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!