I Am My Mother

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

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

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

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

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

Nice

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

Telly

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

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

On The Bookshelf

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

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

Festy cont..

These Switzies, they're so foreign.

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

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

Festy

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

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

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

No Vampires On Me

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

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

It'sTrueThatISpeakTooQuickly

Yesterday I had lunch in an Indian restaurant in Lausanne with a friend. We were chatting to the waiter and he asked me if I was English. "No", I said, "I'm Australian" and he said "Aah, that's why you sound like Ricky Ponting". As it turned out, what he meant was that I speak incomprehensibly quickly, not that I talk about cricket a lot.

Look What I Made!

I made a crocheted blanket! For me! And it only took me about 4 months!

How Complicated Is A Teapot?

More than you'd imagine, apparently.

At our Excellent Breakfast Frenzy at our Swanky Anniversary Hotel, there were about 12 different types of tea on offer, all loose leaf. There was a plethora of teapots,

(sort of like this)

some of them with tea leaf straining thingies inside them,

(pretty much exactly like this, but inside the teapots)

some without, and there were a bunch of tea strainers like this

(but less fancy. With the strainer and the thing you rest it in, though)

next to the teapots as well.

I've never really noticed people here drinking much tea at all, but people were going for it very enthusiastically at breakfast and in a variety of confusing ways. Basically, everyone wanted to use the outside-the-teapot strainers as inside-the-teapot leaf holders (which they were all wrong for and it meant you couldn't get the lid on your teapot and it unbalanced the whole thing). People were taking their inside-the-teapot strainers out and replacing them (inside the teapot!) with outside-the teapot strainers. I saw one woman put an outside-the-teapot strainer into her teapot then fill the teapot with water and put the lid on it and walk away. With no tea in her tea! I mean, drinking hot water is an odd but acceptable habit (hello, Mum!) but does it really require a teapot and strainer?

I thought everyone ws being weird and misinformed until later when I had a cup of tea from a cafe place there (ie. staffed by hot beverage professionls who should know how these things work), and the waiter brought me my teapot with an outside-the-pot tea strainer in it. Which has led me to wonder if I'm suffering from some ridiculous cultural confusion where all these loony Europeans do things ridiculously. By which I mean differently. By which I secretly still do mean ridiculously.

Anyone have any ideas?

Happy Anniversary, Everyone!

Ange and Jonno, specifically, and me and Reto too since it's always nice to share in the furriness of a celebratory cat.

Happy Birthday Tawny!

I haven't managed to put this up in time for your time zone birthday limits, but in mine I've still got heaps of time! I hope your day is still going well!

Happy Anniversary, Me and Reto!

We've been off swanning about in swanky hotels in celebration of our first wedding anniversary over the past few days, and lordy isn't it sad to be home again? Highlights included:

The terrifyingly narrow/snow-covered/winding road we had to take to get there. Which was flanked on one side by the edge of a mountain, and on the other by an enormous yawning chasm that ended in the iciest-looking river you've ever seen. Fortunately we were protected at most times by the uselessest of safety barriers, which was about shin-height (ie. not much help when a bus wants to topple over the edge) and made of wood. Wood, for crying out loud. Old, pathetic wood that has been out in the weather for too long. Oh, and the horn thing that the buses honk when they approach blind corners and want to warn any oncoming traffic that THE RISK OF A PLUNGY, ICY DEATH IS IMMINENT is not charming and reminiscent of childhood, as Reto seems to think. It's alarming and noisy. If I was an oncoming driver I'd probably panic, veer to the wrong side of the road and either die a horrible death in the chasm or t-bone the side of the mountain and block the road meaning that the bus would have to reverse its way to safety. Great.

The food. Oh, the food. We had 6-course dinners both nights we were there, and we had giganto breakfast buffets that sadly I don't think I really did justice to, and we had lots of delicious home-made chocolates in our room that they kept replacing while we were at dinner (not that you get back from a 6-course dinner and think "hmm, what else can I eat?") and there were apples everywhere, really crispy crunchy ones, which was lovely. And .. oh, at dinner one night I did a bit of a salt degustation. There were about 8 different types of salt on offer. I always enjoy buying fancy salt, but it always takes me forever to get through a packet of it so I can never really compare them and tell which ones I like best. At dinner the other night, though, I tried the murray river one from Australia, one from the red sea (guess what colour it was!), one from the black sea (guess what colour it was! I don't think I could seriously use black salt on a regular basis, though. It looks odd), a hawaiian one, and a few from France. The conclusion, however, was disppointing - they all tasted kinda the same. The Australian one wins for reasons of patriotism, though, and also because it was such an attractive shade of pink. Now I just have to finish this stupid enormous packet of Maldon salt I have at home before I can buy some. Other memorable food moments included the baked saffron icecream with sweet pesto (which was weirdweirdweird) and the cheese trolley.

The thermal pools. It was a thermal pool hotel place that we went to, so you'd hope the thermal pools would be a highlight. And they were. We went midnight-thermal-pooling and we went crack-of-dawn-thermal-pooling and we went civilised-middle-of-the-day-thermal-pooling and it was all fantastic. The low-point being after you get out of the thermal pool and you realise the water has sucked all the moisture out of your skin and hair and that you've wildly underestimated your conditioner and moisturiser needs for the weekend. Seeing all the hotel guests wandering between their rooms and the pool in their hotel-supplied bathrobes was funny, though (when do you ever see people in bathrobes?), as was seeing the same strangers you'd seen in their togs all day in the pool wearing real pants at the next table at dinner.

Oh, and I discovered that I can't float. I'm sure I used to be able to when I was a youngster. Reto spent lot of time floating about all over the place (although he seems to think he can only float when he uses his special floating technique of stretching his arms out above his head. Not above as in upwards, obviously) and being smug while my legs sank and I got water in my eyes a lot. No one likes a gloater!

All the romance was nice. Which you would hope, for a first-anniversary holiday.

And then there was the bus back down again. After all that new snow had fallen (and continued to fall and made the road EVEN MORE TREACHEROUS. But we survived, and even better, we forgot to take the bottle of fancy champagne that my sister and her boyfriend got for us for our anniversary (not that we would have had time to drink it in between all the swimming and eating anyway), so we've decided to drink that next Fridy in celebration on Reto being unemployed! Because he quit his job and his PhD a few months ago, in case I didn't mention it. We'll be a no-income family, and what better way to celebrate that than with a bottle of Moet? Hurrah!

Wheel Of Fortune

I've just been watching the French of Wheel Of Fortune on telly, and what a cultural experience it was! It was like going to KFC in another country and finding that they offer a different type of sauce or something when you order the nuggets. Not that I go to KFC in Australia, and not that they have KFC here (as far as I'm aware) but once long ago I went to KFC in England and I'm sure they had a surprising Indian twist to their menu there.

Anyway, I've learnt that French people are apparently cheats, either that or the French wheel (of fortune) is ridiculously heavy. One of the competitors, an old lady, apparently had some terrible arm disorder that prevented her from spinning the wheel much, but the other two (able-bodied youngsters) didn't really spin it much further than she did. Most of the time they just gave it a gentle nudge so as to stay as far away as possible from bankruptcy. Boring.

The Lovely Assistant was sort of a departure from what I'm used to, and sort of the same. She was tall and blonde and flashy (normal), but she also looked sort of plastic (in a plastic surgery way. When I say "sort of" I'm being extremely generous. She looked extremely plastic) and she was at least a head taller than the host (who was small and featureless but not at all charmingly Tony Barber-ish). And her dress looked more like a nightie than a dress. At the end of the show, she danced with the winner (who, strangely, looked a bit like the Lovely Assistant, but shorter and less flashy. Just as blonde though)

The French version has a dog. He doesn't do anything, but he's always there watching.

And, most unexpected of all, the French version of Wheel of Fortune is educational. I now know that there's an expression "entre la poire et le fromage". I don't actully know what it means, but I like to imagine that it's the French equivalent of "between a rock and a hard place", except the French think that being caught between two soft places (like a poached pear and a camembert, perhaps) is the worst possible scenario. Or maybe it's like being caught between a beurre bosc and some parmesan. Which could well be delicious.

Alone At Last

It's our first weekend spent without hordes of my relatives hanging around since the end of November (!) and we've spent it doing absolutely nothing. Which has been quite nice. And it snowed all day today, enough to look charming but not enough to be annoying when we ventured out for a coffee and a piece of cake.

Happy Australia Day!

Happy Australia day! We haven't really done anything to mark the occasion, but Reto did make his own little public holiday (ie. took the day off work) and I'm not at french, so that's in the right spirit.

Happy Birthday, Mischa!

Confusion At Coop

Why is it that Swiss checkout chicks (if you can call them that; I think the average age might be a bit too high) are obsessed with tying knots in my bags of veggies? There I was at the checkout yesterday with a (scandalously unknotted) bag with various carrots and zucchinis and things in it, and the checkout woman glared at me and aggressively double-knotted the bag (so enthusiastically that I actually couldn't get the knot undone again when I got home) before she scanned the bar codes. Possibly there's a small risk that a carrot might fall out while they're doing the scanning (oh no!), but why do they care? Is it really worth getting all narky and knotting the bag for the sake of those 2 seconds or so while my bags of veggies are in their care?

Really?

In french today we spent aaaaages talking about punctuality and what it means in different countries and when it's polite to turn up a bit early and when it's polite to turn up hours late, and after this looong discussion where we all acknowledged that there is usually lots of scope for disagreement and individual differences and the fact that rules really aren't set in stone*, the teacher asked us "who here really thinks that punctuality is important?", and instantly, absolument sans hésitation, the two Swiss (german) girls, and only them, shot their hands in the air and said "me!".

And then we had a loooong conversation about cultural stereotypes.


* except possibly in Japan, it seems, where, according to the Japanese chick in the class, it's less insulting to phone up and give an excuse and reschedule a work meeting than turn up 15 minutes late

Things That Were Annoying Today

1. Ice. Ice has been driving me nuts for a few weeks now, ever since it snowed a lot and no one cleared the streets properly and we've all been slipping and sliding all over town ever since. Today I went out the 'burbs of Fribourg (to get my Swiss drivers license if you must know, tick for New Year's Resolution Number One. And even better, atrocious misreading of (what as it turned out were actually atrociously ambiguous) instructions meant that I didn't even have to do the theory test! Reto had to phone up to confirm that, though. It really was very unclear on the website. To think I wasted all that time unnecessarily learning the road rules when actually I was free to take my bung eye and my habit of driving on the left and a total ignorance of the road rules and get straight out there!). Anyway, there I was in the middle of nowhere (walking to the RTA-equivalent, which apparently isn't the done thing. They have the biggest carpark ever) bumbling around on the footpaths-masquerading-as-skating-rinks like a moron. And getting rained on at the same time, funnily enough. Warm enough to rain,not warm enough for all the ice to have melted.

2. Morons waiting for the train who have 2nd class tickets, but who get into the 1st class carriages (because it's always quicker to get into the 1st class carriages because there isn't a huge queue of people in there waiting to get out) and then go through the door from there to the 2nd class carriage that I'm queueing (with a million other people) to get into, thus managing to get in and get a seat first. Cheats.

3. Having an argument about something remotely serious in french but being unable to express my opinion in a relatively coherent way because my vocabulary is dismal. I think I may have ended up being construed as a militant vegan, which would have been fine but it wasn't what I was saying at all.

On a more positive note, I got my Swiss license (yay!), I managed to have a decent argument in french (maybe it was just everyone else misunderstanding me, not me being incomprehensible), I didn't break my leg on the ice, it wasn't freezing, I had a rather excellent salade nicoise for dinner, I got something pleasant in the mail (rather than just boring letters from my health insurance, which is what it usually is) and Reto didn't hog all the blankets last night. Which is the first time in ages that that's happened. Assidouously poking him in the ribs all the time every night seems to have finally paid off