10 More Days til Christmas!

Not a whole lot going on here. Last week it snowed pretty much constantly for the majority of the week so it's rather cold still. I can't wait for April. I finally ordered a Swiss adaptor for the Wii so hopefully I will be seeing that in the mail soon. Nick and I are stoked. I spent some of this last weekend in Zug again. Heidi, Amanda, and I went to Zug fairly early Saturday in order to walk around the city and enjoy the decorations and the scenery. It's a really pretty little town with a great lake. We stayed with Jill again, who made us a delicious fondue dinner which we washed down with gluhwein (a popular warmed red wine this time of year here). Except for the semi common occurences of the house almost being burned down by children because Swiss parents let them play with things like lighters and knives and other dangerous tools, last week was fairly average. The whole family has been sick and coughing all over me and my food so inevitably I also have a bad cough right now. I am trying to get all of my Christmas vacation travel plans organized since we are only 10 days from Christmas! Right now it looks like we will be heading to Florence to celebrate Heidi's 23rd birthday. Today I was supposed to have off except for sending the kids to school in the morning but Jana and Christian decided to do some Christmas shopping together for the kids so I got to spend the afternoon home. Of course I was annoyed by this last minute change of plans that seems to happen often, especially since I am working so much this week already. I just can't wait for next week.

However, I took (or rather was forced by the kids to take) a couple of videos of the kids at the lake from this afternoon that I thought I would share. First is of Sanja, who found a crooked stick and thought it was hilarious to walk around like an old lady. I did, too actually and here is the video:



Also, the kids had so much fun with this fallen tree branch. We were down there for about an hour or so and they were playing on this branch most of the time. They would sit on it like a teeter totter and rock back and forth and they would also act like it was a horse. It was rather cool. But here is a video of Nick that is pretty funny:

Ja, Si!

I LOVED Spain.
I can't really say why exactly I liked it so much. It was wonderful being able to use Spanish a little bit and actually understand what locals were trying to say to me. I guess I just didn't feel as helpless as I do here in Switzerland. I also very much enjoyed the weather. It was December yet the sun was warm and shining every now and then. It did rain a little the Sunday we were there but it didn't last long and it was still waaaaay warmer than it is in Zurich. Except for one instance in a lame cafe with an extremely rude hostess, the people were generally pretty friendly and helpful. We even had a couple of people stop us and ask if we needed help when we were looking confused and holding a map on the streets. People in Switzerland definitely do not go out of their way to ask if you need help, they are known for their stand-offish style. The hostel we stayed in was very nice. It was clean and the staff was friendly and helpful. The three of us - Heidi, Amanda, and I - had a room to ourselves with a shared bathroom just outside our door. The hostel was also in a pretty good part of town where we only had to walk a few minutes to the main areas. We were a few blocks back from the beach and towering above us was the Castillo de Santa Barbara.
When we got into Alicante on Saturday afternoon, we checked into our hostel and found a place to get a bite to eat. I have to say that I am not a fan of Spanish food. I'm not sure what I was expecting (tacos, enchiladas, salsa, guac?) but there did not seem to be anything very unique on the menus. I did have paella one day, which is a Spanish dish, and which was probably the best thing I ate the whole trip, but this was not really anything special. I ordered a hamburger at a cafe before we left and I received two plain beef patties without any bun or vegetables and some french fries. Even the ketchup was not very good.
The three of us decided to hit the town Saturday night. Unfortunately, we did not realize that most people in Spain go out really late at night, like midnight or later, and we were already pretty tired by this point. We went to several different bars and just walked around the downtown area but were back to the hostel relatively early.
The next day we headed out to do some more sightseeing. Our goal was to go to the castle but the lift to take people up there was not working. So we decided to just walk around town instead and we actually ended up making our way up to the castle on our own. It was a little bit of a hike but it was worth it once we got to the top. We could see all of Alicante and the ocean, it was beautiful. And the castle itself was also very pretty. I wanted to go down into the dungeons to see if there were any dragons down there but unfortunately this was locked.
After touring the castle and hiking back down to our hostel, we took a little break before heading out to explore the city some more. We walked along one of the main roads near the beach. There were some really pretty parks along the way and we had fun taking many pictures. Alicante is a big tourist city and so there were not a lot of people around this time of the year. There is a big casino there but when we checked it out it was all closed, which we found odd.
Again, we went out on the town Sunday night. Amanda, Heidi, and I went to a really cool restaurant/bar. It was called Lizarran I think and it was pretty unique to anything I'd experienced. The servers brought around large platters of food with toothpicks in them and you just grabbed some when they went by. When you were finished they would add up your toothpicks and charge you this way. The food was pretty good and the atmosphere was fun. After this place closed we went back to our hostel where Heidi and I had a nice chat with some of the other people staying there as well. Amanda was having problems of her own because she had stepped in dog doodoo on the walk back and ended up getting it on her sheets.
The next day we woke up to check out of our hostel and do some more touring. We went to a few cathedrals, namely the cathedral of St. Nicolas. This was gorgeous! It was so pretty inside and very plain looking outside. We also wanted to check out this market we had heard of. After finding it, we were extremely disappointed. It was mainly just a market of fish and meats and vegetables/fruits that the locals would purchase. We were expecting more of a Saturday's Market but we were very wrong. We walked around a different part of town looking for a big mall. The mall wasn't anything special by the way. After purchasing some postcards, we sat in a little square in the middle of the city to write on them and then managed to find a post office to send them off. By this time we were really craving some gelato so we took off to find a gelateria. For some reason, we could not for the life of us find one and we ended up walking way farther than we meant to. Anyways, by the time we had gotten something to eat, we had to catch the bus back to the airport. You would think that this would be the end of the story, right? Well, not quite.
After our flight, we arrived in Basel around 22:30 and had to catch a train back to Zurich. Well, even after running with our bags all the way from the bus stop to the train gate, we missed our train by a minute. It's a good hour's train ride from Basel to Zurich and we had to wait for the next one, hoping and hoping that we would get to Zurich in time to catch the last bus to my house, which is outside of Zurich. So we got on the train and ran off as fast as we could to the tram stop that would take us to the bus stop that would take us to Maur. Well, even after running with all our stuff to the tram stop, we missed the last tram by 2 minutes. We tried running to the next tram stop to see if we could catch it but alas, we did not. We had about 6 minutes to get to my bus stop before the last bus left. After that we would be forced to take a cab to Maur which would cost more than 60 francs. Heidi then had the great idea to take a cab to the bus stop which was only a few minutes away. After scrambling around trying to find a cab, we finally got this really old lady cabdriver to take us to Klusplatz, the bus stop. We explained to her our situation and that we only had about 4 minutes. This was not the best idea since she then decided to go sooooooooo slow the whole way. We're pretty sure that she wanted us to miss our bus so that we would have to pay for her to take us all the way to Maur. We were still a block away from the bus stop when we told her we were getting out. She actually told us no but we did not care, we had a minute to get to our bus and she was stuck at a stop light! We ran to the bus stop and actually made it on time!!! It was quite the ordeal but we were very happy to not have to pay a ridiculous 60 francs. We ended up getting home at 1:30 AM and were very tired.
It was definitely worth it though. It was a fun trip and I really really want to go to Spain again! Below is a slideshow of some pictures I took of our trip! Enjoy!

Dashing through the snow

Before I go into my Spanish adventures, I wanted to talk about last week a little bit. Christmas is starting to pop up here. Last Friday, the kids and I went to a Christmas mart/open house thing at the grandparents' farm store. The shop was filled with lots of homemade Christmas decorations and there was hot apple cider and music and lights. The kids also had the opportunity to decorate a gingerbread star with different colored frostings. The grandparents have a really cool pool in their backyard which is made to look like a pond. The pool was frozen over of course and there were lots of little candles glowing on top of the ice. It was so pretty. Also, Santa Claus (I don't know how to spell it but here, they say something like Salmon Claus) and the dark man (also not sure how to pronounce or say his name) made an appearance with their donkey. They brought chocolates and peanuts for the kids. It was freezing outside so I mostly just stood by the fire drinking hot cider but it was so pretty, especially since it was dark and there were lights and candles glowing softly everywhere.



Earlier that day, I went with the kids and their grandpa to the Uster mart. Uster is right across the lake from Maur. Their grandpa speaks no English but I went along to help him with the kids. At first we just walked around one area of the mart looking at the many many tractors and boring farm equipment set up in tents. This got old fast. After that the kids had a chance to spend all their francs on dumb games where they won 10 rappen prizes. The kids had a lot of sugar that day. Each had their own huge stick of cotton candy as we were leaving...I was actually quite jealous. We were there from about 9:30 - 13:00 that day. And it was so freezing cold outside. And we were outside the whole time of course. I was layered like crazy, yet I was almost unbearably cold the whole time. At one point the grandpa realized we were all dying of cold so we went into a coffee shop and I had some tea to warm me up. Also, holding a heiss marroni (hot chestnut) helps, too. Nick and Sanja decided to go on a ride which ended up being a little faster and scarier than I think they realized. I (and the grandpa too I think) had a hard time trying not to laugh when the two kids would whiz by with increasingly terrified looks on their faces.



Last Thursday was Thanksgiving as you all know. I was extremely sad to be missing out on Thanksgiving at home this year. I really missed my family that day. It was so weird to me that it was just another day here. But I decided to educate the kids a little on the holiday so I had them make turkey hats. They love creating little arts and crafts like this and it was even funner that they could put it on their head. It was something I found online and it was a huge hit. I don't know if the kids really knew what a turkey was because they don't seem to have them in Switzerland. However, I told them that a turkey makes a "gobble gobble" noise, so the rest of that night, there were 3 turkeys gobbling all over the house (ok, 4 if you count me).



I will eventually get around to telling you all about my trip to Alicante. I have pictures to show off and stories to tell but you must have a little patience with me for now.