünster. (keep that in mind, my legions of future visitors!) another thing to keep in mind: fondue can only be consumed in winter -- even i've become swiss enough to gag at the thought of cheese fondue on a warm day. yuck! anyway, as soon as you walk into a fondue restaurant, this terrible cheesy stink engulfs you. it's really gross. but, in my third winter in zurich, i have to say i've gotten used to it, actually kind of like it, and am considering having fondue more than once a year now! (eww)

as for point #2. i went to the equivalent of the swiss DMV today to apply for a swiss driver's license. (and oh NO, i horrified myself just now by almost typing "driving license" because i'm surrounded by all these europeans who say that instead.) it was an amazing experience. i printed and filled out the application at my office, walked into the DMV, stood in a line with one person who then immediately got an open counter, waited about 10 seconds for another counter to open up, gave my documents to the lady, waited about 3 minutes while she typed some stuff and made copies of my docs, and then she said i'd get it in the mail in 2 weeks, goodbye! it was astounding. go switzerland.

mesopotamian video potluck

three things to talk about today!

1. i'm not really a nerd, just a nerd wannabe. however, i have a few nerdy tendencies, one of which is strategy board games. my latest obsession is tigris and euphrates. for a long time i couldn't win, which made me even more obsessed, but even now after a few victories, i'm always looking for chances to play it! since getting the game, i haven't looked twice at my old standby puerto rico, which is also really good but (at the moment) doesn't compare with the complexity of T&E. not that complexity is always good -- i don't like chess at all. but oooh, T&E is just excellent!

2. mr. button, inspired by my past life in moviemaking, made one of his own! please be so kind as to give it 5 stars. :)

3. last sunday was my first potluck in zurich! i instigated it, of course. these europeans don't seem to be familiar with the concept, and mr. button actually considers it socially questionable. but despite the fear, uncertainty, and doubt, it was lots of fun and brought back all my best memories of the potlucks we used to have at the beanpit. i hope to make it a monthly tradition, but i've said that about lots of things that never ended up happening again. we shall see! it's a chilly autumn and there's not much to do before the snow comes other than going to people's houses to eat and play board games... hee hee.

month of adventure

september was filled with fun and adventure! the first week was a sailing trip in croatia. it was by no means glamorous, as some have suggested it might be. actually, i would say it was really roughing it! cramped sleeping quarters, using water sparingly, tiny bathroom that couldn't be used when parked in marinas, zero noise insulation,... but somehow the six of us survived the week with no casualties. we started from the city of split, and hopped around to some nearby islands, distance varying daily depending on the weather. one of the best days was when we didn't sail at all, instead renting scooters on the island of hvar. that was lots of fun until it started raining... really hard! poop.

in the second half of the month, we discovered two really fun things to do in switzerland! (this is directed at you, prospective visitors!) the first is a self-serve ropes course above the most beautiful swiss city (luzern, if you've been paying attention). i learned that doing ropes courses in teams (one person belaying, to "build trust") is purely a moneymaking maneuver
on the part of companies out to collect corporate dollars under the banner of "team-building." actually you can just clip yourself onto a safety line and it's much safer that way. anyway, this course has plenty of challenging bits, plus some fantastic zip lines! my favorite! tb and i had so much fun that we went again the next weekend. :)

the second discovered really fun thing to do is canyoning! this is an impossible-to-describe excursion that involves "following a river down a canyon." that's how it was explained to me, but it doesn't describe it at all really. it's more like jumping, sliding, and abseiling down waterfalls and into natural pools. definitely terrifying at times ("don't think, just jump!"), but unforgettable (you actually slide down ropes *in* waterfalls), and i can't wait to try it again! the slides were the most fun for me... the highest jump was 10 meters (32 feet) !!! but i was too chicken to do that one. but anyway, the next time someone visits me in the summer months, we're there.

p.s. when i used to work at HQ and there were enormous bins of junk food around every corner, i once overdosed on peanut m&m's and was unable to eat m&m's for a couple years. but i just ate a little bag right now, so it's time for me to announce that my m&m OD has been cured. thank you.

summer

oh dear, has it really been over 3 months since my last post? it's been a nice lazy summer, and the season's laziness has transferred to my blog-writing. (i'm usually so diligent, after all.) i passed my 2 year anniversary of moving to zurich, and now that i've been in europe for a while i'm traveling a lot less and doing more around here. the days of the lightning weekend trips are over! (sort of) since my last post, i've still traveled a little for work (israel), family (korea), and friends (romania, vienna), but i've also finally started doing things that make zurich feel a bit more like home: starting a [balcony] garden, celebrating birthdays, inviting myself over to friends' places, and getting up close and personal with (read: nearly smothered by) seething masses of swissies during the once-every-three-years züri-faescht. yum.

i also just got back from 2 weeks in california, and despite one sleep-champion night of 17 hours of sleep, jet lag has been plaguing me ever since. good thing i have the jeeves and wooster omnibus to entertain me!

even prettier than zurich

to prepare for our sailing trip to croatia this summer, last weekend we did a practice run on the vierwaldstättersee, also known as lake lucerne. now, why did it take me almost two years to realize that lucerne is even prettier than zurich?! the town and lake are just as picturesque, plus it has stunning mountains right around the lake, rather than visible off in the distance on a clear day as in z-town. also, the lake is bigger, more interestingly shaped, and has enough wind for sailing. perfect!

hmm, now i've made it sound like i actually like sailing... but it's more complicated than that. the entire time (that would be for about 8 hours last saturday) i'm either screaming in terror or barely holding in my screams of terror. but part of me still manages to like it. it's a bit stressful, being so torn. anyway, we didn't flip over, thereby accomplishing my primary goal, and even though some people say this boat actually can't flip over, i was proud of our crew. unfortunately, there's now some talk about practicing next time "in rough conditions"... eek!

settlers and trains in rainy zurich

after skipping spring and jumping straight from winter into summer, we now seem to be either back in spring or fast forwarding to fall. it's going to rain all week! therefore, there was nothing better to do last weekend than play games and eat a lot. settlers, scrabble, and trains, hooray! a very strange wii game was also thrown into the mix (wario something), and there were some delicious pancakes in there too. that, plus being terrorized by moths and nightmares, was my weekend.

the best weekend trip in europe

i couldn't let a second year go by (my visit there last year also coincided with one of this blog's hibernation periods) without mentioning that the best weekend trip in europe is without a doubt catching the keukenhof gardens during the two months of the year that they're open. (late march to late may) lots and lots of flower pictures here!

now that i'm a boring permanent swiss employee, i can no longer claim to be living the exciting life of being on an international assignment. so this blog may degenerate into something like a weekend update, but hey, one of my favorite blogs is a weekend update! (hi hwh) and i still manage to sneak in some interesting destinations over weekends, although i've seriously calmed down my travel schedule since last year. there will be much more simply enjoying the zurich lake, trying to learn how to take care of plants, and hanging out with friends now that i have some. :) but anyway, this is just to say that i'll try to write more regularly!

happy 2007

oh dear, this blog certainly tends to suffer around the holidays. what have i missed? a trip to athens in december, a lovely couple of weeks at home for christmas, and a few ski trips in the austrian, swiss, and italian alps since i've been back in europe. (making up for squandered time last winter) as usual, all the pictures worth seeing are here.

i had to decide this month whether i'd stay in switzerland for good (i.e. transfer to become a swiss employee), or move back to the states. well folks, you heard it here first: i'm staying in zurich! eeeeeeeeeeeek! but not before i spend a few weeks in the states saying temporary goodbyes and trying to convince more people to come visit me. so hopefully i'll be seeing some of you soon, if not on one continent then on another.

copenhagen

i can't say anything bad about copenhagen since my desk neighbor is danish... i visited a museum where i enjoyed sculpture for the first time. (the burghers made another appearance, too!) and saw this memorable quote about women: "stupid, perhaps, but dazzling and bewitching" (baudelaire). i walked around for six hours on sunday and ate three servings of danish danish. all my guide books said the little mermaid statue was small and disappointing, but she was quite lovely! the hippie town christiania was not my thing (surprise), but the rest of the city was cute. i missed the opening of the christmas market at tivoli by 3 days, oh well. overall the weekend wasn't too taxing. maybe i'm tiring of these solo travels through the capitals of europe, but i don't think i've hit even half the countries yet!

stockholm and berlin

i'm back to my weekend travels now that the beautiful weather's over in zurich (the temperature dropped 15 degrees right on november 1 - this country can be really eerie with its punctuality). recent stops: stockholm and berlin! and since i'm so tardy with these blog posts, i should point out that my picasa web album is kept much more up to date and you can subscribe to it via rss here. (thanks, h)

stockholm reminded me of zurich (but COLDER) - scenic and walkable, a couple nice tourist attractions, but i got my fill in my two days there. the people really are tall, blond, and possessing perfect english.

berlin put me in a weird mood with all the stuff about the wall and communism. but it also made my heart soar with the pergamon altar and the inside of the reichstag dome, which is undeniably star trek!

the happiest place on earth!

(or one of them anyway) my favorite weekend excursion yet: disneyland paris! hee hee, so much for becoming more european. it was soooooo delightful. mostly identical to the original disneyland except for lots of stuff being in french, with a few new things to check out. (do they have buzz lightyear laser blast in anaheim too?) there's also a companion park, walt disney studios, that's an exact copy of universal studios so i could get my fill of "i love movies!" feeling for the year. hooray!

one tidbit from the weekend: one day while eating dinner, we were wondering why there were so many (literally) screaming kids outside. we weren't close to any rides or anything. when we finally went out to check, we found a monsters inc. "scream-o-meter" right outside our restaurant. sigh!

moscow

as i mentioned, i was in moscow for a couple days. i didn't really like it. traffic is amazing and amazingly unpredictable, there are huge ten-lane thoroughfares all over the city (oh stalin!) making it unpleasant to walk around, and most of the landmark buildings have that communist feel -- trying to be great but ending up somehow hollow, like they were either trying too hard or their artists weren't as talented as they would/should have been. the only thing i went a bit crazy over was taking pictures of st. basil's cathedral. i definitely thought that building was special!

plaster casts

i'm usually not that interested in sculpture at museums, mostly because i don't know how to appreciate it and partly because i feel like it's not that special to see *the originals* since exact copies can easily be made. (e.g. 'bird poop david', who is much more accessible than the real guy) i'm in moscow, and at the state museum of fine arts, they have plaster casts of lots of famous statues. (see photo quickly taken while the guard's back was turned) i was like, hi david! oh hi venus! hi belevedere torso and caryatids and panting horse head from the acropolis! (i felt very cultured at recognizing them until i read a website on this topic and realized there were tons of others that i had no idea were famous...) i'm used to seeing rodin copies everywhere, but this struck me as really weird. at first i was like, this is kind of sad. they didn't have any great statues so they just copied a bunch. but then i thought, hey, the russians get to see all these great sculptures from museums around the world, all in one place. so as long as they admit that they're all copies, what's wrong with that? i still think it's a little iffy, but am leaning towards thinking it's a good thing.

active weekend

it took four days before i could walk normally again after last weekend! sure, everyone in the office was either laughing at me or giving me funny looks, but i love the feeling of being totally worn out.

on saturday i fulfilled my longtime wish of visiting the italian part of switzerland, ticino. a few of us did a bike ride from bellinzona, ticino's capital and a cute little town that was my favorite part of the trip, to locarno, a lake-side resort town where we picked a restaurant that left us with the impression that ticinese food is more swiss than italian. (boo) ticino is a little too far away for just a day trip, but you know me.

on sunday, a coworker organized a klettersteig trip. you wear a harness and attach yourself to a cable running up and down some steep crag, and the farthest you can fall is the length of cable between points where it's bolted down - about 4 meters at most. i loved the going up part - the height was scary but thrilling, and it wasn't like anything i'd done before! but the down part totally killed me to the point where my legs were getting quite wobbly, and even when the klettersteig part ended i had to walk downhill so slowly that we missed the last chair lift down... so had to hike another hour and a half down the mountain... at the end, i kept saying how happy i was to be sitting down again, and everyone thought i didn't like the trip much since my best memory was of it ending. but i'll definitely go again! i hear there's one where you climb up and there's a friendly cable car at the top waiting to take you down...

holy moly

i thought i was getting used to swiss prices, until i ran into $23/lb tomatoes the other day. yowsers!!! (they were good, but not the best ever.)

too much flying

i'm just recovering from a stretch of 14 days where i flew on 8 of them. eek. that's enough flying for now.

highlight of the travels: b&k's wedding! woo hoo! worth visiting chicago for, though i will hold an eternal grudge against that city for having the worst street signage ever. california is of course the best, but it was even a relief to come back to suisseland. anyway, enjoy this random candid photo that i happen to like a lot.

maaaltaaaa

malta is a tiny speck of an island south of sicily, and it's a good thing there were discounted flights there last weekend, otherwise i might have missed it on my quest to visit all the countries is europe!

it's nice and hot there, an okay beach destination but it also made me realize how well-preserved bermuda is. (the one car per family quota really keeps that island beautiful.) the most exciting thing about malta is their ancient temple ruins, including the oldest free-standing ruins in the world! older than stonehenge or the pyramids -- i love that stuff. also, the neighbouring island of gozo is supposed to be the island of calypso from the odyssey. gobble gobble gobble (that's me eating this stuff up).

three little things

1. it's not european travel, but i went to bermuda the other week, woo hoo! (that's me driving a boat)

2. emabarrassingly, i was interviewed for the google korea blog.

3. even more embarrassingly, i took advantage of a rainy swiss national day to cut some video footage that's over two years old... (apologies to wham)

frogs

i've recently discovered that people are very amusing when you ask them what noise a frog makes. this is especially entertaining when asking a german speaker. ask the next one you see!

the frenchies go down at last

whew, i can go back to the rest of my life now! i was hoping for germany to go all the way, but preferred the italians over the french in the end. and in case you think i've stopped traveling, i haven't! four asians came together from four different countries to watch the germany-sweden game in munich -- woo hoo! (pics; more pics) i had to watch today's final in america, so i missed out on the italians honking their way through zurich's streets in jubilation. but it was nice to fully understand the commentary for once. every time i'm in the us or uk, i feel this pleasant surprise at being able to understand the people around me. darn those swiss with their unlearnable dialect!