Swiss Privacy Laws (look, I can do heavy titles!)

The privacy laws in Switzerland seem to be less strict here compared to the UK: The other day we received a letter from the Concierge service that comes with the building (not that we have our own doorman or a baldakin!) saying that it was time for the yearly window-cleaning session.

I knew our rental contract mentioned us having to clean the windows on a somewhat regular basis but thought this could be done once we moved out, or couldn't see out - whichever came first. Also, I wasn't too keen on either Paul or me trying to clean the windows on the outside, seeing we're on the 11th floor and NOT surrounded with a balcony on all sides.

We could perhaps hire that French guy who climbs buildings without any safety equipment. (Though I don’t think scaling our building with his teeth and a bucket of soapy water and a piece of cloth is enough of a challenge for him.)

Luckily, and there is a link to the privacy laws emerging, the letter told us that dates had already been set for when our windows will be cleaned, as they'll do it for us. It's apparently all part of the rent. And this is where one of the big differences between Switzerland and the UK lies: With the letter was a schedule for three floors stating when the cleaners will be in which flats. How big the respective flats are including flat numbers and everyone's first and last names!

I actually like this relaxed attitude to personal information (to a certain degree, I hasten to add), perhaps because it’s the same in Denmark.

After the cleaning of the windows, we might be able to see mountains from our balcony again!

I don’t have any pictures to illustrate this entry, so I’ll suggest you close your eyes and picture your favourite dessert in double size waiting to be devoured by you. (Mine is currently merengue with vanilla ice cream (must include real vanilla from a vanilla pod!) with a separate helping of warm chocolate sauce on the side. As enjoyed twice in Lyon during our recent three day visit there.)

Rumour: Spring’s here!

Lots of love,

Karen x

Uetliberg

This Sunday the sun was finally shining after weeks of lovely white snow but not so lovely grey skies. Hence we decided to go for a walk. Initially, the route was quite simple: From our flat in Oerlikon to Zurich City. A walk of about 7 km that takes just over an hour. (I don't walk fast, particularly not in hiking boots.)

This time around, the walk was interrupted halfway, as Paul wanted to change the route as he was curious to explore unknown territory! Well, as I'm always up for new adventures, I followed him which was a very good idea (not least because I have no sense of direction, so had I decided to stick to the original route, I probably would have got lost) because we ended up getting these views of Zurich:

The lake can be seen in the background along with some mountains.

Please pay attention to the mountains on the right...

I was pretty happy with these views and after having been walking around this area for a while, I started to look forward to visiting Starbucks in Zurich.

Paul, however, had a different idea. He knew that we could catch a train from Zurich main station to the mountain on the right, Uetliberg, so suggested we did that. I agreed, if we could have some lunch first. He agreed, if we could go to this Italian place that we both like. So it was very easy to agree to that...

After lunch, we caught the train and once we got to the end station, the following views surrounded us:

The lake is Lake Zurich.

We live somewhere between the two dark areas in the back.

Stunning! Absolutely stunning!

I shot this video which I think catches the beauty and breathtaking views even better than the pictures:

We went for a walk along various paths and it was quite a workout as some of those paths were absolutely treacherous, so due to my condition, we did a lot of turning back, instead of trying to climb down some ice-covered wooden stairs. There was also a lot of tree-hugging involved, when we had to walk a little bit uphill. Luckily, I look graceful in most situations.

This would be a great place to return to in the spring/summer, so we'll probably take our next visitors there.

Sunday evening, Paul made pancakes. All in all a perfect end to a gorgeous day!

Lots of love,

Karen x

Spiders - oh, and Happy New Year

Where are the Swiss spiders? 

We've now been here almost six months and I have yet to come across a spider. I don't particularly love them but accept them as part of life on the same level as dust. (One can get rid of both to some extent, but they will never go away completely.) I wonder if Switzerland is too clean for spiders? Or is it simply too difficult for them to get a permit? 

Whatever the reason may be, I have actually seen arachnoid evidence of their existence here twice: Once when walking over some Roman stuff and looking at display cases describing the Roman stuff with Tina and Sarah last month; in one of the cases it seemed as if a few attempts of making a spider web had been carried out. But I'm not sure by whom as there wasn't a single spider in sight. The second time was in our flat last week. I noticed a (slightly dust-covered) string of web glinting in the sun between two Christmas cards but after a thorough examination, I failed to spot the spider that had been hard at work. As proof, please see the picture below (if you look very hard, it's visible just above the red mushroom):

I'm not complaining but do find this very curious!

I will keep you up-to-date with this situation should it change. 

Happy New Year!

Lots of love,

Karen x

Titlis, Ice Grotto and Cable Cars

Last Saturday we took the car to the town of Engelberg which is situated on the foot of the mountain Titlis.

View of a mountain (not Titlis) from the parking lot in Engelberg.

A real mountain, with real snow and real people skiing. In order to get up to the top of Titlis, we had to board three different cable cars. The first one was a bit like sitting in a first class carriage on a train (funny story: the other day I was so tired when boarding my morning train from Zurich HB to Zug, that I mistakenly found a seat in first class. I only realised when my ticket was inspected (five minutes before arriving in Zug). Hence there was a reason why the carriage was pleasantly free of crowds and the seats wider than usual. Inexplicably, could be my new haircut that makes me look kind and naïve, I wasn’t charged extra!!! Instead the friendly inspector told me where the second class carriage was), - and now back to the cable cars: the second and third ones could be compared to hanging out with sardines in a can (without all the scales and smell). I think a Japanese group of tourists were doing their own version of: How many people can we squeeze into one cable car without it tipping over? (280,972 is the correct answer.)

Once up on the top, we went a little bit mad with our cameras – please see below.

From the cable car going up (the scratches are from the window).

The black dots are people skiing.

Another one of my potentially award winning short (very short: Blink and You'll Miss it) films... 

While walking around the area, we came across an ice grotto which was cool in more than one sense of the word.

Doesn't this look like something you see on medical programmes?

When the euphoria of all this beauty literally surrounding us had faded a little bit, we decided to have something to eat and start the descend on three more cable cars, making Facebook friends with several thousand more Japanese tourists.

Due to both of us (Paul more than me, let’s be honest here) being born adventurers, we went out for a walk before changing from the first to the second cable car. And this is the view that greeted us after five minutes:

This is how I greet beauty.

When we got back to the cable car station, we boarded the second one to take us closer to our end station, but decided, after reaching the end of that journey and before getting into the last (less crowded) cubicle, that we wanted to walk the rest of the way. Our adventure genes were obviously pushing for more action.

So we did, and after a little bit of panic from my side (‘but the orange pillars we’re supposed to follow down to Engelberg, take us back to Titlis. Let’s go back to the cable car. It’s getting dark and I don’t want to be stuck in a field in the middle of nowhere in Switzerland’) we managed to find our way back to the parking lot after an hour or so of walking down very steep paths. This was a good test of my hiking boots which passed – and so did my feet: No blisters! Here are some pictures from this walk, which ended up taking us past a ski hop slope!

Cable cars.

Engelberg.

Ski slope.

The view a ski hopper sees - (I guess) with more snow.

Hope you're all well.

Love,

Karen x

Snow, Sausages and Blue Tractors

Back again.

Yesterday we went into Zurich to get me a proper (warm and ideally smart as well) winter coat and boots (smart, ideally warm) and had lunch at a very traditional Swiss restaurant: 

http://www.zeughauskeller.ch. 

Paul had been there with work earlier this week and had very excitedly told me about the decor (artillery throughout the times; on a sign in the entrance hall it said: 'No smoking, live artillery' above something that, to me, looked like grenades) and the large selection of sausages with potatoes in all shapes and forms. One of their specialities is a meter long sausage served on a wooden plank. We didn't go for that but chose a platter with a mix of six different sausages on a spit, potato salad, rösti and sauerkraut. We also had beer. This was the perfect meal on a day which started out a little bit chilly and ended up covering Zurich in snow including my uncovered head and hands. Must buy a hat next and start wearing my gloves. But mission coat and boots was succesful.

It's still snowing and absolutely gorgeous as evidenced below! 

A double-decker train, probably from the airport going to Zurich HB (central station). To the left of the 'rounded' building on the right in the back, there's an outdoor ice rink which we're going to try out soon. It won't be pretty but hopefully it'll be lots of fun. 

I'd also like to share a picture of my hiking boots:

We seem to spend a lot of time purchasing items of clothing and footwear for the outdoors and I'm now becoming rather (too?) familiar with the insides of Swiss sport shops. Of which there are many! They're actually quite fascinating and usually pretty busy. The selection of products span from snowboards, harness for climbing (must get one of those), helmets for: skiing, cycling, water-sports; sticks and pucks for icehockey; thermal underwear; tents; camping tools; gloves for all occasions etc. Work has arranged a two day skiing trip to Flims next year, so I'll need to get a skiing jacket; appropriate trousers; as well as warm underwear and socks as a minimum. I've had to dedicate a shelf (a small one, but still) to the sports clothes and shoes I've bought so far. 

Peculiarity of the week:

Add in Oerlikon train station. 

It's time to wrap up warm and go for a walk in this year's first snow! (Not sure what happened to autumn...)

Lots of love,

Karen

My Weekly German Class, German at Work, and Swans

Just finished my first German written assignment! It's very strange having to write paragraphs that end up of consisting of very short sentences, very short words, and involve looking up every second word in a dictionary followed by checking the correct use of everything in a grammar book. I LOVE IT! And I even get to pay for it! Bliss!!!

My German class is incredibly lively compared to other language classes I've done in the past. Everyone has to speak German as that's the only common language between us, and this means I'm DESPERATE to speak English after two hours of intensive German! We're seven students from all over the world: Italy, Hungary, Ivory Coast, Portugal, a Spanish speaking country (not sure which one as she started one of the weeks I was away, and as we don't have a break, I haven't had a chance to ask her where she's from), Sri Lanka, and Denmark (me). The teacher is Swiss. 

The other students have lived in Switzerland between 4 and 16 years so their spoken German is pretty good. The reason they're on this course is to get an understanding of the structure of the language and to improve their writing skills. 

I mentioned above that the class is very lively, which is brilliant. There's a lot of drilling of verbs going on which we all do at the same time. When it gets to the teacher asking each individual student a question, if there's a delay of more than three seconds before he/she replies, one or two of the other students will have given a couple of replies - not necessarily the same or the right one. Last week our teacher had to tell us off for interrupting each other constantly. We're all adults but completely turn into attention-seeking teenagers in the classroom. (Look at me! Look at me!) 

My study

Two weeks ago at work the Swiss girl, Sara, and I talked about how to introduce German to our colleagues. We came up with the idea of Sara writing one word in German and then the English equivalent below it on a post-it note every morning and stick up up by the coffee-machine for all to see. This has been quite successful so far and we have learnt: Kartoffeln (potatoes), Rosenkohl (brusssel sprouts), Wildschwein (boar), Gabel (fork), Messer (knife) etc. Yes, there's a theme: The HR-director asked if we could start with words you find on a menu so she knew what to order - and more importantly what not to order! Thursday everyone in the office was walking around mumbling: 'Messer.' 'Messer.' 'Messer.' under their breath. 

The picture below was taken earlier today, when Paul and I had walked to Zurich from Oerlikon (takes just under an hour) and sat down for a well-deserved break by Lake Zurich. Eventually this swan (or its brother, who can tell, they all look the same apart from the black ones) got too close for my liking when it started nipping at my right shoe. And that was the end of our break. Even an animal lover like myself has a limit when it comes to personal space and invasion of said space by fowl, fish, or field mice. 

NO PHOTOSHOPPING!

So yet another drama packed week!

Lots of love,

Karen x

Denmark, Flu, Bitte Keine Werbung

Back to the blog after two weeks which have included:

Paul's first visit to Denmark (with five days in Copenhagen which included: Meeting some of my friends and their children, dogs and in one case pet rabbit; meeting most of my family; one family wedding; a couple of trips to Vesterhavet (the North Sea); and of course lots of food).

Karen's first experience of the flu in Switzerland (which actually wasn't much different from British flus. I have realised, though, that I speak much better German with a sore throat and a head full of snot than when mucus free. Just in case anyone was wondering...).

Hence, I'm actually looking forward to starting a new working week tomorrow which will hopefully see me back at my desk every day, all day Mon-Fri and ready to kick ass in my German class Tuesday evening.

Due to the anonymous nature of this blog (one pretends to be a little bit royal, bar running around top-less in front of French photographers), I don't have many pictures available to share from the visit to Denmark. However, I had a little Dogme-moment by Vesterhavet the other day:

I'd also like to show you how we've decorated our postbox down in the foyer:

During the week we receive a landfill of paper rubbish from Aldi, Coop, Migros (all three supermarkets here in Switzerland); furniture shop 1, 2 and 3; Get Your Mobility Scooter From Here, etc. which we don't want. We were starting to get rather fed up with all this crap (for want of a better word) when we began to notice a variation of stickers saying 'Bitte Keine Werbung' (please no marketing (leaflets, magazines, flyers...)) adorning more and more of the neighbouring postboxes. As we don't want to be different (and really don't want more post than strictly necessary), Paul found out where to get these stickers from. Out of the seven different ones he bought, we chose this silver one with striking red writing in CAPITAL LETTERS. We both think it's stylish and authoritative at the same time. It says: 'Don't mess with us' (metaphorically) as well as 'Bitte Keine Werbung' (literally).

I look forward to telling you about my German class in the next post, particularly which grammatical points we discussed. Unless something more interesting (one doubts that's likely) happens that is...

Lots of love,

Karen x