When my parents were here in December, we all went to Rouen and visited the grave of my great grandfather, who died near there during WW1. On telling my mother-in-law about it some time later, she expressed surprise that any Australians had been killed in the war because she didn't realise we were involved. We were all surprised that she didn't know.

The other day I was telling my french teacher about the trip, and she asked "But why did he die there?". "Errmmm, because he was a soldier" I said, and she also was SHOCKED to hear that Australia had been involved. Apparently she must have thought he was on holidays or something. I was surprised that she didn't know (and then I gave her a big tedious lecture on Australia's continuing links with England and the fact that so many Australians signed up to be soldiers because of the desire to travel and have an adventure, which I imagine was fairly different from the motivation of french soldiers. Which I quite enjoyed).

It always comes as a surprise to find that the rest of the world thinks of us so little (except to say how much they want to go to Aus on holidays and how they think it must be some sort of paradise and "Why are you living in Switzerland when you could be living in Australia? What's wrong with you??"). Are we really so irrelevant?

(the military part of the cemetary in Rouen. Some of it, anyway)

Well Someone Has To Do It.

Congratulations/commiserations to Reto, who rejoins the world of the living dead, I mean working dead, I mean fully employed (actually his new job is only 80%), today. On May Day, which is apparently unusual/appalling/ironic (or something). If only we had a public holiday today too (like Zurich does, and possibly other cantons too, but I can't be sure) then I wouldn't have been woken up at 6.30am. Although I might have been woken up at 7am anyway by the marching band that marched past making a racket for no good reason. Grr.

Zombie cat, with job

Lisbon!

Well, in spite of my earnestly good intentions to write a nice post about Lisbon and how super it was (and it was!), I'm going to possibly thwart myself a bit, or possibly save myself from being a complete slacker, by giving y'all a bit of an edited highlights list now. In no particular order:

The sun! Not that the weather hasn't been quite nice here lately, but getting back yesterday and finding it all cold and rainy and grim (and even snowing in places! Not our places fortunately, but it has been &^%^$#$ing cold) was depressing, to say the least.

Gum trees! And bottle brushes (in flower)! Normally the only place you ever see Australian flora is in Australia (although apparently there are tons of gum trees in Israel, and I saw some in Monaco and the south of France last year) so this was pleasantly nostalgia-inducing. I like gum trees.

The architecture, and particularly all the pretty tiles on the walls of buildings. Also, the lovely cobbled streets, decoratively and attractively cobbled, not boring run-of-the mill cobbling. Although those streets were slippery at the best of times; I hate to imagine how they'd be in the rain. The tiles were very lovely though, and I have any number of photos of them that I could (and possibly will) share with you.

The portugese tarts. Although funnily enough, I only ate about 2 of them the whole time, but it was nice to know they were there. And as it turns out they're delicious sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon.

The ease of public transport use. The metro is fab. I've never liked buses much, but who needs them when you have a well-running train system?

The IndieLisboa film fest, which just happened to start the day after we arrived! We ended up seeing (choosing based on language, because the blurb we found had nothing about what the films were about, just when they were on and where they came from) an American doco called Tyson, which we assumed would either be about Mike Tyson or the evil chicken-growing corporation Tyson (disappointingly the former, but it was still really interesting), a programme of short films (two from english-speaking nations, one Finnish and two Dutch. We were thinking that we might have some chance with Dutch (or at least Reto would) because it sounds kinda german-ish, but happily they were all either in english, without dialogue or subtitled into english (and portugese, obviously)! The hardest one to understand was the New Zealandish one!) and a French flick called Avant que j'oublie, which we were all prepared to watch in french but it was subbied into english too! And each ticket only cost 3 euros 50! Cheap!

The beach! We paddled in it and it was freezing.

The shopping! We hardly did any of it, but I managed to rustle up a few tshirts and they were so cheap. Possibly because they're from sweatshops or something, but I won't think about that. Although I should.

The food! For some reason we ate Tibetan food more than anything else, and it was lovely. And as it turns out Portugese wine tastes kinda Australian.

The fact that everything was so easy. Everyone spoke english or french, the public transport was great, it was easy to find our way around and nothing was a drama.

And that's the list. At least as far as I can remember it now. If I'd been more organised I would have gone for a better ending.

tiles!

Living In The Past

Hmm. Reto just called his mum, who was preoccupied with babysitting her new(ish) grandson and therefore not paying proper attention to R's (undoubtedly) scintillating conversation. At the end of the call, she said "Well, have a nice dinner and say hi to Tina for me". Erm, that would be Reto's ex girlfriend then. From about a million years ago, admittedly, and who I've since stolen from him (as in she's my friend now, not his) but still.

Good thing I don't have any mother-in-law issues that need a bit of extra fuel. Not to mention jealous ex-girlfriend rage.

Swine Flu

Nice
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news_digest/Vials_of_swine_flu_virus_explode_on_train.html?siteSect=104&sid=10627294&cKey=1240905572000&ty=nd.

If you can't be bothered clicking on that, the DRAMATIC story is that a container of swine flu exploded on a train just outside Fribourg. The LESS DRAMATIC version is that it was a strain not dangerous to people (apparently).

We're back from Lisbon, by the way, and it was SUPER.

Call Me A Sad Old Whiner, I Deserve It.

I was just out at the shops and I saw a huge queue of people outside fnac, waiting to buy tickets to the Paleo festival (which go on sale in a few hours. Actually, right now, but it was a few hours ago that I was at the shops). And that's why I don't like festivals. The boring queueing required (and if it's not for tickets it's for toilets or food or drinks or tickets to buy food or drinks with (great system, whoever came up with that one, making everyone queue twice for the same thing) and the implication of competition to get stuff (I assume the tickets sell out quickly) and having to sit in mud (or on the floor of a shopping centre, not that I would have a problem with that) or in the relentless sun getting sunburnt. Fun fun fun.

French and Portugal and Facebook (not in that order)

Well, I've just wasted my evening away doing lame quizzes on Facebook, and apparently I should live in Balmain, I'm Jen Garner (whoever she is), I'm a "bible scholar" (random guessing seems to suffice) and the "what hair colour should you have?" quiz is broken. Let's hope I haven't been embarrassing myself as a blonde all these years. Sadly I gave up at that point and so I may never find out if I married the wrong person, or what the name of my husband will be (I bet it's not "Reto", though, which suggests maybe I don't need to do the other quiz).

In other news ... not a lot. Today someone in my french class apparently had a pressing need to learn how to write a formal letter (like for a job application or something) so we spent an agonising hour or so talking about where to put your name and address and where to out the recipient's name and address (which I'm pretty sure is the opposite of what I would consider normal, although I can't really remember what the normal way is anymore) and all about the "formule de politesse", aka vile grovelling about how you hope that this person who you're writing to is showered with good fortune in every aspect of their life and how you feel blessed to receive even the scantiest percentage of their attention instead of just saying "best wishes". Honestly, it was the most offensive thing I've ever heard. I suggested that it's perfectly possible to be polite and respectful without both demeaning yourself and sucking up in such a blatant and implausible manner, and the teacher said that everyone recognises it's just formulaic and that it doesn't matter as long as you just do it too, and I said it was the opposite of everything I stand for and she sort of grudgingly said that's okay too (possibly just to shut me up). I'm willing to wish people "mes meilleures salutations" but that's the absolute limit. And that's about it.

We're going to Lisbon tomorrow for a few days of holidays before Reto has to return to the workforce (did I mention that? He left his last job at the end of Feb and has been happily unemployed for the last 2 months (mooching around in my french classes with me for a significant portion of that time, which made me less than happy, but that's a different whinge-fest) and now we're going on a final celebration of spare time before he's shackled once more to the grindstone of his new job, which starts on the 1st of May). Hello portugese tarts and ... Vasco da Gama, and .. well, port, I suppose, but someone told me today that there's some other port-like beverage that comes from the south of Portugal, so hello that drink. I may bring photos when I return.

A Nice Day

I had such a nice day today. Reto and I went to Zurich for a spot of loafing and a change of scenery. It was sunny and delightful. We went to a design museum and saw a bunch of wacky designy things, then had a rather lovely lunch and coffee in the park outside. We did some very low-maintenance shopping (which I got fed up with after about 5 minutes, which is just what I always anticipated and it saved me from having to go to the trouble of actually trying on any boring clothes that I wasn't going to like anyway). We loafed for ages in a bookshop (which culminated in me buying a book on french grammar, not so charming but nice to have). We had a Mövenpick icecream (pear for me, which was delightful; raspberry/strawberry for Reto, which confirmed the superiority of my choice). We loafed for ages at the Chinese gardens down by the lake (oh the serenity, if you don't count all the kiddies running around playing hide and seek, nor the dead carp I saw in the pond) and read about life in a Thai prison (not so good). We went out for dinner at Hiltl (veggo restaurant that everyone's a big fan of) with our Zurich-dwelling Australian pal Sarah. Which was delightful not only for those reasons, but also because our waiter got the impression that Reto and I were both proper german-speakers (in spite of me not saying a word in german) and that Sarah wasn't, and he kept bringing her english menus and speaking english to her and speaking german to the rest of us. Which was funny, because my german is so abysmal as to be practically non-existent these days (although I'm okay at understanding it, I'd be hard pressed to make a sentence that didn't turn french within a word or two) and Sarah's totally down with the lingo. It's nice to think that other people assume I'm socially competent, though.

And then we went home.

You Sexy Thing

I read a thing in 20 Minutes this morning about how women are likely to rate men with certain professions as more attractive than other men, and men are likely to rate women with certain jobs as more attractive than other women. No surprise there. But what are these jobs? Well, women apparently prefer men who are architects, and men prefer women who are doctors or "working girls" (which was how it was written in french, ie. in english and in inverted commas).

Erm, so that's prostitutes then?

Changes

About a week ago, Reto started reading some pop-psychology book about how he can be a better person and improve his life. At the same time, I finished (re)reading The Ethics Of What We Eat, and decided (as the primary shopper/cooker in the house) that we should be far more ethical/vegetarian in our food choices. Fortunately Reto's book told him he should be more of a veggo too, so since then it's been tofu and chickpeas galore chez nous (which it already was, but now Reto's much more enthusiastic about it. INcidentally, I've also been assiduously choosing the organic/fairtrade options, and I now do our regular shopping at 3 different supermarkets (which is incredibly annoying but makes me feel smug and virtuous. I suspect I might start feeling less smug as spring and summer march on and it gets hotter and I get more and more annoyed at dragging my stupid canvas shopping bags of fairtrade bananas and tinned tomatoes all over town and up and down our 3 flights of stairs)).

Anyway, shopping-wise it's all going well at the moment. The main down-side is that Reto is taking his self-improvement thing waaaaay too far and making me feel like a slob/grot/scoffer. First he started drinking a glass of water with lemon juice in it each morning. Then he stopped having sugar in his porridge and started having dried fruit instead. Then he stopped scoffing chocolate (which he LOVES!), and started requesting half-glasses of wine instead of proper-sized ones. The final straw was when he bought a heart rate monitor and a pair of hideous shorts and took up jogging (he's only been twice so far, but he seems so uncharacteristically enthusiastic). I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be the earnest nutritionist/alternative health care bore in our family. I think I'm losing my sense of purpose.

Netiquette Problems

I'm having a bit of a dilemma. One of my dearest friends, who is all new to blogging and thus full of enthusiasm in a way that I can only dimly recall (note my absence of posts, and her outrageous enthusiasm for writing something not only new but also usually quite thoughtful and entertaining all the time) has tagged me in a modern-day-equivalent-of-a-chain-letter (albeit one that is more flattering than chain letters ever were and which doesn't threaten me with BAD LUCK FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE if I refuse to send it on) and I just don't know what I should do. Actually, I sort of do. Common decency seems to indicate I should acknowledge it, do the questions you're supposed to do and then pass it on, but ....

The thing is, though, that the tag thing is something about how fabulous my blog is. Hmm. My blog which I rarely write anything on these days, and when I do it's normally more on the humdrum tedium side than the fabulous side (I found my pyjamas, by the way. They were in the laundry basket. No idea how they got there, but I like to think that perhaps Reto did pinch them so he could wear them, and then he chucked them in the washing. Thanks for that, Vlad!). Fabulous? Hmm. I feel like an impostor.


And the other thing is that the "and answer these questions!" part is where I'm supposed to list 5 things I'm addicted to. If there's something I've realised, it's that moving away from my country and culture has not left me pining for the fjords (so to speak). I'm not one of those people who packs their suitcase full of Vegemite and Cherry Ripes in order to survive the long cold winter (although that being said, I do have Vegemite and Cherry Ripes in the cupboard, but I haven't really touched them in ages. In fact, I should really give away the Cherry Ripes before they go off. Anyone interested?). I'm much more unconcerned than that. I do find having backwards northern hempisphere seasons constantly unsettling, but I don't know that I would say I'm addicted to the opposite. Oh, there's always the internet. I couldn't live without that. Wearing jeans. Porridge (although that's more of a fad, and one that is likely to die off soon now that spring is here, stupid reverso-seasons). Hmm. Tinned tuna, perhaps. I do love a nice salade niçoise or a tuna pasta or a tuna salad or a tuna lasagne. Perhaps water, too, lame as it sounds (not only because I'd obviously die without it, but because all other thirst-quenching options, like fruit juice or soft drinks or iced tea or whatever, are kind of repellent. I wouldn't turn up my nose at a green tea/black tea/coffee/boozy option, though, but they're not for thirst-quenching purposes).

Okay, maybe I am addicted to some things. Maybe I am fabulous. But that's as far as I'm willing to go. I'm sticking to my long-standing "anti chain letter" stance and not passing this on at all. Anyone who thinks their blog is fabulous should feel free to go for it, though.
Thanks, Ange.

Mystery. By My Standards, Anyway.

I've lost my pyjamas. It's mysterious. I was wearing them yesterday morning. I had a shower. I'm sure I would have picked up my jammies from the bathroom floor and chucked them on our bed after that, but ... they're mysteriously not there. Or anywhere. Our flat has a total of about 3 rooms, so there really aren't many places where they could be, so why can't I find them? Why? Why?

In related news, I also can't find my easter bunny, which Reto has hidden (in plain sight, apparently), which is VERY ANNOYING.

Thanks

When I was at the supermarket this morning the checkout woman actually congratulated me on having minimised the number of plastic bags I used (because, non-Swiss people, here you have to weigh your fruit and veg yourself and then stick the stickers onto something. Which, in my opinion, can be the fruit and veg if you only buy one piece (like a single pineapple, although be warned, pineapples don't cope well with stickers), but otherwise it really has to be on a plastic bag, with said f&v in it). I always put my potatoes and carrots and zucchinis and whatnot in the same bag and then slather it in stickers, which normally earns me a glare from checkout chicks, who apparently find it outrageously inconvenient to have to scan the same bag more than once (oh, the horror). So this morning's experience was a very nice change.

I Am My Mother

I've turned into my mother, and not in a good way.

During my youth, it was always my mother who was responsible for getting rid of bugs in the house. Unfortunately my mother has a "live and let live" policy towards creepy crawlies, so my sister and I were instilled with the belief that you really have to catch the stupid spider or whatever and throw it outside instead of just spraying it with something horrible and toxic and moving on. Anyway, my mother is a real expert at throwing bugs outside. She shows no fear whatsoever, even in the face of the biggest spiders you can imagine.

After we left home, my sister and I lived together in Sydney for ages, and we both became a bit more proactive about bug catching (although I'm willing to admit I was always more wimpy about it than she was). We may even have had a brief flirtation with Mortein (only against cockroaches!), and I definitely went through a long phase of denial (one of the rooms in our house was a particular haven for huntsman spiders, which are so enormous and horrible that my main strategy against them was to close the door to that room and not go in there again for as many months as I could manage).

Now, in the brave new world of married life, I've somehow become Bug Catcher Number One. Not that this is even remotely surprising, since Reto has a pathological fear of everything that's not human (that's a complete overexaggeration, but he has a major bee phobia, which is funny because a) he is frequently spotted cowering away from something that you can't see, which is odd, and b) his dad is a bit of an apiarist and as such his garden is chockers full of bees all the time). Anyway, Reto's a big wimp and I have to be all tough in the face of danger (and bees). Happily, this isn't at all hard in Switzerland where, in spite of the non-existence of fly screens (which is ridiculous, by the way), there's rarely a bug in sight. The other night, though, I was brushing my teeth and there was a pitiful cry from Reto in the other room and upon investigation I found that he was scared of some incredibly small, possibly wounded, bug that had taken refuge on the wall. While I was off getting a plastic container so I could throw it out the window, it vanished mysteriously. And that's about as exciting/(scary) as it gets.

A huntsman spider. Hopefully we'll never see one of these in Switzerland.

Nice

Just when I was being all cranky because we were being ignored by a waiter in my current favourite cafe ever (first he didn't come to take our order FOREVER and then he didn't bring us our order FOREVER, which, since the cafe was mostly empty and we'd only ordered coffee and a slice of cake, was pretty rude) he noticed that he'd ignored us and came over, apologised ridiculously profusely, brought us all our stuff and then insisted it was on the house. Which was completely unexpected, and really rather lovely.

Telly

Something stupid's going on with our telly. Because we live in frenchy-Switz we have the stoopid french version of pay TV, and so, unlike the german-livers, who gained something ridiculous like 9 extra english channels the other day, we seem to have lost Film 4. Actually, we might not really have lost it, but it does seem to have vanished from our TV guide thing. Not that I should be encouraged to watch more telly, but if we were going to lose a channel, why couldn't it be one of the ones that just seems to she Antiques Roadshow all day every day?

In other TV news, I've just found Buffy on a french channel! It's like homework and fun all at once!

On The Bookshelf

I've recently finished reading my first ever proper book in french. By which I mean something that was written for adults, and didn't have any pictures in it (all those Asterixes and Tin-Tins don't count, apparently). Bonjour, Tristesse, in case you were wondering. I feel a certain sense of achievement.

And now that that's over, I've possibly lowered the tone a bit by moving on to the His Dark Materials trilogy, which may be considered children's books. Or maybe "young adult". And I'm reading them in english (and by the way, I bought them for the bargain basement price of 1.50 chf for the three at my favourite Swiss second hand bookshop, which is so outrageously cheap it must be worth mentioning).

Festy cont..

These Switzies, they're so foreign.

Going to the movies here is weird enough what with the allocated seating, different ticket price for different areas in the theatre, intermissions, and outrageous enthusiasm for dubbing instead of subtitling. Actually, I've found that only the dubbing part of that is relevant lately (maybe I'm just going to the right movie theatres, but I haven't had an intermission in ages), but I think all the years of indoctrination with allocated seating might have had a permanent effect on the movie-going habits of many Swiss folk. In my experience, ticket-sellers at Swiss cinemas, when they have to allocate seats, tend to allocate everyone into the smallest space possible. Even if there are only 10 of you in the whole theatre, you'll all be wedged into the middle, nary a spare seat between you, and your Charming Swiss Companion will be surprisingly hesitant to agree to move with you to other seats so that you can have some elbow room. If, unlikely as it is, you do happen to use your initiative and move to a seat other than your allocated one, you can be sure that someone will come in and say "excuse me, you're in my seat". Everyone cares that much about being where they're supposed to be.

Even now, in the brave new world of "sit where you like! All the tickets cost the same!" a lot of people can't bear to see a seat in the middle go to waste. At pretty much every movie I've seen in the last few days (which is about 10) I've seen people come into the (usually mostly-empty) theatre just as the lights are going down, spot a single reasonably-central spare seat (usually with coats/scarves/bags on it) between groups of other people, and squish past everyone else in the row to ask "is that seat free?" rather than just taking a slightly less central seat that perhaps has spare seats around it. I'd rather sit at the end of the row and have a bit of room to myself and be able to whisper annoying commentary to my Charming Swiss Companion (that's Reto, by the way, not some Mystery Swiss Companion) without annoying other people as well, than have the "best" seat in the house. Apparently no one agrees with me.

Festy

The Fribourg film festival started yesterday! It's an annual thing, with a general theme of movies from asia and south america and africa. Last year, while anticipating this year's festival and when I was much crappier at french than I am these days, I was a bit worried that it might all be a bit french (language) and inaccessible for me, but happily I have discovered that pretty much all the movies are shown in their original languages and sub-titled into english. Wackily enough, there is also the offer of simultaneous translation into french for many films, which involves a translator sitting in the back row of the theatre, and her french translation of it all being available on headphones that you can get upon your entry to the theatre. Which is something I've never seen before at the movies, and no doubt extremely handy. And also kind of annoying, because in quieter moments (like when there is text on the screen and no sound) you can hear her muttering away in the background.

So far we've seen Terminal Island (an american flick from the 70s or so, which is in the festival under a "revanches de femmes" theme, although I'm not really sure if the women in the film were actually the agents of their own revenge or if they were there more to take their clothes off a lot and be rescued by their menfolk (rescued from the other menfolk, whose intentions were nowhere near as gallant).

And then we saw Garapa, a doco about malnutrition and starvation in the slums of Fortaleza (a town in northeast Brazil). Which was relentlessly depressing, as you'd imagine, and really interesting. "Garapa" is the name of the sugar water that people give their children to drink when they have no other food available, which seems to be an awful lot of the time, in spite of the government's "zero hunger" programme which seems to involve giving money for food and/or milk for children under a certain age. While the lack of work/money/food is obviously a major problem, one of the more interesting bits of the doco for me was near the end when the filmmaker asked his subjects if they wanted to have more children (more than the 11 that one family already had!). Some of them sort of said "no", but overall the mood was more one of resignation; that there's nothing you can do to prevent it, that you're equally likely to have another baby whether or not you use contraception, and that if you do have more children, you will always find a way to feed them. But of course that way is frequently with nothing more than sugar and water, which really isn't doing anyone any good. Lordy it was depressing.

No Vampires On Me

I just had a nice bowl of porridge for brekky. Nice until the last mouthful, anyway, when it turned into pure garlic. I'm a big fan of garlic, just not first thing in the morning, apparently.

I think the moral to this story is not to use the same chopping board to cut up the almonds that go in my porridge that Reto used last night when he made garlic bread.