Dad & Colleen's visit day three: Home

Thursday was our last day together. My dad and Colleen left early Friday morning, on their way to Turkey to collect the yacht. We spent the afternoon doing some shopping, buying our beautiful yucca plant and some cheese for them to take with.

Then we made a traditional German dinner: three different kinds of sausages, including Münchner Weisswurst, and a baked potato dish.

Thanks for the visit Pa & Colleen, it was really good to see you!

Dad & Colleen's visit day two: Schaffhausen

On Wednesday we took the train to Schaffhausen. It has become one of our favourite towns. This was the first time I went there with the train though and it was so much fun. It didn't take that long and it was a beautiful ride through the country. You even get a good view of the Reinfall (waterfall) on the way.

After many visits to Schaffhausen I can now finally say that I've been to the Munot too.

Why did we not do this on our first visit there?

It was stunning. Fun to see an old castle/ fort? and you get such an awesome view of the town.

Andre only joined us later and I'm definitely taking him up there next time too! By the way, see those two guys in the photo above coming up the stairs? They were hopping on one leg all the way up!! CRAZY.

It made us wonder how people lived in that time...

We strolled around some more

and then had drinks waiting for Andre to finish work and meet us for dinner.

The dinner plan (as always when we're in Schaffhausen) was to eat at Lemongrass. We were all ready for good Thai curry. But they were closed for holiday! How can they do that to us!!

Maybe it was a good thing because in the end we had cheese fondue, a first for all four of us and it was soooo good!

Dad & Colleen's visit day one: Zurich

My dad and stepmom came to visit us this past week. They arrived Monday night and so Tuesday when I came home from work we took the train in to Zurich. It was a cloudy grey day but luckily no rain.

This swan was not impressed after it came all the way out the water, only to find our hands empty.

Andre met us in town after work and we went for drinks before dinner. Again cocktails at Widder Bar.

And of course dinner at Zeughauskeller where Andre and my dad had the famous beers.

The food was really good as always.

I can make an album just of pictures of me eating. This one my dad took, but Andre has this habit of snapping at me with the camera whenever I have food in my mouth. Flattering.

We have fire

I haven't been blogging this week because my dad and stepmom came to visit. We had a great time and I'll tell you all about that this weekend still. As soon as I'm done going through all the photos.

Sneak peak: can you guess where we had dinner? Not too difficult with that big beer!

Here's last night, our first fire in our fireplace!

We must still find the best place for buying wood. (Any tips, Swiss readers?) We bought this box at Coop Bau&Hobby yesterday but it won't last more than two fires. We want lots of wood. We like fire!

See that lovely plant over there? It's a yuka. Bought for our new home by my dad and stepmom. I love it! It makes our living room feel more homely now. Thank you Pa and Colleen!

Last night was the first night we actually spent in our living room (after living in our flat for 5 months now!) It was nice. We ate pizza in front of the fire. Good food and a warm fire on a rainy evening... Ok let me get on with those photos.

One cocktail too many

Friday night Andre decided we should go out for dinner. We took the train in to Zürich and booked a table at Restaurant Zum Kropf.

Many many years ago, as in 1444, this used to be a private residence. It's stunning inside, really something to see. The food was super.

Andre had the roasted pork knuckle

and I had boar which was on the seasonal menu.

But before the food came some cocktails. After making the booking at the restaurant- which was a good thing as it was the last available table- we walked around, passed a place with the word "bar" on the window and went inside for some pre-dinner drinks. We discovered a really great bar- the Widder Bar, one of the World's Best Bars, I now read. It's beautiful inside, like dark red leather and a long shiny wooden bar. Very classy ;-) There was someone playing the piano and on Wednesday nights they have Jazz performances. The bar is sooo well stocked. Bottles and bottles of anything you can imagine. Over 500 varieties of spirits and 250 different types of whiskey. And then the cocktails... They were amazing. The best cocktails I've ever had.

I had (a few) pina coladas

and mojitos. My two favourite cocktails and I can tell you I have never had better anywhere else. The service is also amazing, great bar tenders, really quick to notice if you need anything and very friendly. It's the kind of place where someone opens the door for you before you can reach out to open it yourself, if you know what I mean. (And someone really did.)

So Andre and I each had two cocktails, then it was time for dinner. After dinner we phoned some friends and they joined us at the same bar again for some more cocktails. We got home after 3am! (You see, it was that good!) Even later than our previous latest night out here! And of course it took us half of Saturday to recover... We were going to buy beer on Saturday, but neither of us could face any more alcohol so soon after all we had on Friday night!

We spent the rest of Saturday shopping and Andre got me to try on some ski suits. I must say it did get me a tiny little bit more excited for skiing. We didn't buy anything yet because we don't really know what we should be looking for in a good ski suit, but I did like this jacket with its fluffy fur ;-)

PS Please excuse the poor photo quality in this post, I cleverly left my camera at home so had to use my phone.

Everybody's reading the newspaper

I was going to tell you about school but I'm a bit annoyed with that at the moment so can't think happy thoughts about it right now. Another time.

Instead I will tell you, those of you not living in Switzerland, about reading the newspaper. You've got to get into doing that. Everyone does it here. It's the in thing to do you know.

Here we are, waiting for the train and... reading the paper! I should have taken this picture a few minutes later when there were more people, but I was worried about getting into trouble for snapping pictures of strangers.

Ah ok, I understand. You have to first go to a shop like Pick'nPay or Checkers to buy the paper and then you sit with such humungous pages that you need quite a bit of floor space to read the newspaper. It used to take me a week to read one newspaper. I used to buy the Argus on a Wednesday because it had a school supplement in. Then it kept me busy the rest of the week. You have to make time to go and sit down with your newspaper in SA. You can't stand and read it while you wait for the train, because well, I don't know anyone in SA who takes the train and you'll probably wait quite some time and then you won't be reading anything because you'll be holding onto your handbag and trying to hide your wedding ring that's on your finger in case someone tries to steal it. And if after all this you still try to read your newspaper standing outside in Cape Town, the wind will blow it away! You also won't read it sitting on the train because your neighbours won't be very happy having to sit underneath half your newspaper while you're paging through it.

No here it is a little different. At all the train stations there are 3 boxes for the different free newspapers. Here's a picture:

The purple one is for the evening paper, and then there are two others in the morning. You've got to get there early or there won't be any left. And now that I'm working in the morning, I do get there just early enough (8am) to still get one. Oh yes, I have been reading these for quite some time now! And I can happily say that my German has improved so that I can now actually scan through some articles where as before I had to really sit and read and read again to try and understand. In the beginning I did it because it was the only German practise I got. Now I do it because I'm curious to see what's in the news every day.

This morning I decided I'm not going to take one because I want to read my book. But I wasn't even on the train yet when I read a headline over somebody else's shoulder and then I also wanted one, worried that I might be missing out on some important news.

So at the next station I grabbed one of the last newspapers and did what I now do every morning: read the newspaper in German like every one else does. Even the kids read it on the train.

Oh, and it's a perfectly manageable size too you see!

busy busy

Tomorrow is Friday and finally the end of another week. I'm still adjusting to the new job and I will do a proper post hopefully soon to tell you all about that. I'm just a little tired at the moment. New teaching jobs do that to you. It takes some time getting used to it. Luckily it is school holidays for 2 weeks now. That doesn't mean I won't be working. The play school does not close for school holidays and today I actually started working there full time which means every morning. But at least I won't be teaching in the afternoons for 2 weeks. Yay! No rushing around from one venue to another and planning lessons and making resources for my four different classes.

This sort of a holiday is timed perfectly because my dad is arriving for a visit on Monday. They leave again next week Friday and then we have friends from the UK coming for a visit. I'm very excited to have visitors and happy that at least I will have some extra time to spend with them.

So just wanted to say I'm still here and will write more soon, hopefully over the weekend!

Have a great weekend!