Coming home… Settling back in.

September 4, 2011

Fortunately, Darrell’s cousin (Jen – our last US visitor to Switzerland) had a long career in the Army. She told us that the Army talks to soldiers coming home after a long deployment about what to expect. It was good for her to frame that for me and just let me know that there is a process to being home again. We clearly are not the same people we left as. I mean, we are still fun-loving energetic, and lovable :) , but with such a different view on life and living. I’ve been home since August 25^th now and have had some time to try settling.

It has been hard to say I am happy to be home without any caveats because there is still a lot of work ahead of us to get settled. We’ve just been going through tasks for so long now. Lately, it has been get cell phones (we have new numbers if anyone needs them), turn on utilities, go to a wedding, visit our neglected property in eastern Washington, start cleaning and moving back into our house, thinking about house projects we need to do, weeding our out of control garden….

But we are settling, and there are lots of things in the works here now. I’ve ordered a raclette maker and we are looking at espresso makers so we can stop using our drip coffee pot (friends in Switzerland were always amazed that we would drink that “stuff that you leave in a container”). We have plans for a firepit outside so we can do regular grills with wood instead of with our gas grill – which is for sale now. I am also excited to say that we now have a home carbonation system so I can drink wasser mit Kohlensäure (carbonated water) any time I want. I’m planning to sit in on the university German classes and am trying to figure out how to make regular visits back to German speaking countries so I can practice.

I am also excited about some of my favorite Bellingham things like social exercising (runs and bike rides with girlfriends), a 25K run in January on Orcas Island that I just signed up for, spontaneous and frequent get-togethers with friends, our killer Farmer’s Market, NPR at the right time of the day, and good American micro-brewed beer (after giving Swiss and some German beers a serious chance, I have to say that it really doesn’t get much better than American micro-brews for tasty beer). I am happy to say though that at our first meal with friends, I said en guete (enjoy your meal) without thinking about it.

I suspect that there will continue to be things that strike me as interesting or odd, but there are already some to talk about.

• Red onions. Darrell claims that Switzerland had red onions, but for whatever reasons, I didn’t have red onions for a year – and I had forgotten about them. Discovering them on a salad though was wonderful!

• Toilets – I am still trying to figure this out, but I think the flush handle is on the opposite side (left side here – I remember it always being on the right in Switzerland). Even more importantly though, in Switzerland almost every toilet had a toilet brush beside it (public and private) and it was clear that you were to clean your own toilet bowl. Here, there are some toilet brushes, but not as commonly. It is an odd feeling to have been very careful about cleaning up in Switzerland and then come here where it isn’t expected.

• My neighborhood… It is an old charming neighborhood in Bellingham with turn of the century houses of all styles and with tree lined streets. I loved this neighborhood when I left. The first day we went back though, I had a bit of a panic attack. All I could think was that this place was so chaotic. The houses were all different and maintained to different degrees, the yards were different shapes, the alley ways were dingy, there were parked cars and power lines everywhere (both of these are underground in Switzerland)… I honestly had to get out of there. It was just so different than the well kept Swiss homes, apartments, and green spaces with clean lines and similar styles everywhere. A week later though, we’ve had dinner three times in a row outside in our garden and I am happy to be back in my house again. Unfortunately, I think the power lines will always bother me.

• There are a lot more American flags than I remember. Still not as many as Swiss flags, but there are plenty of the Old Glory here and there.

• The brats (bratwurst) are really small here.We have to spend some time exploring what our local options are.

• And related to that…. MUSTARD – I am sure I royally embarrassed Darrell by breaking out into excited (loud) chatter about all of the mustard options (picture below) we had at our local grocery store. As one friend here pointed out, we weren’t even at the nice store, we were at the ghetto store and still had probably 40 different mustard options – Russian, Chinese, Düssseldorf, American picnic, chipotle, Hawaiian, horseradish, cranberry,jalapeno, wasabi, honey …. oh the varieties! In Switzerland, we did most of our shopping in Fehraltorf with small grocery stores, but I think it is fair to say that most groceries there focused on carrying one or two brands for each item, so options were always limited. For example, all Mexican products were always the Old El Paso brand only.

There is only one more thing to happen that will make life complete… and we are in the process of that right now… stay tuned.

Coming Home…. On the way.

August 23 - 25, 2011

Moving is always hard and time-consuming, but an international move (at least the way I did it) has some unique considerations – for me, the luggage was the challenge. The cheapest way to get our household goods back to the U.S. was to check them as excess baggage – and Iceland Air had the best price for that, which is why I flew Iceland Air and decided to throw in a stopover for two days.

Darrell had already left with the fully packed ski bag (thank goodness!), my fold up bike, and a box of things – plus his check-ons. That left me with 2 boxes of things, 2 boxed bikes, 2 suitcases, and 3 backpacks – does that add up to 8 plus 1 carry on??? Yup, that’s it. The challenges – pretty simple – how to get all of that to the check-ins without ever leaving it unattended, which is impossible without help. Fortunately for me, people popped up to help. In Frankfurt (where I flew out of), I got two baggage carts (2 Euros each, but refundable when you returned them – that part is important). As I started to load them, a man came by and said something about helfen – which sounds enough like help that I knew he was asking if I needed help. To make a long story short, he was Polish and his name was Sebastian. He made a living by cruising the airport looking for bottles with a refundable deposit and baggage carts that he could return for the 2 Euro refund. He spent a lot of time with me- which was a bit creepy, but ultimately, I was very thankful. After all of my luggage was checked, he left with both of my carts and a handful of Euros from my change purse (which I gave him).

OK, step 1 completed. The next problem was in Iceland. There isn’t on-site storage for baggage at the airport, but I had researched and found a place just off-site (500 meters away, which can be VERY far when you have this much luggage) that would store my luggage for a fee. I went through customs pushing my two carts overflowing with luggage and boxes – with a little help from the customs guard. When I called the off-site baggage storage, the woman was quite no nonsense about me having to get there on my own… so I got two carts and started pushing them out of the airport. The route started with a sidewalk, but turned into a road. To be exact, it was the only road that leaves the airport. Fun.

Fortunately, I was in Iceland and not the US; this road had traffic, but it wasn’t a highway and the traffic wasn’t consistent. My plan of attack was to leap-frog the carts. I pushed one about 50 meters, then went back for the other, pushed it 100 m, then went back for the other, and so on. At one point, the cart waiting for me up ahead flipped over spilling everything onto the shoulder. Damn it. Then the one I was pushing dumped. At that point I shouted out a cussword – which I am sure is what led to the two young people to come ask me if I needed help. The landscape here was pretty barren with no people around except one worker tending the airport lawn and these two young people hanging out talking to him - I was lucky they were there. The rest of this journey was cake with their help!

After storing the luggage, it was a nice bus trip to Reykjavik (from the airport in Keflavik). The highlights of the stopover were:

• · Being at the tectonic plate boundary; standing on the North American plate (pictured below) looking across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to see the Eurasian plate 7 km away (cool!)
  

• · Seeing the Icelandic horses – famous for being small (don’t call them ponies if you don’t want to offend the locals) and having a unique gait called the tölt. Apparently, the tölt is so smooth that you can drink Champagne while riding the horse and not spill any.

• · Seeing a geyser field – The Great Geysir is no longer active, but is the origin of the English word for geyser. The Strokkur geysir didn’t fail to please though – I saw it spout 4 times in about 20 minutes.

• · The Blue Lagoon – ahhh, what a great way to end the trip. I stopped here the morning of my flight home - on the way to the airport. The Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa located in a lava field. This ended up being a great way for me to let go of the stress of moving and get ready for a nice re-entry back into the States.

The rest of the luggage handling was much easier. I asked the people at the luggage storage to drive me back to the airport, and they happily obliged. In the U.S., a customs agent helped me through the final check, and then Darrell was there to help with the last leg to our car. My first thoughts – gosh, Americans are so nice. I was heartily welcomed back by the man at passport control, had help from 3 customs agents with baggage, and talked to a nice lady on the train about her son. What struck me most, is that Americans smile a lot – this is good. Yup – I’m back…

Mt. Rainier welcoming me home as I flew into Seattle.

Good-bye Eawag.

August 19, 2011

My last day was today and I am sad to leave. I gave a final presentation of my work conducted at Eawag and am happy to say that it is a solid bit of work – this year was a smashing success professionally. We followed the presentation with an Apéro later in the day and then some time at the local lake for a Bar-BQ.

One thing we talked about in earlier posts is how neat it is that here the custom is for you to bring your own cake for your birthday, and by the same token, you have your own party when you are leaving. Most of the parties at work are in the form of an Apéro – which was great for us because we were able to use lots of food from our Swiss pantry. At the Apéro , I was surprised to have some gifts from the people in my department (UTox). A lovely book of Switzerland from the two group leaders I was working closest with (because they knew how much I loved their country), a recycled water bottle and glass from the department chair (because what is better than that when you work at an Institute of Aquatic Studies?), and a scrap book from everyone.

The scrap book is awesome. Basically, anyone who wanted had a page with a picture they added. For example, Flavio added his famous tiramisú recipe (although it is in Italian and I won't get the translation until next year when he comes to visit!), Adi added pictures of the ICP-MS for me (so I could remember the instrument that he worked so long with me on), and David had a note written in English that he held up in his picture (he spoke Swiss German, and by the end we had worked out our own wonderful way to communicate with each other, it often involved me drawing pictures and one of us running off to a computer to look up a word). There were lots of pictures of activities from the lab and from outside adventures with my closest friends there.

Maybe best of all is the name on the front. It says Les Ambassadeurs. If you’ve been following the blog, you know we called our dog, Fiona, the Ambassador. Honestly, with all the emotion of leaving and stress of moving out, and a touch of sadness still for loosing Fiona, this caused me to cry. I have to say though, that I am honored to be considered Ambassadors ourselves. As our friend explained, not only was Fiona an Ambassador, but so were we – simply put, we gave our European friends a different sense of what an American is. I really really am honored. Thank you.

The lake was nice – it was a place I went in the early spring with some of the PhD students and post-docs to just hang out on a sunny Saturday. It was great to do that one last time with them and with some other friends - this ended up being our last good-bye with many of them.

As Darrell said when I was looking through my scrapbook the next day… it is like I just came back from camp. I made so many wonderful friends, learned so much, and just had fun. Add to that my huge accomplishments with research, new skills I am bringing back to my U.S. university, and European colleagues I hope to work with in the future... I couldn’t have asked for more and will cherish this time and these memories forever.

A special pie

Our Swiss friend, Christine, loves Darrell's apple pies. She was over tonight helping us clean our apartment and Darrell made this for her, complete with the Swiss cross... Christine pretty much rocks and deserves lots of these pies.

The Hills Are Alive...

In a previous post, I mentioned that I was surprised to find my friends at work did not know anything about "The Sound of Music". Shortly after that post, a care package arrived from Darrell's sister in the US with a DVD of the movie (thanks Marnie!). We quickly scheduled a movie night with "the girls" complete with a tapas style pot-luck. Being with the girls was as much fun as sharing the movie with them... RMS

Brutal, read the fine print.

Back in January, Ruth was looking for something to ‘train for.’ I suggested she enter another Mountain Marathon. We did one, the Jungfrau Marathon, as part of our honeymoon in 2008 and enjoyed it. There are about 10 others in the Alps each year. The next thing I know we were signed up for 2. Last week, we went to Liechtenstein to race in the LGT Marathon. I have been training, but training for a race that finishes 1200 meters higher that the start is a challenge. 8 weeks ago I ran myself to exhaustion in the Zurcher Oberland (boney hills up to 1200 meters high). I felt okay running from one ridge to another until I reached the highest summit. The problem was I had to go back down the mountain, 1000 meters of downhill and my knees were seriously mad at me. From then on I looked for training runs where I could take a train or bus back down. Still my body, just does not really like to run uphill, and I kept picking seriously hard hiking trails.

Saturday, we got up early and took the train/bus to the race (it is awesome that we and others can do that). The weather forecast wasn’t good. It rained hard that week = sloppy trails... and it was going to be rainy, foggy and cold on top of the 1730m pass we were to go over. But, I convinced myself that I was ready. I even joked about how nice it would be get some of the prize money. We could use some Swiss francs, for all the food I would be eating to recover from this endeavor.

The first 10 km were flat. The climbing started with a jolt - 1000 meters up over a distance of 11km. The fog (actually these were clouds I was running in) was thick and I could only see 20 meters in front of me. The fog made the race surreal. For minutes I would be running alone, with only the sound of cow bells to remind me where I was. The next moment a runner would appear in front of me. I didn’t have to set a goal of chasing them down, they were there out of the blue...

As I crested the ridge, a well meaning volunteer hand me a drink. Perfect, electrolytes I thought. Gulp, chock, gag .. .it was Coke, not exactly what you want to drink with another 21 k to go. The trail tipped downward, in four km I was too lose 300 meters of the height I worked so hard to gain. My spirits were high though, as I entered the last village and passed the finish for the 25 km race.

As I rounded the next hill I could no longer hear the cheering, and the gravity of my situation became clear. Not only did I have another 800 meters to climb ahead of me, but I had 570 meters to descend! Unfortunately, my body could not produce enough endorphins, and the last 200 meter descent was unbearable. I finished respectably, no tears ... but not even close to the prize money! I was keenly aware, however, that I wasn’t prepared for the combination of up and down in this race. In my training, I had focused on the 1800 meters of uphill not the 870 of downhill. That is more than the Sea to Sea downhill run for you Bellinghamsters. Ouch! So, hats off to all that finished.

In one week, we have the second race we signed up for the Graubunden Marathon, am a sucker for anything claiming to be the hardest, which this one does. It ascends 2740 meters, and has a steep 400 meter descent in the middle (I have now studied the profile of this race, yes I learned my lesson). It finishes at 3260 meters above sea level (asl). Wish me luck. I am hoping, it isn’t that much harder than the last race and that it’s sunny - it is a shame to run 26 miles in the mountains and not see the tops of any of them. Either way I will be sure to write about it.

Ruth here: Darrell's account is similar to mine, but different also. I was much slower and with the people who walked the steep parts of the race. I did run past many of them (men!) which felt good... unfortunately, I've had a heel injury that acted up - and I had to stop at the 25 km finish. (I've since diagnosed my injury as Plantar Fasciitis - a runner's nightmare - I'm doing everything I can to get it ready for this next race, which was only intended to be the half marathon for me when we signed up). The run was great, nice forests to run through - we went by a castle and through the capitol of Lietchenstein. At the 25 km finish, I jumped on the next public bus to go to the top where Darrell was finishing. I had a shower (they set up canvas enclosed tents with a generator heating water connected to a main line and they pump water in for the showers - in this kind of race where you are cold, wet and covered in mud - it is much appreciated!) and got back just in time to see Darrell finish - he started cramping, so I gave him some broth :) (just like any good wife would do!) they had a food tent set up where you could get grilled brats, which we were both happy to gobble up!!!!


Sorry no photos from the race, it was too wet! Instead here is a photo from a train run Darrell did in Glarnerland.

Our Guest Has Departed

Several weeks ago, Flat Stanley came to us from a grade school friend of mine (Ruth's), now living in Kentucky. Her son is in the first grade and read the book Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. I am pretty sure I read this book when I was little, but that was before the Flat Stanley Project - the way the project worked in this case was Flat Stanley stayed with us (the host family) and we took him different places. He sent postcards back to Kentucky from the places he visited. We took him to 4 countries, with his last one being Konstanz, Germany (pictured here). He departed Switzerland on Thursday - headed back to his home in Kentucky.

Bye Flat Stanley!

Fiona is NOT the Easter Bunny

We have been very lucky to meet many wonderful Swiss people. I've spoken about Iris before - she often dog sits for us - and just adores Fiona. We do consider Iris' house Fiona's second Swiss home. Fiona was with Iris last week during a class she teaches. She brought Fiona for the children to meet and started out by teasing that Fiona is the Easter bunny. When the children said, "no she isn't", Iris said, "But look, she doesn't have a tail, she has to be the Easter bunny". From there, Iris turned it into a lesson for the children on how to approach dogs they don't know. Brilliant, lovely, and caring - that is our friend Iris...

Easter in Our Part of Europe

Easter is an important holiday here in Switzerland. I have a 4 day weekend because of it. This feels very unusual since we don't get any time off at my U.S. University for this weekend. Chocolate Easter candy started showing up in the stores as soon as Carnival was over. We had fun looking at the chocolate and cake displays in Switzerland and France - everyone does it a little differently, but all are colorful and artistic. There is one odd picture in the above collage (upper rightmost picture). On my bike ride to work, there is a wooden carved rabbit in the woods just off of the road. As Easter got closer someone added a big ribbon to his neck - honestly I found it a little creepy...

One display really stood out though because it combined the Swiss tradition of butter zopf - that yummy Sunday bread - with an Easter display. Usually the zopf is in a straight braid, but here it has been braided into a large basket filled with Easter eggs and surrounded by chocolate bunnies.

Happy Easter,

RMS

So French.

We wanted to start our bike tour early on Thursday, but it was raining. Instead, we cozied up in the little cafe pictured here until noon. I was able to people watch everyone heading to the market with their umbrellas up. Darrell spent time working on his computer eating croissants, and Fiona was treated to a bowl of water by the waitress. The simplest things can bring the greatest pleasures sometimes...

Hippity Hopping Easter's on Its Way

We've been to this small village near Biel once before. The charm of these villages along the lake between Biel and Neuchatel includes hills adjacent to the lake surrounded by vineyards, small villages with cobbled winding streets lined with old buildings. Many of the buildings have rooms where you can taste the local wines. You can see the pride the people have in their village with how well kept and decorated everything is. This door has always been lovely when we go and this time was no exception with Easter decorations up....

As a side-note we were very close to the Röstigraben with the signs (and people speaking) in German in this village and 5 km down-lake the language was French...

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...

Darrell is back...

Darrell is back from his conference and we just had some very good friends visiting from the US, so a lot has happened this week.  I am going to pause my work related posts (I was only getting into them - it isn't all about getting to work and eating cookies), but I'll put some good details up here as soon as we get caught up on the fun adventure posts...

RMS

Thin mints are so strange

One of my office mates at work is from the US (there are three Americans in my department).  She just returned from a recent trip back home with two boxes of Girl Scout cookies (!) that we shared with our friends at work.  The general consensus was that the Samosas were soft (a surprise to many people, but they liked them) and the Thin Mints were weird.  As one person put it, chocolate and mint shouldn't go together - mint is for toothpaste (as an aside, they have anise flavored toothpaste here, which I think most Americans would agree is not for toothpaste).  In this picture, our friend Muris from Germany, is trying the Thin Mint - I think his face is a nice representation of all others I saw... 

RMS

My favorite cat

I've had a few people ask me to tell more about work, so I'll include a few DailyPics related to that part of my life here.  My train ride to Dübendorf, where Eawag is, takes 18 minutes. On either side of that is a walk (or run) to the train station.  Going to work from the train station is a 20 minute walk along a nice little path surrounded by woods, houses, and small agricultural fields.  

This is my favorite cat.  I see her about once a week on this route, she always comes up to get loved on and has followed me like a dog sometimes.  I think it is fortunate for all that it costs so much to fly animals internationally or we might have a new pet...

RMS

The Swiss Can Dance...

 

One more picture of the Fasnatch in Luzern.  This picture is from Saturday night.  As we crossed one of the bridges we saw and heard a masked band (drums, trumpets, trombones, and tubas) standing on steps in between these buildings.  The crowd was packed in below the band and spilling onto the bridge.  About every 20 minutes, the next band came in from behind and replaced the current band.  It is quite the show, and as you can imagine, it is also quite the party with lots of people dressed up (again), beer, and dancing!  The Swiss can certainly dance.   There were lots of nice memories from that night, but one that stands out was in between the bands, there was enough silence to hear the music from a DJ and the crowd singing along to "Country Roads... Take me home.... to the place, I belong....".  That sure does make a West Virginia girl happy! 

I won't recount everything that is in the history pdf on the link below (check it out!), but will say that Dirty Thursday is the start of Carnival in Luzern.  At 5 am, the  Fötzeliräge”(rain on paper pieces) starts and a loud boom signals the beginning of Carnival.  The Guggenmusigen bands start playing and marching through town.  As our friend Christine asked us, can you imagine the silence of the morning and then the noise of these festivities all at once? Unfortunately, we didn't want to get up to see the 5am show in Luzern - maybe next time :)

The videos on this website are better than mine, so I'll link to them for your viewing pleasure...

RMS

Eisbär

The big Fasnatch parade in Luzern on Monday was great fun to see.  A lot of the people watching the parade were dressed up.  Many had a theme to their costume with the whole family partaking.  In this shot, the family in the center (surrounded by 2 Pippi Longstockings, a devil, a witch, and a Santa Claus-like person - click on the picture and zoom in to see them all) was dressed like the Eisbär.

I first learned about The Eisbär from our German friends with a little boy, and after seeing so many at the parade (more than just this family), I figured it was time to really learn what the story was with him.  So, from Wikipedia, there was a series of books written by a Dutch author about a polar bear named Lars.  It lead to a popular animated tv show called "Der kleine Eisbär" (The little polar bear) and movies about the Eisbär.  Apparently he has made his way to popularity in the UK also, but I am not sure about in the US - anyone with kids know?

RMS

One color

The Fasnatch parades have been over for a few weeks now, but confetti is still present on the ground along the parade routes in many towns.  This picture is a great example of something we were told.  In Switzerland, the confetti is sold in big bags of only one color.  You can pick which one color you want, but a mixture isn't possible.  The reason is so you know if someone has picked the confetti up off the ground and is re-using it, which would likely have more than one color at that point....  The Swiss seem to think of everything!

RMS

Carnival Impressions

   There is far too much to say about the Fasnatch in Luzern... There are two big centers for the Carnival celebrations in Switzerland - Basel and Luzern.  We spent our time in Luzern - together with our friend Christine on Saturday (March 5) and me by myself at the parade on Dirty Monday (March 7).  A few things stand out about the festivities we saw in Luzern.   The first was that 80% of the people were dressed up in amazing costumes - men in furry bunny suits, strange science fiction creatures, pirates, whimsical people... This included the masked bands (called Guggenmusigen) in the parade and at the Saturday festivities (pictured above).  The second was that the festivities, especially on Monday, included the entire family - in the parade and watching the parade.  

These Rock-N-Roll angels from the parade had their child in the baby buggy - this wasn't uncommon to see...

More about the Luzern Fasnacht here

RMS

Inspiration!

 

We received a little care package from a friend in Alaska, which inspired me to brave the Saturday crowds at Ikea.  This was a serious commitment to joining the herd going around and around each floor of the store, but I wanted to buy this card hanger.  It is a nice reminder for us of friends and family from home.... 

I'm not sure if the inspiration to buy the card holder is the best part of this story or what was in the care package.... a 2 kg bag of Masa so we can make our own corn tortillas!  It does solve the mystery of why Mexican food is so expensive in Switzerland when the Masa comes from Alaska!   (Thanks MC).  RMS