Plane Food

Well, we're back from our Australian adventure (did I mention that?) and it was a delight. I'm not really sure where all the photos are, so in the meantime let me just say that it was super, and also wonder .. Why are childrens meals on planes so atrociously appalling? I don't even mean appalling in the way that all plane food has the potential to be revolting, but appalling in the sense that an average meal for the No included something revoltingly deep-fried and reheated, about three types of dessert and an extreme-sugar non-fruit fruit juice. We ordered the "child meal for infant" option (because the alternatives seemed to be a jar of baby mush, which she has never eaten, or nothing), so obviously they were designed for slightly bigger people, but still. Is this ideal? Give a kid some chicken nuggets, Oreos, a mars bar, chocolate mousse and a box of raisins and then hope he settles in for a nice 12-hour nap? And why all the Oreos? They came with almost every meal! Aren't plane meals usually at least a bit geographically influenced? When you're flying out of Switzerland you get a piece of gruyère; when you leave Australia you get cheddar. Who eats Oreos apart from Americans? Where were all the Tim Tams and .. (hmm, what biscuits do Swiss people eat?) ... läckerli? Blergh. I think we might order the veggo option for the No next time, and see if that is any less offensive. That being said, I do wonder if I'm being a bit hysterically food controlly with regard to the No. I have been told by assorted onlookers that it's mean not to give her chocolate, that she deserves a piece of cake, and that she would drink more if we gave her syrop (= cordial) instead of water.

Things I Haven't Done Recently

The annual balloon festival was on at Chateau d'Oex (quite near here) last week, and we ummed and aahed and then didn't go. Reto was a bit sad because he's just bought a fancy (= expensive) new camera and missed out on an opportunity to use it, but then he had a look at the pictures he took when we went there a few years ago and was appeased.

Woof

While I've spent most of this week flailing about and being sick as a dog (well, I've had a cold), the dogs we saw last weekend were adorable and not showing any outward signs of illness.

(not sick)

We went to a cold mountainy town (Kandersteg) and watched some dog sled races, and it was really surprisingly fun. I don't know anything about dogs, but they all seemed to be having a nice time and were going COMPLETELY MENTAL jumping around and straining at their harnesses and making a racket while awaiting their turn to go hooning off around the track.(some dogs were hooning less than others. Admittedly this was uphill, and it was freezing in the shade, and teams of less than about 6 dogs really seemed a lot more knackered by the end, but yes, that is the sled person running along behind, and yes, that dog on the right looks like he might be wondering about a shortcut)

Particular marks for adorableness go to the samoyeds (for being so furry),

(not samoyeds, because I figured they were already overrepresented in the photos below)

to the dogs in boots, to all the dogs that turned all cute and puppyish while gawky spectators gave them a pat (some of these dogs looked like they'd prefer to bite their own legs off than submit to the indignity of being patted, but I didn't see one that maintained its steely-eyed glareyness in the face of actual affection), and, most of all, to this dog in goggles, who seemed to be the favourite of all the spectators.Special mention also goes to the person who got so keen about taking photos that he kinda went onto the track and then got run into by one of the teams of dogs. Stoopid.

(not this person. It wasn't Reto either, by the way. Or me)

Getting Things Done

Jet lag makes us efficient.

Which isn't actually true at all, but it does mean that we had woken up, lounged around in bed, had a leisurely breakfast, called my parents, been indecisive about what to do today, done some googling and made a decision, organised ourselves, left the house and caught a bus by 8am (that was after waking up at 4am, so really it took us ages). We went to a thermal pool in Charmey, a nearby-ish town, and it was great. We arrived in time to have a coffee and a croissant (normally I loathe croissants and only eat them if I'm starving but this one was actually ... edible. If not slightly enjoyable) before the pool even opened and still be practically the first ones there. Unusually, the entry price (which was relatively cheap) included all the novelty pools (by which I mean saunas in various styles and temperatures, and a coldcoldcold pool and a foot bath too, I think, none of which I used because apparently these things are verboten during pregnancy. Well, not the foot bath but the rest of it). The main pools (one indoor, one outdoor) had a few of the bubbly/jetty things that are always fun at a thermal pool place, but not so many that the whole thing would be a magnet for little kids who like to frolic mindlessly and kick you as they don't watch where they're going. There were pretty mountains around to look at. The walls and floors were all covered in really nice green mosaic-y tiles. On the down side, we caught a very inconvenient bus to get home again and spent an hour and a half following some tortuous route through the smaller towns of canton Fribourg, but I guess you can't win them all.

And then we had a fondue as a very early dinner, and now I'm wondering how early I can possibly go to bed. I suppose I should try to stay awake and get rid of the jet lag, but bed seems very enticing.

Flying

Yesterday I was worrying about getting sunburnt at the beach and the dilemma of having to potentially pack wet swimmers in my suitcase for the flight back to Switzerland (you'll all be pleased to know they dried in about 2 seconds after I hung them on the line), today I struggled not to fall over in the snow slush on the way home from the train station with my giganto suitcase and in my summery shoes. Sigh.

In other news, when we were going through the metal detectors in Dubai, one of the staff asked me "are you pregnant?". I said yes, and she directed me around the side of the machines and over to some woman who took me into a cubicle and frisked me (in lieu of being metal detected). I think most options are better than being frisked (including those nudie scanners that are causing such controversy lately), but this was the first I've heard of avoiding metal detectors during pregnancy. Which is possibly not ideal, since I've gone through at least 4 of them in the last few weeks.

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!

More Of The Same

Well, it's been more of the usual lately. A quick trip to France with my parents and sister to find the grave of my great grandfather who died near there during the first world war,a bit of enjoying people's insane christmas lights (these ones were opposite the hotel we stayed at in Rouen, and involved Santa in a hot air balloon, santa in his toy factory and santa with his reindeer, as well as an inexplicable dancing pelican), looking at space cabbages (I don't know what they actually are. They look sort of like cabbage-related items, but they're CRAZY, and everyone knows that CRAZY things probably come from space) and various other charming sights in Paris.

In other news, I read American Psycho while I was away, and it was the most horrible and disturbing thing I've ever read. Normally violence in books doesn't bother me so much, but this was so grisly and so graphic and so lacking in humanity ... aagh, don't read it.

Tourist Frenzy

Oh how I am looking forward to my day off tomorrow. Since mum and dad arrived (a week ago) I have given them the grand tour of Fribourg (which comes in several parts and as it turns out can take days to complete. Jet-lagged, luggage-free days, but still), I've taken them to Grindelwald and the (invisible due to cloud/fog/snow) Eiger*, to Zermatt and the (pleasantly visible) Matterhorn, we've done the "here's our former home" tour of Aarau, and we've spent a few days seeing christmas markets and raclette and Stein am Rhein with R's parents (only half of whom share a language with my parents, which makes things tricky. Although I have to say, Reto's parents cope extremely well with the fact that two of their three children have married native english-speakers who are both a bit other-language challenged (since french is definitely my dominant non-native language now and not a very useful one in the in-laws setting) and whose parents are all uselessly monolingual. Fortunately the remaining unmarried sibling looks likely to stick with his Swiss girlfriend and thus save his parents from too much more intercultural incomprehension and expensive plane fares). Tomorrow it's officially been decided that no one's doing anything, which means I will be staying home, doing laundry, trying to read my stupid french road rules book and maybe going to Ikea to buy some curtains for the spare room before my sister arrives and has to sleep there for a month.

Not so relaxing after all, then. Grr.




* Sorry Steph. We heard that you wanted us to wait so we could go there with you in the evening after we'd got back. I'm sure we can go again, though, since we saw NOTHING the first time round. And maybe mum n dad will be such experts by then that I won't even have to go with you!

No Photos

R and I went to Locarno this weekend (celebrating our last weekend of freedom before my parents arrive for an extended visit. They're supposed to be flying via Bangkok but fortunately have been rerouted) and had we remembered to take a camera I would have so many pretty photos to show you. There would have been heaps of the HUGE amount of snow we came across when we popped out of the tunnel in Ticino and all the huge snowflakes that were falling and of all the excellent fog that prevented us from seeing more than about 10m away (which doesn't necessarily make for a good photo, I suppose, but it was ridiculously beautiful nonetheless). There would have been some of the skating rink (complete with mirror balls and unattractive christmas decorations) that they're in the throes of putting up in the main square of Locarno. There might have been one of me in this ridiculously furry hat I'm thinking of buying (actually, there's no way I would have taken a photo of me trying on a hat in a shop, but you don't have to know that). There would have been some of these excellent trees we kept seeing, which were all brown and leafless and wintery-looking, but they all had mysterious orange blobs on the ends of the most inconveniently-located branches. I assume they were just apples or something (although they were much more the colour of oranges) that the tree-owners hadn't been able to reach, but they looked hilarious.

And there might have also been a photo of me looking all cranky and cold and being rained on. It's nice to be home (where there's almost no snow and absolutely no rain).

Long Weekend

I'm going to London any second now! For the hen's night of a friend (which is filling me with a certain amount of terror, but more about that later)! It's going to be super, I think - speaking english to EVERYONE, buying newspapers in english and for a reasonable price (as opposed to the 7 francs I very occasionally pay for the Guardian International weekend edition or whatever it is. Which is an outrageous price and the paper is usually chockers full of middle-aged paranoia about private education and ethical gardening and stuff like that. I used to be such a paper-reader in Australia, but here I've turned into the sort of moron that relies on 20 Minutes (and the internet, obviously) for her news)! Seeing people I know! Errm ... I'm not really sure what else one does in England that one doesn't do here, but either way, I'm sure it will be super.

Moléson

We spent a charming weekend in Moléson, which is a town/mountain about an hour from here (on bus/train/bus, or bus/bus, anyway. If you drove yourself it would probably only be half that, but then again, if you drove yourself you might have got caught in the big stupid traffic jam on the way home and spent ages being annoyed. Our bus driver knew better, though, so we didn't miss our next bus and we could spend our time being tired instead of annoyed) with little to recommend it other than mini golf (closed), some sort of bobsled/luge thing (closed), a fromagerie (closed) and a bunch of nature (not closed). Oh, and free accommodation, of course, because we went with a friend who has a flat there.

We didn't do a whole lot. We walked up some mountains and down some mountains

not those ones

we did walk up here though

We looked at parapenters taking off.

We went in a funicular (or something) and a big scary cable car.

We ate a lot of fondue (no photos of that, unfortunately, nor of the sad, sad ending where no one could manage to scrape the delicious burnt cheese off the bottom of the pot. I don't know why it happened, but my theory is that it had something to do with the fact that the caquelon was made of metal instead of ceramic). Also no photos of us watching "Benissimo" which is some crappy Swiss lottery type TV show that's apparently on every 6 weeks or so, and is hosted by this Beni dude who seems to be the Daryl Sommers of Swiss (german) telly. Reto and Cécile seemed to think that making me watch Benissimo would make me more Swiss, but really ... if that's what being Swiss is about, then I don't think I'm interested. I did enjoy the fondue though, which I suppose is a step in the right direction. Or at least in a direction.

One of the most civilised things about Switz: on top of every mountain, there's a restaurant.

Anyway, all in all we had a charming weekend that felt like it was miles from everywhere (certainly miles from home) but was actually still in the same canton.

Norway

Well, as I said, Norway was super, and as I also said, it's a bit of a far-distant blur now. The story, therefore, will be heavily assisted by photos.

We spent a day in Oslo. Oslo is a city basically without charm, and I say this as Norway's biggest fan. We visited what may be the premier tourist attraction in Oslo, Frogner park, and found that the premier tourist attraction in the premier tourist attraction, the enormous statue of naked bodies all intertwined into a big phallic totem pole, was entirely hidden behind scaffolding for its once-in-a-blue-moon cleaning. So that was some fairly bad timing.
The good thing about this holiday, though, was that both of us have been there before, and so it really didn't matter.

So. That was Oslo, along with overpriced accommodation, surprisingly cheap (but still overpriced) curry, and lots of wandering around and failing to find this really lovely statue of some long-dead Norwegian king (I saw the statue last time I was there, and although I remember it well, I'm really not sure where it is).

Then we sat on trains and more trains and boats for a really, really long time. Which was far less arduous than it could have been.

And then we arrived in Stamsund,and spent a week and a half loafing about and doing pleasantly non-arduous things. We looked at a lot of sheep

Apparently the Lofoten islands are known for the delicious lamb they produce. I ate some, and I'm pleased to say it was delicious (although at those prices it really should have been. Everything in Norway is constantly shockingly expensive. Which we were expecting, but somehow that didn't lessen the shock. It was strange to arrive in Sweden after a few weeks in Norway and to think "wow, everything is so cheap!". I don't think Sweden is known for being a bargain basement holiday destination).

We sat around a lot.

That's obviously a cat loafing. When we were loafing, we were loafing properly, not taking photos of ourselves. And we weren't cats.

We said hello again to everyone's favourite Norwegian ice cream pirate.

Yes, he is very icy. He doesn't normally look so creepy.

I went fishing. And successfully caught 3 (or was it 4? I don't know) wee saithe,

not my fish

which were later contributed to the world's most delicious fish soup. The idea of fish soup has always seemed a bit horrible to me (much like fish curry. There's nothing I like less than fish curry) but this was really, really delicious. And made by a genuine Swedish chef, which probably helps.

We rented a car and drove around a lot. We saw a lot of white sandy beaches

and a lot of enormous rocky mountains

and a lot of charmingly colourful houses. If I was going to live there, I'd paint my house blue.

I wouldn't go for white window sills, though. I'd seriously consider dark blue

Obviously there's also the possibility that you could paint your house whatever colour you like wherever you live, but a) I don't have a house, and b) Reto tells me that in some places here there are rules about what colour you're allowed to paint your house. For example, apparently where R's dad lives, there is some sort of rule to protect the historical charm of the area and R's dad is basically obliged to paint his house white*.

We saw a bunch of fish-drying racks (minus fish).

And of course there were also all the northern lights. Which didn't actually look anything like they do in the photos, but were still ridiculously awesome.

In reality they were a lot less green. Plus, I think the photos were taken over something like 20 or 30 seconds, so that's a lot of accumulated light and movement in one photo.

I remembered how much I love Norwegian food, too. The butter there is unbearably delicious. And the bread, far more so than in Switzerland. And it's nice to eat jarlsberg cheese for a change. And I love all the fish and the blueberries. And we had whale a few times, which I feel like I should feel guilty about but I don't at all. Actually, I don't really feel like I should feel guilty about it, but I feel like everyone else expects me to. And I ate heaps of the yummy danishes that the Norweegies seem to be so fond of, and I finally got around to eating a hot dog there (apparently Norwegians eat more hot dogs than anyone else. And, even better, you're not obliged to eat them in one of those disgusting hot dog buns. I had mine in a lompe, or whatever they're called, a flat potato bread thing, and it was DELICIOUS. And I don't even like hot dogs!).

And that was about it. Then we sat on some more buses and trains and planes and thing for a really, really long time again,

Swedish trains: not as good as Norwegian ones

and then we came home and my head exploded.

It was super. I love Norway.

* Also note that I am paraphrasing from a vague conversation Reto and I had, and I'm not sure how much I was listening at the time because I was too busy being OUTRAGED at the idiotic amount of control Switzerland sometimes likes to have over people's lives.

Aagh!

Remeber all my holiday zenness where I was all relaxed and happy and optimistic about everything? No? Me neither!

I've been back for slightly over a day and in that time I've already been thoroughly traumatised at having to wake up at the crack of my alarm clock, I've managed to go to twice as many french lessons as I was expecting (apparently our tiny and relatively happy class has been melded with another one that's more advanced than us, so to catch up to them we're doing an extra 3 hours of classes in the afternoon!), I've been told that I'm doing some sort of DELF/DALF (or whatever it's called. Some sort of internationally-recognised french exam) thing in November, which is probably a good thing but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it, I've realised I actually have forgotten everything I ever knew, and I have discovered that I have no clean clothes.

Remember how happy I was last week? Sigh.

Back!

Well, we're back. And exhausted (thankyou to 6 hours on a bus, 22 hours on trains, 2 hours on a plane and 7 hours of being woken up a lot on an uncomfortable couch in an airport in Stockholm since Monday morning). Fortunately we had an excellent time and the weather was super (so much warmer then icy Fribourg, which half killed me when I finally got off the train this morning) and it was the best holiday I've had in ages, which made all the endless travelling worth it.


Happy birthday cat, meanwhile, to my mother-in-law (whose birthday was last week some time) and my tiny new nephew Dominic, who was born last week. Honestly, you leave the country for 5 minutes or so and all sorts of things happen.

Brr!

Today we had a really excellent afternoon swimming in the river in Berne (along with about 8 million other people). There is a local pool complex thingie down by the river (which, unexpectedly, is all free to use), so off we went and we ditched our towels under a tree and we walked off up a path along the side of the river. At the place where we decided to get into the river (about 500m from where we started), we took the option befitting our advancing years and unreliable swimwear and leapt in from the stairs on the river bank (as opposed to all the teenagers who were jumping off the bridge, which was only a drop of a few metres but I really doubt that my togs would have done their best to retain my modesty if I had subjected them to that sort of exertion). The water was freezing*. Actually 18 degrees, but cold enough to take my breath away when I jumped in.

Anyway, the current, which is pretty zippy, carries you back those 500m that you walked, then you have to swim over to the side of the river and grab onto one of the strategically located poles to get out. I'm not sure what happens if you don't make it to a pole. I gather there is another option for pole-assisted getting out another 250m away, but after that? I think there might be a weir. Which doesn't sound like too much fun.

Anyway, it was super. And surprisingly exhausting, what with the shock of the cold and then the constant minor struggle to keep nicely afloat, and swimming over to the side and so on. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who finds themself at a loose end, with cossies and a towel, in the general vicinity of Berne. Although possibly that description really only applies to people who live in the general vicinity of Berne and who therefore probably already know about it or have done it.





* I have no tolerance for cold water and am a complete wuss about getting into it. It really wasn't that bad, but I carried on a lot.

Finally Over!

Our honeymoon is all booked! All forms of transport, all accommodation, and I'm never thinking about any of it again! Atrociously enough, we're going to have to travel for about 22.5 hours to get there ("there" being a town in the far far north of Norway, 2.5 hours on a plane, 16 hours on trains and 4 hours on a boat away via Oslo) and about 28.5 hours to get back (via Stockholm, 6 hours on a bus, 20 hours on a train and another wee flight). Plus of course the hour and a half that we need to get from our place to the airport.

That's crazy. We could have practically gone to Australia in that time.

Oh, and in other good news, I have used up all of my stupid frequent flyer points and will now be saying goodbye to the United programme forever! Yay!

Honeymoon Rage

There's nothing that ruins a holiday like having to organise it, particularly a holiday that involves lots of long (ie. reservation necessary) trips on trains, boats and planes.

We're going on a honeymoon. Finally. To the place where we met, actually (and practically on the anniversary of when we met, which is twice the bang for your romantic buck), and where the icecream we named ourselves after* hails from (Norway). Getting there is going to be arduous (plane, train, boat) but at least we've already booked it, getting back is still the world's biggest headache (bus, train, plane), not least because we're trying to use my pathetic collection of frequent flyer points to book the flight.

I hate frequent flyer points. Without actually going into it, because everyone hates frequent flyer points and it's not really an interesting conversation,
1. The fact that my frequent flyer thing is with United Airlines is moronic.
2. All frequent flyer websites seem to be unbelievably moronic. Why are they so badly organised? Why don't they tell you the things you need to know (ie. how to book the flights, what flights are actually available, how many points they cost, what are the taxes)? Why don't they let you book a one way flight? Why don't they make it easy to contact them? Where are the phone numbers and emails? Why did I have to crawl pathetically around for ages on their stupid site for about half an hour looking for what I needed? Only to phone them up later and be told that everything I had read was wrong?

Morons.



* Did I ever mention that on here? The new surname we eventually decided to take as our married name comes from a Norwegian ice cream.

Die Insel

Well, what a hectic week of not going to french this has been. As well as all the sleeping in and loafing around, there was also the fete de la musique last weekend, which involved lots of wandering around the town and listening to marching-type bands and this floaty sub-aquatic sounding rock, and all the jazz that came from the stage about 2 doors up from our place. Then there was the Aareschlucht and the strange meeting of Inverell and Switzerland, and then a rendezvous with my Switzerland-Australia exchange partners (by which I mean our Switzy friends who moved to Australia at approximately the same time as I moved here). And then yesterday, Reto and I spent half the afternoon sitting on a piece of artwork that's here as part of the Belluard Bollwerk International festival.

The artwork in question was this, an island that they've built near the main train station here (ie. smack dab in the middle of stuff), made of scaffolding and with a solid and grassy top, and you rent it for a few hours (for free!) and you climb up, pull the ladder up behind you and then loaf on the lawn and do whatever you like. As it turned out, what we liked was sitting around, doing some reading and some chatting and some lolling, having a bit of a cocktail hour (a thermos full of gin and tonic and various snacky items) and being stared at by passers by.


It was super. We really were an island. As it turns out, swanning about with a parasol on top of a grassy scaffolding island in the middle of town on a Friday afternoon makes you something of a target for starers and hecklers and lunatics, but it also lets you not care at all. We sat there in the normally-non-loitering-friendly centre of town (where it's all roads and train tracks and concrete and gaggles of congregating schoolkiddies) and we read our books and we drank our gin and we looked at stuff going by and felt totally disconnected from it all, and it was great. There was so much hustle and bustle all around us, and we loafed with our shoes off. I can't recommend it highly enough. And the best (/worst) part is that it doesn't seem to be very popular at all. Since we left the island last night, I haven't seen anyone else up there at all, in spite of the fact that it's available around the clock for all your loitering needs. I may well take advantage of its unpopularity to do some more top quality public loafing some time next week.

Milano

We went to Milan on the weekend. It rained a lot, but we discovered that the Milanese version of happy hour (it goes for hours and comes with an endless array of delicious, free nibbly items. My favourites were these ace stuffed, crumbed, fried olives, and these zingy little spicy biscuity things) is super, that there is apparently no standardisation of coffee names (I have a hard enough time knowing what sort of coffee I want to order at the best of times, but when you can order the same thing in the same place on two separate occasions, and get something different each time, you know you are dealing with people who are out to confound you. In related news, the wackiest coffee I had was an espresso crema, which turned out to be an espresso (no surprise there) with vast quantities of hardcore foam (not the crema that I would have imagined, which I always thought was sort of brownish and scarce, but then again I'm no expert. The stuff on my coffee was the consistency and colour of beaten egg whites, though, which was odd) and some inexplicable layer of mysterious golden yellow, super-sweet (possibly boozy) stuff at the bottom. This all fitted into a wee espresso cup (well, a big-ish wee espresso cup) and I wasn't expecting it at all. It was lovely, though), and that a holiday involving no planning, organisation or expectations may well be the way to go.

It rained a lot

The place we stayed at wasn't great. It was allegedly all designy and smartypants (and cheap, thankyou very much lastminute.com), and it looked quite nice, but it was surprisingly non-functional. The soap dish in the shower had no holes in it so my soap melted. The pillows were like bricks. The towel rack made my towel dangle dangerously close to the bidet (not that anyone used the bidet because apparently we are united in the belief that they are kind of odd). The lifts, door locks and heating mechanism of the towel rack all didn't work. I think the front desk staff implied that Reto and I are incestuous siblings, because after looking at his ID and then mine they said to me "you have the same surname??" in an incredulous manner. Breakfast was great and plentiful, though, and the hotel was in a good location, so sadly I can't whine too much.

When good pot plants turn bad

In other wacky news, I saw Tilda Swinton while lurking near some old fortress/palace thing and counting stray cats (they were so cute. And surprisingly inept at stalking the pigeons), Milan has more potplants and wacky old-fangled trams than I have ever seen anywhere before, and we came across a rather excellent exhibition on Australian design and innovation at some excellent museum that we stumbled upon while wandering aimlessly.

Just call me a stalker. Or Reto, because he took the photo (after I forced him to)

Who could ask for more?

Murten

Yeterday was a lovely sunny day. I put on my non-wintery coat (for only the second time since being back in Switzy, the first time being on Friday) and off we went to Murten, where we wandered aroud the town (quaint and charming), then wandered down to the lake, had a picnic, toyed with the idea of going on a boat trip to somewhere, but then decided not to and lolled on our picnic blanket for ages instead, reading and chatting and drinking tea from a thermos (which is something that I suspect I have never done before, but I am now a thermos convert. It was super and not at all grandmotherly). Being me, I had taken a brolly and spent all my time under it, avoiding the sun.

And yet, in the evening when we got home, I saw that I was sort of sunburnt.

I hate weather.