Anyone up for some Curling?

Last night was Martin's lab's Christmas party. They started off with a potluck dinner and secret santa gift opening, then we all boarded a bus ... and a train ... and then another bus to get to the sport center in Wallisellen where all the curling magic happens.

Here are Nikko and Martin with their road sodas:



In case you had any doubts, yes, it was still snowing. Here are the 3 guys Martin shares an office/lab space with, from right Mattias, Julian, and Oliver (not the guy in the background texting). Oliver's girlfriend is next to him but she was the only girlfriend that was brought along, then there was me and one other wife and that was it for significant others.



They're all either Swiss or German.

There were about 35-40 of us going curling so we rented out the whole place, though it only has 4 lanes. First we had to do some exercises to learn how to curl and then we got to play for real. It was really fun but boy that ice is slippery. A lot of people fell but nobody got injured. I think we all have bruises on our knees today from kneeling when pushing off with the stone.

Here's Martin lining up his shot:



And the action shot (see his right knee on the ice, that's where the bruises are):



And the follow through:



Here's our team doing some sweeping while I helped out by taking a picture of it:



We ended up tied 7-7 at the end of our game. We had a pretty high scoring game compared to the other 3 groups.

After curling, it was time to hit the bar that was there. It had a glass wall overlooking the curling rink so it was neat.





I would highly recommend curling to any of you! It was a very good time.

Some Christmas Lights

Today I took some pictures of some of the Christmas lights in Zürich. Some of them are only a little blurry!

Here is one street (the street that my German school is on actually):



And here are a few shots of Bahnhofstrasse, the main high-end shopping street:





And the lights on Bahnhofstrasse twinkle! Like stars. I think it would be neater if they were red, orange, and yellow instead of white, light blue, and dark blue, but that's just me.

A Tour of Göttingen

On Saturday morning we went on a guided tour of Göttingen with our hosts, Fritz and Antje and their little boy David. I got very little out of it since it was all in German and there were ~25 people in the group and we were on noisy streets most of the time so I couldn't hear the tour guide. But Antje and Martin translated some of it for me so I can talk about some of it here.

Here's a shot of a street in Göttingen. It's quite a cute town and it has lots and lots of stores:



Here are Martin, David, and Antje on the tour (David really liked Martin):



Göttingen has a population of 130,000 and 30,000 of those people are students at the University there. So a large part of the tour was of the University. The Brothers Grimm were professors there. And the tour also included the student jail! The jail is just a bunch of little rooms with uncomfortable wooden beds in them where bad students were locked up anywhere from a few days to a few months. There were lots of drawings on the walls:





And here is a cute building that the guide talked about but I have no idea what she said:



Later that night Fritz and Antje had some friends over for dinner (meat fondue, yum). Actually most of the guests were their children! Fritz has two older children, Johanne and Ruben, and Antje has a teenage son as well, Jakob. The other guests were an older man named Martin and his son, Loren (probably not spelling that correctly). Martin (the older one) and Fritz toured the US together several times during the 80's and Fritz lived with Larry and Frankie for about a year in MA in 1986. Towards the end of the evening the slides came out and we got to look at pictures of everybody from 25 years ago. Crazy. Anyway, here are Fritz and David watching Loren play a video game:



Here is the wood stove that Martin and I plan to purchase for our future home:



And here are the two Martins:



The older Martin looks exactly the same as he did 20+ years ago except his hair is gray now.

Christmas Markets!

A very popular thing to do during the month of December in Germany and Switzerland (probably Austria too but I'm not 100% sure) is to hang out at Weihnachtsmarkts (Christmas markets). They are made up of little booths that sell handmade goods or German food specialties, carousels and ferris wheels, and one even had an ice skating rink. It's just a good time for all. And don't forget the Glühwein! Glühwein is a hot beverage made from wine (red or white). You can get it with rum-soaked cherries in it too which is what Martin and I decided was our favorite derivative of Glühwein.

We went to two Christmas markets in Cologne (there are four there total but it was too cold for us to venture to all four in the few hours we had in Cologne) and one in Göttingen. Each market has its own feel and personality, so to speak. The booths are all coordinated and the lighting is themed differently at each market. And the goods and the foods are different as well, though obviously every market has some Glühwein, crepes, waffles, and let's not forget the bratwurst. The market in Göttingen had half-meter long bratwurst!

Anyway, here's the first one, which was next to the Cologne Cathedral. This is only the entrance to it, it extends in a star shape all around a big stage where there were musicians playing Christmas music:



Here is my first taste of Glühwein (and yes it is on a star-shaped table):



We ended up stealing mugs like these from the Göttingen Christmas market though it's not actually stealing them because you pay a deposit for them when you order the wine.



Here's the nut booth:



And a pic from the inside of the market:



The booths contain things like wool scarves and sweaters and mittens, chocolates or nuts, christmas ornaments (wooden or shiny/sparkly), candles, ceramics, wooden toys, jewelry, and glassware. All of it is unique and in most cases the artists are working on new pieces right in the booths - blowing glass or carving wood or etching drawings into things.

The second market we went to in Cologne was much prettier and more atmospheric than the first one. It did not have as many booths with goods in them but it had many more booths with food in them. Here we got some meat on a stick for dinner, followed by spätzli with fresh creme and herbs as a side dish. I didn't take many pictures here but the lighting was much prettier. There were lanterns that looked like candles in some of the trees (big trees too, it was beautiful) and many trees were lit with spotlights of different colors.

Here are some brass musicians that were playing Christmas music ... some of them had no gloves on!! I couldn't feel my fingers and I had gloves on. I also can't imagine that you can keep an instrument in tune in such bitter cold but they managed okay. Behind them is a statue of something or other, and behind that you can see a church that was very pretty in the moonlight (or maybe it had a spotlight on it?). When I return to Cologne next year to attend the other two markets that I missed this year, I will venture into that church to see the inside. You can also, in the picture below, see a bit of a tree that was filled with dangling hearts. Fun.



Here's a blurry pic of some of the lights:



I didn't take any pictures of the market in Göttingen, sorry. It was raining and I was drunk off Glühwein with rum-soaked cherries in it. It wasn't as pretty as the Cologne markets but the town of Göttingen had many decorations and lights in the streets so that was nice. I'll show a pic or two from Göttingen in my next post.

The Cologne Cathedral

Know what it was like in Cologne? Freezing cold, that's what. It was somewhere below freezing with a strong wind and therefore a significant windchill. Anyway we arrived around 3pm and immediately got ourselves to the famous Dom to get a pic of it before the sun set:





It's black for several reasons. #1 because the train tracks used to be right next to the cathedral and all of the black smoke from the engines discolored the building and #2 because people used to heat their homes with coal and that smoke also discolored the building. I think it makes it look neat but since people no longer heat with coal and the trains no longer run right next to the cathedral the stonework will slowly be replaced with new clean stones and the blackness will be gone.

The inside of the Dom is enormous (obviously not as big area-wise as Saint Peter's but definitely close and it might be taller on the inside but it probably just looked that way due to the architecture or something like that that I don't understand):



Inside the Dom, you could see your breath. It was the coldest church I've ever been in and I have no idea how anybody could sit through a mass in it.

There are beautiful windows of stained glass, more than I've seen in any other church I think:



I really liked the bigger scenes, this one's a little blurry but you get the idea:



Then they let a modern stained glass artist do one of the big windows and this is what he did (I think it's great because it's fun and it's totally different from all the religious scenes you always see in stained glass):





The floors were made up of intricate mosaics:



And look at all the prayers being sent to the Virgin Mary! I've never seen such a large area filled with candles in a church before.



And of course all the dead archbishops of Cologne are buried in the Dom so you can see their tombs as well.

Grittibänz

Grittibänz are sweet little men made of bread. They are made here around Christmastime and they're awesome. They are Switzerland's version of gingerbread men except they're much doughier and not made of gingerbread but instead of sweet buttery bread.

The one below is smoking a pipe (which is not edible) but they also come holding bunches of twigs or a block of chocolate. And when you eat the chocolate with the sweet bread it's the most delicious thing on earth. Sometimes they have bits of sugar sprinkled on them, like the one below, and sometimes they don't. It's not really sugar, it's like the frosting on a cinnamon bun ... so it's sugar mixed with something that's really bad for you but tastes really good.

Here's the one I brought home today, and I would like to note that this is the first time I've gotten one home intact! I almost always eat at least the head off on my walk home from the store while it's still fresh.

Our First Fire

Compare and contrast.

Outside:





And inside:



Of course it cost us about $16 for enough wood for a 3-hour long fire. And Martin had to carry it home up the hill from the bus stop ... so we will have to figure out how to buy the wood in bulk and have it delivered or pick it all up in a car so we don't have to carry big awkward 20-pound boxes around all winter long.

Thanksgiving

Martin and I decided to bring the tradition of Thanksgiving to some of our friends in Switzerland. So we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. We ended up with people from America, Switzerland, Brazil, Germany, and Singapore. The Americans definitely ate the most ... it was impossible trying to convince the Brazilians that you're *supposed* to eat too much on Thanksgiving. And Agnes, the woman from Singapore, could not believe how many desserts we had. She said it was way too much and I tried to explain to her that you always have too much dessert on Thanksgiving and that's so you can eat it for breakfast the next day. She wasn't buying it.

It was a success nonetheless. Here's a before pic of the table (with Martin slaving away in the kitchen, it looks like the turkey is already out too):



And our fun orange and yellow roses:



And here's the "after" pic of everybody:



So, clockwise, you have Martin, Erlend, Sonja, Alex, Marcela, Nick, Agnes, and Andreas. Erlend, Marcela, and Agnes I met in my German classes and Nick is one of Martin's friends from the ETH.

I would have taken more pictures including pictures of the food (and the cheesecake, complete with strawberry topping, which was a huge hit) but we were busy. Martin and I made the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, brussels sprouts with apples, zucchini casserole, carrots, fresh-baked Zopf (we bought the dough though and just had to bake it ourselves), and cheesecake. For our first time making such a large dinner and our first time cooking a turkey, I think we did a really good job if I do say so myself. And we learned a few lessons for next year too!

Rome III

On day three, we awoke to some sunshine and decided to start the day at Castel Sant'Angelo. I wanted to go to this castle because it was round:



I'd never seen a round castle before. There is a tunnel that connects the castle with the Vatican so the pope can flee into the castle if he needs to. So, it's where the popes go to be safe.

Our guide book said you got the best views of Rome from the top so we climbed to the top (compared to the other churches/castles/towers we've climbed around Europe it was the shortest). Saint Peter's, of course, dominates the landscape to the West:



I got a picture of Martin standing next to it:



A view of some suburbs to the northwest, along with one of Rome's seven hills (which were really not very big at all and I had trouble finding seven ... Lisbon's seven hills are much larger and easier to count):



And a view looking towards Rome (yes the Colosseum is in this view, it's just to the left of the big monument with the two chariots on top of it. The Pantheon is also in it I think all the way on the left, cut off a bit):



After wandering around the castle a bit we wandered around Rome some more. Tried to see some churches but they all either had mass going on or were closed for siesta. We didn't realize that many churches close from noon until 4pm every day for a siesta so we missed out on seeing several churches. Then we went to see the Spanish steps. My tour books told me to go see the Spanish steps and I told Martin I wanted to see them and he told me that they're just steps where people hang out and he was right. Not worth the walk all the way to see them:



Then on our way home we found a little side street to walk down, to avoid the busy main street with all the buses on it. This little street was quite cozy and quaint and right after I took this picture it started to downpour on us. And we had to walk home in it without an umbrella because we had left it at the restaurant we went to on Saturday night. But we made it back to our B&B before the thunder and lightning started so it was a success.

Rome II

We spent our second day in Rome at the Vatican. It was pouring rain so it was the perfect day to spend in the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's.

I only took one picture in the Vatican Museum. It is of the ceiling in a room that is about 400 feet long. The entire ceiling is decorated in the same way and the walls of the room are covered with maps of different regions of Italy. I liked this room better than the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles or the Sistine Chapel:



After wandering through the museum we saw the Sistine Chapel. It was neat, but not as impressive as I had expected it to be from the way it had been portrayed in movies and books. I had just imagined it differently.

Next we went into St. Peter's. It's huge and filled with statues and tombs of all the previous Popes. I tried to take some pics, they're a little blurry but you can get the idea.

Here's some pics of the ceilings (hard to get because there are lights shining down at you from the ceiling):





Here are the chairs where all the normal people get to sit during mass:



Here's where the Pope hangs out, this huge pulpit is in the middle of the church:



This stained glass piece is in the front of the church, where the priest usually gives mass from in a normal church. This one small bit of stained glass is beautiful and quite moving:





And here's the whole church, from the back ... a little blurry but you can see the pulpit with the stained glass way behind it:



St. Peter's is 5.7 acres big. There are four statues surrounding the large pulpit in the middle and under or behind them are buried or hidden pieces of the cross that Christ died on and the sword (or spear?) that killed him and the veil that was used to wipe his face. Underneath the church, you can tour the tombs of many of the Popes of the past. There is an area in front of John Paul II's tomb where there were a lot of people praying.

And now here are some pictures of the outside of Saint Peter's and around the Square. The buildings all have statues of saints on top of them (140 statues in all) and they line the entire square. As you can see, the sun started to come out!





I don't think there is usually so much stuff in the square (chairs and large screens set up and the obelisk in the center all blocked off). I think it was all here so people could watch the big ceremony for the 24 new Cardinals on Sunday.





And here's the Swiss guard! They're super colorful. If I was the Pope I'd have the Swiss guard me too ... the Swiss have no wars to fight so they might as well go guard the Pope to keep busy.