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!