Wedding celebrations from afar

Yesterday good friends of ours got married in Cape Town. Of course with us being here in Switzerland we couldn't go to the wedding. But they were in our thoughts the whole day. I was thinking back to our wedding and all the excitement of the day, and wondering what our friends were doing.

After another visit to the archery shop in Luzern yesterday morning to replace some broken arrows we headed off to Lake Luzern. It was a beautiful summers day. I packed a picnic lunch and we brought some champagne. We celebrated our friends' marriage on the beach at the lake. We made them a little video clip message and if you want you can sneak off to my vimeo page and see it.

Some ducks and swans came to visit:

We were hoping to rent a motorbike for the weekend, or half of the weekend, but it was a first come first served basis and when we got to the BMW motorbike shop the bike André wanted was already taken. Another time then...

With our friends getting married yesterday it gave us more reason to go out for dinner. A while back when we were in Schaffhausen we had this great curry at a restaurant there called Lemongrass. It was so good that André decided last night that's where we're going for dinner! It's 53km (45min) drive from our home but it was so worth the drive! We had really good curry and for dessert we had apricot sorbet with Cointreau over it. Mmmm... We only got back just before midnight, our first late night out here!

The turkey hunter

Monday night André took part in an archery tournament at Baden archery club. They had to shoot at a moving target. A (fake) turkey was put on wheels and then pulled across the field by one of the guys while about 15 other guys each got to shoot one arrow per round at it. Sometimes the turkey 'ran' fast, sometime slower and sometimes it would unexpectedly stop before carrying on again. It even charged right at them once! This turkey just kept going, it wouldn't die!

If you look carefully you can see the turkey.

The guys then got points each round according to how accurate they shot the target. At the end of the competition the scores were added.

After having his bow for only one week, André came second! I was so proud of my bow hunter :-) Especially when he brought his prize over to me: a chocolate! First prize was some real turkey meat from the grocery store! (Personally I think second prize was a way better prize to get.)

André even beat the president of the club (who came 3rd). Perhaps not such a clever move since he still needs to be approved as a member of the club...

Weddings...

Hi there my dear friends and family!

Hope you're all doing well? I was browsing around on the internet as I do most days and thought I'd look up our wedding photographer. I just love looking at wedding pictures... A while back he mailed us and asked if we would write up a short piece about him, our photo's and so on for his new website. So if, like me you have times when you've seen all you can on facebook and whatever else you do on the internet (like read my blog of course ;-) then go take a look at this: http://www.rcphoto.za.net/default.asp

To Meghan, Angela, Pieter, Simone and Juan: There's a picture of you too on his website!!! Click on portfolio, then Reception, it's picture number 30. There's another picture of me and Andre doing our wedding dance and one of us when you click on 'Couples'.

You can also see some of our wedding pics under Recent Weddings (if you haven't already seen enough after the 100's I posted on facebook! ;-)

Have a fabulous day! Miss you all lots.

Anneliese

xx

Some free publicity for HP

A while back when our things from Cape Town arrived I was excited to have a printer again. We only got to print a few pages when the black ink was finished. So off to Media Markt to buy ink. Surprise surprise, they don't stock the ink we need. No one in Switzerland does because it's only for South Africa. Our printer was bought in SA so was made to use the cartridges that goes with that zone.

No problem, I emailed HP and they were very helpful. We set up a date when they would phone us and then they will help us convert our SA printer to a Swiss printer! Then we're supposed to be able to use the cartridges compatible with this printer here in Switzerland. We were told to go buy these cartridges first and then they will phone us. The guy on the phone from HP support tried everything but for some reason our printer absolutely refused to be made into a Swiss printer.

Ok, still no problem. They will just send us the same printer and we send our non-Swiss one back to them. No charges at all. Isn't that great? Would that have happened in Africa? I wonder.. We received it today.

In other news, André has also replaced his South African MacBook Pro for a new Swiss one today. Well, actually not really a Swiss one because he asked for a US keyboard. Not going to struggle with a mixed up German keyboard. That would cause lots of spelling mistakes! It's really nice. For me it is important that it looks nice. (That's why my Mac is pink :-)

But this new one is apparently also super fast, something which has been lacking in his old laptop. (So there's a 15" MacBook Pro for sale if anyone's interested.)

My dear husband did not forget about me! Every time we go into the Mac shop, conveniently situated right opposite Media Markt, I longingly look at the... ummm... I don't know what to call it... music making things? iPod players? Speakers? Speakers is basically all it is with an iPod plugged into it. Our house can be very quiet when I'm home alone all day. And I don't like having music on my laptop while I'm sitting in front of it. So today there was a sale at the Mac shop and André bought us these great looking speakers. They're all nice and shiny black with my pink iPod sitting on top! Beautiful beautiful sound... ABBA is playing at the moment.

So lots and lots of nice things today! The plan was to also buy a scale today so I can track my progress now that I've had to give up the best things in Switzerland: chocolate, bread and cheese. Sad I know, but I had to. That's why I'm all into salad now and really enjoying it actually. After two weeks of eating more healthy food and having salad every day I'm starting to get into it and it's not so hard anymore. But I do look forward to the day when I can have chocolate again! More about the interesting salads I've been having on my food blog. And my darling sister has worked out a healthy eating plan for me, kindly including a little bit of ice cream and chocolate :-) It's not that bad.

Oh oh I almost forgot. Today we went to the Zürcher Brockenhaus, a second hand store in Zürich. I was looking for English books. I've finished all my books which I brought with from SA and I find it hard to pay so much for a book which I will finish in a few days and never read again. So I had a list of three places to go looking for second hand books. We didn't have to go further than the first one. I bought 13 second hand books for the price of about two new books. So this will keep me busy for a while!

Now I'm off to choose a book from my new mini-library and start reading!

This past week

I had a busy week this week. I was a working woman for a change. I worked every day except on Monday. Okay, it was only an hour or three per day. (Just the way I like it) :-)

On Tuesday I taught three English second language classes, two on Wednesday and one on Thursday. Today I spent 2 hours with the cutest 5 year old girl at her house. We had lots of fun. We made blue play dough. I just love play dough, that squishy feeling between your fingers when you squeeze it and it's so soft. She loved it too. She's so excited about everything and that makes it easier. Otherwise 2 hours can be very long.

And on Wednesday I manage to drive safely all on my own to the class I had to teach. No bumps or scratches! Phew! It all went well and each time driving feels a little bit better.

Last night I went to buy some second hand children's story books which I want to use as readers for my English first language classes. We met a lovely couple, they're moving to France and selling some of their stuff, including some of their toddler's books. Second hand books are much more affordable and they still look like new.

Oh yes, I haven't even told you about last weekend. See how busy I was (for a change!)

We went to Luzern. It's a beautiful town. Ok, I know I say this about every place we go to every weekend, but it's true. See for yourself:

The actual reason for visiting Luzern was because there's an archery shop there. André has now rented a compound bow for a month and he's really enjoying it. He has blisters on his hands to prove it. A real Robin Hood!

Now I'm waiting for my husband to come home so the weekend can start. Not sure what we're doing yet...

Enjoy your weekend! :-)

My first time driving in Switzerland

This afternoon André let me drive his car for the first time.

Before we left South Africa I said that I want to start driving as soon as possible here to get used to it. I felt that the longer I would put it off the harder it would be. But since we got the car I felt no urge to be driving on the other (wrong!) side of the road to what I've been used to. I was quite happy sitting in the passenger seat and admiring the scenery.

Then this afternoon we drove to where I have to teach some English classes this coming week. I thought I could maybe cycle there. Google maps said it's 25 min walking (no bus..) but as we drove we realized it's way further than I thought. So André said he thinks I should take the car.

Good motivation for me to get this over with! I drove home from the school (9 minutes, not too far!). Then I drove there and back again to get used to it.

It felt soooo wrong!! This being on the other side. I keep wanted to change gears with my left hand. That's another thing, after André just got me to start enjoying his automatic car in SA, he decides he actually prefers to manually change gears. I should be used to that because it's the only way I've known but with so many other things to think of he had to keep reminding me about the gears!

I thought it would be hard keeping to the right side of the road. Seems I don't have a problem with that - I actually keep to the right too much!! André kept telling me to get closer to the white line in the middle of the road!

It's so frustrating. It's not like I can't drive, I've had my license now for over 11 years, but it felt like I'm just learning to drive all over again. That nervous feeling, trying to remember everything and to keep your eyes everywhere.

Oh I miss getting into our nice and comfortable car we had back home which I knew so well and just driving off where ever I needed to go. Zipping around. I could even sing while driving, drink water, change the music or have a conversation (not all at the same time). Now I sit almost with my nose against the windscreen, concentrating. It's not the car, André bought a really nice car and I love it. It's just this different country...

But it will get better with time and practise. I will be the driver on Sundays for short outings when there's not much traffic around. And I will set the navigator to keep away from highways too.

Visitors from Germany

My mom and stepdad came to visit us this weekend. They live in Germany so they drove about 3 1/2 hours to come and see us. It was Jürgen's 3rd visit, but my mom's first since we've been in Switzerland so it was great to show her around and spend some time together.

They brought some more of our things from Cape Town! (They just got back from there.) Some things we thought we don't need and then changed our minds and made them pack a big suitcase to bring more stuff over for us, including a bottle of Mrs Balls Chutney! Mmmm... I will have to use it sparingly! Maybe sometime I will try make my own chutney. There's no other chutney like Mrs Balls'.

My mom brought us this beautiful house warming gift, our first plant/ flowers in our home. It's beautiful, my favourite. I wanted these for my wedding, but they were not in season when we got married.

What did we do this weekend? They arrived Friday evening and I made stuffed chicken for dinner. Saturday morning after breakfast we took a walk through Dietikon. Bougth some fruit from the market and had to get some things from Migros where we got these pretty flowers (for FREE!) We each got one!

Then we drove to Flurlingen and did the short walk to the Rheinfall again. This time we didn't walk all the way from Schaffhausen, instead we parked the car at the start of the forest walk in Flurlingen. We were a bit disappointed that the platform over the waterfall was closed... They're busy working there and it didn't say when it will re-open. But we did get a good view of the waterfall. We also walked over the bridge and had a look at the waterfall from the other side.

Oh I almost forgot, we even crossed the border into Germany for a short distance. We didn't know that we would be going into Germany so we didn't have passports with us (don't know if we might have needed them?) but Andre is not allowed out the country until he receives his B-permit. Luckily no questions were asked and we got back into Switzerland! Phew.

Back at the car it was lunch time. We drove to Stein am Rhein for lunch which consisted of ice-cream and cake!

Sunday morning we took a walk along the Limatt river here from our flat. It was another beautiful, hot day outside.