Pfaffikonsee

Just a 20 minute bike ride from home. This small marina lets people row boats in the summer.

Where is van Gogh?

Chocolate High

Turns out the Pfizer Chocolate Factory is just one town away from us. More importantly there is a factory store. After a few frees samples we all got a little silly with some of the options (many bins of chocolate). We left with a modest sized bag of goodies. In contrast, the woman in front of us at the check-out spent 278 francs and had to make two trips to the car.

Ruth contemplates if she could eat that 2.4 kilo bunny.

Life in Switzerland Still Requires Laundry Days

It is true that life is good in Switzerland, but there are some things you just can't escape... laundry being one of those things. Our apartment building has a washer and drier shared by 6 flats. We are all assigned a day - The Sofields get the laundry room from 6 pm on Monday until 6 pm on Tuesday (I am always thankful we didn't get the Saturday assignment - we would never have clean clothes). To use the washer and drier, we have an electronic key that is inserted into a reader (right most box on the above picture) - this keeps track of how much electricity The Sofields use for laundry (we think we are billed later for this... bills in Switzerland could be a whole series of blog posts). In reality, it is nice to just have 1 day for laundry - it somehow seems more manageable...for example, you know what day you'll run out of underwear , or how many more times you have to re-wear your pants,or when new matched socks will show up. We'll see if we can implement this 1 day of laundry in our Bellingham home...

The other nice thing is that we also have a drying room. You can tell this system has been well thought out. For every one laundry room, there are two drying rooms, so you can use your drying room for 2 days. The room has a heater and a window, with clothes line strung up across the room. Works like a charm to dry clothes and save on electricity...

Happy Holidays from the Fehraltorf Gemeindehaus

Our town decked out the city hall and fountain. How nice!

Episode 2 of Our Town: The Christmas Market

The 2nd Episode of Our Town. A story about two Americans and their dog, living in Fehraltorf, Switzerland for a year. In this episode, the Sofields go to the Christmas Market, a one day event in Fehraltorf.... (P.S., the quality of this is better on my Facebook page if you want to watch it there, Ruth)

Snow Day

Fehraltorf @ 560 meters

Fehraltorf our home town is 140 meters higher than Zurich. That means is can be raining in the city but snowing at our home. This is what we are treated to when we get off the train.

Our Town Fehraltorf: Episode 1 (Local Fruit)

Snow

We live on the top floor of the apartment behind Ruth.  One of the pluses is that you can hear the rain on the skylight.  Last night it rained hard.  This morning before daylight, the rain stopped, I thought that the storm was over.  Actually it just changed to snow.  Ruth enjoyed a wintery walk to the train.  

Fehraltorf:

It is where we are living. We are 45 minutes to the alps - smack in the middle of horse country.