T-minus one week

This is it. My final week in Switzerland (this time around).

It's weird.

I have a life.

Thoughts sometimes come more fluidly in German than English (okay, not complex thoughts, but still...).

I have a dynamic cast of intriguing co-workers, some of whom never cease to surprise me.

For example, the frau who I earlier declared to be my nemesis seems to have a certain fondness for me. Yesterday, as she prepared an espresso for her break, she muttered how the coffee machine was so extraordinarily clean, and that once I leave, it won't be so clean.

Today was my first Sunday free. I celebrated my morning by laying in bed, and then going for a brutal run in the wind-blown snowflakes. One of the fraus from the restaurant, who also had today off, stopped by the personnel haus to give me a plate of fresh-baked, homemade, traditional Swiss Christmas cookies. Then we sat in the unoccupied banquet hall of the restaurant and chatted over coffee for a half-hour.

I had to cut it a bit short because I had a train to catch.

I played billiards with my cousins, then had fondue and vermicelles (chestnut pureé - the epitome of fall in Switzerland) at my aunt and uncle's house.

And after dinner, as we sat chatting in German, somehow the question arouse as to whether I was stressed... I'm not. My biggest concern at that precise moment was the fact that my bike tires are exceedingly flat, making the uphill climb back to the Waldmannsburg tedious to the point that one might give up and walk. That's it.

And perhaps that's simplifying things slightly, but that's my current state of mind. Sure it would have been cool to zip up to Copenhagen and join the throngs of climate change protesters. And Switzerland is far from perfect, particularly given the recent political manifestations of long-festering discrimination - as one (Swiss) friend put it, "enjoy your last week in Switzerland with its xenophobic inhabitants." But likely due to my work schedule and social status as a foreigner, I'm constrained from doing much in terms of political or academic action. And that leaves me, at least for right now, content, in fact, quite happy cruising Switzerland from the comfort of the second class train cars.

it's been forever since I blogged

but that is what happens once you actually develop a life in a place - you no longer have time to write about it. I mentally compared the phenomenon to taking pictures and some insight I once read about a photographer necessarily missing out on part of the experience (or maybe just experiencing things differently?).

Work still consists mostly of cleaning, although for the Christmas season we have a new menu and a new array of specialty wines (as my boss explained, you highlight the more expensive varieties around this time of the year).

Goodbye, Amarone!

My cappuccino and latte machiatto skills have become fairly impressive.

I hauled like 50 boxes of Prosecco (12 bottles/box) around the cellar last week.

Business is definitely picking up.

In fact, yesterday my boss sent me into the "lounge" where a banquet buffet was held for 60 people. My job was to stand behind the soups, explain that the one on the right was consommé with flatley and kurbiscreme suppe was on the left. Each guest picked a soup and I served them in what probably amounts to a 3-oz glass (who knows how many cl that is...).

Only one guy asked if I was American, and then, where I was from. Per usual, no one has heard of Oregon, but they are convinced I'm from LA as soon as I mention that it's north of California. Great.

Oh, and yesterday morning, after living here for 3-months, I got lost in the woods. I went running before work (trying to take advantage of a time when I could actually be outside while it's light out), went down a path I had never encountered before, ended up looping around over a little hill and finally asked an old man with trekking poles for the general direction of Dübendorf once I began to worry that I wouldn't find my way back in time for work at 10:30am.

In a way, it's reassuring that there is still so much to learn.

(Like how/why 57% of Swiss voters could possibly agree with a constitutional ban on building new minarets. Oh the shame.)

momentary chaos

Today, right as lunchtime hit, my boss wanted me to make mulled white wine for an evening banquet celebrating the close of the golfing season. This all would be simple enough, if he hadn't just handed me a handwritten photocopied recipe (in German, of course) and pointed to the kitchen and said to ask Urs (the head kitchen chef) if I didn't know where something was.

I don't know where anything is in the kitchen.

and that is only the slightest exaggeration.

I didn't know:

a) what ingredients I needed (because I haven't had a lot of use for the German word for "cloves" up to this point).

b) where to find any of the ingredients - in the cellar, in the kitchen, near the stove, near the kalte kuche...

c) where to find a pot, or which type of pot to use (fortunately, my boss became impatient and grabbed a pot himself and stuck it on a hotplate, but then one of the kitchen-folk stuck a magnet to the pot and established that it couldn't be used on that hotplate, so while I was rushing around trying to get a liter of water, the pot or the hotplate, or both, got switched).

d) where to find measuring utensils, a stirring spoon, or a funnel.

So basically, I was a minor nuisance in the kitchen for 10 or 15 minutes, until the wine was happily mulling (in the appropriate pot, on the appropriate hotplate). At which point, Darco, who was trying to flatten veal for cordon bleu beside my brewing concoction, said, "I'm already drunk from the fumes."

I'm bringing the recipe home. Sweet, sweet success!

why not? it's Tuesday.

So I hopped a 2-hr train (or rather 4 trains and 1 bus) to Wasserauen in the Appenzellerland to go hiking today. And it was worth every minute of the trip.

Yeah, I'm wearing a T-shirt. It was probably 60 or 65-degrees, even at elevation (while at one point I lost the trail in the snow). Meanwhile, in my backpack I had a thermal, down vest, fleece, rain shell, hat, and gloves. Probably the most prepared for cold weather I have ever been on a day hike. I ended up needing the layers while waiting for my train back to Zurich.

This is a prehistoric cave, which has been excavated. Apparently the stone age Swiss hunted brown bears. There was an education display in the reconstructed hermit's hut on the other side of the cave, but since it was all in German, and I was more focused on the scenery, I really don't know all the details.
This is the view looking back at the famous pastoral lands of Appenzellerland. I was reading on a bench as a farmer fertilized nearby, and I can tell you, that greenery comes at a "fragrant" price.

Yeah, I'm still here

Okay, so I'm experiencing the 1.5 month hump, as it seems to be known by world travelers and expats (or at least among my friends) - that time, when back in the States, friends and family are enjoying the all-American aspects of fall: the World Series, football, spectacularly-colored leaves, and of course, Halloween - and I'm, at various moments, wishing I could be partaking in those experiences.

But, I do have a number of minute updates, which are, perhaps, worthy of note:

1. I received a Swiss social security card. While handing me the envelope, my boss explained that once I turn 65 I'll be "rolling in the dough" (okay, he didn't phrase it quite like that).

2. I have a Swiss bank account. Yeah, I know! And it's with UBS... which I initially chose because I was thinking, "Hey, we have UBS in the States, maybe I could just put money in as CHF and withdraw it in the US as American dollars!" When I explained this idea to the woman setting up my account, she tried, tactfully, to say that there are laws against that. OH, right. Like the billions of dollars that UBS is paying the US govt. for acting as a tax haven... Oops.

3. I have a nemesis. She is one of the Fraus at the restaurant and she is known by all of my colleagues of comparable age as the "hexe" or witch. Even before I knew they called her that, I actually could hear the theme song of the "wicked witch of the west" from the Wizard of Oz play in my head whenever she arrived. I told this to the other Diana and she looked it up on youtube and agreed. It's not like this woman is a bad person, she's just past due for retirement and insists on antagonizing everyone and treating me as though I am a complete idiot. She also does the flower arrangements for the restaurant every Monday, so I try to compliment her on those - unless of course she is sweetly telling me to set the tables for the personnel dinner 1.5 hours in advance.

a real weekend?

I went out both Friday and Saturday nights.

(I slept for 11 hours on Sunday night)

And all day Monday.

Maybe I have a social life?

I also discovered a veggie peeler in the personnel house kitchen - Hello, carrots!

Tonight I'm going to Zurich to meet English-speakers from the English-speaking forum... I know, it seems like a cultural cop-out, but I speak Swiss German at work and I spent all of yesterday speaking Swiss German, and today I was basically a slug (I watched a documentary about Le Mans - the car race - and enjoyed it; I fell asleep reading Tolstoy).

We shall see if I'm capable of normal English-language conversation at this point.

This is what globalization looks like:

In a restaurant in Switzerland, where veal and salmon are regularly served for the personnel meals (with reactions ranging from apathetic to disgust - apparently everyone except me hates fish), near chaos broke out today when the kitchen staff unveiled our lunch of... wait for it...

chicken nuggets and french fries.

Apparently, all they really want is every meal to be like McDonald's (and they gleefully told me, innumerable times, that, "hey, it's like McDonald's!"). I didn't have the heart to tell them that in the States, I haven't eaten at a McDonald's since I was probably 6. I did refuse to dip my chicken nuggets into mayonnaise - standards, people, standards!