Monday, November 26, 2012

Never a dull moment here in Zurich

Last Saturday night we had a bunch of friends over for Mexican Noche!  Andre cooked up quite an impressive feast and we all sat around eating and drinking and being merry.  There are purposely no pictures from this event.  :)  I think everyone who attended brought us a bottle of tequila so even though we made margaritas, Andre and I are left with what we expect to be a lifetime supply of tequila:

Who wants to come have some margaritas!?

On Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving with our Australian friends.  I'm not sure what inspired them to buy a turkey and cook it but I will be forever grateful that they did.  I contributed some typical unhealthy American desserts and a casserole to balance out the healthy salad and brussels sprouts (ew) that our wonderful friends cooked up.  The dinner was great and I was so thankful to spend the evening with them.  The day itself was kind of difficult.  We had to go to work on Thursday and Friday although I certainly didn't get much work done on Thursday.  Friday, I "worked from home" and actually got some things done.  Probably everything I should have done on Thursday......

After preparing my pie dough, I realized I didn't have a rolling pin so I improvised!
the delicious turkey!
Sophie's Thanksgiving Dinner
dessert time - yum!

We ended our week by starting our Christmas celebrations.  I am really looking forward to the Christmas season here.  They've already set up the Christmas market in the main train station and some smaller ones all around town.

the Swarovsky decorated tree in the main train station
love this - it's decorative and functional - stop on by and buy your hot beverage for the evening!

count the kids climbing the tree!

Sophie is ready for Christmas!
Coming up, Andre plans to go skiing as soon as we can possibly fit it into our schedules.  The slopes are already open!  We head to Munich for my birthday weekend and to Chamonix for skiing over New Years.  Hooray for the holidays!  Come visit!

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Best vacuum ever! Oh, and some wine.

Sooooo, once upon a time, two Americans moved to Switzerland and suffered from price shock.  During that time, the Americans bought the cheapest vacuum available.  Unfortunately, the vacuum turned out to be a dud (shocking I know).  Also, unfortunately, the Americans don't like to vacuum so it took another 8 months before the Americans ventured out to buy another vacuum.  Mostly, the Americans realized they were having friends over in two weeks and the friends might prefer a clean floor to walk on.  Soooo, the Americans headed back out in the wilds of Switzerland to find themselves a decent vacuum.  When what to their wondering eyes did appear?  But the world's easiest vacuum, one that can be used while drinking a beer!

Seriously - best purchase ever!  I can tell you that it works 100% better than our prior method of vacuuming (aka - not vacuuming).  Annnd - it comes with a remote!


It even comes with a camera so that it sees things and doesn't bump into them.  It also returns itself to its charging station when the battery is low.  We're in love.

In other news, for 59 years, Zurich has been docking a bunch of yachts and holding wine tastings on them.  We were quite happy to participate this year.  It was really quite nice.  About 9 of boats had different wine tastings sections and the other 3 had restaurants.  We "tasted" plenty of wine and had a really great meal too.  Much better than my normal German lessons on Wednesday night.  Nerk Nerk.  A few shots of the boats:



this is the inside of the boat

That's it from this side of the pond this week!