Rent-a-motorbike

In South Africa Andre had a motorbike. He has been looking at some bikes here but he's not in a hurry to buy one yet. He had a BMW GS1200 in Cape Town. Here's a picture of that one, this was at the Buffalo Rally in Mosselbay in 2007. What a fun weekend. I miss that.

Oh, I don't ride, I just sit on the back and hold on tight!

Now Andre's been looking at some other bikes too like the Buell from Harley Davidson. He rented it three weeks ago for two days while he was on leave.

I went with for a ride. We did an hour's ride to Schaffhausen (because we know the way there without a GPS! No GPS on the bike..). It felt good being on a bike again, but this one was definitely less comfortable than his BMW. This is important for me! You've got to be able to sit comfortably if you're going to sit in one position for at least an hour at a time. At first the seat felt really good, but after 45 minutes I learnt this is only a 45 minute bike! The seat was still fine, but my knees started hurting. My legs had to be more bent on this bike. So no, we're not getting this one!

Sunday Skate

As you saw in the previous post, André bought a slalom skateboard yesterday. This morning we went for a ride, him on the skateboard and me on my bike. Here's the video, or you can click here to see it on vimeo.

Slalom Skateboarding, Switzerland from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

This weekend: flambe beer and skateboards

Last night we had another great dinner at Zeughauskeller and I had Jessica's recommendation of Kalbsgeschnetzeltes nach Zürcher art -panfried sliced veal and mushrooms in a delicious creamy white wine sauce, served with Rösti. It was good! We went with friends, had drinks somewhere else beforehand hoping that the long line outside Zeughauskeller would be gone when we go back. But no, there was still a line just as long and that was around 9pm. It was definitely worth the wait though. The guys had the Hövels "flambe with firewater" beer and us girls decided this looks like a cocktail glass and needs some cocktail decorations:

At 11pm they kindly told us they are closing now and we took the hint and went for another cocktail somewhere else. We got the train back at 1pm, (a late night for us!) and again thanks to Jessica's informative blog I was able to figure out that "mit Zuschlag" meant we now had to buy an extra ticket for Sfr.5 for using the night train. (Thanks Jessica!) We weren't impressed though that no one came to check our tickets after we paid extra. But had we not bought those tickets I'm sure we would have been checked! I won't take that chance.

This morning André and I felt like we were at a major party last night. We're not used to going to bed after 12pm anymore!!

But we dragged our tired bodies to the Glatt shopping mall in Wallisellen near Zürich. It's the first time we went there, well first time for me. Andre's been there before when he came over here for work last year. It's a nice shopping mall. We're getting used to not expecting too much from the malls here and this one was really nice. New and quite big enough, nice variety of shops, free undercover parking.

André sold his old MacBook Pro this morning so we spent the money at the mall! He bought a slalom skateboard. His been looking at this for a while now and was getting quite excited about it.

This guy in the shop was really nice. We had a long chat and he convinced us to try snowboarding first instead of skiing. I like the idea of snowboarding, it sounds cool. But I can't picture myself staying upright on a snowboard. We'll see... So anyway, here the guy is putting together Andre's skateboard. Tomorrow I'll go on my bike and Andre can go on his skateboard.

And then André bought us a Nespresso coffee machine :-)

I've been nagging a bit for this. Those who know me will wonder why since I don't really drink coffee. But I like pressing the button on a machine and coffee comes out! And I like the frothed milk so we had to get one that can do that too! So now I'll start drinking coffee.

See here's my first one and a fancy one I made too. A latte macchiato. (I had to check the name in the manual, that's how little I know about coffees!!) The sales lady was really nice at explaining everything and even gave us an extra set of all 16 capsules for free. You also get a set in your box with the machine.

Tomorrow there's an expat expo in Zurich and it's also Knabenschiesen (translated: boys shooting) festival this weekend until Monday. I don't know if we'll go to either. I think we'll just catch up on sleep tomorrow and go try out the skateboard and drink coffee of course. We've still got another 14 flavors to try and then we can start all over again!

Oh, I did some baking on Friday and made jam. I'll tell you about that later on my food blog.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Schulbeginn

I'm 3 weeks late with this blog. The new school year started 17th August. These pictures have been sitting on my laptop but I've had so many other things to write about and so little time. The first time in a long time I'm having a slow relaxing morning again today. School work is all planned for the week. The house is clean. The fridge is full. So time to catch up on blogs!

I went to a lot of trouble getting these pictures. Hanging out the car window, telling André to go slower! Being a teacher I just had to get pictures of this to show you. These signs are all over Switzerland and we've driven around quite a bit. You see them when you enter every town, warning you that school has started again and to watch out for the kids on their way to school.

Isn't it great how they care about the safety of the kids? You see even the littlest ones walking to school on their own with their little orange reflectors over they're chests to make them more visible along the road.

I especially like this poster of the girl saying, "Hey, you stop for me okay." Or something like that in what I assume is Swiss German because I don't recognise it as proper High German. And at the bottom it says: Beware, children on their way to school!

Jeans-shopping in Basel

As you know I've been looking for a new pair of jeans. Let me start at the beginning. I had (still have but not wearing them) this perfect, comfortable pair of jeans. Because they were so perfect I was wearing them ALL the time. Then I noticed they were becoming a bit worn out on the one knee. I was starting to see the inside white threads and wondering how long they were still going to last... They lasted quite some time until one afternoon a few weeks back I sat down on the couch with my one leg folded underneath me as I usually do and I heard a loud "riiippp"! No no it was NOT due to too many Swiss chocolates. It tore on my knee okay. Reminding me of younger, much younger, days when my mom made me tracksuit pants with patches on the knees from the start because she knew I'd wear them out from sitting on the floor on my knees.

So for the past couple of weekends Andre has patiently done jeans-shopping with me. He is very patient. Such a good husband. When I wanted to give up he encouraged me to try just one more shop.

I've bought too many uncomfortable pairs of jeans in the past so now it takes weeks to find the perfect pair. Soft, good fit, not too tight but not too loose. It must make me look good and feel good. Oh and have I mentioned it also has to be the correct shade of blue? What were you thinking, I can't just wear any old blue jeans. Especially not ripped jeans. Not my style. At all. Neither are skinny jeans which are all over the place now. I don't think it's cool. Unless you're going to wear boots over it it makes sense. But I'm not buying jeans that I can only wear with boots. It's a teenager thing, wearing skinny jeans with sneakers or whatever. And they aren't comfortable anyway.

André knows exactly which kinda jeans I want and what works for me. I can actually walk into a store, go sit on the couch and he could bring me the jeans. He actually does that, tells the sales assistant what I need. Until today I said, "Do you mind, I'm the one looking for jeans. Can I actually get a chance to look myself?"

But when I looked at the price of these jeans you see in this shopping bag it was quite a bit more than I've ever paid for jeans and I've never even heard of this label! But André said, "Just get it. I'll pay. Get two. Go get another pair." I guess he doesn't want to have to go through all this any time soon.

Now let me tell you how we ended up in Basel today looking for jeans. Basel is about an hours drive from us. My very special (now ripped) jeans were Guess jeans. Also bought after a long search and paid for by my dear husband when I guess his patience was wearing a bit thin. (Seems like there's a pattern here of expensive jean shopping paid by dear husband.)

So I searched on the internet for a Guess Jeans store here in Switzerland and found the closest one in Basel. I thought I could go buy the exact same pair I bought in Cape Town but no, it doesn't work like that. They did not have anything for me. Tried on two pairs there that didn't work and they didn't have that same pair I had.

But I am so relieved that we did actually find jeans. And bought jeans. It was a good day!

While I was at it I did some shoe shoppping too. I haven't really bought anything for myself since we've arrived here almost 5 months ago. It's just been house shopping. And this month has been the first that I've actually started earning some money to spend!

I was looking for some house shoes to leave at work. You hear that? AT WORK! haha I'm a working woman now. Not sure if I like that idea though. I was quite happy at home. But at least I can shop now. So I was looking for something comfortable to wear inside at the play school I now work at mornings. You need to have inside shoes or walk around in your socks. I wanted something nice that still looks good for work. But the shoes were too nice and I wanted them to wear outside too. Not only at work. So I've decided to leave some old, but still pretty slip ons at work and now have new shoes to replace these. Worked out well!

Some pictures of Basel.

This guy was quite good.

There was some football (soccer?) game on and lots of people were dressed in red. A few in blue which must have been the other team's supporters. Can you see them over there in the red?

They were having a PARTY!

We had our first sushi in Switzerland too.

And ended the day with some good Italian Glacé (ice-cream).

Zermatt

After the festival on Saturday André and I drove to Zermatt. 230km took four hours of driving along very very windy roads snaking up mountains and down the other side. We only drove an average speed of 50km/hr and went through 40 tunnels! Yep, exactly 40, I counted them. There are some photos of the mountain where you can see the winding road.

At one stage it got very misty and we could hardly see anything in front of us. At that time it was only 3.5 C outside.

Quite tired after the long drive, but excited to have finally arrived, we parked the car in Täsch, the town before Zermatt and took the train in to Zermatt. Zermatt is a car free town so you can't drive there.

We arrived in Zermatt and walked down Bahnhoffstrasse which is a beautiful welcome into this little town. It wasn't far to our hotel. There are little electric cars, like golf cars which you can use as a taxi, but we enjoyed the walk and stretching our legs.

At the hotel we received a welcome drink and then went up to our cosy room. Look at the wood carvings at the entrance to our room and on the ceiling.

For dinner on Saturday night we went to a steak house where we had some really good steak. It was done on an open fire in the restaurant, right next to our table actually. Then the chef brings it to your table and slices half of it and serves it with your veggies and rösti. I was very worried about where he took the rest of my steak. He explained that when we're done he "makes another plate". In the video you can see my second plate.

Of course you'll see many photos of the Matterhorn in the video.

We saw two men playing their alpine horns. It was the first time I heard what this sounds like. Really nice.

The old part of the town is crammed with tumbledown wooden houses. The wooden storage barns are built on stilts balanced on stone discs to keep out rodents. Interesting. I've never seen something like this before.

On Sunday we went for a short walk. Well we tried, but we had an afternoon nap before going for the hike so I didn't have much energy and for some reason I'm not all that much into hiking anymore. That's sad for André, I do try from time to time to scrape some energy together to go on a short and easy hike with him. But it didn't work this time and we turned around to go have drinks and a snack at a pub in town.

On Sunday night we had our first fondue in Switzerland! I really wanted to try a cheese fondue since I've never had that, but the restaurant didn't do that so we had the oil fondue with meat and 16 little bowls with dips and fruit and veg to snack on while your meat is frying. We were totally stuffed after that!!! We really ate well this weekend. The hotel breakfasts were of course a feast too. I love hotel breakfasts!

We were very lucky to have great weather. Clear, so we can see the Matterhorn, and sunny and not cold. Only in the evenings it got a bit colder and I was wearing my winter jacket, so I can imagine it must be freezing in winter!

If you haven't noticed already, you will see from the pictures that I love all the wooden buildings with the flowers on the balconies.

Enjoy the video! (As usual, if you have problems viewing the video, see it here on vimeo.)

Zermatt, Switzerland from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Chreis Nüün Fäscht

Or in German: Kreis 9 Fest (festival)

Kreis 9 is a district in Zürich made up of Altstetten and Albisrieden. This is where I did the past two summer camps during the holiday and where I teach on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Kidee, the venue where I teach, had a stand at this festival and I helped out for a couple of hours on Saturday doing crafts with the kids. It was fun being a part of such a festival. Oh, they celebrated 75 years of being part of Zürich.

André picked me up afterwards and then we drove to Zermatt for our anniversary weekend. I'm busy with the Zermatt pictures now. There are so many so I might put them in a slideshow again and that could take a while. If not tonight, then hopefully they'll be up tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the festival.

The Kidee stand at the festival.

Want to milk a cow?

A smile from the horse!