K's Café: The 30 Second Blog

The World is So Full of a Number of Things...

Title reference: I know this line from the movie Singing in the Rain, in which Donald O'Connor quotes it before doing his most incredible "Make 'em Laugh" scene. I did not know until today that is was the beginning of a very short (two line couplet) poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.

In any case, my life is so full of a number of things...that I am finding it exceedingly difficult to write anything on my web log, even though there is prodigious material for it. The days are gone in a flash, one after the other. Right after this I should get to ironing, wrapping baby shower gifts, baking an apple crumble, finding cleaning help, organizing the office/my desk, showering and cooking dinner. I've been doing German class homework, laundry and sending my outstanding verses of the week to my Bible-in-a-Year reading partners. We've had a lot of fun events filling our time, e.g.:

Friday lunch: PASTORS OVER FOR A MEAL:
Had our new pastor & wife & two kids over for lunch (it was a holiday in their Kanton, Zug, but not in ours, Zurich, but David came home for lunch in his new car which makes such things possible, hurray, thank You!). A fun time. Emily loves playing with their daughter. They brought some yummy homemade zucchini bread. It poured with rain.

Friday night: tried a MÖVENPICK RESTAURANT
Not far from our home, in Adliswil. Nice non-smoking side, smelled good. Very pleasant servers. Heavy Germanic food, every variation of meat and potatoes and cheese....studied the menu and used a dictionary surreptitiously under the table, and even wrote down some Swiss-German words to look up at home (Rüebli = carrots in English, Karotten in high German; Chörbli = basket).

Saturday morning: COMPANY PICNIC FOR FAMILIES
Our first drive up the forested hill on the other side of Zürich for a company family picnic. Impressed by the family orientation of David's office here. It was not so in London, where most people didn't seem to have any kids. There are lots of little kids involved here (but hardly any older kids/teens, same as at our new church here). At the picnic, they let each family pick a rolled up picnic blanket with a handle and a waterproof bottom, and a toy for the kids. We got a silver frisbee and a pretty plaid blanket. I was most tickled that David and I wanted to choose the same pattern of blanket out of 7-8 choices, without conferring.

Saturday night: wonderful NEIGHBOURHOOD DINNER PARTY
Just across the road, for our cul-de-sac of 9 houses - we stayed from 5:15pm until 11pm, and so did everyone else! (13 adults, 7 kids) It was a potluck, so we brought our own saucisses de veau* to grill, and a green salad with peppers and carrots and homemade balsamic-mayo-maple syrup dressing, and brownies, to share. We got a house tour of my new Swiss friend Silvia's place which she and her husband designed and built - complete with screens on the windows and a laundry chute! That's the 2nd house around here we've seen with screens! Hmmmm..... The evening was really remarkable, in that I think we were the only non-Swiss (and I was the only non-reasonable-German-speaker), and from what we hear from coworkers and the ex-pat community, it is not "normal" to be welcomed into a Swiss community so soon and be on first name basis, etc. God has really, really provided very richly. It was humorous that most of the evening we had no idea what anyone was saying, because they were speaking in fast Swiss-German, which bears very little resemblance to "High German" (what they speak in Germany and Austria). However, several of the neighbours took time to speak with us in high German, English, and French! It was certainly a multilingual evening. Our neighbours include a general practitioner physician, a carpenter, a person with the fire department who does catering on the side, a furniture company representative, a gift shop saleslady, a dietician, and a stay-at-home mom who helps with the catering business and also does some child care. Behind our street live a lady and her two daughters, who have 5 horses on the premises, and sold part of their land to their hosts of the party (hence their invitation to join us). The mother has lived there for 50 years. Very interesting people, many of whom grew up in this very village and stayed (or other nearby villages). I had a long conversation in English with the doctor, whose daughter will be spending a few months in Australia soon (where people seem to go from here to solidify their English!). During the evening, the seven children (ranging in age from 8 to 14, perfect for our kids who are 10 and 13) played cards, ping-pong and football (soccer), and petted 3 rabbits. Later on, a bunch of adults joined the kids in the garage and played elimination ten-person ping pong, in which everyone runs around the table...crazy, funny, and a blast. The kids did everything in German, including learn a new card game called "Lüge" (= "Lie" in English, somewhat like "I Doubt It" except with following suit instead of increasing numbers).

This all meant that I never even opened my computer all day Saturday (a rare event for a day in my life).

Sunday: my niece arrived back in Switzerland after 6 weeks nannying in Virginia for my cousin, near my mom. My niece lives 3 hours from us, though, with my brother, so we might not see her for some time. I hope she comes to visit soon. At church I signed up for a bunch of upcoming women's events, including two baby showers, a Bible study (Beth Moore) and a ladies' potluck get-together (South African style - "Bring and Braai" - there are a number of South African families in the church). Or am I confusing that with the whole church picnic which is next weekend? I think that is a Bring and Braai too. From the wikipedia article, only men do the barbequeing, but maybe we have progressive South African women in our church. ;-)

Monday morning: KID CLEANING SERVICE
As usual this summer, big house cleaning day with the kids doing a huge amount of the work, for pay...Jason vacuumed the whole house, swiffered the stairs, replaced the handtowels, gathered all the trash, and carried the laundry & used towels downstairs. Emily stripped the beds, emptied the dishwasher and dishrack, cleaned all the toilets and sinks, and helped me make the beds. I mopped the bathroom floors, and did the laundry, meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking. I was really grinning ear to ear last week when I had taught Emily how to clean toilets, and she said, as she moved onto the 3rd one, "Cleaning toilets really isn't so bad..." I'm going to miss my cheerful helpers something fierce when they go back to school next week!

Monday afternoon: PLAYING WITH NEIGHBOUR KIDS
A next-door neighbour girl from Saturday night's party came to the door for Emily while I was out shopping. Emily went over to her house, then they played at our house, and then they went across the street to the family with the ping-pong table and borrowed that... and in the meantime, Jason went over to the ping-pong family and played with the boy there who is exactly his age: ping pong, and then basketball with 4 other boys they met at the school playground, having biked there together. David and I are giving heartfelt thanks to God, again, for His incredible provision in this house and its neighbours. It's fantastic.

Tuesday morning: GERMAN LESSONS continue on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings with David at his office - in a group of about ten students, with a teacher from Germany. Today I understood about 20% of what the teacher was trying to convey about German grammar and pronoun endings. I told her so at the end of the class, and she said I should have said something during the class, because quite likely the others didn't understand either. I said I didn't know how far behind the others I was, since I've just joined the class, and she said I probably wasn't behind. One of the other students said he didn't ask anything because he hadn't done the homework, so he didn't feel he had the right to ask questions because it was his fault he didn't understand. I tried to do the homework, but since the textbooks ordered for David and me haven't arrived yet, it's a tad more challenging...the issue is that the teacher is speaking very fast in whole paragraphs in German, about German. There is no processing time. I think she will go more slowly tomorrow. I think it's great she teaches in German, but it was just too much too fast. And I don't know how to ask the questions I want to ask, in German! Argh! She said if it is about grammar, I can ask in English :-)

(During the writing of this post, I paused to move the laundry along (at least twice), give solicited feedback to Emily on a card she was making, answer questions about German words, encourage the kids to go outside, find a basketball pump needle for Jason, assist in pumping up a basketball, relocate to the vicinity of a power cord for my laptop...and also several days went by at different stages. Definitely time to stop now. Must get back to the laundry, and bake that apple crumble...)

* Video in French of Swiss saucisses de veau being made. You would never know from this video that they are really very tasty ;-)

Another Great Day: Bus & Train to Zug, with German Hangman

Jason, Emily and I went through the Swiss Public Transport Initiation Rites today.

We bought the "Half Tax" annual cards for David and me, which make all public trains, buses, boats, trams, and most cable cars half price all year long. The kids are already half price, but we got them the "Junior Cards" which are only 20CHF and make them FREE anywhere in Switzerland on any bus, train, boat, tram, and most cable cars, IF they are with me or David, for the whole year.

So then we had to try it out, and the kids and I walked to the bus, missed it by one minute, walked the rest of the way to the train station, caught another bus to Thalwil, caught the train to Zug, changed to another train to go two more stops to just up the hill from Jason's school. We walked past the school and continued down the hill to hop on a bus back into Zug (to try out all the methods of getting around near his school), and had a nice lunch by the lake. We learned "Trothahn" is turkey, and "Teigwaren" is pasta. Great to add a few new words at each meal...we did all the transactions with the waitstaff in German, which felt good. Emily was tickled that her request for cheese to go with her Teigwaren worked, as she configured the sentence on her own out of her head... We played hangman on our paper placemats - in German of course. I did "Baumnuss" (walnut, literally "tree nut" - another new word we gleaned from the dessert menu photographs), and Jason guessed it straight off without even bothering with letters! Wow. Then Emily did "Nachtisch" (dessert), and Jason nearly stumped us with "Sonnenbrille" (sunglasses, which Emily wearing). I got another chance since my first lasted so short a time, and I nearly hung them with a word that has SIX different consonants in a row with no vowels interrupting the streak: Kühlschrank (H-L-S-C-H-R!), which means refrigerator.
Then I had Jason lead us all the way back home (via walk, bus, train, another bus, and more walking), to help him solidify his bearings and figure out where to look for all the information we needed. There are a lot of helpful screens at stations and on vehicles doling out information about which "Gleis" (train platform) to wait on, how many stops left until destination, etc.

It felt like a very successful trip. And boy was I glad we had all our tickets in order when that inspector came by and asked for them on the 2nd train of the day!

The upshot of our discoveries: public transport would be a good back-up method for Jason to get home if needed, and it's good for him to know how to do it...but it seems just way too long a commute to ask him to do daily (55 minutes each way, with 3 different vehicles involved). So we will probably end up driving him at least partway. In the car it's more like 30 minutes, although we haven't tried it at rush hour yet. We can also try the back way over the mountain.
(photos are Lake Zug, with views over the Alps - notice there is a tiny little fountain coming out of Lake Zug - tiny compared to what I can't help but feel is the "real" Jet d'Eau in Geneva ;-) Being from there and all)

Incredible Day: Car, Flowers, Cake, Swim, German Conversation

I am all better from my sore throat illness (since Sunday). Thanks for the prayers.

Today David bought a car for himself (we already had one for me), brought me home flowers (a gift from the car place, but who cares, I'll take roses!) AND chocolate chip bundt cake with chocolate glaze and marzipan decoration (a welcome gift from his company, but delicious is delicious!) and he shared them all with his family.

This afternoon the kids and I went with our new pastor's wife and her kids to an amazing swim place in Zug, with multiple indoor and outdoor pools, an awesome, long outdoor water slide that was not scary but took about 20 seconds to get down, whizzing past fresh lavender plants under the blue sky...and 1 meter, 3 meter and 5 meter diving platforms outside (I only managed the 1m! My friend's kids both did the 5m! They are 11 and 7 years old)...and a cool "river current" area in one of the inside pools that is so strong you cannot make any progress if you are trying to swim against it; better just to let it sweep you away around the corner and back into the main pool area. Fun! I also had a really great time talking with my friend Tanya and getting to know her a bit better.

Tonight at dinner our family held a half-hour conversation ALL IN GERMAN (with a bit of dictionary-searching, both electronic and paper, and about a million mistakes I'm sure), spontaneously, with great cheer and many laughs, and totally out of the blue. I don't even know how it started. All I know is that the kids have been doing the Rosetta Stone German program daily for months, I have finished it (Levels 1, 2, and 3, all there is), Emily finished today, David had a conversation with the car place in German today, and David and I have had our first two German lessons live at his workplace (offered for free by the company for employees AND spouses, woo woo!) yesterday and today. It all came out tonight. It was incredible and wonderful. David and I just looked at each other afterwards with eyebrows practically up to the ceiling. Such fun.

Thank You, Lord, for an incredible day.

Small Medical Adventures in Switzerland

I've had a sore throat for five days. So yesterday I decided to try to find a doctor to whom to show my throat (hals in German), to rule out something on the more serious side.

This turned out to be harder than I thought. I was anticipating some language problems with German-speaking receptionists. However, what it ended up more being was language problems with Swiss-German answering machine messages.

A local doctor's office in our village, recommended by our kind Irish landlady, is closed until August 18th, as far as I can tell from the message. 11 days to wait.

I tried phoning another doctor, recommended by someone on the Families-in-Zurich yahoo mailing list, in a neighbouring town, and perhaps deciphered that they might have closed permanently as of this month? They said something about August, but maybe they just meant the whole month of August it is closed? But the verb sounded more permanent somehow.

Then I dialled another highly recommended physician in a lakeside town who apparently studied in the U.S. and whose receptionists purportedly both speak English, but there was a long Swiss-German message awaiting me there as well, not sure what that one was about (regular hours resume Aug 15th, possibly?).

Next I went for a doctor heartily recommended by the local expat family organizer lady online, whose message was the clearest yet. It only took me three repeat calls to get it all! It must have been actual high German rather than Swiss-German. Closed Thursday afternoons. Of course it was Thursday afternoon at the time. The U.S. Consulate website warns that this is the case with most doctors in the Zurich area, and now I believe them.

I started to think that maybe I was just not meant to go to a doctor that day or anytime soon.

BUT. But...my throat was really hurting. I didn't look forward to another night and another morning of wondering if I had Lyme Disease or strep or mono or something.

So I persevered a little more. Having clued in that every doctor in Zurich is either away on vacation in August or just not in the office on Thursday afternoons, I started to look up "clinics" in the Zurich area. And into play came Englishforum.ch, which is a cool resource for anglos in Switzerland. There was a thread about a drop-in clinic in the centre of Zürich, open from 7am to 10pm 365 days a year. That sounded more positive. Except it's far away from our house, with complicated parking, and people were going on about how long they had to wait (up to 3 hours for one person). I kept reading and scrolling down the page, when PRESTO, someone mentioned another clinic which is only 15 minutes from our house, in a shopping mall I've been to before and liked, with easy parking, close to David's office (directly on his way home in fact, whether by train or car). Öffnungszeiten: Mo - Fr 08.00 bis 19.00. Sa 08.00 bis 13.00. That is, opening hours 8am-7pm Mon-Fri and Sat 8am to 1pm. Better and better all the time.

I called, now my fifth try at getting an appointment with any doctor, anywhere, at any time: success! The receptionist spoke English, was very pleasant, and booked me in for a couple of hours later! I went in, was assured it is just some little viral thing that will go away on its own, got a prescription for an anaesthetic spray, and met up with David on his way home from work. There was a pharmacy in the mall, so I picked up the meds before leaving.

In the meantime, we have to wait four more weeks to get our health insurance cards - but have been covered since August 1st. It doesn't really matter about the cards, since we have to pay our bills directly, then file for reimbursement by mail. It was a nice arrangement in England where all the regular visits were "free" and the specialist visits and hospital were paid directly from the insurer to the provider. No messing around with paperwork for us. Fantastic. Ah well, we really appreciate things when they change for the worse, right!?

All this is actually very positive, though, as I found the clinic at the mall to be a wonderful place, and I really like the availability they offer. Not closed all of August, not closed Thursday afternoons, and so on. They have a big team of different kinds of specialists. The doctor was friendly and spoke English and seemed competent. Now I just have to get better to prove she was correct in her diagnosis...maybe this will become our family's doctor's office. Or at least a great known resource. So I am thankful.

A Quick Guide to Swiss German

A Quick Guide to the Swiss German Language is a lovely page to look at if you are interested in some differences between German and Swiss German or would like some tongue twisters with which to pass your evening.

Today, other than cleaning toilets, mopping floors, changing sheets, doing laundry, meal-planning, grocery shopping, training the children to be industrious, helpful and hard-working (by giving them the instant reinforcement of being paid for their cheerful labor), and visiting our town library for the first time, I had a German interaction with the cashier (asking her for three sizes of the special trash bags they keep behind the registers, measured in litre capacity), and listened about four times to an answering machine message in Swiss-German without being able to decipher what the hours of the orthodontist are. I'll have to try them again tomorrow morning and hope they're open then (and speak English or French).

Being slightly under the weather this evening, that will have to suffice for my contribution to the blogosphere for today. The deepest of grace and peace to you. It flows freely to those who ask the Source Guy.

Lucerne - our first visit

Today after church in Zug (Emily was so happy to see her new friend again, and we met some more new people), we decided to continue on 20 minutes further from home to have lunch in Lucerne. Lucerne is a Swiss city founded in 1178, which in 1415 joined the Swiss Confederacy. It has gorgeous views of the Alps over the lake.

We parked and found a restaurant by the river and had some raclette (melted cheese slabs over hot boiled potatoes) and rösti (grated fried potatoes, with bacon & cheese) and Schweinegeschnetzeltes with Spätzle (pork strips with mushrooms in a cream sauce and homemade noodles) and a Schinkengipfel (ham croissant).

Strolling along the Reuss river, we crossed four bridges, back and forth over the same water:

The first, the Spreuerbrücke, is a wooden bridge from 1408, which at first we thought was THE bridge of the Lucerne photos, but it wasn't. Still pretty and fun to cross.

Next, the Reussbrücke, nothing special. But THEN:

Then, ahhhh, the Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge) built in 1333, but mostly destroyed by a 1993 fire and then reproduced/restored. It was the oldest wooden bridge in Europe until that unfortunate event. This is the landmark that represents Lucerne in all the photos. We have a coaster with a painting of it, which for some reason led me to believe it just took people out into the middle of the lake, but actually it crosses the river. Halfway across there is an attractive water tower (Wasserturm). Apparently it "has served as a prison, torture chamber, watchtower and treasury." This bridge and tower together are supposedly the most photographed monument in Switzerland. I can see why, especially in summer with all the gorgeous flowers adorning it. We were blessed to be there when a harpist was treating all passersby to romantic, dreamy music. I laid my head on David's shoulder and closed my eyes. Lovely. 40 minutes from our house. Come visit, we'll take you.

We noticed a sign on the Chapel Bridge telling of "Mauritius," a Christian commander in the Roman army in the 3rd century, who was martyred in 287 for either refusing to harrass local Christians, or for refusing to worship Roman gods. He was born in Egypt and died in what is now Switzerland. We clued in to the fact that the ski resort of St. Moritz is named after him! That was kind of neat to see - in the rafters of the Chapel Bridge there are several old artworks and poems about him and his Legion (who perhaps were all killed for their righteous insubordination).

Also along the river is a large baroque Jesuit Church from the 1600s. Very pretty inside, with lots of pink and gold. On the ceiling is a cool painting of the outside of the building, including the nearby Chapel Bridge and Water Tower, and, of course, an elephant pulling a cart (??).


We finally got to the fourth bridge of the day, which is at the edge of Lake Lucerne itself (properly called "Vierwaldstättersee, or Lake of the Four Forest Cantons." I am used to lakes having a popular name and a real name, since what people call Lake Geneva is really the "Lac Léman" in French. We bought some stracciatella and strawberry ice cream, and wandered along the flags (this was the first bridge with cars on it as well as foot traffic), admiring the mountain view and the daring roofline of the Lucerne Art Museum.

I discovered today that swans make me feel at home, since they were ubiquitous in Geneva.

There were also some cute ducklings:

Wordle

Thanks to Jon Reid for the pointer to Wordle.net where you can make pretty word pictures like this by just sticking in your blog url (or any text you want):

Click to enlarge. Of course the choice of colors is my favorite part.

Cat on a Cool Stone Compass Rose

There's this neat compass rose in our driveway. It's good to know what direction we're heading in the morning...this very friendly neighbourhood cat likes to know, too.

Swiss Sheep For You

These Swiss sheep graze on the side of a little hill that we pass whenever we leave our village. At the top of the hill is the village church, with a profusely flowered graveyard around it. The sheep dutifully keep the ivy trimmed off the walls around the graveyard.

Swiss National Holiday - 1st of August

Yesterday was the Swiss National Holiday. We decorated with flags, garlands, balloons, and the traditional "lampions" (patriotic paper lanterns with candles inside). We walked into the village with our umbrellas to join some of the community for music (imagine country music with a Swiss-German twang) and food: cervelat (this link will lead you to another link about zebus, which then even talks about Silly Songs with Larry...but you don't really want to know what cervelat used to be made from and is still cooked in) and the traditional big, long, white veal sausages, grilled, which in Suisse Romande (the French-speaking part of Switzerland) are called Saucisses de Veau, and here are simply called "Bratwurst."

After dark, we drove up the hill to the top of the Albis pass and sat on the barrier at the edge of the road (with a small crowd of other people) to look out over the lake valley, where at least 17 separate fireworks displays were in progress simultaneously, stretching along Lake Zürich and beyond. I've never seen something like that before. True, the fireworks seemed small and low from that vantage point, but seeing so many all at once was amazing, along with the city lights.

It was a rainy day with a lot of fog, but the moisture held off during the fireworks, for which we were thankful. We sat on my raincoat.


I must say I feel rather patriotic about Switzerland :-) It was so lovely to know about some of the traditions like holding the lampions on wooden sticks (I had to dig for them in the store, but I knew they must be somewhere...) and sticking them in the ground to light the garden. Happy 717th Birthday, Switzerland!

In that last link, you may be interested to read of when Swiss women were allowed to become voters: in the first cantons, 1959! And the final cantons to allow it did not come around until 1990!!! Unbelievable. Vs. 1920 federally in the U.S. But they've now had two female presidents of Switzerland already, and half the Swiss Federal Council is female - so they moved faster than in the U.S. in the end! Funny. Currently the president is a man, Pascal Couchepin. It's very different here, though, as it is really the seven-person council that makes decisions together, and it seems like they all sort of take turns being president. The current pres has done it before. They hold the post for one calendar year at at time and then give someone else on the council a turn. Sounds quite civilized.

Close to France, Germany, Italy...

Summer rain
Green grass in July in the fields
Fresh air
Blue skies

Clean desk (because I moved the clutter to the floor, heh)

David and the kids did all the dishes after dinner last night, a wonderful thing. I took a shower instead.

There are no bran flakes that I can find in stores here, but they do have "Bio Dinkel Pops" cereal. Try saying that out loud with a straight face. We have not tried this cereal. As it turns out, "dinkel" means the grain spelt. The things I learn every day...And of course "bio" means it's organic.

We are one hour and a quarter's drive from Alsace, France. Never been there before. Sounds worth a visit for sure (once we have our residence permit).

We are also just under one hour from southern Germany, and just over one hour to the edge of the Black Forest (Which contains the rise of the Danube River).

And two and a half hours to Lake Como in Italy. I hadn't quite realized all these wonders before moving here. Many exciting prospects to explore.

But for today, I am participating in a user study at my husband's company, then we go together to the American consulate to get our (non) criminal records check, then later in the evening we have a company party the kids get to come to. An eventful day ahead. Onwards!

German Vocabulary Lesson - Migros Loyalty Card Application

In filling out the Migros loyalty card application yesterday, I had to look up a lot of new vocabulary, some of which I hope will stick with me...maybe better so if I type it here and share it with you:

Antrag - application
Anmeldung - sign-up, registration
Mitgliedschaft - membership
Verzichten - decline, abdicate
Deswegen - that's why
Erhalten - receive
Benötigen - need/want
Noch - still
Beachten - pay attention to / note / heed
Gewünschte - desired
Bevorzugte - preferred

And to finish off:

Einfach - simply
Ablösen - to detach
Anfeuchten - to dampen / to wet
Zukleben - to seal

From the village website, I also learned, with the help of my online German-English dictionary:
Stützmauer - retaining wall (someone wants a permit for one)
Anlässe - events
Abteilung - department

We'll see if I remember any of them tomorrow. I have good hopes for noch, beachten and anmeldung, at least.

One of the Differences Between Migros and Coop

Migros and Coop (pronounced CO-op)are the two main grocery store chains in Switzerland. They are the very same two chains that we shopped at when I was growing up in Geneva, and now I shop at them in Zurich.

Here is a difference that I don't think existed back then...to do with the loyalty cards (which is a newer phenomenon). Of course every time you check out at the store, they ask if you have a loyalty card. At Coop, they say, "Superkarte?" (where the S sounds like a Z). At Migros they ask, "Karte Cumulus?"

Until yesterday, I had just been replying with, "Nein" (no). But then at the Coop I came up with the much more brilliant and descriptive, "Noch nicht...Ich warte" (not yet...I'm waiting for it). To get the card at the Coop, one must get a form at the Kiosk (customer service desk), fill it out and mail it in, and wait about a month. Then presumably one receives the card and can start using it. And no, they don't credit your receipts for any shopping before you receive the card. In the meantime, in exchange for your shopping, they give you miles of little stickers with a shower graphic on them, pretending that you will get airline miles and bathtime gifts with these stickers, if you take the time to stick each one individually onto a little piece of provided paper in rows of five, and bring them in later. However, once you have done this, they inform you that actually if you've stuck 120 stickers on with the help of your kids, and just want to trade them in for the miles, you have to pay 139 Francs to get the 4000 miles. I had understood about the bath products costing money (you have the honor of paying them 20, 25, 50, or 60 Francs if for some reason you want towels and bathrobes and such with a company logo on them), but I had thought the miles were actually free. Nothing is free. I took those shower stickers back so fast...and felt like it was all a royal waste of time and the stickers are worthless. If anyone wants them they can have them.

By contrast, at Migros, you go to the customer service desk, they immediately hand you a plastic card with a bar code on it, they credit you already your purchases from that day, and ask you to fill in the form later and send it in, but in the meantime you can use your new card right away. Instead of deceptive and labor-intensive shower stickers, they give you Migros coins, which you can distribute amongst your kids, who put them into a machine much like a gumball machine, except it emits big marbles! They roll down around the spiral and pop out, and if you're lucky, they give you a cloth bag at the check-out to keep the marbles in! Now there's something free and fun.

Guess which store's loyalty program I am more impressed with? However, I have yet to see what the Migros or Coop card actually does for you, if anything other than that the cashier will no longer scare you with the question of whether you have one every time.

Minor Setbacks

1. The house smells like manure. Some neighbours or other seem to be fertilizing their garden to within an inch of its life.

2. Yesterday I stalled the car in the middle of the street while a red sports car waited behind me. I couldn't get it to start again for a few embarrassing moments.

3. Today we got letters from the Swiss government, out of which I could only understand that we had to do SOMETHING by August 20th. Such an odd feeling, really having no idea what they were trying to tell me. I read the whole thing, word for word, and that's pretty much all I understood of the German legalese.

4. It turns out they want a criminal records check (Strafregisterauszug) on the two of us before they will continue processing our residence permit. David's company and the US Consulate in Zurich told us this would be likely, but the relocation company and all the ex-pat websites disagreed. Well now we know who was right. We actually had an appointment at the consulate but then cancelled it when the town hall did not ask for this piece of evidence upon our newly-arrived registration. Too bad. I have to make another one. Thankfully, all we have to bring is our passports and 33 Swiss Francs each. As far as I know (which is not very far).

5. I tried the 2nd of two bakeries in our village this morning and brought some goodies home for the kids for breakfast - there were only two problems with this. One is that I tried to begin the ordering process in German, but blanked out on anything to say after the opening greeting. I ended up stupidly pointing at a strawberry tartlet, having no recollection of how to say strawberry (Erdbeere). The lady said something I didn't understand, and I just raised my eyebrows, instead of explaining my limited German or something educated like that. It became clear she was naming the strawberry tart (I never did get what it was called), and then she said something else, and we ended up speaking English, which she understood. I could feel the lady behind me watching the interaction, and wished I had just started in English. Oh well. I'm going to be doing this a lot. Feeling foolish and ignorant. But I plan to take some German lessons soon to complement the computer learning I've been doing. There is hope for improvement, says logic, if not my heart. The second "problem" is that I keep looking for a French-style bakery, and haven't found one here yet. I don't know how to describe really what it is I am seeking, but the German culture is just very different from the French side of Switzerland. The pastries and baked goods are different, and not as many, or maybe that's just because I am living in a small village. But then again, the small village in Geneva where I lived had a fantastic bakery. I guess I am looking for that one. 3 hours is a bit far to go for breakfast. But maybe in a closer French-speaking part of CH...for a special treat...memories are powerful.

By the way, if you put the misspelling "eerdbeer" as a German word into the built-in Mac OS German-English translator, it says that in English that would be "more eerdbeer." Then if you try to translate that back into German, it renders it "mehr eerdbeer." This information will come in handy some day, I know it.

Dizzying Library Hours

I was hoping to visit our village library. So I looked up the opening hours. Good thing I didn't just try to stop by:

Monday	3-6pm
Tuesday & Friday	6-8pm
Wednesday	2-4pm
Thursday	9-11am
Saturday	9am-12pm
Sunday	Closed

However, during the holidays (whenever those are; perhaps when school is not in session, like now?):

Monday	4-7pm
Thursday	5-8pm
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday	Presumably Closed

I feel a bit dizzy (but speaking of remembering rules and times/days, I did remember to put the garden waste out yesterday for the first time, with the special orange tag which I had to wet and stick together around the bin handle, and the trash today in the special bags at the end of the street - I forgot to bring the yard waste bin in last night, but someone else forgot until this morning too, so I felt better that I wasn't the last to collect it).

Back to books/movies, I have discovered that there is a DVD shop in downtown Zurich that is called ELM (English Language Media) - we had a similar store in Geneva when I was growing up, and we used to rent videos from it. But it's 23 minutes from our house here (or so Google Maps says), so I don't know if we would use that much. I am trying to choose a replacement for Netflix (USA) / Glowria.fr (France) / Amazon.co.uk (UK) DVD Rentals by mail. There are also a couple of companies in Switzerland that specialize in ordering English-language books, so I am trying out one of those for more books for the kids.

First Alpine Hike - Flumserberg

After our first two Saturdays of IKEA overwhelm, we were most excited to turn to other pursuits yesterday. With the house under enough control, we took the opportunity to explore farther afield by driving an hour into the Alps for a mountainous picnic lunch. What fun! What beauty! Cow bells! Goat bells! Mini-golf at altitude, fresh bread & cheese on rocks in a steep meadow surrounded by wildflowers. Enough to make this Swiss Mrs' heart sing with joy.

Along the drive, I spotted license plates from 22 of the 26 Swiss cantons (like states). In the order of their joining the Swiss Confederation, from 1351 to 1815:
ZH Zurich (1351)
BE Berne
LU Lucerne
UR Uri
SZ Schwyz
OW Obwalden (Obwald)
NW Nidwalden (Nidwald)
GL Glarus
ZG Zug
FR Fribourg
SO Solothurn
BS Basel-Stadt (Basel-City)
BL Basel-Land (Basel-Country)
SH Schaffhausen
AR Appenzell Ausserrhoden (Outer Rhodes)
SG St. Gallen (St. Gall)
GR Graubünden (Grisons)
AG Aargau (Argovia)
TG Thurgau (Thurgovia)
TI Ticino
VD Vaud
GE Geneva (1815)

We were only missing
AI Appenzell Innerrhoden (Inner Rhodes) (1513)
VS Valais
NE Neuchâtel
JU Jura (1979 - previously part of Bern)

On the other hand, we were listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, downloaded from the Apple Store in audiobook form, so they may have passed by unnoticed.

I was of course especially excited when I saw GE and VD, because those were the ones I saw all the time growing up in Geneva. Vaud is right next to Geneva, along one side of Lake Geneva.

I also saw license plates from eight other countries: Germany (lots), France, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and the Czech Republic. One license plate stumped me: FL (and it was NOT Florida). David suggested Florin (from the Princess Bride). I just looked it up, and it is rather surprisingly not a country that starts with F: Fürstentum Liechtenstein, which means the Principality of Liechtenstein. I was very pleased to learn this, as I am sure I shall see more - Liechtenstein is right next to us here, only 1.5 hours away. It's on our list as soon as we get our proper residence permit here (supposed to stay in-country until then).

Before we got to the hiking spot, we stopped to look around a small, ruined castle from 1249 or so. The Bergruine Gräpplang.


After driving up the mountain from the town of Flums, we took a gondola from Tannenheim partway up the Flumserberg, then an 8-person, wind-shielded chairlift (never seen an 8-seater, never seen one with a windshield), then hiked up a bit. Each of us had our own little knapsack, carrying our own drinks, and the picnic load was shared around as needed. The real hiking came on the way down, through meadows and forest and cow pasture, and along a stream.

Our picnic spot:

The whole hike I kept thinking to myself, "I can't believe we're only one hour from our house! This is unreal! Look at those peaks!" God is very creative...and generous and gracious. We saw a slew of different animals on the drive and hike: cows with very large udders, horses, goats, chickens, rabbit, long-necked geese (like Jemima Puddleduck), birds, dog, cat. We went through a bunch of tunnels and saw several lakes and a ton of paragliders who had jumped off the various peaks to land in the valley below. On the hike we picked wild blueberries and Emily even liked them (she hasn't historically, but couldn't resist trying some cute little ones she had picked fresh off the mountainside herself).

It was an awesome day! We live in an awesome world created by an awesome God!
(can you tell I felt enthusiastic?)

Blessed at "Lift Zug"

This morning we visited a third church here in northern Switzerland, this time in the canton of Zug. We live halfway between the cities of Zurich and Zug, so we can go either direction. David's office is in Zurich, the kids' schools are in Zug, so our centre is not clear. I guess that would be our house.

LIFT = Living in Forever Today, which is a catchy idea...

It is a small church (there were maybe 40-50 people there this morning, including kids), but this is also summertime, with people gone. However, it meets in a very small room on one of the main streets in Zug, right on the lake, and it didn't seem that there were any spare seats, so I'm not sure how it works during the school year... Beautiful flowers adorned a little park on the lakefront across the street.

We really enjoyed the worship in song (mostly songs we knew, with guitars, keyboard, drums, words on the screen), just our style, and the message was full of Jesus and His Love and Life given for us. Emily, of her own accord went upstairs to the kids' class, without us even going with her (she did not go at either of the other two churches, so it was nice to see her feel so comfortable). The view over Lake Zug from upstairs was breathtaking.

Afterwards, we spent a long time chatting and getting to know several families:

- the pastor is from Colorado, and his wife is of Swiss and German descent. The whole family of four have both U.S. and Swiss passports and have lived in Colorado. Talk about a connection for us! We love Colorado. The daughter in this family is 11 and she welcomed Emily like an old friend. Emily is really hoping to go back again next week. "Would anyone mind?" as she put it surreptitiously.

- the worship leader (this week anyway) and his wife are from London (so that was another connection for us)

- another guitar player and his wife are from South Africa (a good friend and prayer partner of mine in the UK was South African - it was nice to hear the accent again)

- the couple who were sitting in front of us are from Canada, and BOTH teach at Emily's new school!!! That was fantastic to hear. Not only that - the gentleman teaches Emily's Grade!!!!!! She has a quarter chance of having him, since there are 4 5th grades next year.

- another couple we met are from the U.S. but lived in two other countries before landing here, the most recent being England, just like us. They have two boys and a girl - the eldest boy is about Jason's height and plays guitar and piano (I can imagine Jason playing drums with him...), and the next is Emily's age and will be in her grade at her new school as well (but not with the teacher we met) - so now she has 50/50 chance of being in a class with someone she's already met! Wow. The grace of God is so deep and lavish.

We found out that the pastor's wife knows the science teacher at Jason's school, and that she is a Christian! Very exciting to hear as well. What wonderful connections this morning. Thank You! Thank You!

After the chatting tapered, we went out for a local pizza lunch with the South Africans, the Canadians, and the American family with the two older boys (most of the kids at this church are on the younger side - a huge number of strollers parked in the hallway...). More good chat time - all the adults at one long table, all the kids at another, outside in the perfect temperature on a lovely day.

So is this where You want us, Lord? Thank You in any case for a very blessed morning. Please provide friends for Jason and bring some more God-seeking teenagers to this church if You are planting us here!

License, German-English Translation, Fruit, Junkmail, Power, Sun

I think the Zurich DMV used Google Translate for their email to me. Here are some excerpts:

...The visual test you can finish with every optician(glasses business)

...They must wait, to you the foreign identity card have

...The American leader's drive card we need for the paraphrase. You get back this after the occurred paraphrase (approx. one week). Nevertheless, in the interim you may go in Switzerland.

Mit freundlichen Grüssen
Strassenverkehrsamt Zürich
Backoffice

* * *

Yesterday I hung our wedding vows by our bed - David's to me on his side, and mine to him on my side. This means we are truly home once again. I also hung the iris painting that my mom gave to us as a housewarming present three houses/countries ago. It is in the dining room, beautiful! And David's mom's special and lovely river painting is hanging in Jason's room - she painted it for him.

And I organized all the extra toiletries...what a mess that was. Our bathroom looks a whole lot better.

Also the kids and I got to have lunch with David at work for the first time, and see where he sits. FUN office... (not mentioning on the blog the name of where he works, but it's somewhere really fun :-) ).

* * *

We've been delighting in God's fresh summer peaches (so ripe the skin just peels right off with my fingers), nectarines, and blueberries...yum! This morning I baked my first banana bread in this house. The kids liked it a lot.

* * *

In reading Psalm 89:13, I came across an unusual verb: "endue:"

Provide with a talent, ability, power, etc. (godonthe.net)

To take on, to take the form of... To clothe; to endow or invest (with a thing). (wiktionary)

Endow, indue, gift, empower, invest, give qualities or abilities to (wordnet.princeton.edu

So anyway, God is endued with power. All of it.

Earlier this week I was clueless as to where I might find a shower curtain rod around here (that was not 45 minutes away of yucky city/highway driving at Ikea). I sort of kind of asked God for help (didn't feel it was important enough? Have other matters I'd rather He work on? Didn't think He knew? Didn't think He cared that much? Ha!), having looked in the phone books and found that no help with my limited German (what would you look under?), and having tried Google maps business locating...again I don't think I put in the right words.

I left the house for some other errands, hoping I would just see someplace likely on the way...but stopped at the mailbox to check if there was anything in there. For the first time since we moved in two weeks ago, there was some "junkmail" in the bottom half of the mailbox. Some flyers from stores. Hmmm, thought I. Leafing through, three of the stores looked like likely candidates for my search! So I went back inside and looked them up online. The closest one was 20 minutes away through absolutely stunning countryside. Hills, forests, lush verdant fields, Christmas tree farm, cornfields, distant horizons...Anyway, I got to a Co-op "Bau + Hobby" which turned out to be Home Depot meets Office Depot meets Michael's Arts & Crafts meets Garden Center meets Kitchen Store meets Outdoor Store. And upstairs, a full-blown Co-op grocery store and attached mall. I had a great time exploring, got the shower curtains and rods and several other things we needed, and had to leave to come home before I was done with the adventure. I will have to go back and take David too sometime. Looked like a nice town to visit for other reasons too (Affoltern am Albis).

So anyway, it wasn't junkmail, it was God-mail, I guess. Thanks!

* * *

The sun has returned as of yesterday, and we're supposed to have real summer temperatures here all next week. Nice. We may take our first trip into the mountains this Saturday for a hike. I hope we see lots of wildflowers, especially centaurea montana...

Starting to Look Into the Swiss Driver's License

Here is a helpful (?) translation from the German of what happens to our original driver's license when we swap it for a Swiss one:

6th ERFOLGTER BY DEFINITION

6.1. What happens with the foreign driving licence after euphemism?
Lead passes from EU / EFTA member states are sent to the exhibitors State returned. Lead passes from non-EU
EFTA states will be marked "Not valid in Switzerland" and will be the designated candidates in return. Leadership
rerausweise of people with permits foreigners F, N or S will be sent to the competent authority.

For those of you who understand German, here's the original:

6. NACH ERFOLGTER UMSCHREIBUNG

6.1. Was passiert mit dem ausländischen Führerausweis nach erfolgter Umschreibung?
Führerausweise aus EU-/EFTA-Staaten werden an den Ausstellerstaat zurückgesandt. Führerausweise aus Nicht EU-
/EFTA-Staaten erhalten den Vermerk "Not valid in Switzerland" und werden dem/der Bewerber/in zurückgegeben. Füh-
rerausweise von Personen mit Ausländer-Bewilligungen F, N oder S werden an die zuständige Behörde weitergeleitet.

Do you see what I am dealing with, with the "help" of Google Translate? Oh boy. I generally get the gist of what it is trying to say, but often I have to take individual words and stick them into my favorite online German-English dictionary (sometimes requiring splitting them into the parts of the compound words the German language so strongly embraces).

I think the mysterious
"NACH ERFOLGTER UMSCHREIBUNG" means something like "After the Procedure has Taken Place."
What is translated as "euphemism" really means something like "the procedure" I think.
And of course "Lead passes" are simply driver's licenses. Automatic translation is so hopeless because so much is determined by context. I'm sure faithful reader Randall who lived in Germany, and is married to a wonderful German lady, will enlighten us about this stuff.

What's awesome is that unlike the UK, where we had to pass a theory test AND a road test (which I failed the first time and passed the second time), here in lovely Switzerland we can exchange either our U.S. OR our U.K. license for a Swiss one, and our only test will be an EYE test - that kind I can handle! Especially after my 2004 lasik surgery... (thanks again, my dear husband David for that incredible birthday present!).

So now we have to fill out two forms in German, find out where to get the eye test, get one (D too), and bring our passport, residence permit, foreign license, photos, forms and ourselves to the appropriate office (only 16 minutes away, hurray! It was 45 minutes in the UK). We also have to decide which license to exchange. It looks like, from the paragraph I quoted above, we would not get our UK licenses back, whereas our U.S. licenses they would deface slightly and give back. Hmmm. Probably our UK licenses are no longer valid anyway since we don't live there anymore? Not sure about that. We sure went through a lot of trouble to get those!

July 22nd High of 60

Jeans and sweatshirt today. High of 60 F (16 C, low of 53/12).

The postman really does ring twice here, by the way. (That was a non sequitur, and sounds like a nasty book from the summary I just found.)

Made a Granny Smith apple tart last night with Emily (she did at least half the work). Glad to note that in Switzerland the prepared pie crust dough is once again round. In England it was rectangular, which meant a lot of trimming and wasted dough if I was making a round pie (like all my pies). In France it was round I believe, like in the U.S.

Remember yesterday I wrote about ordering salmon at the fish counter in the grocery store? You may be amused to know that the word for salmon here is "lachs" (it sounds similar to "lax") - as in bagels and lox (only it's not smoked unless you have the word Räucher before it (as in "Rauchen verboten" - no smoking!).

Here you have
a) the hibiscus tree as viewed from our bedroom window
b) an example of beflowered balconies very common in Switzerland (usually a lot of geraniums)
c) a forested streamside path we can take to walk from our house to our village, e.g. to the bakery
d) a sleeping swan by the lake in downtown Zürich (we explored a little after trying a downtown church on Sunday)