"Where the car sleeps"

The above title is Sanja's response to our recent conversation about where she was going to roller blade at her friend's house. She doesn't know the proper English word "garage", probably because they don't have one so I've never had to use it before. I will definitely miss some of the funny things that my kids say.

Yes, you read correctly: I will be leaving the Bergers this Friday. I think it's best for me to leave this family now because I have been really unhappy with a lot of things here. I won't go into too much detail but I am more than ready to leave. What am I going to do now? Well, if you think of something, let me know. I really don't have many solid plans yet. I leave next Tuesday for Greece where I will meet up with my parents and Abbi. We will spend the next two weeks travelling around Greece, Austria, and Spain. I have already purchased a ticket from Barcelona back to Zurich at the end of our vacation, so I will definitely be heading back to Switzerland. My visa for Switzerland is invalid once I leave the Bergers so I will only be allowed to remain here for three months after that. Tentative plans include finding a place to live (still in the works) and doing only babysitting jobs. I already have one job lined up for two days a week for the summer with the possibility of another one. Babysitters actually make waaaaaaay more money than live in au pairs in Switzerland.

Anyways, I wanted to talk about last weekend. Amanda, Heidi, our new Serbian friend named Dragan, a couple of Swiss guys we met earlier in the week, and I all went out last Friday night. Sam, our Swiss friend, took us to a bar we hadn't been to before, nor had we ever even heard about it. It is the oldest bar in Zurich and it's pretty small. It has wood floors and walls and two wood beams hang low in the middle of the ceiling. Anyone can try to lift themselves up onto the beams and if they can do figure eights through the two beams, they get a free glass of wine. (Only wine is served at this bar.) The other neat thing is that once you complete the task, you must drink the wine while hanging upside down on the beams! When you are all through you get to carve your name on the wall, where hundreds of other courageous souls also received the honor to carve their names and forever mark their accomplishment. Sam claims that he has done it a couple of times but I don't know if he was just trying to sound cool or not. While we were there we saw several attempts, only two guys were able to actually do the figure eights. It was really entertaining and of course the whole bar was cheering and clapping for them. The server told us that apparently a blind man was able to do eighty figure eights through these two beams.

I made a video below of one guy's accomplishment: