Pfingstrosen

It's my birthday today! So I got some flowers from Martin. I don't think I've ever seen these before but now that I've got some I suddenly notice that they're growing in everybody's yards outside. So this must be Pfingstrose season. Pfingsten is a holiday here, known in English as Pentecost. That is where these roses get their name from, I suppose because they always bloom right around Pfingsten (which is really late this year since Easter was really late so of course they're blooming a little early).

They also smell ah-may-zing:







I'm not sure if these are around in the US or not but they were new to me so I figured I'd post them here in case they're new to some of you too. Oh wait I just looked it up and they're Peonies ... we definitely have those in the US.

Balcony Flowers 2011

So, I'm not 100% sure that I like the order that they're in yet, and I'd like to take them all down and make them all big tall orange/red/yellow begonias so my balcony looks like it's on fire, but this is how it looks for now:



Starting from right we have little white/pink begonias (I bought them as babies so they're still growing and will get big), then impatiens, then purple/white petunias, then my herbs (thyme/rosemary/basil), then the big orange/red begonias. I wanted to put my herbs on the side railing and have the whole big railing be flowers but the herbs are in an oddly-shaped box that hangs funny and the side railing hangs over our neighbor's patio and if the box fell down there it wouldn't be good. So, the herbs must remain amongst the flowers.

Here's a closer look at the orange/red begonias but I think both of these pictures came out blurry so I'll have to try again (i.e. Martin will have to take the picture):



The middle one is a little out of control (large) but I'm sure the side ones will catch up eventually.



The impatiens are pretty cool too, one is fuchsia (yes that's the correct spelling, which I just learned), one is a bright pink, and one is a bright pink with cool white patterns on it.

Here's Onyx's cat grass:



The last one I bought died in just a few days but this one I planted in a big planter and it's been happy so far. Every morning after his breakfast Onyx goes out onto the balcony and chomps on his cat grass for awhile. That's his routine. I'll get a picture of it eventually. You can see where he's eaten it around the sides, where it's shorter.

And here's some pretty purple flower. I have no idea what it is I just thought it was pretty and bought it, then didn't have room in my boxes for it so it got its own planter that it will hopefully grow into and look awesome:



I realize that I need to pick my favorite flowers and make a pattern on my balcony for it to look its best (i.e. for it to look like all the other balconies here) but I can never resist buying different flowers in different colors when I see them all at the store (plus I like certain colors and Martin likes other colors so we need a little of everything). I guess whatever lasts the longest this year will win the honor of being what I buy next year for the whole balcony.

The SOLA

This past weekend Martin and I participated in a relay race all around the hills surrounding Zurich called the SOLA (not sure what that stands for but it'd be in German anyway). We ran on a team made up of members of Martin's lab group, there were 14 of us total and together we ran 116.57km and 2,635m of uphill in 9:39:02, finishing 178th out of 808 teams. We each ran a different section of the race, all different distances with different amounts of uphill/downhill. There were photographers taking pics of the runners on each section and so I have saved some of them off to show you us at our very sweatiest and most worn out (the photographers were always at the end of each section and got you right when you were about to die):

Here's Martin, he did leg 13 out of 14:



Doesn't he look good? Not a drop of sweat on him it seems. You'd never know he's been unable to walk ever since due to his achilles being swollen up to golf ball size. Then there's me, the sweatfest of the ladies' advanced leg:



I wasn't going to post the pic of myself because I look awful in it but then I looked at the pics of all the other women on my leg and they all look awful so this pic of me really isn't so bad in the grand scheme of things.

Here's the guy who ran before me, whom I couldn't find at my starting line and therefore wasted 1-2 minutes of my time. He just ran the Madrid marathon and on his leg in the SOLA he finished 98th out of 808:



He looks awesome too. And the background in that pic is gorgeous, we sure did run through some nice scenic areas around Zürich. And here's the guy who ran after me, Mattias. He was tired and sweaty just like me because we got to run at the hottest time of day on a hot sunny day. He took a fun pic where he was smiling but I like the "in the zone" pics better:



Here's Carine, one of the other women on our team (there were 3 of us):



Karin got to run a section where women and seniors get to take a shortcut. I wish I'd had that section, I love shortcuts.

Here's Julian (I think ... his arm is over the number but it really looks like him), he ran the longest section which was 14km (8 miles):



And here's Sebastien, who ran up Uetliberg, which is a short leg at only 6km but it's all uphill(by far the steepest leg) and includes lots of stairs. This picture is taken right at the top of all the stairs which I believe is right when Sebastien thought he was going to pass out and had to walk a bit. Looks like there's a guy standing behind him taking a break too. I'm glad I wasn't volunteered for this leg.




Overall, it was a fun time, but we've all been paying for it since with really sore and tired legs.

Spring II

Here is a picture of somebody's front lawn filled with little wildflowers. I wrote about these flowers in an earlier post, titled Spring, but didn't have a picture of a lawn filled with them. But now I do:



This is what lawns around apartment complexes look like. I quite enjoy it. I tried to get a close-up:



All the flowers are gone now but in March and early April they're in full bloom.

Easter in Switzerland

Easter is, I think, the biggest holiday of the year here. You can tell because it's the holiday where they fill the entire front of the grocery store with aisles of chocolate bunnies and Easter decorations. For comparison, there was no candy for Valentine's Day, or Halloween, and very little for Christmas. And most people had a 4-day weekend for Easter as well. You don't see that in the US! But people here tend to take religious holidays much more seriously than we do in America. They get Ascension and Pentecost as days off from work as well, which I had never heard of before I came here.

Everybody knows that swiss chocolate is quite delicious. One of the Swiss chocolate companies is Lindt (I'm sure you're all familiar with it). Here in Switzerland, they make a really big chocolate bunny - it weighs 1kg (2.2 lbs). Here are some pictures of it so you can get an idea of its size:





I think this picture makes Onyx look like he has a freakishly long neck:



I think the bunny could have eaten Onyx whole.