The last days

I am probably the most intermittent blogger ever and I am sorry not to be more regular. It is not that I don't like to see myself online--who doesn't?--but time is getting tight here. We leave in two weeks and the time is largely filled with sorting and packing our stuff, making arrangements for living in California again, and visiting all of our favorite places using all of our favorite modes of transportation. On top of that, Markus' family will visit us here this weekend for a last hurrah (related to my birthday so there really will be hurrahs!) And then we will spend our last weekend in Europe at his parent's house in Germany. With any luck, the weather will be pretty good for the next two weeks and we will be out and about a lot.

But I am still collecting the bits and pieces of observations and oddities about life in Switzerland. One of them is the age of public transportation here. We just spent a week in Germany and were surprised how modern the buses and trams were. Zurich has a few modern trams and buses, but overall they are very old-fashioned and probably from the 1970s. I notice this particularly because modern transport accommodates wheelchairs and strollers well by either being at street level and without steps up, or in the case of buses, kneeling. The old trams and buses hardly accommodate strollers and it has been a big challenge for me to get a stroller and two kids up the steep stairs of our local tram. And I purposely brought a small collapsible stroller. What most people have here are giant prams or wide jogger type strollers that only fit into specially modified doors of buses and trams. This means when the bus stops you can't get on the door closest to you, but have to race with the stroller to the one door you can fit into. What this breeds is very helpful behavior from the people around you because you just couldn't get on and off without help from strangers. However, it seems strange in a city where there is clearly lots of money and most things are very modern. My theory for explaining this relates to how well-maintained everything is in Switzerland. I guess that although they are old, the trams and buses are kept in great shape and therefore last forever. Certainly this is the cleanest public transit we have ever been on, even when it is old. Great preservation of resources, but this would be a hard city to be disabled in.

Our trip to Germany was great, if hectic and exhausting. But this seems to be characteristic of our last weeks here anyway. We are trying to do it all (and some of it again!) Then we will be back home again living off memories of trams and trains!

First day of school

We are just back from a visit to Markus' brother's family who live in a village outside of Basel. The whole family was there, including the grandparents. The occasion was the first day of first grade for our neice Cecilia. This turns out to be a big deal in Germany (although not so much of one in Switzerland). We basically had a weekend of fun and preparation for the big day, which included gifts for Cecilia and lots of cake. Germans mark the first day of school with a giant horn filled with school supplies and chocolate. Kids also then get their backpack which is a big reinforced pack that alone weighs several pounds. Cecilia's was pink and blue with multicolored unicorns all over it. In addition she got all of the accessories like matching umbrella, pencil case, lunch box, water bottle, eraser etc. See the picture of all of the grandchildren and grandparents with the loot! Who wouldn't want to go to school with all of those goodies?

On the day of the big event (monday) the whole family trouped down to school with Cecilia and into the classroom where we were greeted by the teacher and then invited to a presentation by the older kids of the school. After school, German traditions reasserted themselves with a party and more gifts (and cake). Overall, it was lots of fun and certainly would eliminate the anxiety of the first day of school.

Now we are back in Zurich for a couple of days, and then we are off on a nostalgia tour of Germany. We will visit Markus' cousins, his highschool friends and his college town. On the drive up, we will stop one night in Heidelberg (where Markus had his first job with IBM). We decided to rent a car for this trip as we have lots of stuff to carry and are making five different stops. Hopefully our kids will weather the rapid changes in sleeping accommodations all right!

We are still discovering new fun places to go...most recently a playground around not far from home that also has a working farm (goats and ponies) and a kind of aviary where they must breed canaries and parakeets as there were hundreds of them. We also visited the Children's zoo that is associated with the Swiss Circus company so it has lots of performing animals (see picture of Nicolas and friend Rasmus with the bathing elephants--shortly before we all got sprayed via their trunks!) Since the end of the Europa-Meister (European soccer cup), Zurich has also hosted an Ironman triathalon, the world cup for in-line skaters, and last weekend the Street Parade, which is a kind of techno-music and culture festival--which we decided to live without, instead we visited Bern (see smudged picture above) for the day. Summer has been really busy here, but it is all about to end. Zurich is a week behind Basel with school starting here next monday. We can only hope that the weather doesn't get any worse now that summer is ending (we have had days of rain again!) But for us, the fun here is ending as well. We have only a month left, and we are trying to sort through all of the things that need to be arranged before we leave. It looks like we must have our apartment professionally cleaned before we go. This will cost $75/hour for cleaning, and $150 for laundering the sheets (which probably means ironing as well.) As usual, there are no cheap short-cuts to be had in Zurich!

To Denmark and Back

We are now back from Denmark and northern Germany for a week and I am just now getting around to posting some pictures and updating our blog. We had a great trip! We visited friends from my graduate school days in Bremen for a weekend. Unfortunately the weather was very wet and cold, but we had a great time playing at an indoor pirate-themed play center and visiting the downtown of Bremen which is really beautiful. See the picture here of us by the famous statue of a shepherd and his pigs in Bremen. I remember visiting exactly this statue with my dad when we visited Bremen when I was in jr. high school, so it was really fun to see it again.

Then we drove north to Denmark to visit my host family (from my year in Denmark 20 years ago!) We stayed two nights in Odense, touring around my old haunts. Then we spent the rest of the week relaxing on the Baltic coast where they have a summer house. This part of Denmark is just idyllic, at least when the weather was as summery as when we were there. The summer house is a cute little fisherman's cottage (apparently 9 people lived in its 3 rooms before it became a vacation house) in a row of similar cottages on the waterfront. We spent the days at the beach, or just playing in the water and yard of the house. My host sister and her family were there with us (and did all the cooking, which was heavenly!) and it was fun to hang out and talk about old times and Danish politics! Tina and Per have a 6 month old baby who was also delightful (and sleeps all night!) We were sad to leave, but on the way back to the Hamburg airport we stopped in the small town of Schleswig which turned out to be more old-fashioned fishing charm. This turned out to be a great place to break the 4-hour drive back to Hamburg and we roamed all over town.

Now we are back and our departure feels more and more imminent. Markus is still pushing his project forward, but otherwise we are trying to identify what needs to be done to move, and what we still want to see or accomplish while here. Today, for example, we met our danish friends at a children's zoo in a town at the far end of the lake (Rapperswil). The zoo is owned by the big Swiss circus company (Knies) as a place for trained animals to retire or winter. While it is a zoo, it also specializes in all sorts of animal rides (ponies, elephants, camels, horse-drawn trains etc.) and sea lion shows. We just had a wonderful time. The highlight of the day was the bathing of the 4 elephants. After getting hosed off, the elephants then get into the pool of water and submerge themselves. Then the trainer helped them spray the audience. We got soaked (which is ok since the weather was hot) and the kids were screaming with laughter.

The other task we have for the next couple of weeks is to visit all of the people we haven't yet seen in Europe. We are planning a big visit to all of Markus' friends from highschool and college that he is still in touch with, which will mean a kind of marathon trip around western Germany. Before that, we will visit Markus' brother's family again to celebrate our neice's first day of school. Apparently that is a really big deal here, with lots of presents and cake (hey, it is German here afterall!) and special "schuletute" which are like big paper horns full of goodies. Markus has been waxing nostalgic about these for weeks so I am interested to see what they are all about. Anyway, all of this is to show that we are trying to milk our last weeks here (6 to go now) for all the possible fun and friendship we can. We also continue to find great new playgrounds and other points of interest in Zurich.

Last Friday we attended the Google party to celebrate the opening of their new garden patio. The decadence just goes on and on! Now the patio hosts not only the latest in garden decor, but also a sandbox for young and old. The party was great with lots of bbq! It was full of kids it felt like. I think this is because lots of the young and mobile googlers were taking advantage of the 3-day weekend afforded by the Swiss day (see below). The highlight of the party was a big bowl of water balloons. What were the organizers thinking????

Finally, I wanted to quickly describe the Swiss national day which was yesterday (Aug. 1). We were expecting something really big and patriotic, given that the Swiss basically use their flag as a marketing tool and seem to be very proud of all things Swiss. Indeed, we did see lots of people out in Swiss flag t-shirts, but truthfully I felt like many of them were like us: tourists or visitors who were there to see what it was all about rather than Swiss enjoying their Swissness. The parade of people in traditional dress and military divisions carrying bayonets was cancelled because it was raining. But later, when the rain stopped we headed down to see what was happening in the city center. There were some interesting tidbits, like old men playing alpine horns (think giant wooden pipes that rest on the ground and sound like trombones only much louder) or a parade of men carrying monster-sized cowbells and making incredible noise with them. But overall, the main event seemed to be eating brautwurst and enjoying some Swiss music. At night, however, as soon as it was dark the fireworks started. Zurichers apparently buy an enourmous number of fireworks to supplement the several shows put on by the city. They began just before 10pm and went on until 2am. This in a country in which it is illegal to put your recycled glass and cans in the public bins after 7pm because it disturbs the peace! Nicolas woke up in a panic (which was overcome when he realized it wasn't guns but fireworks that we could partly see from our apartment windows.) So I guess patriotism found its outlet though noise and light late at night. We found the whole event surprisingly lifeless. Of course, next weekend is the Zurich version of the Love Parade (a giant technomusic-themed street party/parade/drug-induced euphoria) so perhaps the people here are just saving up their wildness for that!

Of Freetime and Freitag

Several people have noticed that I don't seem to be writing blogs very regularly anymore. Looking back over the last blog I noticed a number of spelling and grammar errors as well. Perhaps this is all symptomatic of life here these days. The immigration problems seem to be a kind of turning point for us: we have two more months to stay here but are beginning to look toward home and reentering our lives there. Nicolas talks about California constantly and Markus has developed a real longing to return to his job and bike. For me, it is time outside of motherhood that I crave. We never got around to enrolling the kids into day care and the twice-weekly playgroup that Nicolas has been attending ends this week. This means that I get only an hour or two a week without kids unless I carefully schedule time. So I am looking forward to work and the feeling of accomplishment that goes along with a job, but also to workout and other alone time while the kids have a babysitter. Friends at work will be surprised to hear this, but I read the updates about summer orientation almost longingly!

That said, I must also admit that some of the loss of excitement around here can be attributed to really settling into Zurich. We have established a really normal rhythm to our days, albeit a slow and sometimes frustrating one. The idiosyncracies of life in Switzerland aren't so novel now, and we mostly know what to do. The next two months should be really fun. We are expecting visits from Markus' extended family, as well as a visit to friends around Germany and Denmark in the next couple of months.

We have also made some really great friends here with a Danish family. They have a boy the same age as Nicolas and a girl who is two like Timo. We have been meeting at various playgrounds and riding the trains and boats with them. The kids share no common language, but that doesn't really seem to be a problem. For Nicolas this is an opportunity to push and shout and chase around, which is apparently what boys really like to do. For Timo, it is someone his size from whom to steal toys. So we see quite a lot of them. The mom, Christina, has given up an academic career in Aarhus for full time motherhood here, so we also have lots in common. Best of all, they will be visiting in California in October, so we will get a chance to show them all around there.

Christina is really into the cool bags made here. Certainly, as Swiss exports go, this one is even cooler than Swatch (which is still alive and fashionable here, although I don't remember them being much sought after in the US since the early 90s.) Freitag bags are made with recycled tarp covers from Cargo trucks (what do we call lorries, anyway?) The straps are mostly recycled seat belts and the edging is made of recycled bike innertubes. They are clearly the its-it in bag. The store is made of stacked containers (like the kind that ride on the wheels of semi-trucks.) Christina keeps trying to lure me there, but I have so far resisted...in part because I am afraid to be sucked into a love-affair with these bags (as she has been) and that could cost a fortune. Eventually I will get there (without kids I hope) and then perhaps I will also become the very cool owner of a grungy plastic messenger bag...(Markus still owes me a present for my 40th :)

Well, next week begins our vacation to Denmark, so I will send more updates as the adventures continue!

Sunny weather

We have had another full week. No sooner had my mother and her partner left Zurich (under grey skies) than Therese from the Political Science dept. at SCU arrived and we entered full-blown summer. All of this of course coincided with the immigration problems I have had here. Ultimately Google was unable to persuade the Zurich migration office to grant an exception and I mandated to leave the country. I deregistered with the police station here and we traveled up to Germany for the weekend. Now I be a tourist for the remaining time here. But at least the good weather is still around!

The trip to Oma and Opa's house in Germany was like a visit to kid-paradise. The kids ate hot dogs and french fries, ice cream and lots of gummibears. Therese got lots of practise (which she doesn't need, unlike me) of her household German and lots of time chasing Timo (the runaway). We visited a wild animal park in the woods, several great playgrounds, and the local swim center which is a great collection of pools and pool-activities for kids. Not exactly what Therese expected from her visit to Zurich, but she was a very good sport about it!

Back in Zurich and without guests we have resumed our exploration of new playgrounds and new parts of the city. The city is still dressed up for the European cup which ends this weekend (last game in Vienna...will it be Germany?) Even some of the playgrounds have been augmented. Unlike in the states kids just get naked and play in the fountains. Timo and Nicolas are loving it!

Otherwise, we are expecting some visits from cousins of Markus and a visit to my host family in Denmark in July. Time suddenly seems to be running out...although we have two and a half months left. We discussed tonight ways to really maximize our time still here (including moving Markus' working hours around so that he has more daytime free with the kids and the city.) And sealed the plan with a picnic in a city park and more time in the fountains for the kids. With the sunny weather everything seems jollier here. Here are some pictures taken by Therese of our weekend adventures.

Full house, for now...

Blogging seems to have lost out in my crowded schedule these days. We are again hosting, this time my mother and Bob for three weeks, as well as a two-night visit from one of Markus' old school friends. This has meant more than the usual number of trips to the grocery store, but also more fun and the kids are really enjoying family. We have been to visit Markus' brother and family in the countryside again (where we attended a strange blessing-of-the-farm service on a farm, tucked in among the tractors and cow milking sheds.) We also met his folks for a day in Radolfzell which is a charming small town on the Bodensee. There we had a fabulous lunch that makes a return trip appealing. During that trip the train took us past the Rhine falls, which are like a small Niagara. Mom and Bob are back for another look at that close up today. Unfortunately, the weather has been rainy for two weeks now, and is about to turn colder as well. We have been having thunder and lightening almost every evening, and the rivers are full of muddy water from all the rain. I am really ready for some prolonged sun!

The other big news from here is that the European soccer cup is going on here. Switzerland, afforded a place as a host country, has now lost two games and been eliminated, so the excitement here has abated somewhat. But there is a real sense of party and fun here that I think is normally missing in this staid country. It also means that that there are tons of Swiss t-shirts that are about to go on sale....

While we have had babysitters we have been out to the movies, and this was a real event in itself. We decided to see Sex in the City since we were ready for something fun and decadent. The movies are expensive here, $18 a person (which really tests my spending limit!) But as we were buying tickets (which means that you must pick a specific seat in the theater, such as row D seats 31 and 32, even though there were 20 people in a huge theater for this 5:30 showing) we noticed there were several seating options. If you agreed to sit in the front row, you could spend only $13. Whether they make sure you sit there, I don't know. Or, if you want to reserve one of the three "private" balconies in the back of the seating for two people that is only $90! Now that is an expensive movie. And for that price, are they really watching the film at all?

Sex in the City, like most movies here is generally dubbed into German (hard to imagine Sarah Jessica Parker saying "Ach, ja".) But we went to a theater that had it in original English with German and french subtitles. I wondered how they did this, but it turns out that they just put one line of German and one line of French at the same time. It took up a lot of the movie screen and must have been confusing to those reading them (I guess I am lucky) but I guess that is the concession you make in a multilingual society.

The movie got underway after 20 minutes of advertisements. Part way through the movie the film just stopped mid-sentence and there was apparently a 15 minute intermission. We didn't know if the tape just broke (do theaters even use tape any more?) and didn't know how long it would last. But several of the people got up and came back with popcorn. As we found out later, they might have run to the bathrooms which would take a while as they are on another floor of the theater. Eventually the movie started again, somewhere other than it had ended and we watched the rest. Afterwards we headed to the bathrooms ourselves. What a trip. Now 8:00 the theater is packed with people and loud music. The bathrooms are very high-tech with fancy sinks and high-wind hand dryers. In the toilet stall there were video screens mounted in the floor to watch movie previews while you sat down (or stood up in the men's room). We topped off the evening with a trip to a hip Indian restaurant and a long walk home. How romantic!

There is one last adventure to include here. I received a letter from the city a week ago telling me that I have not got the right visa to remain in Switzerland (thank you Google) and so I must leave the country on June 23. And the kids too as they are Americans and not Germans. Markus got right on to the HR at Google to see if they can fix this, and we are still awaiting their results. However, if we do not get some kind of an exception then we will be leaving Zurich for a while (as yet unclear for how long). As you can imagine this has been something of a nasty shock. Markus' parents are happy at the prospect that we will be moving in with them, but I am not sure they have thought this through. It will be a bit wild and noisy if the kids and I move in with them for long! We are still not clear what this will mean for our stay here, but we will at least hold out until July as we have tickets to visit Denmark in the end of that month. And of course we have rented the apartment until September and as the case would be it is quite hard to end these things prematurely here. As it is we are holding off making more plans for the end of the summer...

The thinnest women in Europe

I have been looking at the women here and marvelling at how thin they all look. Then Markus read an article in the paper that confirmed my observations: women in Switzerland are the least overweight in Europe with only 23% being overweight at all. Pretty impressive. And the men are within the top 5 thinnest in Europe, after places like Romania and Bulgaria. And they look it: it is very rare here to see anyone with a potbelly or chubby legs. I remember seeing a book in the Santa Clara library about a French diet (which of course I browsed through) that said that European women are so thin because they don't snack. Might be true here too. I have to say that there seems to be a lot less snackable food available here than I remember in Germany (where women are apparently fatter). There are many fewer bakeries here to entice passers-by with delicious smells than in either Germany or France. Most food is still purchased in one of the two grocery chains here, even bread it seems. At least in the city, there seems to be few small bakeries. People do snack in the take-away windows of the grocery stores, but it is not the same kind of selection you get elsewhere: mostly just sandwiches and loaves of bread rather than small cakes and crusty rolls. They just seem less prone to finger food here. Maybe it has to do with tidiness (clearly a thing here). Maybe they don't really want people dropping crumbs from baked goods all over.

Or maybe, women are thinner because food is so expensive here. I have more or less adjusted to the cost of shopping for groceries, but eating out is a major shock every time we do it. Why, I am not so sure, since I look at the prices as I order, but by the time the bill comes I am surprised the lunch for two and a cup of coffee comes to $50. It is spring here and every restaurant and cafe seems to have tables out on the sidewalk here. And Zuricher are busy sitting at the tables. But what I have noticed is that although people are sitting at these tables all the time, very few people are eating. Mostly people are just having a coffee or beer. My new theory about this is that it costs too much to actually eat a meal (and there are not so many snacks you can order in a restaurant here) so people satisfy their social going-out urge by having a leisurely drink in the sun. But then they probably go home for dinner.

Of course, maybe Swiss women are just thinner because they have better impulse control than me. It wouldn't take to much. I cannot seem to leave the cheese alone. Even 5 flights of stairs isn't making a noticeable impact on my reserves. And of course, my mother is here with news that "they" are now saying belly fat in your 40s is a harbinger for illness later in life. The good news never ends!

Yes, my mother and Bob are here. They arrived yesterday and are just getting settled in. So far they have been on a tour of the old town and a bit of the neighborhood. But after Timo's nap today, Nicolas is going to show them some of his favorite modes of public transportation. We know how to maximize the all-day public transportation pass! The European soccer cup starts here in a week, so we need to get out and see Zurich before the 1.5 million expected soccer fans arrive. We unwittingly chose an apartment only 2 tram stops from the main soccer stadium, so we are expecting to see a lot of fans soon. We only hope these same fans are not interested in the same sights as us (soccer--mountain tops...doesn't seem like the same crowd!)

I have one last, unrelated (or at least I don't have any official statistics on their relation...) story to tell. I have mentioned our funky neighborhood in other blogs, but it has gotten even funkier... Downstairs from our apartment in the same block is a small woodworking shop. It is a very small shop that sells the hand-made wood projects of a woman who looks to be, maybe 60 years old. For weeks her window has had a large Beaver (perhaps 3 feet high) hand carved out of a single log looking out onto the street. But the other day, the display changed. On our first pass by the exhibit, Markus commented that the things in the window looked pretty phallic. Indeed, there are about thirty variations on penises of all different wood and all different interpretation in the window. The next time we passed by, small embroidered bags had been added to the window that said "love toys". So it looks like our neighborhood artisan has extended her range (and probably marketability) from beavers to dildos. I have attached a picture for the non-believers. Never let me say that the Swiss are uptight...just thin.

Heidi and the Sound of Music rolled together

Yesterday, my dad and Peggy offered to watch the kids for the whole day so that Markus and I could go away. Naturally we seized this chance and were off on the 7:30am train to Appenzell (home of great cheese) and to the Alps beyond. We had a wonderful day and went to several places that were just beautiful but would be really difficult with two small kids along. I am including some pictures to accompany the story of our outing.

We started out with the train toward Appenzell, which is east of Zurich about 2 hours away. We wandered around the quaint town of Appenzell for a hour, gathering things to lunch on at the bakery and glancing at the tourist shops. This is a place that must get loads of tourists in the summertime...all of the shops sell Swiss paraphernalia (you won't wonder that I am not buying any souvenirs here from among the stuffed animal st. Bernard dogs, red t-shirts with white crosses and all sorts of cutesy figurines! Plus the going price for a post card here is $1.20 with an additional $1.80 in stamps!) and the streets are lined by outdoor cafes. Not so many tourists there at this time, however, even though the weather was great.

We then continued on the small railroad up the hill until we got to Wasseraun. There is a gondola that carries you up another 2,000 feet to near the top of the Ebenalp mountain. This gondola was quite a ride, much of it at a steep angle against the shear rock face (those of you that know I hate heights will be surprised to hear that I actually could look out and down and wasn't scared at all!) The gondola left us at 5,300 feet, with great views to much higher mountains all around. We hiked there for several hours, on one side looking up to snowy peaks (Mt. Santis) and on the other side looking into a beautiful valley full of cows whose bells we could hear even at the top of the mountain. I eat Appenzell cheese most days for lunch and it was fun to up close to those cows :) Of course, the final song from Sound of Music (climb every mountain) got playing in my head as we hiked along the ridge looking down into the green valleys...

Along the hike we lunched near a small guesthouse built into a crevice of rock under the peak, and then traveled through a cave to get back to the side of the mountain where we could catch the gondola back down. Then we hiked along the valley floor past several villages and through lots of cow fields to a train stop. This "wandering" in Switzerland is crazy: there are little yellow signs that guide you, but there is almost no train, just some beaten down grass through fields and along the streams. Part of the trail joins up with people's driveways, and you often walk right past their front door, through the side yard and out into the fields again. No one seems to mind, not even the cows. The fields are generally divided by electric fences with makeshift gates for wanderers to cross. We seem to have come at peak dandelion season and they are as thick as grass in the fields. Just beautiful! The cows are moving up to the higher levels as the weather gets warmer (bells distinguish the different herds) and I had flashbacks to reading Heidi as a child.

After rejoining the train we travelled to the southern tip of Lake Zurich (Rapperswil) and looked around. Then took a local train up the lake and back to the city. We still had time on our clock and decided to have dinner in Zurich before resuming our parental duties, so we went to a hip restaurant called Tibits. It is in a posh part of town and serves an eclectic assortment of food to an upscale clientele. This is the Sweet Tomatoes for the rich and adventurous: probably 35 mixed salads and hot dishes, all vegetarian on the buffet. Stuff that you don't see elsewhere here, like curried corn salad, thai style tofu salad, onion rings, jalapeno poppers, samosas, tabbouli with peppermint, curried fennel and apple salad, etc. Yum! We loaded our plates up moderately, and shared a mango lassi. The total was $50 for two, but given our limited time to eat out, worth it! Not a child friendly bite in the place. :)

Of course, the kids had a wonderful time with their grandparents and were finishing off their hamburger dinner with ice cream when we got home. They had been out with our map of playgrounds and had discovered not only a new great playground, but a new (to us) cogwheel railroad in the city. So everyone had a great day. Sadly, the grandparents left today, but as the weather has shifted again to rain they have probably gotten the best Zurich has to offer.

Diversity and Insularity

I haven't been blogging of late because my parents have been here for several days. They are off on a field trip (one I hope to take as well one of these days) to Appenzell (small cheese-making place in the alps) so I have a bit of free time today. We have been having a great time visiting all of our favorite places around the city, riding buses, trains, boats... a classic tour of the Scherer-Morlang haunts. They have also been busy with the boys so I have had some time off, and someone else to plan meals and supervise playground visits! Yeah!

This morning I went to my second Spooglers meeting. This is the group that has formed in Zurich of spouses of googlers. It is about 50 people strong now I think. They have coffee every thursday morning, and this weekend they are hosting their annual spring brunch (at google, but believe it or not it is potluck!) It is a very congenial, international group of so far all women. There are several americans, but also women from Finland, Holland, Sweden, France, Viet Nam, India, China, Germany, Australia, etc. It is a good indication for me of what Zurich google is all about: talent from all over the world. Many of them are moms and I have already made several play-date arrangments. Coffee is a challenge with Timo along, but I am hoping to find a babysitter so that I can have these mornings free.

Google here is very impressive. The interior is wild, with lots of playful decoration and games-rooms. And the food is great. The kids also appreciate that there is a train that runs right in front of the cafeteria...keeps them busy. Markus had a funny story of Zooglers the other day. They have a fresh-squeeze orange juice machine in the cafe (but it is only available at lunch time). They originally got oranges from Italy, but it turns out to be so popular that they go through several tons of oranges per week and apparently have drunk Italy dry. So now the oranges come from Argentina. One more account of decadence at google!

Zurich seems like a good home for a multi-cultural (orange-juice drinking) google. At the playgrounds there are always people from all over. And I find this true of those people I interact with. The teacher of Nic's playgroup is from Uruguay (married to a Swiss); Our landlady is originally from Spain; and so forth. Talking to spooglers from all over people are finding their niches here without much problem. In this way it is kind of like a European bay area--accepting of diversity. Oddly, the politics and systems don't seem to reflect this as well as the day-to-day living. Poltics and institutions here are very conservative. Everyone from outside complains that the school system is very rigid in that it is hard to get into, and the curriculum is old fashioned. Children in the 6th grade must "decide" whether to attend gymnasium and afterwards university and it is very hard to reverse this decision in either way later (and deciding really means have you got the aptitude). Not a good place for late bloomers. It would be interesting to see if girls do particularly well in this system, as they tend to be more mature in an academic setting at a younger age....

Politics in this area are also quite conservative. The Swiss People's party, a very conservative party simliar in many ways to the populist/anti-immigrant parties seen elsewhere on the European right, is the dominant party here in Zurich and is central to national level government as well. My father asked me the other day why Switzerland is not a member of the EU. In California I would have given an answer about Swiss neutrality and its financial and trade interests related to that. Now my answer would be more about politics and government style. The extreme federalism of the system here means that there is much less national level government than you find in other euroepan goverments (even other federal systems like Germany). Here, local and canton governments dominate. This means that there is a large amount of legal diversity across regions and cities in Switzerland. If this country were to join the EU, it would necessarily give much greater weight to the national level government over the local governments because of the way decsions are made in the EU (most important ones happen at conferences of national heads-of-state or government ministers). I can imagine that the SWiss, in an effort to preserve not only national independence but sub-national independence would see the EU as an unacceptable reduction of soveriegnty. In truth, the benefits of the EU, like greater trade (cheaper prices and more variety) or monetary stabilty don't appeal to the Swiss because they rather buy their own products and make their own deals.

Ok, as you can see, I am missing the world of political science a bit. But overall, I am enjoying just looking around and hanging out!

Cheese please

We are back from visiting Germany; again a great time was had by all. This time we spent a day with friends of ours from San Jose who have moved back to southern Germany. They have two boys so Nicolas and Timo had a great time with old friends. Best of all, the weather has changed here, and it is beautiful: days in the low 70s and very sunny. Perfect for strolling along the lake or going to the playground.

Today we took a tram to the other side of Zurich and then rode a funicular (kind of a cable car for 10 people that goes up a steep incline). Needless to say, the boys were in train heaven! The view was beautiful: the city below, the lake shimmering in the sun and the alps like white ghosts in the background. Then we were home for cheese sandwiches and naps (sadly not for me!)

Which brings me to the topic of the day: food. We are not really eating like the Swiss; at least I imagine not, but we don't really know as we don't know any Swiss and we don't go to restaurants much (and so far these have been falafel places and McDonald's). However, from what I can see in the grocery store, most people eat a few key vegetables, a little meat and lots of cheese. I was surprised to see packaged foods pretty big here, although differently than in the US. Probably because so many people groceryshop as pedestrians (rather than loading up the car once a week they shop as they walk home from work) packaged foods are often very streamlined. For example, lots of very heavy things, like spaghetti sauce are less often found in jars here and are more often packaged as dried powder in a paper envelope. Sure we have this sort of thing in the US too, but there is much more of it here. Even things like fishsticks are packaged to be very small. Whereas American food often comes in a bag inside of a big box, foods here are very tightly packaged in shrink wrap or a small box.

Probably this also reflects the garbage scene here as well. Instead of weekly pickup for a set fee, here you must buy special city garbage bags that cost about $2 each (think 8 gallon bags) and only those can be put out for pickup. So you really pay more if you create more waste (a bit hard on us diaper uses) and discourage excessive packaging.

Same sort of principle for recycling stuff. Actually, when I read the guide for new people in Switzerland, it said that the Swiss are wild about recycling. Must be written by someone who hasn't seen the recycle process in the US! Here recycling is available, but is a big burden on the consumer. Of course, it cuts your garbage cost by reducing the number of bags you must pay for, but I can't imagine that recycling is very big here considering how hard it is. There are bins around the city that take various glass and metal types. You must bring them clean, and separate them into the different bins yourself. If you have plastic bottles like coke, you can take those back to the grocery store and put them in a bin there. Most of the packaged things here, however, are not recycled. For instance, most milk and juice comes in 1-liter tetrapack boxes (kind of plastic lined boxes) that cannot be recycled. We go through several of these a day. Then things like single serving yogurt cups, plastic from meat or cheese packaging, etc cannot be recycled at all. So basically, to be a green citizen, you need to travel to several different places to drop off your various bottles, cans and plastics. This is no small thing in a city where there are only .3 cars per person! Then there is paper recycling. This should be the easiest of all since it creates the most waste. To recycle paper here, you must collect like papers (say all office white paper the same shape, or all newspapers, or all cereal boxes) and tie it into a bundle with string and put it out on the stoop on Mondays. To me this is a system that assumes there are people in every household who don't have much else to do....but who are these people? Maybe this is what one is supposed to do with the more leisure time Europeans get? Though the Swiss seem to have less of this than elsewhere in Europe, and at least in Germany recycling is a lot easier.

So anyway, back to food. We mostly eat cheese. I have resigned myself to this luxury, in part because it is so good here, and in part because the alternatives are more difficult to deal with. Meat is available, if very expensive (we did buy hamburger the other day to make meatballs, but it cost $18/kilo and seemed pretty grisly), but looks different here than at home. Lots more sausage and processed meats. We stick mostly to ham. But the cheese here is lovely. I love strong smelling cheese so I am in cheese heaven. The kids less so. They of course don't have any of the child-friendly varieties we have in the US (no cheddar, jack, etc.) but they have all sorts of wonderful variations on Swiss cheese that you never see in the US. To offset the cheese intake, I am resolved to eat salads for dinner...one of these days. Kids eat a lot of ham, hot dogs and pasta. The mainstays like tofu that we ate in the US are hard to find here. The whole soy thing seems to have missed consumers here, as has the omega-3 frenzy (although my brother-in-law cites a study from Sweden showing kids with learning problems improve a lot with fishoil supplements.) When visiting my in-laws we revert to German style eating: meat-potatoes-salad for lunch and then bread-cheese-sausage for dinner (every day.) So I was wondering why I haven't lost any weight yet....

Is this my normal life?

The weekends are full of fun here, although the weekdays tend to roll by without much to distinguish them from each other. Partly this is because it seems to rain all week, and then have beautiful sunny weather on the weekends. I love living here on the weekends.

Last weekend we were on our own and able to explore our area more. It was Markus' first trip into the small alleyways of the old city, which is truly charming. We also discovered several great new playgrounds. We took the local train up to the top of the Uetliberg: the local Zuricher mountain which is 2900 feet tall. It overlooks the entire Zurich area including the lake. They kids did a great job hiking up to the lookout and they were rewarded by a long play at the great playground there. The highlight of this playground is a kind of conveyor belt that kids can roll down. I am adding a picture of this as it is hard to explain. Then in the afternoon we took the tram south along the eastern shore of the lake and discovered where families go on beautiful days. There is a huge grassy park along the lake that has all sorts of neat artwork and a giant fun playground with soft sand and new play equipment. They also have take-out chinese food there :) We had such a good time that the next morning we got up and took a local boat back to the park to play some more. Then spent the afternoon walking around in the back streets of our own neighborhood.

Where we live is kind of the funky area of town. There are lots of oddball shops and eateries here. The other day I passed a store that advertised "the latest in Pimp fashion". It looked more like ska-wear to me (long pointy snake skin shoes for men) and it seems like an odd store for this multicultural neighborhood... There look to be lots of fun places to hang out around here and there is a young and cool urban crowd that does so. Not us, however. We have been eating take-out here and there, but it mostly consists of falafel (as Markus comments, not related to what you get in california, but not bad) bratwurst and the occaisonal thai or chinese. As you can tell, I am missing our old eating habits...but this doesn't mean that I have lost any weight yet!

This week will have May 1, which means labor day for the rest of the world. Our part of town appears to be one of few labor strongholds here, and we are curious to see what kinds of celebrations will take place. Zurich overall is politically very conservative, but in our area it is not uncommon to see red sickle and hammer grafitti sprayed on buildings. It is also not uncommon to see city works power-spraying it off again. The following weekend we will be up to see Markus' parents again. This means lots of grocery shopping and a chance to eat someone else's cooking. But also, I hope, some time to myself! That is, if Markus can tear himself away from the sorting of his old memorabilia...

Technical woes

So when I think of Switzerland, I think of everything working well; I guess I expected everything technical to run like the fabled Swiss watches. And many things do work extremely well. Especially the public transportation which runs all the time and can take you anywhere. And of course, all of the rules mean that things are pretty neat and tidy here. The place we have endless aggravation is online. The Swiss seem to be embracing the trend of charging for telephone or in-person service and turning customers toward internet services. However, the websites don't work like they do in the US. Even Markus is finding the websites very hard to navigate, and it is not uncommon to come to a website which never seems to link you to the promised service. For example, one should be able to buy all sorts of train and transport tickets online, but getting from the schedule of trains to the buying of a particular ticket is really difficult. Unlike customer websites in the US, the websites here don't take you directly from what you are looking at (the schedule or products) to a shopping cart when you can proceed to a pay point and be done. Instead mostly you have to go to a separate link to buy something, which means somehow remembering what it is you wanted. Unlike US travel sites where you can pick and choose various alternate destinations or routes or carriers, the sites here make you add the parts of travel up for yourself. We have found this sort of clunkiness to be the same on lots of German websites as well.

So, of course I have a theory about this! Markus tells a story of how he has worked with websites in different cultures that support different kinds of cultural-internet norms. For example, he says that Google has been less successful in South Korea because its search page is so plain. Apparently the cultural norm that South Koreans prefer for their websites is lots of flashing lights and pictures and music. In otherwords, they seem to like the web to look like the nighttime lights in Seoul. (note, this is my own interpretation of Markus' comments!)

So maybe Germans and Swiss prefer their interactions on the web to feel more like living in Germany or Switzerland: constrained by rules and less subject to wild individualism. Ok, I'm joking here. But maybe Germans and Swiss like to safeguard against making mistakes online, and so they don't want their interactions there to be subject to a quick click, and "you're done!" Maybe what feels like clunkiness to me (savvy shopper that I am!) is reassuring in a culture where commercial decisions are made more carefully, less impulsively. Perhaps six months here will have the same effect on my shopping habits. Certainly I have yet to make any impulse purchase!

Playground pictures

Here are some pictures of the kids at various playgrounds. We found a website that lists all of the playgrounds in Zurich with pictures and maps, so now we are on a mission to visit a bunch of them. This turns out to be an interesting way to explore the city....something new to me!

Still a place with real playgrounds

We spent the weekend up in Germany with Markus' parents. They were happy to see us and had all sorts of goodies (like extra sheets, homemade jam, and my favorite cheese and pickles) for us to take back to Zurich. Plus, we had a giant shop-up at the grocery store and bought all sorts of things that are either much more expensive in Switzerland or that they don't have here (like brown sugar, decaf tea, sugarless peanut butter, chili spices etc.) It was like Disneyland in the grocery store because there is so much more variety there. I was wishing we could take back frozen food because they have all sorts of fun looking things in the freezer section. We also raided my in-laws' cupboards a bit, but they were happy for us to cart it all away. The rental car was completely full (oddly the border guards had no interest in our gluttony--although I saved all of the receipts;) of course the wrinkle in this plan was carrying it all up to the apartment when we got back. It took seven loaded trips up in all, and for once Timo got himself to the top on his own steam or it would have been eight!

One of the highlights on the trip was the first boat ride for our kids. There is a ferry across Lake Constance (the Bodensee in German) that you drive the car onto. It only takes 20 minutes, but they kids just loved it. Another highlight is that we went out for lunch one day. Markus and I both tried to explain that our kids don't really do restaurants, and especially in the slow-service country inns one finds in rural Germany. However, we took the video player and when they started to get antsy, we plugged them in and everyone had a good time. It was SO enjoyable to eat some meals that someone else prepared and did the clean-up for. I have virtually forgotten already how delicious eating out is. When we return to California, we are just going to eat all of our meals out for a while!

One of the things I really like both is Switzerland and Germany is how fun the playgrounds are. Obviously, I am more focused on this than before since I spend lots of time at them now (running off the energy that we used to spend in the backyard.) The playgrounds here seem more authentic somehow. They are mostly wood, with rope climbing portions and all sorts of intricate slides. One near our house has a pool of water with a big pump next to it that dumps water into a channel than wends its way into a big sandpit (well, or dirt pit). Most of the playgrounds have some sort of wooden fort that kids climb up into using ladders or ropes. All of the playgrounds feel unique and pose different problems in terms of play-skills. In comparison to the plastic modular playgrounds in and around San Jose, these playgrounds feel really durable and challenging. Clearly they are not as worried as Americans are about kids falling, but even Timo seems to be able to navigate these Swiss and German play structures. Merry-go-rounds and see-saws, which you never seem to see in San Jose, are abundant here. Maybe I like these playgrounds because they feel more like what I played on as a kid. But I am reminded of a recent article in the Economist comparing toys in Europe and in the US. One of the observations they made was that Europeans choose toys that promote imaginary and creative/building play--like lego and playmobile--while Americans tend toward toys that reflect brand marketing and specific role-playing--like spiderman or ninja turtle equipment, or princess stuff. The playgrounds here appear to reflect the same perspective on child's-play. They are not the standardized, safe, but ultimately not very challenging equipment we find in suburban California; rather, these playgrounds look dull (all aged wood and steel) but offer a big assortment of activities and challenges where children need to create these activities themselves as the playground is just kind of a template instead of constructed for specific activities. Of course, maybe it is just that they are different from what I am used to that I have this view...or that I am spending more time at playgrounds than I did before and so have more time to think about using them!

A last note on toys. While in Germany we shopped a bit for birthday presents for Timo. My mother-in-law pointed out the stickers on even cheap sand toys that showed that they had been inspected for toxic residues by the government. Moreover, most of the toys, even the cheap trucks, were made in Germany, or at least in Europe. She said that this has been partly the reaction to the problems with toys coming from China that we have also seen in the US. I find it interesting that the reaction here is: pay a bit more but guarantee safety and hold the government accountable for this. The American outlook seems to be: you get what you pay for and life is all about risk anyway! Had any of you taken my European politics class (which rolls around again in the fall...) you would know that this is an enduring theme in this class: public opinion about the role that government should play in promoting a certain quality of life and mitigating the problems of the marketplace.

Well, back in Zurich now, Markus is at a conference in Innsbruck (all European engineers from Google are there) so we three are hanging out, getting wet as we venture out-of-doors and eating the goodies we brought back from Germany. Enjoy the sun all of you in sunny climes--we are dreaming of you!

Petals in the wind

Days are rolling along for me in the way they do when you are on vacation...no big deadlines or projects to delineate which day it is or to push you forward. I realize that Markus is not feeling this way, but I feel a bit aimless and undefined here. The kids and I try to go out and explore new territory every day, but the weather is wet and dreary here (I have noticed that San Jose weather is now in the 80s!)Today we walked through a new section of the old part of Zurich. It is really beautiful. They are preparing for a festival to mark the end of winter, but it seems like wishful thinking to me. We will miss most of it as we will be in Germany starting tomorrow. Luckily for the boys, there is a ferry to take to get there and they are excited about adding to their transportation repertoire. Just as well that we will miss the festival, as the main events are huge parades...the kind of thing Timo is scary at!

Our exploration today culminated in the Linderhof, which is a kind of central square on a hill in the middle of the old pedestrian district. On of the doorways had 1574 over the door, signifying the date of the building I think. The square overlooks the main river and the buildings on the hill across the river. Beautiful. Of course I didn't have the camera so I will have to go back for a picture. Markus hasn't been down into town at all yet so perhaps next weekend we will go there again.

After all that walking we all had an afternoon nap (the cozy kind you can't get in California since it isn't wet and cold enough to warrant snuggling under the covers in the middle of the day!) Then this afternoon we were out in the square near our house in the wind (and some drizzle). The trees are blooming here, prematurely it seems, and their white petals are like snow in the wind. The kids spent a great half hour chasing clouds of these white petals rolling and swirling across the square. Of course I once again didn't have a camera, but it was fun to watch. In fact, a stranger came out of his house and took some pictures. These guys have seen so little snow that I think they believe this is a kind of snow!

Germany's next top model addiction

We had a great time in Laufen, a village outside of Basel visiting Markus' brother and family for the weekend. They have kids so ours finally got to interact with someone fun (rather than just me all the time)! Everyone especially loved the nearby farm, which has chickens, calves, cows and horses. The city boys were a little surprised by how smelly a farm actually is. We also came away with all sorts of loaner toys, advice for living in Switzerland and good food. Our train back to Zurich happened to be a TGV from France (their fast train) so Nicolas got to fulfill one of his main dreams. This next weekend we are off again, although this time in a car, to Markus' parents' house in southern Germany. We are taking a car because there are no good train connections and we want to do some grocery shopping there as everyone here says it is so much cheaper than Zurich. Hard to imagine....of course it will help that they live in a small town so we will avoid the high city prices from here. My sister-in-law even drives over the German border regularly to grocery shop (1/2 hour away). So, in preparation I have been on the Swiss customs website to check out the limits of what you can bring in. A total of sfr 300 (roughly $300) per person. But there are much more specific limits on food, such as only 1 lb. of butter, 5 liters of milk, 1/2 kg of meat (but since sausage isn't meat you can bring in 3 kg of that!) and 20 kg of veggies and fruit and 3 liters of juice (which is like a day's supply for us).

In other news, we got cable tv here (this is a major deviation from our usual antenna habit) because I didn't want to watch only Swiss channels. We had high hopes that it would include some kind of decent programming for kids too, but we have only been able to find German stuff so far. But for adults, there is a range of English channels (although still nothing to watch.) As many of you know, I have something of an addiction to America's next top model. At first I thought I would watch that online here, but of course American networks are too smart for me. One can only watch American channels online if you are a US resident. So instead I turned to the cable channels. ANTM is available here, although dubbed into German, but it is 4 years old. Anyway, Tyra Banks is not soooo interesting that I want to listen to her in German! So I thought I would give Germany's Next Top Model with Heidi Clum a try. I mean, hey, at least they really do speak German!

Although I don't understand much of the discussion (or maybe because of this) it is great! Much better it turns out than the American version. For starters, the models seem more or less intelligent and they actually do challenges that might someday be meaningful if one were to be a top model. In each show the challenges are about trying to get booked for a real modelling job. In the episode I just watched, Heidi Clum watched from behind a mirror as the contestants interviewed for a runway job while taking all sorts of flak from the American male models. Clum explained that one of the most important things about interviewing is doing your best and shutting out the noise around you. The winner then gets selected by the designer to actually walk in a runway show. Best of all, Heidi Clum is actually dignified. Instead of endlessly pitting the contestants against each other, the judging focuses on each girl alone, without her peers. Of course, 3 girls were sent home in the episode I saw, so there is also more pressure on everyone to perform all the time. Overall, it was kind of an interesting window into how German psyche is different from ours. Much less humiliation, much more feeling of camaraderie between the contestants, and as I said, a sense of dignity and realism to the challenges and judging. Overall, it was less of a circus and more of a window into what a real model might have to go through to really make it. OK, so that was my academic analysis of junk television, and about as academic as I get in any case these days!

We woke up yesterday to snow on the rooftops here. It has turned cold again (maybe in the 40s yesterday) and that makes our daily outings a bit brisker. Yesterday we walked a circuit of the import food store, took the tram, and then went to the normal grocery. It all went smoothly until I was loading the food into my bags at the grocers. Then I noticed that Timo, who was strapped into the stroller because he been trying to escape from me, had taken off his shoes and socks. He absolutely would not let me put them back on, so we had to walk the 1/2 mile home with him barefoot. Needless to say, that is not ok with Swiss old women, and I got several comments and lots of nasty looks. When we got to our building, he got out of the stroller and just lay on the floor at the bottom of the 5 flights of stairs. So, as usual, I had to carry him and food for a family of 4 up to the top. But it does make me think twice about just going out for no reason...

Well, the last adventure for this installment is the making of Markus' birthday cake. I am hoping to make a pineapple upsidedown cake for my inlaws this weekend, so I am having a trial run today. Nicolas and I got it together, although it turns out mixers don't do such a great job with only mixer arm (I suspect the previous renter took the other arm with them). But now it is dark brown on the top but still jiggly. I suspect this is going to be another example of how you can't translate baking to another country. I don't know if it is the oven, the ingredients, or the one-armed mixer but cooking just isn't working for me here. Perhaps we will try to Thai take-out down the street instead!

Toast for dinner again

It is after lunch today and I am going to grab a few minutes to write my latest saga while Nicolas is busy scrubbing in the kitchen sink. I wish that I could say that he is washing up, but of course it will be more of a mess after his fun with dish detergent and scrubbing brush...including a giant puddle on the floor.

Today we had two great adventures before lunch. First, we went to the local library to get a library card (I have already finished off the books I brought to read, and need some fluff). Oddly, for a country that ostensibly supports public education, the library system is almost punitive. To join the library costs $45 a year (kids can get cards for free, but of course they are not allowed to check out adult books with them!). But then they really get you with the little things: $3 to reserve a book from another branch of the Zurich library; $3 a day per late item; $5 for a replacement card; and the best of all: if you call the library information line it costs $1.50 a minute! The good thing is that they have lots of German books and videos for kids, and a small and very odd selection of fiction in English. Luckily, I am not too picky. Apparently, the main branch has more in English, but of course I have to go there in person to find out, since it costs so much to get the books sent to my branch. I can also renew my books online as long as they are paperback; hardback books cannot be renewed. No one seemed to be able to explain this in English...

Discovering all of the rules somewhat diminished my sense of accomplishment in finding the library. But then we moved on to a walk in the old center of Zurich. The old part of Zurich is charming: lots of cobblestone pedestrian streets and alleyways, old buildings with expensive jewelry and high fashion clothing shops at street level, and massive churches tucked in between other buildings. We accidentally happened upon the Frauen Munster and went inside. This is the church that has the famous Marc Chagall windows, which are lovely. Even Nicolas and Timo liked them. And the organ player was practicing so we got to hear what they kids have only seen on sesame street so far. They were even well-behaved, which made the entire visit nice.

One of the things I am surprised to find here are lots of orthodox and hasidic Jews in Zurich. I realize this is a very cosmopolitan European city, but I would have thought with the Swiss troubles with Jewish war acquisitions that this would not be a particularly friendly residence for European Jews. Clearly I am wrong.

Our other projects the past two days have included more investigation into some kind of play group for the kids (no luck yet) and purchase of our 1/2-price train cards in advance of our trip tomorrow south of Basel. We spent $150 each on cards that will then make train travel inside of Switzerland half price. It seems somehow counter intuitive, but we hope it will work out. We have basically decided to do without even car-sharing. The public transportation works very well from where we live, and I think we will just try to use the trains for longer trips. Except for our upcoming visit to my German in-laws, where we are hoping to do a massive grocery shop-up! Of course, that will only make sense if we can get our refridge a bit cooler. As it is, nothing is very cold and things turn bad quickly--pretty disheartening when you pay $2 a quart for milk! Yesterday when I bought two chicken breasts for the kids (the "cheap" German imported chicken.) I looked at the label: $26.99 per kilo! Makes you want to be a vegetarian--until you look at the price of tofu. Happily, we ended our adventures today with another visit to Google for lunch. This time everyone was well-behaved (helps that we just walked and rode the streetcar for 2 hours) and a delicious free lunch was had by all. That means I can get away with toast for dinner again!

Pictures of Lake Zurich and the PlasmaCar

First Days in Switzerlang

This is the beginning of the Diana and Markus Swiss journal. In past stays abroad, I have written lots of paper letters, eventually turning to email. Now, to join the 21st century I plan to try my hand at blogging. Also, this is a good way to post pictures of our adventures here, should any of you be interested.

We are now Swiss residents for a week, and I have a number of thoughts on our (collective) life here. So far, we are still talking about the adventure of it all, and that is true. But also, as anyone with small kids knows, there is lots of reproducing routine involved in maintaining sanity as well. Markus especially is in a routine since he goes to work every day. The rest of us have also settled into a kind of routine by going out for a long walk or tram ride in the morning, ending at a playground and then hiking up the stairs to have lunch and for Timo to have a nap. One of the apparent losses in the transition has been a nap for Nicolas. Then we go back down to street level, do some grocery shopping and go again to the playground before returning home to make dinner and head to bed.

We bought monthly transportation tickets, so the kids and I just pop on and off trams and buses as we need. Nicolas in particular is really loving the trains. We have now had several outings to the main train station just to look at engines coming and going. However, this Friday the kids and I will actually take a real train as we go to visit Markus’ brother’s family in Basel for the weekend. Other outings include an involved trip on several forms of public transit to IKEA for necessities like Tupperware and plastic plates (More so than even McDonalds, IKEA is truly the same everywhere-even those strange Swedish names for products seem comforting here!); a walk along the lakefront (Zurich is right on the Lake Zurich and it looks like a postcard: ringed by snow-covered Alps…see picture!); a trip through downtown; and visit to the local police station to register; and a visit to the new shopping mall just south of us.

Just so you don’t think we are only having fun, we are having some adjustment problems as well. Markus is trying to be available to work on both time zones, so he is often in meetings in the evening (Mt. View) as well as in the office here all day. The kids are clearly having some adjustment stress as they are fighting more than usual and having more tantrums. I am really feeling the lack of adult interaction and because I am with the kids all the time I feel like I have little time to just be alone. Next week we will begin to search out some kind of child-care or playgroup in earnest.

As is always true about travel, one of the most fun things is comparing and exploring how people do things differently here. I am happy that the most surprising thing about people here is how friendly and helpful they are. My past experiences traveling in Europe is that people will help if you ask (particularly if you ask in their language). Here, when I pause to get out the street map, inevitably someone comes over to ask in English if I need some help. On and off the trams someone almost always chips in to help carry the stroller in. And whenever I am clearly not understanding what people are asking me in Swiss-German (which is basically all the time) a passerby always jumps in to help in English or German. It is actually fun to ask for help (which is good, since I am the one averse to asking directions) here because people are so friendly and apparently eager to help.

Ok, enough about us; now for some of my outsider observations about Swiss life. All the guidebooks talk about the rules which govern life here, and we have also encountered them. For example, one isn’t allowed to flush the toilet after 10 pm. Or run the washing machine on Sundays. Outside on the street are bins for recycles (bottles, cans) but they have hours posted on them: you may not deposit recycles after 7 pm or at all on Sundays! Garbage collection here entails buying specific bags at the grocery store that have a tax added to them. Everyone just puts their garbage out on the street, but no one seems to cheat by buying generic bags. So it is clear that as a society, the Swiss are into orderliness and people following the rules. At the same time, things that are considered dirty or antisocial in California are common here. Of course, lots of smoking everywhere, but also the sidewalks are absolutely covered with chewing gum that has been spit out. Another thing I didn’t expect here is how ethnically mixed the population is, although no Latinos and rather more people from the middle east or Africa. And the food offerings, at least in the parts of town we have so far explored are often very diverse: lots of donner kebab (Turkish food like shawarma) but also Indian, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, Sushi etc. Unfortunately, still pretty expensive, and not worth it in terms of eating out with kids. Even IKEA was a pain with them! Anyway, at this point, just the grocery store is enough adventure!