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?