And 7 hours later...

...I return from biking around lake Zurichsee. You can really see the snow still on the Alps well from halfway down the east side of the lake. When I started out near the north shore, they were setting up a carnival for this weekend. There are a lot of festivals happening this weekend all around Zurich and nearby Rapperswill. Too bad Lexi and I will be in the Netherlands. Actually, we'll probably have as much fun there, if not more. I've been pouring through the TIME OUT guide for the last few days and I've found more things to do then we have time to do.

As I made my way to the southeast shore, I came across vineyard after vineyard. I had no idea how close they grew the swiss wine. Lexi and I will have to go through this neighborhood again some time for some wine tasting.


Near to the vineyards, someone had taken a bunch of old German helmets and put together this ant on their roof.


On the south west shore, I found Casino Zurichsee, which unfortunately had no Texas Holdem. I've just about given up on finding any real poker in Switzerland. They only have the versions where you play against the dealer and those don't use any of the skills that Lexi and I have developed. There's never much chance for profit, when you're playing the house. It's better to play the other suckers.


Halfway up the west side of the lake, I came across all these small farms. These bulls in the picture had only a small string keeping them from wandering into the street. You could never keep ferrets the same way. These must be some real chill cows.


It was around the Lindt Chocolate Factory that my arms and but gave out. I pushed through the last 20 kilometres and then walked home from near the banhofstrasse. I was completely exhausted, but I didn't feel how tired my legs were until I got home. I actually took the elevator up to our apartment, which I rarely do. In the elevator promised myself that I would only take it on days where I biked atleast a canton away.

I made it home just in time as a huge gust of wind followed by a downpour greeted me at home. After the downpour, Lexi made it home and we went out to Brasserie for dinner. The antipasto was great with lots of grilled mushroom and eggplant. Lexi's rack of lamb was also delicious and came, oddly enough, garnished by a breaded and deepfried stick of rosemary which neither of us were about to try to eat. My pasta was another story. I should have listened to the waitress when she said it was small, but when the menu said raviolis in saffron sauce, I didn't know they meant exactly 2 ravioli. The two ravioli even cost us more than the full plate of antipasto. Had I known how big it really was, I would've just bought two antipastos for dinner. I know now to skip their prima piati section of the menu.

Happy Birthday Lexi

Today was Lexi's birthday so after German class at Google, we went home and I cooked her dinner. Sausages, Mixed salad and fancy swiss semisoft cheese and bread with swiss red wine. The swiss wines have a very different flair than napa wines. Our red was a very light red, lighter than even a sangiovese, but was not at all a Rose wine. It's so much cheaper to buy swiss wine here that we have been drinking it pretty much exclusively when we have wine with dinner.

After dinner, we walked down by the Limmat river and had chocolate crepes. Then we headed over to an Big Ben Pub, a local English expatriate hangout. We had a few beers while we talked about ideas for building a poker theme for blogger, something Lexi's been thinking of doing for a while. There were a couple of Englishmen arguing about who was on the Chelsea team and who wasn't. Eventually they must of settled their argument as they struck up a Chelsea chant across the bar. We got back home pretty late and went right to sleep. It's been a lot easier to sleep through the night now that we have our fan. Apparently it's been a hotter than usual summer.

Oh. Today's pic is of a funky bike/car crossbreed that I saw on my way to german class. I've never seen anything like it in the states.

First day back from paris

We took it easy on Monday. I did my usual workout and went out looking for a guide to the netherlands for our trip this weekend. On the way to the shopping district, I came across this funky hippy shack near the river.

We tried to get into this restaurant associated with a local hospitality school, but they were closed on Mondays so we ate at the Ascot Hotel Cafe. They had some pretty typical American fare. Lexi had some pesto linguine, which was pretty good. I had a club sandwich that was pretty huge and for some reason had the bacon sitting on top rather than in the sandwich. We then went food shopping at Migros, one of the few supermarkets in Zurich. They have these huge bars of swiss chocolate for less than 2 francs.

Aviation Club of France

After spending the afternoon at the Louvre, we ate some quick sandwiches at a cafe and set out across the gigantic park. The park, and the shopping district next to it on avenue de Champs-Elysees, was pretty crowded. The traffic in Paris reminded Andrew of Manhattan, but I think it's more chaotic. Sure, in both places the drivers go full speed and honk to make the pedestrians get out of the way, but Paris doesn't seem to believe in street signs or pedestrian crossing signals. I mean, there's some signals in some places, but there were a lot of times you'd get to a crosswalk and look around at a wall of traffic and no light to stop it. The local drivers were pretty predictable - it's the tour buses trying to squeeze through some arch or other that are harder to move around.

We ended up at the Aviation Club of France, which is a card room on the World Poker Tour. On a lazy Sunday evening, there were two tables of no-limit Texas Hold'Em going; when we arrived, they started up a third one. The structure is a little different from American games - blinds are 2/2 (euros), no posting on the button, with a smaller take for the house - and it's sure a lot harder to read hands and tells when you don't speak the local language. But poker is poker, and the action was great - after watching for a while I got a pretty good sense of the playing styles of the other players (a mix of tight/passive and loose/aggressive, with more extremes on the 'aggressive' spectrum than I'm used to), and soon had figured out how to adapt my play for the situation. The club is super swanky, has air conditioning, and free soda. Yup, we finally found infinite Coca-Cola Light refills in Europe! All things are possible. Four hours later, when it was time for us to leave to catch the train back to Zurich, I had pocketed a net 300 euros profit - enough to cover almost the entire cost of the weekend. Andrew had fun too, but says he played too timidly and came out with a small loss. This was a very friendly club, where the host seems to know everyone (and remembered our names) - we'll definitely be back.

The Louvre...

..is HUGE! You enter through the giant glass pyramid and go down a set of stairs to the main hall. There are three sections off of the main hall each with about 3 floors. In four hours, we went through one floor of one wing. Just the Italian and Spanish renaissance painters and the Large format French paintings.


There are so many famous pieces on display, not to mention the tons they have in storage. I got to see a bunch of famous paintings I had scene only in books before. Liberty leading the charge in the French Revolution, The Mona Lisa (the line was shorter than I thought and you can see it from the side of the line), the Club Footed Boy and a whole bunch of Napoleonic propaganda. I was fascinated by the Napoleonic propaganda. Especially the one that was commissioned after one of his victories in Eastern Europe where he lost tons of troops. To make people forget about all the French soldiers who were killed, he commissioned a portrait of him standing over a pile of dead Russian soldiers giving amnesty to the enemy survivors. The painter was given the legion of honor and an estate. I wonder if in the future, there'll be a museum with a video of George Bush flying into the aircraft carrier with the Mission Accomplished sign and the audio guide will tell how the war stretched on for years to come.

I was also amused by a work of Da Vinci's I had never seen before. I like to call it Saint John in "No, You da Man."

The hall with the crown jewels was also incredible. I take it as one of the signs of civilization's progress that all the wealth that used to be kept by the priveleged few of the past is now available for everyone to enjoy in the present.

The whole area around the Louvre has that feeling. Only royalty used to enjoy the Garden des Tuileries next to the Louvre and now they're a public park.

Neighborhood kids push sailboats around the giant fountains built for the kings of the past.

All it takes is time and access to the global market and wealth gets redistributed more fairly based on merit. I think the comment Friedman makes in his book "The World is Flat" sums it up best. "The average joe in the U.S. used to fair better than a genius in China, but now the genius in China's going to be better off." Just as it should be. I used to think globalization only gave companies the freedom to work from anywhere around the globe, but individuals are also empowered to compete. There's fiber crossing the oceans in all directions allowing anyone with a computer access to the world's information and markets. It hasn't reached everyone yet, but it will. Maybe I'm just a little too positive about globalization because I'm living it up as a Dot Com Debutante.

Paris in the Rain

We woke up the next morning at just before our checkout time of noon to find that the storm that had just started as we left Zurich had followed us to Paris. It was kind of a blessing though as it was a lot cooler and we found umbrella's before the worst of the rain started. We stopped at a little bakery in the middle of the fashion district and picked up a couple of sandwiches. Oh...the bread in France! There is nothing like it. Even a little local bakery has baguettes with perfectly crunchy crust and tender chewy insides. Our walk took us past the French National library on our way to the Louvre.

First Night in Paris

We got back on the train after a long day at Epernay and we caught another nap on our way back to Paris.
We had no reservations as the places I had requested rooms from were unavailable. Luck smiled upon us at the first hotel we saw: Terminus Paris Est. Not only did they have a room, which is hard to come by on a summer weekend in Paris, but the room was air conditioned and only cost 110 Euros. We found out later that the listed price was 160 Euros. Don't know why they gave us a discount. Maybe we looked so tired from our day in Epernay that they took pity on us.

After a shower and some max level air conditioning, we were right back up and out to the paris metro to try to get a last minute ticket to the Moulin Rouge. The paris Metro is warmer than the New York subway and just as cramped. It was however not hard to figure out how to get from point A to point B and we were across town in about 20 minutes. Unfortunately there were no shows available that night at the Moulin Rouge, so we decided to walk home and look for some dinner on the way.


We came upon a nice Paris cafe, La Marmite, at a busy corner right outside of the red light district, which seemed to We took a leisurely 2 hour dinner, watching the sun set on a busy street corner. I can't see how anyone can stand driving in Paris. It's like New York with smaller even more twisted streets. People parked haphazardly at corners blocking traffic while huge tour busses attempt U-turns in miniscule intersections. It's chaotic and lively and lends to the incredible energy of the city.

Here I am sitting in a cafe in Paris
rewriting the first line of my first novel
for the thousandth time just like Camus
tragic author in The Plague

Everything at the cafe came with homemade potato chips. It must have been the least healthy / most delicious goat cheese salad I've ever had. Lexi had the barbecued chicken, which was dwarfed by the pile of homemade chips. The food was very good for coming from a random cafe if not a little bit heavy. The best part of dinner were the beignets for dessert. Beignets are the work of the devil. It's pure evil to take a sundae, an already tempting dessert, and throw in a pastry that's all crunchy crust. It plays to all my culinary weaknesses: crusty, chocolaty, and icecreamy.

We walked the rest of the way back to the hotel. On our way we came across a huge crowd of teenagers. We tried to see what they were lined up for, but apparently the corner's just a popular hangout. Our walk also convinced us that most of Paris was under construction. There were major parts of most every intersection torn up. There were a lot more people out late than in Switzerland. Nearly every fashion trend was represented from west coast hip hop casual to double retro 70's pantaloons (I'm not kidding about the pantaloons).

We got back to our hotel and split a bottle of French white wine. It must have been mostly chardonnay and maybe a little bit sauvignon blanc and for the price it was very good. It had been 17 hours since we woke up on the train in Paris. We were completely satiated and exhausted. In one day we managed to get to France, go wine tasting in Epernay, learn the metro and watch the sun set over dinner at a cafe. All in all a great day.

Epernay

After acquiring croissants with chocolate in them from a kiosk we took a train to Epernay. At Epernay, we expected to meet a guide for a tour of some local wineries.
But the guide didn't show, so we set out on foot ourselves. First we went to Moet et Chandon, which has a huge presence above ground and apparently a bigger one below, in the caves. In the courtyard outside there is a statue of Dom Perignon, the monk who figured out how to put the bubbly in champagne.

We took a tour of the caves. The caves have seriously better air conditioning than any I've experienced in Europe (beating the office hands-down) - they're pretty deep and have walls of limestone, and stay nice and cool and humid even when it's really hot outside.
The caves reminded me a little of the ones I saw at Schramsburg (in Napa), except that the ones in Schramsburg seemed to have been built as expediently as possible and the ones at Moet seem... designed, somehow. There are even some sections of the caves that are two stories tall, to optimize storage space. Only the main path of the tour was well-lit, but you can see tunnels full of wine racks extending off in all directions as far as the light trickles.

The tour guide explained the process of making champagne: they pick all their grapes by hand, do the first fermentation, mix stuff together, put it in the bottles and let them ferment again, then put them neck-down in the racks for riddling to filter the sediment into the neck of the bottle, then freeze the neck and remove the sediment, add some reserve wine to fill the bottle back up, and ship it. During the fermentation phase, you can really see the sediment gathering in the bottles. They still have humans doing most of the riddling (turning the bottles occasionally to help the sediment gather in the neck) but have some machines to automate the labor. The funny thing is that the machine are only about four times faster than their best humans.
The years in the caves introduce some wear and tear on the bottles, though - they get pretty dusty and have to be cleaned off before sale. I learned why champagne bottles have concave bottoms - the shape helps the bottles withstand the pressure of the contents.

There was even a great big barrel on display that was brought back by Napoleon from a conquest, full of port, and given to his good friend Remy Moet.


In the tasting room we got to sample a bunch of their champagnes.


After tasting the champagne, we decided to go to lunch at Le Theatre. It was noon on Saturday, but the restaurant was completely empty except for us. I don't speak any French at all, but recognized the words "beef" and "chocolate" (and "prix fixe") and figured it was likely to be tasty. Sure enough, it was an excellent lunch, but I still couldn't tell you exactly what I ate. But I do know there were figs in the salad, and I had never actually eaten figs before (except in Fig Newton form, which probably doesn't count), and now I know I like figs. Andrew's lunch involved very tasty duck that was sort of the opposite of the duck you get at dim sum - all the really fatty bits were removed, leaving just the little bit of really good tender meat. His third course was a cheese plate. Now, I had always thought of a cheese plate as something where they bring you a little plate with a few pieces of cheese on it. But here, the cheese plate is a guy with this gigantic wheel with a dozen cheeses on it, and you point to the ones you want and he cuts off pieces of them for you to eat with flaky crusty bread.

Andrew says I should say more about the bread. OK, the bread was good too. Plus the dessert chocolate was one of those light fluffy hunks of something between fudge and cake.. mmm. I need to figure out how to make that.

After stuffing ourselves with lunch, we went to a few more places for champagne tasting. Lots of these places seem not to be open for tasting on weekends - I guess it fits in well with stuff generally not being open in Europe then. Finally, after discovering that absolutely no one has air conditioning, we went to the park where there was a little art festival, and napped in the shade in the park until the sun became less threatening. Then we caught a train back to Paris.

Eurail - Sleeper Cab

Friday night, Lexi and I boarded our first Eurail overnight to Paris. We were just settling into our bunks, when we realized that we were supposed to have validated our tickets in the station. That meant a hefty 75 CHF fine for each of us. Doh! It was my bad as I had taken care of the reservations, but not the validation when I was at the station earlier this week. Atleast we were still able to go. I would have been real bummed if we had been kicked off the train instead. Money is less important than time after all.

The sleeper cabs have their benefits and shortcomings. They aren't too hot, which is a blessing in this weather. People are very good about being quiet on them. I was probably the loudest with my constant tossing and turning (this is why Lexi and I need a california king size bed at home). The bunks are just a little too short for me. This makes it slightly hard to get to sleep. The rocking of the train is actually pretty soothing though. I think that if the trip was a little longer we would've been fully rested when we arrived.

Once we were at the station, we found that there are no restrooms available at the Paris Est Station without having a half euro coin on you. We found an ATM to get some Euros. We also found that automated ticket machines do not accept any of our credit cards. We managed to find a teller and some tickets to Epernay with enough time leftover before our train to get a croissant and a pain au chocolate (croissant like pastry with chocolate in the middle. Soooo Good!) before catching the train to Epernay, which we were able to get another hour of sleep on.

Zurichberg Forest

Lexi and I had a great time at the Google party last night. We enjoyed all the fruits of the "magical animal": sausages, pork cutlets, bacon and bacon wrapped sausages. Everyone at the Zurich office is very nice. Some of the guys at the office are into whiskey and one of them has a sailboat. They said they will let us know if they're going out again so we can join them. We stayed until a little after midnight, though we had to be quiet after 11pm for the curfew.



Today I decided to check out the Zurichberg forest. It's one of 3 small forests in Zurich. It was a long bike ride up hill to get to it, but you could see most of Zurich from the top. There's a train that will take you straight to the top of the hill, but I was in the mood for some exercise.



Here's the view of Lake Zurich from the restaurant at the Edge of the Zurichberg forest.


Here's the rest of downtown Zurich. I really need to get a filter for my camera.


I spent around 4 hours wandering most of the paths in the forest. I really liked the quality of the light on the leaves here. Most of the rest of the path around this was completely shaded, except for this shaft of light which caught just this one branch.

The forest has a bunch of mountainbiking trails in addition to the hiking trails. It stretches all the way from the university to the zoo. All along the way are places you can start campfires. One family was out near one of the small ponds with a couple of sausages on sticks over the fire they built. I didn't see anyone actually camping out, tent and all. I guess people just come up to have picnics. The hike was very relazing. It's been too long since I got to play around with my camera. I picked up a very compact tripod, which I've been using with the timer to help get a few self portraits done. Too often, I've gone hiking and come back with tons of nature photos that look like a I downloaded them rather than hiked in to get them myself.



Lexi and I are off to France tonight at 11pm. Tomorrow, we're wandering around Champagne and the day after we'll hopefully be at the Aviation club de Paris for some cards and maybe a few other spots.

We're worried about our Bonnie who has taken a turn for the worse. She wasn't eating for a while, so Billy and Mandy took her to the vet. He got her rehydrated and she has eaten some nutrical so she's a little bit perkier, but she is getting old and her adrenal gland is failing. The vet's going to email us with some suggestions for treatments by Monday. We wish we were with our Bonnie for all this and we're grateful for the care she's receiving from Billy and Mandy.

Our Zurich Apartment

Here's a tour of our apartment. This is how you would come across each of the rooms.


Coming into the house you enter our hallway.


Immediately on your right is the office, where I hang out in the morning blogging and watching videos.


On your immediate left is the bathroom.


The next door on your right is the livingroom. The TV only has 1.7 English stations: BBC and Music Videos. It's kind of funny to watch 50 Cent transition into some German hip hop group.


Across from the livingroom on the left is the kitchen. The electric range takes forever to warm up, but it works fine enough to cook gnocci.


The final door on the left is the bedroom. You can see the shades, which are all over the house. Lexi and I agree that when we get a house we've got to get these shades.


The shades are more like shutters. When they're completely closed, no light comes through at all, which is great for me. Teaching has conditioned me to wake up whenever it gets bright so these are the only way I can sleep in until noon. Crank them halfway up, you get some light and breeze but keep your privacy. Cranked all the way up, you can see where Lexi and I camped out on the balcony.



The cranking system is a perfect example of Swiss design. A magnet holds it in place and then it folds out to let you crank it up and down in a second.


The trash bin for our apartment. If you can't tell fromt the picture, it's real tiny, considering it's the only one provided for our building of 8 apartments. The Swiss take their trash seriously. Stores will often take the boxes off your products for you so you don't fill up your trash at home. There are also official trash bags you have to use so they can keep track of how much you throw out. It must be something related to the fact that Switzerland is a small country so they can't ship their trash far away and forget about it.


Here's the bike I bought. Lexi's is the same model but smaller. It was definitely pricier than a similar bike in the US. The tires are a little wider than my hybrid at home.


My favorite feature on the bike is the generator for the lights. I hadn't seen one of these except for the episode of the simpsons where Bart finds the comet.



Lexi and I are going to a Google party tonight. Every Google office is apparently having an off-site today. Tomorrow we're off to Paris for our trip to Champagne. I even think they'll let us play Holdem at the Aviation Club de Paris. Apparently, it's not a members only thing. I've wanted to play there since I saw it on the World Poker Tour.

A Slow Day

Zurich has a different vibe than New York. New York made me feel like I needed to spend every minute of every hour of every day doing something. If I wasn't on the run, I felt unsettled. Here in Zurich, so far I've been sleeping in longer and taking my time doing the little things. Today, I had to buy a fan. The air in Zurich is very still so even though the summer is not very warm 80 degrees or so usually, it feels much warmer. Last night we dragged the small mattress on to our balcony and slept outside for a while because it was too still and warm in the apartment.

My routine in Zurich has been to wake up around noon. Eat breakfast while watching some Sopranos and blogging. Then I do the "hotel room" workout that my trainer and I put together. 100 each of pushups, situps off the workout ball, dips off of a diningroom chair, and bicep curls with the exercise bands. Then it's a shower and I'm out the door at the crack of 3pm. They do call it vacation for a reason.

I decided to walk to bahnhofstrasse in a different way today and I stumbled upon the Swiss museum.


Inside the swiss museum courtyard there were a bunch of cannons, so I couldn't resist the urge to play Age of Empires.

Fire!!!


I decided to check out the shops under the bahnhofplatz and wandered into the middle of their farmer's market.

There was so much fresh cheese there. I could have bought 10 different gruyeres. They even had raclette (a dish similar to fondue poured over potatoes) for only 8.50, but unfortunately I wasn't that hungry. I picked up some dried mangoes (which I can't help buying even when I'm not hungry) and went on to the main shopping drag to buy a fan.

Apparently the Swiss Culture book I read wasn't kidding about the Swiss and their superstition about drafts. It claims that it is a commonly held Swiss superstition that drafts are the source of colds, bad luck, almost anything that can go wrong. It seems silly, but it was really hard to find a fan. There are no box fans in Switzerland at all. Few buildings, even commercial ones, have air conditioning because public ordinances prevent people from adding them. Their only option is to build a house with a special roof designed to trap the heat, which works well for the big stores, but isn't a feature in many apartments (including ours). Well I bought the biggest rotating fan I could find, so we might not have to camp out from our own apartment tonight.