A late Swiss-National-Day post

We spent Swiss National Day this year by first climbing the local church's tower. The tower is only open to visitors a few times each year. Swiss National Day is one of those days. I figured it would be a good chance to get a good view of our new town. And I figured it'd be cool to look back to our balcony and see what our place looks like from the tower.

I took this picture from just in front of the church. The tower looks much smaller than it actually is at this angle. But, you can see the person in the corner of the railing hanging out. It was over 200 steps to where the railing is.

From Cinque Terre/...

The view to the south was very nice, with Lake Zurich in the forground and the Alps in the background.

From Cinque Terre/...

To the North is Thalwil in the foreground. The Uetliberg is in the center rear, and Zurich is in the right background.



We live somewhere to the West.

From Cinque Terre/...

Speaking of the West.... After going up the church tower, we then headed to Felsenegg for a short hike up to the top, followed by a aerial tramway trip back down. There's a restaurant on top of the Felsenegg, and it was getting ready to celebrate in the evening.

From Cinque Terre/...

We finished the day with a dinner of barbecued bratwurst and then watched a few of the evening's firework shows.

There is a website with the information on when the church tower is next open. Which is September 21st from 7-9 in the evening, and on Sunday September 23rd from 11am to 12 noon. It's only open when the weather is good. There's also a better picture of the tower on their website.

The tale of the BBQ and the little crescent wrench that couldn't

On Friday Alice and I headed over to Zugerland, a shopping center run by Migros, that is almost the same size as SihlCity. I think Zugerland pulls off the whole shopping center experience much better. That, and parking is only 50 cents an hour.

We were in search of a new BBQ. My old BBQ having been left in the US two and a half years ago. And with our new place having a balcony (two actually), we need a BBQ. So we went off and found a great little BBQ made by European Outdoor Chef, the Delta 480. It's a gas grill with a funnel system in it that you can adjust based on what you're cooking. A co-worker of Alice's recommended it to her. You can cook pizza in it if you've got the pizza pan (which we bought) or the pizza stone (which I just found out about). On Saturday I picked up a socket wrench set and a crescent wrench, which I figured would just about be able to handle any job I needed to do. Oh, and I got an electric wireless screwdriver for 30 chf, it was on sale.

So, today, Sunday, I got to work assembling the BBQ. It went together pretty well, and was looking great on the balcony. I even wheeled it around a couple of times, just to see how the wheels worked on it. Then it was time to light it up. I hooked up the fuel hose to the BBQ and tightened it up with my new crescent wrench, and then I hooked up the hose to the gas canister and....the wrench was too small! Argh! And, did I mention that today is Sunday? In Switzerland? Where all the shops are closed and no bigger wrenches can be bought until Monday? Doh! So, the bratwursts ended up getting cooked up in the pan tonight for dinner. Tomorrow, I'll get that bigger wrench, and get some outdoor chef action done.

SihlCity

So today I decided to go check out SihlCity, the big shopping center just on the south side of downtown Zurich. It's not too bad. It's not really all that big though compared to the malls I've been to in America.

Parking is a big problem. Yeah, I know, this is Europe, but 4 franks for the first hour and then an additional frank each for the next hours is just a little bit expensive. I did manage to park for exactly 59 minutes and only paid the four franks. On the other side, it's pretty easy to get to. Well, it is once I figured out the way to the parking lot. The big downside transportation-wise is that public transportation isn't too convienient, and that it's actually easier for us to take the train downtown and go shopping, or even go to the Airport.

There are a bunch of clothing shops. There's a huge MediaMarkt (the European equivalent to Best Buy) and a large COOP supermarket. Sadly though, the COOP supermarket doesn't have much more in the way of variety than our local shop, and the parking is much cheaper there, or it's about a 15 minute walk. There was also a big bookshop, but I'll bet that there is a better English book selection at the Orell Fuesseli shop downtown.

Movin' Day!

Tomorrow is Movin' Day, or rather the past few days have been moving days. So, we're busy with all of that and Alice still has a long commute to Zurich for another day. We're leaving Muttenz and the Basel area for Thalwil. We'll miss many things about living near Basel, especially grocery shopping in France, and all our friends in the area.

I need to finish up writing about the trip to Paris, and in the meantime, I've also taken a trip to the Cinque Terre in Italy.

What I REALLY should have studied in college

You scored as History/Anthropology/LiberalArts, You should strongly consider majoring (or minoring) in History, Anthropology, or related majors (e.g., African and African-American Studies, Chinese, Classics, Cultural Studies, Economics, English, French, Geography, German, Greek, Hebrew, International Studies, Philosophy, Sociology, Women's Studies, or other Liberal Arts majors). It is possible that the best major for you is your 2nd, 3rd, or even 5th listed category, so be sure to consider ALL majors in your OTHER high scoring categories (below). You may score high in a category you didnt think you would--it is possible that a great major for you is something you once dismissed as not for you. The right major for you will be something 1) you love and enjoy and 2) are really great at it. Consider adding a minor or double majoring to make yourself standout and to combine your interests. Please post your results in your myspace/blog/journal. Education/Counseling 94% History/Anthropology/LiberalArts 94% PoliticalScience/Philosophy 88% Biology/Chemistry/Geology 88% Physics/Engineering/Computer 88% French/Spanish/OtherLanguage 88% English/Journalism/Comm 81% Visual&PerformingArts 75% Mathematics/Statistics 69% HR/BusinessManagement 69% Accounting/Finance/Marketing 63% Nursing/AthleticTraining/Health 63% Psychology/Sociology 56% Religion/Theology 25% WHAT MAJOR IS RIGHT FOR YOU? created with QuizFarm.com

Hmm, so it says I should have studied Geography after all! Looks like I did the right thing. But wait, Political Science, Geology and Computer stuff is all up there too. Good thing I did Cartography and Remote Sensing to emcompass all of that stuff in as well!

Paris (Days 1 and 2)

From Paris-Vernon

You may have heard that there is now a TGV high-speed train that goes from Basel to Paris. It now takes 3-1/2 hours for the trip. That's pretty fast. Before last week, it took 5 hours.

We took our trip before last week. Yet, travel across the French countryside is anything but tedious. We quite enjoyed the views of the countryside as we wound through Belfort and Troyes before we arrived in Paris at the Paris-Est, or Paris-East train station. We hopped onto the Metro and the RER and arrived at our hotel, which was the perfect hotel for Paris as we were hardly in our room, just to sleep. The hotel was very near the beautiful Luxembourg Gardens, and just inside the Latin Quarter. Our first day in Paris, we just wandered around a bit. It was Sunday and many things were closed. We wandered over to the Musee d'Orsay to look at the building and then found a coffee shop. Then we walked along the river to Notre Dame and found dinner nearby.

Monday we headed over to check out the Louvre. We spent pretty much the entire day there. We saw the Mona Lisa, Napoleon's Throne, The Raft of the Medusa and the Crowning of Napoleon. It's an amazing museum, but it's very big. Eventually, we were worn out looking at art so we headed out and walked towards the Arc d'Triomphe.
On the way we picked up our train tickets for the next day's trip out of town and we walked down the Champs d'Elysees. We only did a little shopping along the way. At the end of the walk we went to the Arc. It was about 6:30pm, so we saw the relighting of the unknown soldier's ceremonial flame.

From Paris-Vernon

From Paris-Vernon

We took the Metro back to the Latin Quarter to check out the Mexican restaurant we had seen on our way back to our hotel the night before, but it was, unfortunately, closed. We wandered around and found a sidewalk brasserie that was good on a side-street. Then we went over and relaxed in the Luxembourg Gardens until 9PM when the police chase everyone out with their shrieking whistles. Okay, they just toot on the whistles and mention that it's time for the park to close, and the guards at the gates wish you a good evening as you walk past....

From Paris-Vernon

Been doing a bit of traveling

We've been traveling around a lot lately. When things settle down a bit more in the next couple of days I'll write a few entries. Here's a picture of me in 'My Town' ;-)