Birthday Continued

We went out for my birthday dinner last night, and it was super. There was the aperitif in the garden (champagne with somethingorother. I'm not really sure, actually, but thumbs up anyway), and there was the super delicious salad with my entree (which was some sort of sheep cheese/mint thingie), and there was the really great duck cassoulet thingie, and the mystery meat item, the name of which neither Reto nor I were familiar with in either french or german (which is bad enough for me who just learnt food items last week, but obviously far worse for Reto who is allegedly an intelligent native german-speaker. And atrocious for both of us because we didn't recognise it when we ate it, but all meat is kinda the same in my opinion...), and then the rhubarb pie for dessert, and all the booze and coffee and and and. Better than that, though, was the cute little kitty cat that was asleep in a chair somewhere in the room,then woke up, wandered around the restaurant and kept jumping on the lap of someone at the next table who had apparently ordered the fish. Health and safety be damned!

Driving Me Bonkers

I don't care for driving. I didn't learn until I was in my mid-twenties, and I've never really considered it to be an essential skill (there is always walking or public transport or other people who just love to drive), particularly here in the Land Of Trains (speaking of which, my train back from my french lesson today was 50 minutes late!! 50 minutes!! That's unheard of. Apparently there was some train crisis between Geneva and Lausanne, and then when the train did arrive, the doors didn't open! Some dude had to come along and unlock them all with a key! A key! etc). Anyway, I did eventually get my license in Australia, sadly after they had changed the rules which meant that as well as the written exam and practical exam, I also had to do two extra written exams and labour under various speed and blood alcohol limitations for years longer than everyone else my age. Not that I cared much, since I never really drove anywhere anyway.

Anyway, since being in Switzo I have heard numerous things from numerous foreigners about how the process of using your foreign license to get a Switzy one is easy as pie, and involves nothing more than posting some stuff off and doing an eye test (which actually could be more arduous than you would imagine for someone with eyesight as perfect (no false modesty here) as mine, because my grasp of the pronunciation of lots of letters in both french and german is a bit dubious. Assuming it's a "what are the letters in the fourth row?" type test. For some reason in my french lessons, having missed the first week, I never really learnt the alphabet and when one day the teacher said to me "You, say the alphabet!" I just made random noises until I got to Z and never learnt the more direct route). Great, I thought. Today I got my assistant (Reto) to look into it all for me, and ...

... he tells me that the rule in this stupid canton is that I have to do a stupid written test. Which is of course totally fair enough, and if I'm going to be honest about it I'd really think that that's not enough because as an uninterested lefty-driver I don't think I would be particularly confident or great at becoming a righty-driver, but I don't want to do another stupid driving test! And I have to do it in french, german or italian! Aaagh.

Bless Me! Grr!

People don't acknowledge me when I sneeze.

I don't think I ever mixed in "bless you" circles until a few years ago, but at a former job in Australia, all my colleagues were obsessive about saying it whenever anyone sneezed. Anyone but me. At first people relentlessly ignored my sneezing, then, as we all got to know each other a bit better, they sort of looked at me questioningly, then later they laughed a bit and asked me what that noise was, and then later they told me that I have the most ridiculous sneeze ever and that I sound like a bird. I think everyone always thought I was desperately trying to smother my sneezes so that no one would realise I was alive or had a pulmonary system, but personally I have never been able to hear any particular difference in how I sneeze and how everyone else does.

Now here I am in a shiny new place where no one knows me and where I don't really share a language with most of the people I spend most of my time with (apart from Reto, obviously), and again it's the stony silence when I sneeze. Everyone else gets a "bless you" equivalent, and I'm just waiting until the day someone feels comfortable enough to snicker.

Does This Mean I'm Not Really 30 Yet?

Well, in general it may have been a lovely birthday (apart of course from getting up at the crack of dawn and going to french and the fact that it was about 10 degrees and so forth), but it all fell apart a bit in the evening when we walked to the restaurant where we were planning to have my delicious birthday dinner (a present from my parents, thankyou very much mum and dad) only to find that Reto's reckless "I won't phone them or make a reservation, we'll just turn up. It's a Tuesday night!" plan was foolhardy. In his defence, he did a surprising amount of grovelling when they told us they had no spare tables, but it was all in vain, and so instead we got takeaway from a Vietnamese restaurant up the road from our place. Happily, and contrary to most of my expectations, the Vietnamese food was really lovely, and the meal was marred only by the fact that my hands had become so numb on the walk back from our non-restaurant meal (which was a good 20 minutes each way, plus assorted bits of dawdling near the restaurant and while I was on the phone being inundated with happy birthday phone calls) that I couldn't really work my chopsticks. What with most of my fingers doing their extremely normal (although not usually in spring) trick of turning deathly white, numb and bloodless, then horribly sore on their return to health.

My birthday dinner has now been postponed until Thursday (we've made a reservation already!). Reto tried to sell me the line that "it'll be even better because you get to look forward to it for another two days!" but no one was buying that claptrap.

Happy Birthday Me!

Happy birthday to me! And also to Ms Mac!

I'm 30 now. Yoicks.

I'm not sure that that is really a birthday cat, but isn't his hat adorable/bizarro/spacey? Or maybe antenna-ey? Or mind controlly?

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?

Dress Ups

This town is positively a-twitter with monks and nuns. There are monasteries and nunneries all over the place, and for some reason it's always strange to see these people dressed in their old-fangled outfits (long sweeping robes and funny hats and so on) getting around doing normal things, like catching the train or going to the supermarket. Much like it's also strange to see normal people (such as my husband) dressed as army people, hanging around and smoking and loitering at the train stations with their enormous, ridiculous guns. It's like there's some elaborate dress-ups game going on, and I haven't been invited*.




* Not that I necessarily want to be invited to a life of austere chastity, or to one of being trained up to kill people

Will I Look Insane?

Would it be completely insane to get my (presumably talentless) husband to cut my hair for me? On the "yes" side (as in yes it would be insane) ... well, as mentioned, he probably is talentless at hairdressing. On the "no" side, I hate going to the hairdressers, there is no particular need for me to look respectable/non-loopy at the moment, I have no ability to express my hairdressing requirements in any of the available languages (I even struggle in english, actually) and therefore would probably end up looking just as unlike I want to look if Reto cuts my hair as if any hair professional in this neck of the woods does it. Oh, and hairdressers are idiotically expensive here, so think of all the money I would be saving ...

I asked Reto if he would be willing to do it and he said "no" for a while, then eventually "yes", but I secretly suspect he only said "yes" to scare me into shutting up about it. I am a bit scared. Anyone have an opinion?

Happy Birthday Olivia!

Happy birthday Olivia!

I hope Egypt is treating you well, and I hope I see you again soon in Switz! Oh, and have a nice birthday!

Happy Mothers' Day, Mum!

Happy mothers' day, mum!

And in other news, my mother may well have liked the botanical gardens market thingie that Reto and I went to yesterday. I have been meaning for ages to buy pots of herbs for our window sills, but the ones they hock in the supermarkets always look so depressed and semi-comatose, and I haven't really been organised enough to look anywhere other than supermarkets yet. Anyway, the other day Reto told me about this botanical gardens market and so yesterday we wandered down to have a squiz, and it was super! They had all sorts of crazy herbs I have hardly even heard of (although possibly that was more because the names were in french/german than because my botanical knowledge is lacking) and about 8 million different varieties of mint, and about 25 different types of organic tomato plants (which we don't have space for) and heaps of different types of chilli plants and all sorts of boring lettucey plants and .. well, a bunch of other things too, but who knows what they all were, and who really cares when you only have 3 crappy window sills (plus a few more that are a bit sloped and that pot plants would probably fall off). We ended up buying some mint (not apple mint or pineapple mint or peppermint or any of the other interesting types, sadly, but the pleasantly reliable one that we have in Sydney that grows relentlessly and is impossible to kill. Or a variety that looks like it, at least), a chilli plant (with green/orange chillis, apparently), some parsley (dull), some sort of basil that is not the normal kind, and two pretty succulent thingies. Aww!

Now all we need is a bunch of pots to put them all in.

What Do We Want?

We seem to live on the main protesting drag in town. Since we moved in (4 weeks ago?) three protests have passed noisily past our windows (and that's just the ones while we were at home!) first there were the people who were cranky because they had lost their jobs with the train people (or are about to, or something like that) then there were the May Day neo-nazis who seemed to have come here specially for their hard day's protest (and possibly also for the charming scenery) because they were yelling at us in german, which apparently isn't the done thing in this neck o' the protesting woods. Then this evening there was a joint appearance by what Reto describes as a bunch of generic lefties/anarchists/punks/illegal immigrants. I'm not sure what their point was, nor how you spot an illrgal immigrant simply by looking, but they certainly won in terms of numbers.

Convalescent Kitty

Happy recuperating, Dad.

And just so that no one gets the wrong idea, as far as I know my father is not wearing one of these collars. As far as I know he has no desire to lick any wounds he might have. Actually, as far as I know he doesn't even have any wounds.

Next Time I'm In Charge

Late-ish this afternoon (a bit after 5) I said to Reto "do you want to go for a walk?" and he sort of said no, and then he said yes, and so I envisaged us going on a half-hearted wander around the town and then coming home and having dinner. Since Reto knows the area here much better than I do, he chose the route we took, and .....

.. an hour and a half later we were still off wandering through fields in the middle of nowhere, no end in sight. I was wearing an extremely inappropriate skirt and extremely inappropriate boots, and we were sloshing through mud, wandering in forests and mysterious gorges and being sort of lost. Had I been more appropriately dressed, and not hungry and thirsty it might have been really excellent, but I wasn't (and I was and I was, respectively) and so it wasn't. Although, as you can imagine, I did enjoy the complaining.

Am I Becoming More Swiss?

Yes: The other night I cooked Swiss-type food for the first time ever (as long as you don't count all that fondue, or the zopf I once made in Sydney, which personally I don't)
No: I made a very inauthentic version of a very Swiss dish (Zürcher geschnwhatso, which, for those of you who don't know, don't want to read the german entry and/or don't like bothering with links, is a dish with a name it's hard to keep track of (not that it changes or anything, just that it has too many jarring consonants in it to be bothered with) and involves the holy Swiss trinity of meat (veal), dairy products (a creamy sauce) and potatoes (it's typically served with rösti, aka grated and fried potatoes))
Yes: But the recipe I followed was from a Hiltl cookbook, which probably makes it quite authentically Swiss. And even twice as Swiss if you consider that the cookbook was a present from a Swiss friend
No: And I think the fact that it was completely inauthentic made it all the yummier, because really, I can't stand the more standard version
Yes: I made pretty bog-standard rösti to go with it, which gets a big Swiss tick, I think
No: The recipe I followed was veggo, which isn't really within the Swiss eating ethos at all. And not just veggo, but veggo with a decent source of protein, ie. tofu as a substitute for meat (as opposed to the completely lame veggo meals you usually see on offer, not just in this country but all over the place in my experience, that are composed entirely of vegetables or cheese or something, as though legumes and nuts and pulses and whatnot aren't a valuable and vital part of a healthy vegetarian diet. I have quite strong feelings on this topic, and there's nothing I resent more than seeing that the only vegetarian option on offer is some lame "vegetable stack", whatever that is. Note, incidentally, that I am not actually a vegetarian but I am CRANKY NONETHELESS)

So what's the conclusion? I dunno. I really quite enjoyed our tofu geschnthingies, and even Reto enjoyed it (against everyone's expectations. Apparently he doesn't like tofu or mushrooms or onions, which are basically the only ingredients I used apart from cream and flour and stuff). I may even cook it again one day. I would never cook the veal version myself, though, nor order it in a restaurant. Hmm.

Assorted Photos

For the sake of my mother, who really hasn't seen any pictures of our flat or town, here are some photos....

our flat, now with added couch!

our place is up there somewhere, centre-leftish ...

a funicular to take you up the hill. Interestingly enough, it's powered by poo, couterweights of sewerage or something. It smells, but is surprisingly charming in spite of that. Although possibly not for the people who live right next to it (not only because of the smell, but also because patrons of the poo train can look in their windows)

a statue and a tree. pretty.

Minutiae

Stuff we've been up to lately:

Our planned Sopranos-a-thon on Thursday didn't happen because a friend of ours planned to drop in for lunch during a large cross-country motorbike excursion that she was on. The friend is remaining nameless because in the end, owing to the vagaries of weather and motorbike mechanics, she was SIX HOURS LATE (which was actually fine, and it just meant that lunch turned into dinner, but I'm sure I will be able to use it to wring a frenzy of guilt and apologies from her for ages to come, which I will enjoy enormously). Thursday ended up, therefore, being a rather pleasant day of lolling, of watching some group of youthful neo-nazis demonstrating up and down our street, and of seeing the last-ish bit of some cycling race that is going on around here at the moment. Interestingly enough, the day's cycling was won by an Australian chap called Robbie someone, who I have never heard of but Reto tells me is quite famous. Go Team Australia.

On Friday I went on a wee excursion to Zurich and bought a pair of jeans and about 8 tonnes of chocolate. Possibly the oddest thing that happened during that day was when I was walking along the swankier end of the street, and as I was passing Prada a car came screeching to a halt just next to me. Before the car had stopped the passenger-side door was opened, and the woman who was sitting there used her swanky-ish high-heel-clad foot to brace the door open as the car came to a halt. As soon as it had stopped, she leapt out of the car, rushed into Prada and the car zoomed off again. Some sort of fashion emergency, apparently.

I've also discovered that Reto and I have very different policies on butter usage. I scrape it off the top of the block, he cuts a slice from the end. I can't believe I didn't notice this earlier.

Morons!

All my best intentions of sleeping in were thwarted this morning, not only by my mock-insomnia, but also by the band (as in group of people with uniforms and instruments) of morons (as in people who go wandering the street at 7am making a racket) marching down our street and making a racket! Morons!

Holidays!

I'm on holidays! From learning French*! For two days (plus the weekend)! I get to sleep in**! And not think! And tomorrow we're having a mini film-festival at our place (because it's some sort of public holiday. Something religious, I think, but I'm not really sure, and it means we will both be home and at a loose end)! Well, not really films, but we've borrowed a bunch of the first series of The Sopranos from the local library, so it's more like a TV festival! With gin and tonic and some generic snacky items and these weirdly named biscuits*** that Reto insisted on buying! And we're going to go and gawk at bike riders in some sort of cycling competition thingie that will be in Fribourg tomorrow (possibly from the vantage point of a bar down the road if it's open, which it may well not be but fingers crossed)! And I'm going to read a book that's too big to fit into my bag that I take to my french lessons****! Hurrah!




* which is a full time gig at the moment, in case I haven't mentioned that
** apart from the faux-insomnia, of course. I've decided to experiment with ditching the doona from my doona and using wintery pyjamas and a blanket instead (because I think my doona might be too warm)
*** they're called "nippon". They seen to involve rice bubbles coated with crap chocolate. I haven't tried one yet, but I am not holding my breath
**** White Teeth. I have four stupid textbooks for French, and what with all the umbrellas and sunnies (because I have no power of anticipating what the weather will be like in this stupid country, and so whenever I take only an umbrella it's always sunny, and whenever I take only sunnies it always rains, so now I always take both and it's always cloudy and non-rainy) and mug (for the vast quantities of green tea I drink while learning French. It's really not the same out of a plastic cup) and assorted other junk that I need every day, I am really limited to books of 150 pages or less on my hour and a half of train travel each day. At least the view out the window is pretty.

Zzzz, Grr

I haven't had an uninterrupted night's sleep since we moved to Fribourg. Every night I wake up repeatedly for no apparent reason. At first I was waking up all over the place (as in at all sorts of times during the night), but lately I have got into more of a routine of sleeping until 4am or so, and then waking up sporadically for the next few hours until I eventually am forced to get up (exhausted) at 7am-ish. I have never slept this badly for this long before. We have tried changing all sorts of things about our sleeping habits (windows open/windows closed, swapping sides of the bed, swapping doonas and pillows, shutters shut/shutters open, various pyjama options, going to bed early/late) but nothing much seems to help. Reto now has some sort of looney half-baked theory about electricity disturbing my sleep (because we have all sorts of bedside lamp cables going under the bed because there is no power point on one side of the bed), but I think that maybe feng-shui-ing the room is the way to go. Such is our desperation.

Anyone have any ideas?

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.

Good Day To Be A Cow

Today while I was slaving over a hot french textbook (by which I am trying to refer to the saying "slaving over a hot stove", not to imply that my french textbook is either stolen or lewd) Reto went off for a jaunt in the countryside. By which I mean he sat on trains for about 3 zillion years to get to his dad's place to retrieve assorted junk that we have left there.

The people who live over the road from Reto's dad are farmers, and apparently today was the day that they let the cows out of the barn after the long cold winter. Reto was there when the barn doors were opened, and as opposed to their usual disinterested dawdle up the road, today when they got outside they were running, practically frolicking! What a happy day for cows!

Tater Update

... and in a record blog-posting frenzy, here's the update on the Year Of The Potato. I knew they were versatile (chips, salads, other chips, mash! Will it never end?) but this adds a whole new dimension!

Fun At The Supermarket

There are several supermarkets near us. The closest is a crappy tiny wee Migros that has very little other than 2kg bags of potatoes. A bit further away there is a Coop that has most stuff. Even further away, but where I happened to go today because I was over in that direction having a coffee with me 'usband, there is a giganto Migros that sells absolutely everything ...

... except mince. They have soooo much meat in this place, including a whole fridge dedicated to wackier meat options like offal and tripe and tongues and horses and stuff (not that eating horses is so unorthodox here), and they don't sell normal boring beef mince. Looks like it might be veggo lasagne.

Cake Aux Poires Et Au Gingembre

I just cooked a cake in french. As in, the recipe was in french (I got it from one of the crappy train magazines, which seems a funny place to be getting recipes from, but the picture looked nice). It's still in the oven, so I have yet to see if it was disastrous or not (actually, it seemed a bit dry when it went into the oven, but there's no way I can have misinterpreted "60mL de lait" so I am assuming that's just the way the recipe is), but how hard can cooking a cake really be? Not very hard, I say, and that's even accounting for the fact that we don't really have a cake tin.

And speaking of things that we haven't yet bought but that would probably be handy when baking cakes in french, I don't actually have a french dictionary. Yes, yes, much like I could go out and buy a toaster instead of whining about it for a year and a half, I suppose I could go out and buy a french-english dictionary. Reto has a french-german one, though, and I have a german-english one, and so that does me quite well for the time being. Much like I can make toast under the griller. Except that our griller in this flat seems to be broken. Maybe I should get one of those little kitchen blow-torch things. Then I could make toast and creme brulee.

UPDATE: The cake was super! I meant to take a pic of it when it came out of the oven, but then I forgot and we ate half of it. So here's the rest. Oh, and it looks nothing like it did in the picture. There it was all dark and gingerbready-looking. Hmm.

Happy Anniversary, Mum And Dad!

Happy anniversary to my parents, who got married 36 years ago. And on a weekday. I'm not sure what weekday it was, but given that the day after their anniversary is a public holiday,I assume they made it into a very long weekend.

Not Just Me

Reto got a letter addressed to "Madame Reto NewSurname" the other day. Hee hee, someone thinks he's a woman.

Celebrating Root Vegetables

Did you know that 2008 is the Year Of The Potato? Me neither, but my coffee cream thing tells me so, and therefore I imagine it must be true. Perhaps when I have more inclination I might look into it further.

I also didn't know that "bintje" was a type of potato.

Happy Birthday Phil!

Happy birthday Phil!

Where To Go?

... and while I am having a frenzy of constant blog-posting, does anyone have any ideas about where in Switzerland would be a good place to go away to for the weekend? I am looking primarily for an excellent place to stay (if I didn't live in the town it's in, I would go here, because it's totally wacky and whimsical and weird and fantastic. How awesome is the bath that rolls out the window??), more along the lines of interesting than fancy. Of secondary importance is that there be stuff to do in the area. Bearing that in mind, I don't say no to mountains, food, or thermal pools. We're going in May. But where are we going??

Videos

Our local video shop has a section called "zone 1", which is full of DVDs from the USA (and Canada as well, I guess. Wherever zone 1 DVDs are the norm) and it's full of movies that are still on in cinemas! Surely there are legal issues with this?

Happy Birthday Tina!

Happy birthday Tina! You'll be pleased to know that it was a lovely day here after all, not rainy and horrible at all!

Chez New (haha)

I am so in love with our new flat. It's great. It's big (well, in comparison to our last flat and in comparison to having no flat at all), it's really centrally located (just step out the door and you are in the main drag (depending on what you consider is the main drag)), there are restaurants and cafes and shops all over the place (including the shop directly over the road that sells asian-style paper parasols! And I was so sure that I would have to get my sister to bring me one from Sydney when she comes to visit! You can ignore all those instructions now, Steph! There's also the vietnamese restaurant a few doors up that apparently has two slightly different takeaway menus, with the result that the stir-fried tofu and veggies I ordered the other night ("number five") came out of the kitchen as some sort of triple-meat rice frenzy. Which was disappointing, but I just made Reto share his meal with me and my problem was halved), and we're only a five minute or so walk from the train station.

a protest out our window the other day. Something about trains

As it turns out my fear that the flat would be more ramshackle than charming was pretty unfounded. It is quite ramshackle (in a "crumbly plaster" sort of way, although only in patches. And the floorboards are very squeaky in places), but everything works. The stove and the hot water system in particular, with a terrifying style of burn-inflicting efficiency.

Mr K tried to befriend the serviette holder, but he didn't expect its hidden rage

The only possible improvement left (now that we have the internet at home again! Yay!) is the delivery of our couch, and happily that is apparently happening on Thursday! Yay!

no couch but lots of space

Happy Birthday Daniel!

Happy birthday Daniel, who doesn't read this blog!

Happy Belated Moving Day!

Happy belated moving day to Phil!

Cheese And Smut

Reto and I went on a wee trip on Sunday (during the only break in the relentless grey/rainy/snowy/haily skies there has been since we moved here) to Gruyeres (yes, as in the cheese). I had no idea what it was going to be like, but Reto said it was supposed to be relentlessly touristy and cutesy, and I thought there might be a good chance of getting some cheese-eating done, so off we went.

Gruyeres is relentlessly touristy and cutesy. If you intend but fail to get some cheese eating done, you have no one to blame but yourself. There is also a lot of double cream in the region, and apparently meringue with double cream is quite the local specialty. Which strikes me as the poor man's version of pavlova (what, no fruit? No squishy centre? And double cream? Blergh! We went to some cafe for a coffee in the afternoon and instead of giving us the normal milk/cream stuff that you get with your coffee here, they gave us wee chocolate pots filled with double cream, which looked all adorable and decadent but tasted a bit blah and ended up leaving a layer of oily blobs over the top of the coffee. Like I said, blergh). Unlike every single other person there that day, Reto and I didn't have raclette or fondue for lunch, but in spite of our avoidance of the traditional cheese-heavy dishes, we still managed to clog our arteries a bit (as I said, it would have been hard not to).

We went for a wander through the lovely castle on the hill (saving 10chf or something like it with our Swiss Museum Passes, hurrah) and we goggled appropriately at all the adorable old cobbles and low doorways and twirly staircases and snow-covered peaks.

We also wondered why it was that there were so many goth-looking guys (for they were mainly guys) in serious, long black leather coats. We discovered the answer to this question when we went to the HR Giger museum. HR Giger was (is?) some Swiss chap who designed the aliens for the Alien movies (and also for various other spacey movies that I haven't necessarily heard of) and then he bought this house in the otherwise-charming town of Gruyeres and devoted it to his life's work. We went in (saving another 8 chf or so, that good ol' museum pass) and looked at squillions of drawings and paintings and sculptures and models of Alien aliens, and personally I was kinda shocked by the extremely pornographic nature of it all. Not because I am prudish or anything when it comes to imaginative sex among consenting aliens, but because it really wasn't what I was expecting to see there in what is probably one of the cutesy-touristiest bits of Switzerland, and because the pictures in the adults-only rooms were hardly more graphic than the pictures in the "fun for all ages" rooms, and because the sexual themes were everywhere, in every picture in the place. I don't remember the movies being quite so sexually charged. It was surprising. It was weird. It was a huuuuge contrast to all the cheese and twee-ness outside. It gave the whole day a strange feel, and if someone asked me now what my day in Gruyeres was like, I would have to think for a moment in order to come up with an answer that was appropriate for all ages.

Relentlessly Happy

Funnily enough, I seem to be relentlessly happy at the moment. I think it's mainly because we finally have our own flat again (no more living with the in-laws! Hurrah! Not that there's anything wrong with them, it's just nice not to see them every day), and what a super flat it is (more about that later). It's also because, contrary to all expectations, I don't hate the french lessons that I have recently started, and because I have the relentless freedom of my shiny train ticket, and because I have rediscovered the joys of cooking (see also "not living with the in-laws any more". I like to cook what I like to eat, not what the hardcore meat-loving Swiss like to eat). It's raining/hailing/snowing relentlessly, which I always enjoy. I have a shiny new town to discover (which is actually not shiny or new at all) and I'm excited about inviting friends over to see our new flat. Things that could make my life a bit happier at the moment include owning a cat (which isn't going to happen) and having a couch (we ordered a replacement for the one that wouldn't fit through the front door, and hopefully it will turn up any second now). Oh, having the internet at home would also be a plus.

Speed-Typing In The Library

Hey everyone! Just a wee note to let you know that we have moved into our new flat (which is awesome and nowhere near as ramshackle as I had feared, but still charmingly ramshackle), that Fribourg is lovely, that my french lessons are surprisingly non-hideous (although I may have inadvertently agreed to go out for lunch with the class lunatic, but only because he was waffling away at me in french and I didn't know what I was agreeing to), and that we have no internet access at home yet. So I won't be emailing. Not for awhile.

Oh, and we have no couch. The delivery dudes turned up with it, they hefted it up three flights of stairs and then it was about 10cm too long to fit through the doorway. So thankyou very much to Keith and Patsy for the ridiculously luxurious rug which we now spend all our time sitting on. Sigh.

The Best Games Ever

I was off wasting some time in Lausanne the other day (actually enrolling in my french course which I am starting on Tuesday - aagh - and which was moronically difficult to do what with me spending ages not being able to find the place and then the three people I dealt with there not really being able to speak much english, and then them giving me a form in french to fill in but I didn't know what to write where and they were telling me what to write but they were telling me in french and then there were all the spelling issues and so on..) and as I had a bit of time up my sleeve before having to pick up my husband in Fribourg and take him home I thought I would pop down to the Olympic Museum and see what they had to say for themselves.

Rather than being at all controversial or decisive, though; rather than talking about the incongruence of the juxtaposing of all the red stuff festooned everywhere with information about the history of China and its many warm and embracey qualities, and the statue celebrating the Olympic ideal of non-violence (a gun with the barrel tied in a knot, and a plaque next to it talking about how the Olympics aim towards an "increasing effort to create peace and non-violence through sport"); rather than talking about whether or not I would throw things at people taking part in the torch relay (which incidentally I would not), I am going to instead talk about the wondrous event that was the Sydney Olympics.

A few of the walls inside the museum are dedicated to a small blurb about each of the modern Olympics and what was so great about them. As anyone who remembers what little Juaney Samaranch said during the closing ceremony will not be surprised to hear, what is written in the blurb about the Sydney Olympics is that they were "the best Games in history". Huh. Apparently that wasn't just the sort of hysterical hyperbole that they say during the closing ceremonies all the time, it was actually true enough to write on a wall in a museum (although of course we all knew that anyway. Or at least, it was certainly the best Olympics that I have ever been to, not that I attended any actual sporting events of course, since, let's face it, sport is boring. All the non-sporty bits were super, though).

Interestingly, the wall also said that the reason the Sydney Games were so super was because of the many volunteers (some of whom you still occasionally see out and about in their volunteer uniforms, weirdos), because of the Australian love and knowledge of sport (fair enough), and because of our "anglo-saxon capacity for fair play". Hmm. Are anglo saxons known for their capacity for fair play? Does that mean that everyone else is cheating? I thought the reason the Sydney Olympics were so super was because it was sunny and the trains weren't atrocious and because everyone was bizarrely happy all the time. Oh, and because we all really enjoyed that show that Roy and HG did (I can't believe I have forgotten what it was called and that I can't be bothered to google it. The Dream?).

Happy Sort-Of Moving Day!

Well, even though today is totally the wrong day for it, and even though there has been a glut of celebratory cats lately ...

... happy moving day to Kathryn (yesterday) and to us (tomorrow)! Our moving day was actually supposed to be yesterday as well, but what with one thing and another (and another and another) it was changed to Monday then to Sunday then to Friday now back to Monday. It's a good thing it's not today, really, because we woke up this morning to find snow everywhere (and it's still falling).

In other news, Reto got the keys for our new flat on Friday, and he says it's far more ramshackle than he had thought. Hmm. He also says that the bedroom is far narrower than he recalled (apparently we can anticipate having about 10cm of spare space on either side of the bed) and he's concerned that the couch-deliverers won't get the couch up the rickety, narrow staircase (3rd floor, no lift). Aaaaagh.

Fun At Le Kiosk

Today I found myself killing some time in a Kiosk (aka shop all over Switz that sells newspapers and magazines and so on. I rather enjoy making wedding-related jokes about them these days, as those of you who know that our wedding reception was held at a place called Le Kiosk would understand). Anyway, I thought I might check what my horoscope in Vogue said (I'm not a believer at all in astrology, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading my horoscope, and several years ago, also while killing time in newsagencies, actually, I discovered that Vogue has my favourite horoscopes. Which is odd, because as well as not being a horoscope fan, I also don't hold with the Vogue ethos, whatever that might be).

Anyway, I picked up some insanely overpriced international version of Vogue and flicked through the last pages hoping that I might stumble on the horoscopes by accident. I didn't, which wasn't surprising because I never do because Vogue is a stupid magazine with pages that it's impossible to flick through, so I went to the beginning of the magazine instead to look for the contents section. And instead of finding that with any ease at all, I flicked (incompetently) through pages forever until I finally found what I was looking for after FIFTY FIVE PAGES OF ADS! 55! Sadly my task didn't end there, though, because that wasn't the only page of contents information. Do you know where the next one was? Page 57 would be a good guess, but obviously you would be foolish to suggest it. No, the list of contents was continued on PAGE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY! And then it was all wrapped up on PAGE ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SIX!* And all of those other pages up until there were ads!

All of which was very annoying, but not as much as the fact that horoscopes were not listed anywhere in the contents at all! And by that stage I'd spent so long standing there not buying magazines that I got fed up and left. I wonder if my horoscope mentioned anything about that.




* The whole magazine had something like 300 pages, I think

Happy Birthday Lidia!

Happy birthday Lidia! Now you're as old as me (again)!

Leukerbad Revisited

Because my first trip to Leukerbad was such fun, I decided, a week later, to mark the occasion by going there again. Actually, I went because I heard on the grapevine that an Australian person who lives there was leaving the country and that she wanted to give away her book collection. I emailed her and said "please may I have your books?" and she said "sure" and so I spent another long and arduous day sitting on a train.


This trip was quite different from the last one. For starters, there was no Reto there to chat with and to fall asleep on. There were no thermal pools, no Miss Switzerland and no fighter planes (there were still lots of those birds though). It was grim and grey and freezing and snowing (apparently most of the ski lifts there were on wind hold all day). Instead of lugging around wet towels and swimwear, I lugged around bags and bags of books (really, she gave me about 50 books. Mostly paperback, fortunately, but still extremely heavy). I hardly even gave the likelihood of the bus falling off the road and down the side of the mountain a second thought.


And was it worth it? Well, since it's my solemn duty now to travel as much as possible so as to get my money's worth on my train ticket*, and seeing as I got a giganto stack of books out of it, I'd say yes, of course. I had a really nice time chatting to the woman who gave me the books, and I always like a nice trip to the mountains. I'm not sure that a lot of the books are things I would necessarily choose to read myself (a lot of romance stuff. There's even one with a picture on the cover of a man with a sword and a ponytail, wearing a billowy white open-to-the-navel pirate shirt and gesturing heroically) but that doesn't mean I won't. I carried the damn things half way across the country, after all, and I will certainly get my effort's worth out of them.





* and I am doing very well indeed on this front. I seem to have done about $400 worth of travel in the past week and a bit

Hello, My Employed Husband

Congratulations to Reto, who is rejoining the world of employed people today!



And also to Alisa, who is moving into her shiny new flat today (if only I was too, sigh. Into my own shiny new flat, that is, not hers).

Stoopid Technology

Reto and I are fairly addicted to our laptops. A few weeks ago he found that his was dead. We were both distraught, he because he had no computer, me because it meant I had to share mine with him.

Reto toyed with the idea of not getting a replacement computer, but fortunately not for very long, and so a replacement laptop was ordered online. The initial information he had was that it should be delivered within 10 working days. Reto was elated. Soon after that he got an email saying it would be delivered on the 16th of April (almost a month away at the time). Reto was forlorn. He read and reread the email for days, whining that it couldn't possibly take that long to put his computer together and send it over. He then got a new email saying the computer was to be delivered on the 31st of March. He was elated again.

This morning Reto woke up at the crack of dawn* and spent basically the entire day sitting on the couch staring eagerly out the window like some sort of puppy dog who desperately wants to chase the postman. Every time he heard the sound of a car driving past his attention left whatever he was doing (eating, reading, having a conversation) and he stared enthusiastically out the window. He didn't have a shower and he refused to leave the house because he didn't want to miss the computer (in spite of the fact that 3 other people were home at the time and would have ben more than capable of collecting it from the delivery dude).

Happily the computer arrived in the end. The courier person showed up at about 5.30pm, just as Reto was beginning to contemplate the terrible possibility that his computer might not arrive until tomorrow. Poor Reto. It's the happiest I have seen him in ages. I now expect not to have a conversation with him for days as he ponces around with the settings and ... well, whatever it is that he is so interested in.


* relative to the time he normally wakes up, anyway

Dolder Whatever

Today Reto and I went to see the newly renovated Dolder Grand (a big fancy schmancy hotel on a hill overlooking Zurich). Apparently they have been spending a fortune over the last 4 years to shiny the place up, and yesterday, today and tomorrow there are open days where for the mere price of queueing quite a bit you can have a gander around all over the place.

We arrived at the Dolderbahn (the wee train that takes you up the hill to the hotel) at about 2.30pm and the queueing began. The train, which comes by every 10 minutes or so, was just at the end of being packed completely full of people (average age - about 65, I think. Which is fair enough given that it was a workday, and who but retired people and the odd slacker layabout has time to spare to gawk at hotels on a weekday?) so we waited for the next one with an ever-increasing throng of people. We got in the next train (packed in like sardines. If you'd collapsed you wouldn't have actually fallen over we were that tightly wedged in) and moments later came across the next throng of people that we had to queue amongst.

They were letting groups of people into the hotel every 10 minutes or so, so there was quite the crowd waiting outside to get in. Fortunately it was a nice day, and what with the apparent Swiss inability to queue in an orderly or organised fashion, we only ended up waiting outside for about half an hour (in which time I suspect I may have got a little bit sunburnt, which is completely ridiculous). In we went, and around we wandered.

It was a bit ordinary. Well, obviously it was actually really lavish and fancy and there were all sorts of cool designerish chandeliers and interesting wall-substitutes (by which I actually mean these hanging metallic beady things, the poor cousin of which you would see in studenty flats, but here they were in the bars and they were quite shiny and flash) and things made of marble and so on. There were also pools and gyms and "wellness" areas and of course fancy rooms and suites and luxury grand suites and so on, but really ... it all seemed a bit desperately overdone, and there was far too weird and non-cohesive a mix of old stuff (gargoyles and hideous colour schemes and olden days wallpaper) and new stuff (the hangy beady walls and newfangled lighting). And then later I read somewhere that apparently the cheapest room is something like 560 chf a night, and the most expensive is 14 000 chf a night. Which is obviously insane. Why would you want to spend that much money to stay somewhere that is jarringly decorated and inconveniently located? Of course it did have a rather lovely view over the city, and if you were inclined to spend all your time spending all your money, playing golf, being massaged and feeling confused it might be super. If not, perhaps not so much.

Museums Galore!

Not only do we have shiny new train tickets, as of today we also have shiny new museum passes that let us go to squillions of museums all over the country for free! Yay! Although, pathetically enough, we are off to a very bad start having visited absolutely no museums at all today.

Stoopid Technology

Hey, does anyone else who uses blogger.com find that they can't add any lists or text or whatever to their blog at the moment? Every time I click on the "layout" tab thing the page comes up with the "error on page" message thing, and the "add a new page element" button, which I'm sure used to be there, is missing.

Is it just me?

Leukerbad

To celebrate the first day of our shiny new GAs, Reto and I got up at the crack of dawn and went on a giganto train trip across the country and around a bit. I had been meaning to go to an outdoor thermal pool back in December, while it was wintery but before we left for the sunny shores of Australia. Somehow we never got around to it, so today (with all the snow that has been falling lately) seemed like an ideal day.

Generic snow pic at 7.30am (aka "crack of dawn")

We got up, as I said, at the crack of dawn. We stood in the snow and waited for the bus. The bus arrived but for some reason drove very very slowly, so we got to the train station late so we missed our train, so then we missed the next train as well and had to wait in Zurich until the next decent connection which wasn't for an hour. This was actually not so bad as it gave us time to have a nice coffee and complain a bit before we got down to the really arduous "sitting on a train" stuff.

Then we sat on a train for hours and hours. We went from Zurich to Bern to Thun to Spiez to Visp, then we got off that train, and on to another one that took us to Leuk, and then we sat around in the freezing and waited for the bus that would take us up the big big hill to Leukerbad. The roads up to Leukerbad were some winding and treacherous roads, reminiscent in my opinion of those horrible winding roads that take you up to the ski resorts in the Queenstown area of New Zealand. Admittedly I have only been there (the ski resorts of the Queenstown area of NZ) once and it was about 10 years ago, so if the roads there are less winding, less unpaved (although that might just be a figment of my imagination), wider, and have more guard rails to stop you from plunging to your inevitable death off the side of the road and the mountain every time you turn a corner or come across another vehicle going in the opposite direction, I apologise unreservedly to whatever authority is in charge of roads to the ski resorts in the Queenstown area of NZ. But assuming nothing has changed, you NZers would feel right at home on the roads to Leukerbad (although at least these ones are coated in bitumen, as roads really should be). It was all blind corners and overhanging rock faces with enormous icicles dripping off them (and looking like they wanted to fall and stab you through the heart) and slumping snow (threatening to turn into an avalanche and sweep you to your death if nothing else has already) and life flashing before your eyes at every turn. Or something like that.

Anyway, we got to Leukerbad and we had lunch (nothing better than swimming on a full stomach. Although frankly I think that whole "no swimming for an hour/two hours after lunch, kiddies" thing is a load of hogwash) and we went to one of the various thermal pools there and it was super.

Leukerbad with imposing mountains

Interestingly enough, the pool itself was kinda dull. I've been to a few thermal pools in Switzerland, and most of the ones I have been to have had at least some pretence of a therapeutic thing going on, with jets of water that are supposed to soothe your sore bits or hideous fountains of undrinkably sulphurous water that is supposed to be the elixir of youth or whatever. This place that we went to had about 4 different pools, only one of which was outdoors, no novelty jets of water (well, not many and none that could be classified as therapeutic) and offered nothing disgusting to drink. There was also another pool area upstairs, the "roman-irish bath" which was vastly more expensive than the rest and seemed to involve lots of nudity and some sort of mysterious massage.

We spent most of our time in the only outdoor pool, floating around, admiring the ridiculously impressive view (mountains galore) and wishing we had brought our sunglasses (what with all the water and all the snow it was very glary). The entertainment that was kindly and accidentally laid on by the establishment involved not only the mountains, but also this really interesting and large flock of birds (jackdaws, Reto says, but now that I have looked at Wikipedia I see that he is wrong, because our birds had white or possibly yellow beaks. Reto has now updated his answer to include some grumbling about not being able to translate the names of birds into english, he's not an ornithologist, and that they were alpendohles.) which spent ages floating and swooping around above us. Then came the planes, which Reto (who spent the day being very knowledgeable. I have more faith in him on the topic of planes than I do on birds, though, because apparently this is all Top Secret Stuff He Learnt In The Army (or something)) told me at length was all about the Swiss army playing practice plane games (since, let's face it, they are never really likely to play real plane games). There were 3 planes (FA-18 Hornets, for the nerds out there, or the people who want to suggest that Reto doesn't know what he's talking about. Unless I just don't remember properly, of course, because let's face it, I don't care) and they were zipping very noisily about in the sky above us, chasing each other and twirling about all over the place and occasionally shooting mysterious flare things in the general direction of each other. Very entertaining.

Entertainment Number 4 came in the form of a former Miss Switzerland (or here if you are after a less wordy overview) turning up to be involved in the filming of an ad or something. Ever more people turned up and sat in the outdoor pool and waited and waited and watched and watched (while very little happened) and didn't leave in spite of their skin turning all wrinkly and their retinas being burned irreparably from all the glare. Eventually, after much faffing by the crew, (former) Miss Switzerland turned up skulked about in a bathrobe for a while, then spent ages standing in the freezing air in a bikini and eventually was allowed to get in the pool while the rest of us stood around trying not to look like we were gawking. Which of course we were. It was actually extremely uninteresting.

And then we came home again, another 4 hours or so in the train (and the bus and the other train and the other train and the other bus).

A non-treacherous icicle. We didn't get any pics of the good ones.

It was a super day. I would thoroughly recommend a mountainous outdoor thermal pool experience to anyone, even better if you can get assorted birds and some fighter pilots along too.

Money not spent: (train ticket cost assuming I had a halfy card, which until yesterday I did: 101.80 CHF)

Tables And Guns (And Roses)

Today was an outrgeously successful and busy day (by our standards). Not only did we have a remarkably efficient trip to Ikea (a rug, table and chairs, and a coffee table that we wanted and then couldn’t get and then resigned ourselves to not having and then totally unexpectedly found heavily discounted! Hurrah!), we also moved out of the HOT and in with Reto’s dad. Which is great, because it’s a bit of a change in scenery, it’s a house far less hardcore on the cleaning front, and it also sort of symbolises the passing of time, which means that every day we are getting closer to finally moving into our new flat! Hurrah! Plus it’s also great because R’s brother was also there to help us carry boring heavy things, thus saving me from having to exert myself too much. Hurrah again!

Arguably the best bit of the day, though, was the trip home from table-buying. The music playing in the car seemed to be some sort of mix of mid 90s rock type ballads (songs along the lines of November Rain by Guns and Roses, and The Wind of Change by the Scorpions, which I believe I owned on cassingle at the time) and when I commented on it I discovered that in fact it was some sort of mix tape that R had made himself way back when (when the songs were popular and cassettes still existed). It was super! It was like high school all over again (but without all the appalling bits that I have no desire to revisit)! It’s sad that all that long-haired, bike-shorts-wearing earnest rock hasn’t come back into fashion in a retro kinda way. Then again, maybe if it had have I would be fed up with it and I wouldn’t have enjoyed the it anywhere near as much as I did.

Super Things That Happened Over Easter*

1. It snowed a lot. While this may well be picturesque and adorable and just the sort of weather I like to say that I like, it might not actually be super. It was freezing, my coat is not very snow-proof, and my hands have a tendency to shut off the blood flow when it gets below about 5 degrees C. But it did look pretty, especially on all those trips to Zurich which involve catching the train up and over the hill, so you see it get snowier and snowier and then less and less snowy. Which is always entertaining for some reason.

2. After wandering around in the icy air at the local Easter markets this morning, my hands did their usual trick of turning numb then icy white and bloodless. Happily they stopped short of turning gangrenous and rotten, but it was fairly unpleasant nonetheless. Actually, who am I kidding? I love it when my fingers do this. I enjoy the horror/sympathy it evokes. Although sadly Reto is fairly immune to it these days and he is the main person whose sympathy I enjoy.

3. I learnt a bunch of stuff. On Friday we went to a friend's place for lunch (although I'm not really sure if it still counts as a lunch event if you don't leave until 10.30pm) and apart from all the excellent eating and drinking and chatting and loitering and showing of wedding photos, we also played the latest Australian edition of Trivial Pursuit. Although the three Australians in the room were at an obvious advantage (who else would know what rugby league team is represented by a sea eagle?), as it turns out a good trick in this particular game is, if you don't know the answer, just say either "Australia" or "Peter Carey" and you will probably be right anyway.

4. I saw a really large bank note, both in terms of size and monetary value. Today Reto and I bought ourselves some super-duper-go-everywhere-and-pay-a-fortune-for-the-privilege-but-never-buy-a-train-ticket-again train tickets (aka GAs, which I believe stands for General Abonnement and lets you go practically everywhere in Switzo), which we paid for up front. We decided to do this in cash, and so we went to the bank and so for the first time I saw a 1000 franc note, which was purple and enooormously long and had a picture of Jacob Burkhardt, the well known Swiss historian, on it. It's funny how many people are Swiss. Well, there aren't really that many of them, but I am often to surprised to learn that famous people are from Switzerland. Like Marat, the dude who was killed in the bath during the French revolution. Huh. I don't think he's on a bank note though.

5. I hung out with even more Australians. Apart from the ones mentioned in Number 3, I also went out for dinner one night with a really good Swiss friend and his Australian friend who is visiting. It's practicallylike I never left, if you just ignore all the foreign languages and snow and so on.

6. I caught a wacky temporary ferry. I have done a bit of this lately. Every time you see a river with a walking track and more than about 5 people on the track there seems to be some sort of volunteer-run, free-but-give-us-a-donation type ferry manned by people who want to paddle you the 10 metres or so to the other side (where there's always a cafe and an array of yummy icecreamy desserts awaiting your arrival). Today's was there especially for the easter markets and it was far more technologically advanced than the one we went on last weekend (this one was powered by an outboard motor, as opposed to last week's oarsmen) but it was still extremely charming. And freezing. And popular.

7. I failed to call my parents. Apparently the phone card thingie that I usually use has become completely pathetic and unreliable, and so I think I might toy with joining the Skype age. Finally. It seems ridiculous to have spent years in an international relationship and then years more living on the other side of the world from everyone and to never have even looked into using Skype. Any second now, though, I might give it a go.



* And possibly some not-so-super things

Carpet - Is It Gross?

No, obviously, but since I realised it was a controversial topic (it seems that all Swiss people think that carpet is completely unacceptable) I have spoken to several people who I previously thought were right-thinking and sensible who surprised me by saying that they think carpet is a bit gross. Apparently the issue is that it's full of yucky things that vacuum cleaners just can't deal with and so unless you get an industrial strength carpet cleaning person in every 10 minutes or so, you'll be walking around on dead insects and sticks and old drool and all sorts of similar things that have got lost in the pile. Huh.

Personally I'm not particularly convinced by all this lurking filth that people like to talk about (I'm not saying it's not there, I just don't care). I like carpets. Not that I have a problem with non-carpetty flooring either (except that it's cold and it's hard and it's unpleasant to sit on), I just don't really get the anti-carpet backlash. Oh, unless it's in the kitchen, which is just plain weird.

What do you say? Carpet - Yes or No?

Happy Birthday Mary!

... who doesn't read this blog! Don't worry, though, Mary. I don't hold it against you.

Maggot-Free

I'm very unhappy to say that someone (according to my crappy blogstats thing) found my blog by googling "fiance unemployed wedding -maggot at the wedding". Hmm. While my fiance may well have been unemployed when we got married (and indeed also when we got engaged, and for the entire time in between, and also now and for the next fortnight. Then again, who am I to cast stones? Some of the best people I know are unemployed. By which I am obviously referring primarily to myself), there was definitely no maggot in attendance at our wedding. Or at least none that I know of.

Interestingly, googling "fiance unemployed wedding -maggot at the wedding" doesn't actually bring up anything about this blog on the first page of hits. Apparently someone was seriously researching the topic to be able to find me.

Grr

I would have hoped that my recent name-changing frenzy might have solved all my problems with being called stupid things in this country, but apparently not. I am still getting quite a bit of the "Robin" stuff (although I am resigned to that happening forevermore. Happily I also enjoy being OUTRAGED about it, so it's fine), but there is also quite a lot of "Mrs Reto'sFormerSurname" going on, which I don't enjoy at all. If I had wanted that I would have taken his name instead of making him agree to our new icecream-themed option. Grr.

Mr K

For reasons I feel no pressing need to go into, I made an amigurumi kitty cat a while ago. I was toying with the idea of giving the finished product to one of the small people I know, but when he was finished I realised he was far too adorable to suffer the drool and vomit of tiny people, and was much more suited to a happy life at Chez OurNewSurname. And so here he is. Introducing the many faces of Mr Kitty:

there's "at-ease kitty" (note the hint-o-crankiness about him)

"cranky kitty"

and "cranky kitty number 2" (although he could also be pretending to be a monkey here)

Isn't he versatile?

Shopping Frenzy

We may not be moving in for another 3 weeks, but that doesn't mean we can't have a shopping frenzy. Yesterday we bought this

rather excellent sofa (sadly not in that wacky shade of yellow, which is great but probably a bit too high-maintenance), and a bunch of useful but less exciting other things (like saucepans and doona covers and spatulas).

Then last night I had a dream that we had moved into our new flat, and the view from the bedroom window was of the beach. It was lovely. It was quite sad to wake up and realise just how wrong I was. Stoopid landlocked nations.

Blergh

It's a month since Reto and I got married. Much as I don't approve of people noticing such things (and believe me, normally I am the sort of person who doesn't), I can't help but feel vaguely nauseatingly happy.

In other news, in the book I am reading at the moment (the title/author of which is too atrociously embarrassing to mention) the main character's husband dies on the 16th of Feb. Which is our anniversary. So that's nice.

Just Say No To Cleanliness

Guess what I did earlier today? I steam-cleaned all the tiled floor in the house. Although it wasn't really so arduous (no more so than vacuuming) and it really does seem to have the power to make things quite clean, I hope I never ever do it ever again in my whole life. Why? Because I disapprove of that level of cleanliness. I don't care if I live in a bit of filth, and indeed I would even go so far as to say I prefer it. I don't like the constant pressure that having everything spotlessly clean creates to keep everything spotlessly clean. I may not have the busiest life ever, but I would much rather spend my spare time doing whatever it is I enjoy doing than spend it steam cleaning things I stand on and breathing in the offensive fumes of genocide-strength antibacterial surface spray.

Not Homeless!

Hurray! All my incessant complaining for the last few days has come to a cheerful end! We're not flat-hunters any more! Although things were looking quite positive, and then sort of positive, and then a bit negative, and then ridiculously negative (although that could have just been my half-empty tinted glasses that I was apparently wearing this morning), we have just heard that we are the proud new renters of Flat Number Two! Hurrah!

In less good news, we can't move in for another 3 weeks (boo!) but then again, that would be the first weekend when it would be handy for us to move in anyway (what with our hectic social schedule over easter, and then other people's hectic social schedules over the weekend after easter, which would prevent us from having the hands and the wheels that will be so helpful in getting us moved out and in) (yay!). Which means that Reto has to commute all the way from here to there (a few tedious hours in the train) for the first few days of his job (boo!) but this is made easier by the fact that by then we will finally have our super-duper-go-anywhere train tickets (yay!), which incidentally are going to be tons cheaper than we thought they might be since his comes at student rates and mine is the discounted "second person in the house/family" ticket (yay!). It seems to me that the "yay!"s are way out in front. Yay!

Now all we have to do is buy a couch and a table and a toaster (and spend all the rest of our wedding present money (yay!)) and we will practically be living like grown ups!

Why I Kinda Miss Aarau

We went to Aarau yesterday, and in addition to finally seeing a movie I have been wanting to see for ages (Into The Wild), eating some rather excellent tapas and seeing a good friend, we also scored all these books ...... for a mere 20 francs! Well, okay a few of them are library books, but we bought 14 of them at the second hand bookshop. Lugging them all the way home again was annoying, but definitely worth it!

Now if you don't hear from me for a while you won't know if it's because I have been poisoned or because I am hiding under the covers with a book.

Mysterious Occurrences At The HOT

Something strange is afoot. The other day while having a shower I noticed that ... I was not alone. In what I imagine is a display of total unSwitziness (for I have never seen an unauthorised creature in anyone's home here. Which seems remarkable given this nation's abhorrence of fly screens), there seems to be a spider living in the shower here at the HOT. Although not such a fan of spiders myself, this one looks mostly harmless and so I have decided not to tell anyone in case they decide to kill it.

Strange thing number two happened a few days ago. A big box of Lindt balls turned up on the doorstep. No one knows who put it there or why, but it was in pristine condition (ie. unopened and apparently untampered with) and so after a few days of hemming and hawing we decided to throw caution/paranoia to the wind and scoff the lot. No adverse reactions so far, but if I mysteriously don't write anything here in the next week or so, you'll know I've most likely been poisoned.

Please note that the photo above is not an accurate portrayal of reality. The real packet of chocolates was bigger, redder, less empty (indeed unopened), and the daffodils at the back weren't in bloom. I like daffodils.

Boring? Not My Problem!

Last year I was acquainted with the idea of commitment. If I started reading a book, I kept going right through until the end, even if it was unbearable tosh. This year, not so much. It's really very liberating, but I do wonder if I am missing out on some great stuff.

Flat Update

We are in the throes of searching for a new flat, and happily we now have a short list. Our options are:

1. Possibly over-priced but charming. On the 4th floor (I think) with rickety stairs and no lift (a nightmare for moving our furniture in). Tiny bedroom but excellent living room and, fairly revolutionarily, it comes with a washing machine! No communal laundry nightmares! No allocated half day a week and cranky neighbours! No storage space (like a basement or a cave or whatever). Mostly super location. No balcony, but an excellent bath (those are the two things I really want in a flat, a balcony and a bath). We could move in instantly, which would be great.

2. Heaps cheaper and deceptively large. Another tiny bedroom, and another excellent living room, and also a spare room. Crappy old-fangled kitchen and bathroom (with bath!), but cosy and adorable. On the 3rd floor (I think) with not-so-rickety stairs and no lift (a nightmare for moving our furniture in). A shared washing machine but one shared by only 5 or so flats, with space for hanging laundry out (I hate driers) and no timetable (a good thing). Super location. An attic basement. Oh, and there is no way to buzz people in through the front door! You have to actually go downstairs and open it! No balcony.

3. I don't know, actually. Reto saw this one on his own this evening and said it was super, but I really don't know. Apparently it also has its own washing machine. I believe it has a balcony, but a tiny tiny crappy one, and no bath.
UPDATE: Apparently this flat has semi-tiny rooms (although not as tiny as the rooms in the other places), a spare room, a newfangled-ish kitchen (which is also where the washing machine is, whic I think is weird and Reto doesn't), a lift (it's only on the 1st floor so you don't really need one. Oh, and apparently the lift actually opens into the apartment! Weird! Mock swanky!) and a super location. As well as no bath. The fact that I haven't seen it makes me not care so much for it, though, and Reto says he puts it at the bottom of his list too.

So there are the options. We're applying for them all and seeing what happens. I'm secretly going for Number 2.

All Of Us

I used to find it really annoying when people got my name wrong. They would mispronounce Robyn (sometimes), they would spell it incorrectly (allll the time), they would assume I was a man (really fairly entertaining until the squillionth time it happened. Actually, the last straw was when it happened when we were dealing with the Swiss consulate in Australia. I know they're still Swiss, but they're in Australia! Robyn is a girl's name there! Aagh!).

Anyway, fast forward to now and my shiny new surname, and I love the fact that it has lots of variations. I am fairly fond of the official english version, actually (because that is what I have been calling myself for the last few months), but I also enjoy the german version, and I am also looking forward to the french-speaking option, whatever that might be. It's like suddenly I could be anyone! Or all sorts of different people! Wacky!

Not Asleep

Well, here I am at 6.30am on a Saturday morning, all bright-eyed and awake. As I also was an hour and a half ago. Which is far better than yesterday, when I woke up at 3am and couldn't get back to sleep, but it's still not really ideal.

In addition to my lack of sleep, I am also having a quality of sleep issue. For a start, the bed we have here is tiny and Reto is pathetic at not hogging all the space, and secondly, I had a nightmare last night! Happily I don't really remember it, apart from some vague idea of lots of death and blood, but I do recall that I woke up traumatised. I blame it on the fact that yesterday we went to my favourite library in this neck-o-the-woods, the Aargauer Kantonsbibliothek, and, true to form, there were lots of new and/or currently popular books around in english (because apparently no one but me ever borrows anything in english from there). And so last night I started reading "No Country For Old Men" (having failed to see the movie yet) and it was all death and blood and sociopathic violence with the threat of lots more to come. So it's no great leap of personal insight to see where the dream might have come from.

Coming Up This Week

The other thing that happened was that I read my horoscope in Who (magazine) and apparently this week I am going to give birth to a baby*. Or maybe it's this month. I don't know how often Who comes out.



* Actually, what they said was that I am reaching the end of a period of gestation, and that that might mean that I am going to have a baby (right now), or it might mean that I am about to start a new business or that a new romance I am having is about to flourish. Hmm. And by the way, I think that my relationship with Reto is a bit old to be called a "new romance".

Switzerland Versus Australia

Our first flight to get back to The Land Of Calc was with Qantas, which you will all no doubt recognise as an Australian airline, and the second was with Swiss. And so, to sum up finally whose country is better than whose ...

On our Qantas flight we had a spare seat between the two of us. You might uncharitably suggest that this is because no one is foolish enough to fly Qantas, hence the empty seats, or you might just recognise that gift horses' mouths are not made to be looked in.

On our Swiss flight, not only did we have far less leg room and noticeably narrower seats, but we somehow managed to be wedged into the middle two seats of a row of four, which is obviously the worst possible seating luck.

WINNER: Australia.

On our Qantas flight we didn't have individual screens! I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't have even thought such a lack of technology was still possible these days had my sister not recently told me that the same thing happened to her on a United flight to America a few months ago. Happily one of the movies they showed on this flight was Michael Clayton (which I had been meaning to see and really enjoyed watching), but the other one which I embarrassingly endured most of was some tosh with Nicole Kidman and space aliens. Happily for Our Nicole, she had to spend much of the movie pretending to be a soulless, emotionless zombie type, which suits her acting style down to the ground. I have never seen her so convincing.

On the Swiss flight we had sensible individual screens and shows on demand, as it should be. Funnily enough, I watched another Nicole Kidman flick, this time Margot At The Wedding, which was far better than the Qantas one, but still kind of awful. I also watched a fairly excellent and peculiar Canadian movie without Nicole Kidman in it, called Lars and The Real Girl, which was bizarro and comes highly recommended (by me).

WINNER: Switzerland

The Qantas blankets were all soft and fluffy, and the cushions had surprisingly endearing little ruffle things around the edge.

The Swiss blankets seemed as though they had previously been used on horses and made me itchy. The pillows were fine but had no endearing qualities.

WINNER: Australia

The food on the Qantas flight was okay. I scoffed every skerrick of my first meal (and some of Reto's. This possibly says more about my hunger than the fact that the food was great, but it was certainly edible. It was an asian-themed pork thing). The second meal was worse (pasta with an extremely mushy cheesy sauce, allegedly gruyere but I would be very surprised) but still not bad. In between meals they gave you fruit, semi-upmarket 2-minute noodles (of the Suimin variety, if that means anything to you), hot chocolate and peppermint or jasmine tea. Oh, and one of the cold drinks you could get was Ribena!

On Swiss, the first meal was okay but not super (Some sort of unidentifiable chicken and rice number. Possibly I ruined it for myself by having a fantastic bowl of ramen at the airport in Hong Kong), and the second meal was atrocious. Reto disagrees with me vehemently on this point - it was breakfast, a bread roll, a croissant, strawberry jam, butter and strawberry yoghurt. Oh, and a banana, orange juice and a piece of gruyere. In my opinion, this isn't a meal so much as a bunch of assorted undesirable food items placed in close proximity to each other. The cheese was nice, and the banana would have been had it not been pre-frozen, but that's about all I can say for it. Reto, on the other hand, thinks this is his ideal breakfast (or something like it) and always goes on about how he likes the breakfasts on Swiss.

All the wine I drank on both the flights was Australian, so we're all even there, but on the Swiss flight no one offered me anything at all to drink for a stretch of about 6 hours. Possibly this is because I was asleep a lot of the time (and I suppose it's polite not to force beverages on people who are in no fit state of consciousness to drink them. Or even hold them), but there was also a lot of time there that I was awake and so dehydrated that my mouth felt like it had been chewing on the horse-blanket for the last few hours.

WINNER: Australia. Although Reto would disagree.

The Qantas flight had a landing gear (or whatever it is that makes the wheels go up and down) that sounded so scarily loud and crunchy that I was sure we were all going to die. Coupled with the alleged flickering of the cabin lights just after take-off (coinciding with the up-crunching of the wheels), the fact that the down-crunching seemed to need 3 goes to work properly, and the fact that it was a mere 12 hours or so since we had seen footage of that flight that failed to land in Hamburg, I was convinced we were going to die. Then again, I usually am.

On the Swiss flight - no crunching, no more than the usual mild-to-moderate anticipation of death during take-off and landing.

WINNER: Switzerland



Actually, in general both the flights were okay, but it would have been better if they were the other way around. On the first flight, which was shorter (9 hours vs 12 or so) we were not tired (we left at 3pm) but we had plenty of space for comfy sleeping and no real chance to watch movies (which is my favourite thing about flying). On the longer flight we were trapped in tiny claustrophobia-inducing seats with entertainment galore and hardly even the ability to stay awake for dinner, let alone a movie. It sort of goes with my theory about life here being all backwards and topsy turvy. Sigh.

Not At Work

All yesterday morning while I was gadding about town [having the world's most delicious breakfast at a cafe near my place that I am very sad to say I only discovered yesterday] I was hoping that some random stranger would comment on the fact that it was a Wednesday and I wasn't at work, ask me if I was having the day off and thus allow me to say "no, I'm actually emigrating today". But no one did.

Happily my sister managed to work it into the conversation, though. She was in a meeting and she had to leave a little bit early. Everyone apparently glared at her and she said "sorry, but my sister's emigrating today and I have to drive her and her Swiss husband to the airport", and then apparently everyone looked all astonished and talked about that instead of whatever the meeting was about. So that was good.