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!