Hooray for Visitors!

Our first visitors finally arrived this past Friday.  Our friends from Charlotte, Megan and Ellen, arrived at the airport on Friday morning around 9:15am.  They were about 45 minutes late.  Normally this wouldn't bother me but since I live my life without common sense, I didn't think to check the flight before leaving my apartment and therefore spent my extra 45 minutes hanging out at the airport instead of doing some last minute cleaning or whatnot around the house.  Sigh.

Anyway, I can't even tell you how glad I was to see them.  I've had a few bouts of homesickness recently and so it was fantastic timing for their arrival!

I took them home and let them shower and then we headed to Zurich to meet up with Russ, another American friend visiting Zurich.  We spent the day exploring the city.  Lucky for the visitors, our friend April is a much better tour guide than myself.  I took notes though so I can look knowledgeable for future visitors.  :)

Group Shot!

On Saturday, I got up and participated in the SOLA with my work group.  The SOLA is a relay race throughout Zurich and surrounding areas.  It covers 117km.  My portion was 5.9km.  It started out on a nice downhill slope and then about 4km in, it switched to uphill.  It also rained the entire time I ran.  I almost died.  Here's proof that I survived:

The worst part of the race was actually after I finished.  To get off the mountain where my portion ended, I had to ride down in an enclosed furnicular car crammed with sweaty smelly runners.  Ew.

Anyway, after all that, I showered, packed and we hit the road to Lucerne.  We found ourselves a map with a suggested walking tour and we hit the road. 

Chapel Bridge - Europe's oldest covered wooden bridge

The Dying Lion of Lucerne

It was carved out of natural rock in memory of the heroic deaths of the Swiss mercenaries at the Tuileries in 1792. Mark Twain described the Lion of Lucerne as the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world.

Lucerne is gorgeous.  I highly recommend everyone visit.  Feel free to visit us too if you are in the area!  Other pictures:

Lucerne - May 2012

While at dinner in Lucerne, we realized that we wouldn't make it to our hotel until after 10pm so Ellen gave the hotel a call to let them know.  They said, no problem, we'll leave the door unlocked and the key to your room on the counter.  And that's exactly what they did.  Apparently, there is no reason to worry about crime in Lauterbrunnen.

On Sunday, we explored Lauterbrunnen, checked out the Trümmelbach Falls, the James Bond restaurant at Schilthorn, walked through Mürren, took the cable car back down to our hotel, saw a phenomenal rainbow and finally had dinner at Hotel Oberland with our own individual chocolate fondues for dessert!  Lauterbrunnen is a trough valley in the Alps with 72 waterfalls.  It's absolutely stunning.

Waterfall #1

Trümmelbach Falls - Glacier Water Falls inside Black Monk Mountain

A view of the valley

We did a LOT of walking on Sunday

At the top of Schilthorn

This pictures shows you our view along with what we were supposed to see....

Mother Nature was forgiven as we headed back down the mountain and got to see this:

Other Pictures:

Lauterbrunnen - May 2012

Monday, we got up and headed up to Jungfrau.  After the previous three days of walking (and running), I was personally quite glad to sit on the train for two hours as we made our way up the mountain.  This time, we went so high, we actually passed through the clouds covering Schilthorn and it was nice and clear when we arrived to Jungfraujoch.

Other Pictures:

Jungfrau - May 2012

Now it's time for everybody else to come visit!  Let us know when you are coming!!!!

Sechseläuten

Sechseläuten = Best excuse ever for taking half a day off, dressing crazy, drinking and exploding fireworks.

So yea, I totally got a half day holiday today to celebrate burning the Böögg (aka a snowman) until his head exploded! Apparently, the longer it takes for the head to explode, the colder and rainier the summer will be. Explode Böögg Explode!!!

Afterwards, I commented on how strange an event that was and Andre reminded me that we predict our weather with a groundhog....

Pictures from Sechseläuten:

The Böögg!



Historical Dress



Burn Böögg Burn!

If you'd like to read more:
Swiss News in English
Wikipedia Article on Sechseläuten

Extreme Tourism - Paris Version

One super fabulous thing about working in Switzerland is a long Easter weekend (Friday & Monday off). Of course, the flip side of that is that everything in Switzerland is closed. Soooo, we decided it was our duty to escape the country and head to Paris for the weekend. Tragic I know :)

We took the train over on Thursday evening. Being the Americans that we are, we booked our train at 15:30 instead of 5:30 as we intended..... Damn military time.
So anyway, after convincing my boss we didn't do it on purposes, we took the train over to Paris. The train motored on through Switzerland but once we hit France, the train went all out. Sometimes traveling in excess of 200 miles per hour. It was awesome.
Four hours after boarding the train, it spit us out in Paris at Gare de Lyon. We figured we would take the metro from the Gare de Lyon to our hotel and were feeling quite confident that we could handle this. You know, having lived in Europe for three whole months and all and having done our research in advance. Too bad, the only money we had was 50 Euro bills from the ATM and all the ticket machines only take cards with chips (which we do not have) or Euro coins. It took us a good 30 minutes to find the one human being behind a tiny ticket counter that could take our money!!!
We finally made it to our hotel and they gave us this super awesome key that I'm pretty sure is older than America.



We then went out in search of food and decided on a place close by. It may have been the worst meal we have ever had. Andre got the worst of it. He thought he was ordering Andouille sausage when in fact, he was ordering Andouillette. It was revolting and smelled worse. But from there, things only got better.

Without further adieu, our Paris activities with our new Taosuwan rating system: Golden Turtles (play on our last name in Thai)


Sidenote: If you revere history and/or dead people, you might want to skip the pictures.



Photos from Day 1:

Paris! Day 1 - April 6, 2012

Paris! Day 2 - April 7, 2012

Paris! Day 3 - April 8, 2012

Zug

Since I'm over here preventing tax evasion and all, we thought we'd take a day trip down to Zug to check out where all the US companies are "headquartered". It's actually a very nice city. There is a very modern section with tons of office buildings, shopping, etc. and then there is the old city with a castle (!) and all kinds of totally old stuff. :)



Also, you can buy FRESH pasta, olives and meat right off a cart!

Initially, we had a really hard time with the food here. Of course, I have issues anyway but then we are soooo used to being able to go out and eat whenever we want and that is just not possible here.
First of all, it's too damn expensive. We can't even go to McDonalds for less than 25CHF.
And then of course, nothing is ever open! Seriously. I have no idea how the restaurants here stay in business.
Not long after arriving, we realized it's much easier and cheaper to cook at home. And the food here is so fresh. Super fresh. See pictures.





A few pictures of our outing (the rest are in an album below):

We found a castle!!!! with a moat!!!!


and it's like totally tall and stuff!


We're insanely jealous of these people. We will figure out how to do this.(you may have to zoom in)

The rest of the pics (with informational captions for those who might be interested in such information):

Zug - March 31 2012

Indianer Nordamerikas

We took this approximately two blocks from our apartment. For perspective, that's me in the entrance.














For more information, please visit: http://www.indianland-museum.ch/

Happy New Year!

Andre and I spent most of Dec 31 enjoying the English language television we finally figured out and drinking wine. After much discussion, we finally bit the bullet and headed out with the masses to see the fireworks over the lake. We were not disappointed! even if I lost feeling in my right foot while we waited... :)

Check out a few pictures:

New Year's Eve