December Redux - Mürren

Right before Brian and I headed off to NC, we spent the weekend in Mürren, a small town above the Lauterbrunnen Valley in the Bernese Oberland. The Bernese Oberland is, by some accounts, the most beautiful part of Switzerland and where the most famous peaks of the Alps are: the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau.

To get to Mürren, a car-free town on the edge of a mountain, we took a train from Zurich to Bern, from Bern to Interlaken, and then from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen. From Lauterbrunnen, we hopped on a gondola up the side of a mountain and then took a cogwheel train to Mürren. We arrived in the middle of what some might call a blizzard, and walked through that mess for about 1/2 mile to find our hotel. Half the fun is the journey, right?

Mürren is known for its views of the three famous peaks and as the launching point to the Schilthorn, another peak in the Alps, famous for the revolving restaurant on top that was featured in the James Bond movie, Her Majesty's Secret Service. Due to the blizzard-y weather, we spent most of Saturday on a snowy walk down the mountain (pro-tip: you can take cable cars back up the mountain), reading books, and eating tasty food at our hotel's restaurant.



On Sunday, the weather cleared a little bit for us to get some nice views before we headed back down the mountain to Zurich. I loved our hotel, the Hotel Bellevue, and we definitely want to go back on a clear day to see all the mountains!

December Redux - Cheese and Castles

In December, we had our first visitors - Kari, Brian's research partner from UW, and Eric and Morgan from California.

Kari, along with her friends Rike and Heinz, shared lots of meals with us while she was here, including fondue and raclette, the two cheesy traditional dishes of Switzerland. I'm sure that most people here are familiar with fondue- in Switzerland, it is pretty much only served with cubed bread and it's traditional to have shots of kirsch (brandy made with cherries), supposedly to make sure the cheese doesn't clump together in your stomach.

Raclette is both the dish and a type of cheese. In the traditional method, a big block of raclette cheese is heated under a special grill under the top layer of the cheese gets all melty. The top melty layer is then scraped onto boiled potatoes (usually) and served with cornichons and pickled onions and perhaps pickled mushrooms and baby corn. Raclette is sometimes also prepared in a mini grill pan for those who don't want to buy the giant block of cheese. Warning: raclette cheese is moderately stinky so your kitchen will smell like it for a few days.

In addition to eating cheesy dishes, Kari got a tour of Google and some shopping and tourist days as well as a talk at ETH, the technical university in Zurich.

Only a day later, Eric and Morgan strolled into town on their European tour. For the day, we went down to Bellinzona, a small city in the southern Italian part of Switzerland. Bellinzona is known for the three castles that dominate the town and is a UNESCO heritage site. (That night, we made them eat raclette, to continue the cheese theme).


The following week, Brian and I had booked a table on the Fonduetram. As it sounds, it's a tram that serves you fondue while driving you around the city. It's a little kitschy, but the fondue was tasty and included a nice appetizer and light dessert. The best part is probably seeing people and views out the window - however, with the fondue, the windows steam up a bit. To help out with this, they provide each table with a squeegee to clean the windows.

December Redux - Christmas Markets

I am taking an intensive German class, but it was canceled for December, so I had some extra time on my hands. When Brian headed to the US for work, I went up to Frankfurt and Dresden in Germany with my friend Dana. Germany is famous for their Christmas markets, which fill town squares for a few days or weeks. At the markets, vendors sell Christmas gifts and ornaments, often homemade, as well as steaming mugs of gluhwein and traditional foods. Switzerland and Austria also have Christmas markets, but even they will tell you that Germany's are best.

On Wednesday night, we grabbed the train from Zurich to Frankfurt, about a four hour ride. Frankfurt and its market was fine - not too exciting, but it got our palates ready for the Dresden market. Frankfurt does have the European Central Bank and the giant Euro statue, where the Occupy Frankfurt movement had set up camp.

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After Frankfurt, we jumped on a train to Dresden, about a five hour ride away in East Germany. Dresden was destroyed during World War II as a result of Allied fire bombing and it has rebuilt significantly in the last decade. I thought it was an amazing city and look forward to going back with Brian soon! The Dresden Christmas market was actually a series of markets that stretched through the city, and had tons of delicious food and interesting ornaments.





After a day exploring Dresden, Dana and I jumped on a night train back to Zurich. If we had ridden during the day, we could have gotten back to Zurich in 8-9 hours, but the CityNightLine takes about 12 hours as there are more extended stops along the way. Dana and I got a sleeper car - of which I have no pictures. When you walk into the compartment, there are three beds on either side. The middle bed on either side can be lowered to turn the bottom bunk into a seating area, and there is extended storage next to the top bunk. We had signed up for a four person car, meaning that two other women could have been assigned to our compartment, but we ended up with the coach to ourselves, all the better to eat our snacks, watch bad movies, and claim the bottom bunks. We rolled back into Zurich Hauptbahnhof (main station) at 8:30am on Saturday - lots of fun!

Bern

In the past two weeks, I've been to Bern twice. Bern is the de facto capital of Switzerland and about an hour by train from Zurich. It is known for its bears... and I think that's maybe all. But it was a nice and cute little city!

Two weeks ago, Brian and I had a little Sunday trip to the west. We did a whole walking tour of the city... which was pretty empty since it was (a) Sunday and (b) November.



Our main intention of heading to Bern was to see the Rendez Vous Bundesplatz light show. In October and November, it was a twice nightly light show projected on the Swiss Parliament building. It was really cool! Here's a video of some of the best parts. Funnily, though it was completely empty in Bern that day, at 7pm, EVERYONE in Bern was apparently in the square.

About a week later, I headed back to Bern with my friend Linda for the Zibile-Märit, or Onion Market. The Zibile-Märit is an annual festival in Bern celebrating the noble onion. Farmers and other vendors set up stalls throughout the old town, and starting at 4am sell onions, wreaths and ribbons made of onions, and little figurines made of... yes, onions. You can buy onion pies and onion soup all over town... as well as big bags of confetti. When walking around, little kids throw confetti at you and at each other, as well as bop people on the head with plastic squeaky hammers. Because why not?

Pilatus

The first out-of-Zurich trip that Brian and I took when we moved here in July was to Luzern and Mt. Pilatus. Luzern, about 45 minutes south of Zurich, is a tourist mecca, with a beautiful lake and boat trips, access to three major mountains, and lots of pretty and historic buildings and bridges. A popular activity in the summer is to do the "Golden Roundtrip", which takes you from Luzern by boat to Alpnachstad, up to Pilatus on the Pilatus Bahn (the steepest cogwheel train in the world), down Pilatus on the other side by cable car and gondola to Kriens, and then back to Luzern by bus. While we enjoyed our multi-modal trip, the view from Pilatus that day was clouded in, so we couldn't see much of the view from the top.



This past weekend, we took a trip back, after first checking the webcam on the top of Pilatus to make sure we'd get a good view. The Pilatus Bahn closes at the end of October, so we could only make our way up from Kriens. At the top, it was much less crowded than in July, much windier, and much clearer. We had a great view of Central Switzerland, including all the surrounding peaks and of Luzernsee (Lake Luzern).



With the addition of a sausage and roesti for lunch and some raclette and glühwein that we picked up at the Luzern HB Christmas market, we successfully negated any hiking we might have accidentally done on the mountain. A lovely Sunday!

Zurich Apartment

We've been in our new apartment for more than two months now, but didn't finish decorating until we finally had some people over for dinner. Sometimes it just takes a little pressure! Here are pictures of our place.


We had heard a number of horror stories of new residents to Zurich viewing hundreds of apartments, applying to dozens, and coming up empty. While we did go to a few very busy apartment viewings, in the end, we got the first apartment we applied for, so it was a lot less trouble than we were expecting (your mileage may vary). We have a great 3 room apartment (more on how the Swiss count rooms later) in Zurich - it's close to a grocery store, restaurants, and trams/buses. In addition, it's about a 15 minute walk to work for Brian and a 5 minute tram ride to the Zurich main train station.

As you would expect, apartments in Zurich generally differ from those in the US:

• Light fixtures and window treatments are generally not included. When Brian moved in to the apartment (I was in the US), the only lights in the apartment were in the bathroom and over the oven - he went around with one desk lamp and his head lamp until I could help make those important design decisions. For the windows, all the windows have outdoor shutters, so we've only put curtains up in the bedroom for now.



• Built-in closets are not the norm. We did see a few apartments with built-in closets, but for the most part, your wardrobe (likely from IKEA) comes with you. This makes it harder to hide messes!
• Apartments and houses are counted by the number of rooms they have. In the US, we would call our apartment a 1 bedroom apartment. Here, we have a 3 room apartment - not counting the bathroom or the kitchen, there is a dining area/entry way, a den, and a bedroom. However, if we arranged it a bit differently, there could be two bedrooms and a small living area. The math on counting rooms is a bit fuzzy to me, though- when is an area 1.5 rooms versus 1?
• Payments are different. Checks are not done at all in Switzerland - instead, the preferred way is to do direct payments from one bank account to another. In addition, apartment deposits are secured in a bank account that is both in our name and our landlord's name - and deposits range from 1 to 3 months rent (3 months in our case).
• Kitchens are smaller and rather sleek. In most newer places we saw, the kitchens were very IKEA-fied. The fridges and dishwashers are hiding behind the cabinetry and the stove/oven is well-integrated. In our case, we have a "large" oven for Switzerland, but it is small by American standards. It also has strange racks that are the bane of Brian's existence.

• Cleaning seems to take a lot longer. Dishwasher and washing machine cycles are a lot longer than I'm used to. The oven doesn't have a self-clean mode (and oh, we make it quite messy). Zurich has rather hard water, so fixtures have to be decalcified regularly. Recycling is a whole other story. And no closets to hide messes in! Good thing I'm such a good hausfrau.
  

All in all, we like our little apartment a lot! Nice kitchen, high ceilings, well-insulated (well... I hope. winter comes!), and two porches. Can't wait until spring so I can make our decks nice and green!

US Travels

Now that it's almost two months past, perhaps it's time to post about my trip to the US? After only a month in Switzerland, I took off back for the US for about three weeks - to Seattle, the Bay Area, Raleigh, and Orlando. On this trip, I got to see lots of friends, my family, attend three fan-tas-tic weddings, and stock up on all the America-things that I learned I couldn't find easily in Schweiz. Brian joined me for the last wedding in Orlando, since he was a kickin' groomsmen.

In Seattle, I attended both Athena's & Brent's wedding and Sarah's and Jesse's wedding, both of which were in Woodinville, north of Seattle. Despite my jetlag, I had a great time dancing at Athena and Brent's wedding...



...and then next week at Sarah and Jesse's!



In addition, I got to hang out with lots of my Seattle friends and did such exciting things as a taco truck crawl through South Seattle with Ethan, Micah, and Leslie (and others) and attending the bachelorette party of the lovely Sarah. Thanks to Kristen and CC for letting me crash at their places while I was in Seattle! I enjoyed eating the jam that I had left in your apartments when we moved in July.

After Seattle, I headed down to the Bay Area to hang out with my California-formerly-North-Carolina-friends. Melanie was a lovely hostess and took me around to fun things! On Thursday, I got a tour of Meebo from Mark, followed by a delicious dinner with the South Bay people. Friday, Melanie and I drove up to Hog Island Oyster Farm near Reyes Point and ate tons of oysters by the sea. Next time, we will bring a lovely picnic and just buy oysters there, but they had great food, too! Saturday, after a trip to the Farmer's Market, Melanie and Emily and I drove to Harley Goat Farm and took a little tour, petted some goats and llamas, wore some hot hair nets, and then ate a ton of goat cheese. After frolicking on the beach with Toro, we headed back to the Bay Area for dinner with Tara and Arun! On Sunday, Melanie and I drove to Oakland and hung out with Ben, Rebecca, Wendy, and John... and ate lots of things. Eating, by the way, was the theme of my American tour.



This all before I took a lovely September-11-red-eye-in-first-class-flight to... Raleigh! This (USAir) first class flight was my first and seemed worth the Star Alliance airline miles I used on it, if only for the blanket (that I stole). While in Raleigh, I did mostly nothing, but did have a lovely meal with Rachel, Mike, Lora, and Marc, and hung out with my parents and the various pets. From there to...

Orlando! Chethan and Tara got married in mid-September at the Orlando Science Museum by the water. After three long weeks, I finally saw Brian, who came to Orlando as a groomsman. The whole weekend was great - saw lots of people, enjoyed the humidity (that was maybe just me), swam in the hotel pool, ate great food (including: Bojangles), and got down on the dance floor.



From there, Brian and I headed back to Zurich, where fall had arrived while I was away.