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!

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!  

Schnee, Schnee and more Schnee!

I'm not gonna lie, I totally dig the snow.  Annnd it's really pretty on the fall trees!

A few "before" photos taken on Sat morning and a few "after" photos taken on Sunday:

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

 Sophie likes the snow!

checking out the view

dodging the snowball Andre threw at her

 And a few pretty shots of our neighborhood walk this afternoon:

Today we went on our train ride.  We had a nice English breakfast while riding around the country in an old train that's been refurbished.  We brought the average age of the attendees on the train down by at least 20 years.  :)  The train is called the "Churchhill".  It was built in 1939 and was used to transport Mr. Winston Churchhill himself around Switzerland.  It was a nice ride and we sat next to a Swiss couple who we enjoyed talking to and getting good insider information about the Christmas markets!  A few shots from the train ride:

the "Churchhill" - photo borrowed from the sbb website

I'm ready!

and so is Andre!

they let us come up front and hang out with the conductor!

uhhhh - shouldn't his hands be on the wheel?

That's it from Switzerland.  Unfortunately for us, even with the snow, we'll still be going to work tomorrow.  Dang.

so much for the Swiss fall.....

Swiss Fall!

Given that on Monday, the high temperature was 46F, we thought that we should take full advantage of the gorgeous weather this weekend.  Who knows when winter will hit permanently around here??

We walked ("hiked") from Uetilberg over to Felsenberg on a trail called the Panorama Trail.  It was beautiful.  A few shots:

So glad the leaves change colors here!

one minute, you are in the woods . . .

and the next, you are walking by some cows.

Sophie doing her best interpretation of a cow

A Swiss farm on top of the mountain

Old graveyard & wild looking tree

Yay for fall!

Sophie & Andre

Next week, we are going on a breakfast train ride for our anniversary!

United States, Spiders and Guests, Oh My!

United States

It's been a week since we returned from our trip home and I think we have, maybe, just maybe recovered!  Our trip home was great.  We didn't get to see everybody but we did get to see lots of people which we enjoyed!

To summarize:

Things we missed about the US
1.  Family and Friends (awwwww - aren't we sweet)
2.  FOOD!  Mexican food, home cooked food, gluten free pizza, etc
3.  Cheap stuff

Things we did not miss about the US
1.  People who touch our dog.  She bites, people, she bites.
2.  The Humidity - ew, ew and ew
3.  Stores being open on Sunday - It took us a while to adjust to the stores being closed on Sunday here but now we love it!  Sunday = Funday in Switzerland!

Spiders

In other news, here is a recreation of a conversation between us today:

Andre:  Hey, by the way, there was a HUGE HUGE spider in the guest room this morning.
Melanie:  Ew.  Did you kill it?
Andre:  No.
Melanie: What?!?!  Why not!??!!
Andre:  It was so big it could have carried Sophie away.
Melanie:  So I have a giant spider just walking around my apartment right now.
Andre:  Yup.
Melanie:  Sigh.

On the bright side, Andre got industrious this evening and vacuumed the sucker up!  Apparently, our friend crawled up the wall during the day and was at eye level and bigger (riiight) when Andre got home.  My first question was:  What if he crawls out?!  Andre's response:  Go look at the vacuum.

Works for me!

Guests

We have guests coming in January!  Hooray!  Who else is coming to visit!?

Bellinzona - Castles, Castles & More Castles!

Last weekend, we checked the forecast and saw that rain covered 75% of Switzerland so we abandoned our original plan and headed to Bellinzona instead!  Our friend Rachel is working in Basel for a couple of months so she joined us for our day adventure.

There are three castles in Bellinzona.  According to Wikipedia, the site of the Castelgrande has been fortified since at least the 1st century BC.  The current visible parts of the castle dates from 1250 - 1500.

We really enjoyed the castles.  We were able to walk around, check things out and have some drinks overlooking the city below.  Two thumbs up!

Castelgrande:

the view from Castle Montebello

that would be Andre & Sophie napping (bottom center) while Rachel and I climbed the tower

Montebello

Montebello in the foreground and Sasso Corbaro in the very back

Sophie likes castles!

Other Pictures:

Bellinzona - Sept 22 2012