Success!

We are now Swiss.



Notice how I got the neighbor's balcony in so you can see their planter boxes. They seem to have wildflowers growing in theirs but it still looks nice.



Now we just need to fill 3 more of those boxes, keep all of the plants not only alive but thriving and gorgeous when viewed by neighbors, and also buy some non-flowering plants to fill pots that will sit around our deck and grow over the railings and be green. Oh and then we have a second balcony that we'll also need to decorate similarly. But by then it'll be winter!

For now, we're happy with our one box. We want to definitely fill a second box with herbs. I already bought a basil plant and have been using it. Then we want to buy chives, thyme, and maybe rosemary. I've always wanted to grow my own herbs so I'm pretty excited about it.

The bigger purple flowers are Japanese roses but I'm not sure what the others are. The little purple one looks like a violet but I'm probably wrong.

A Walk in the Woods 2

Our new apartment sits less than a quarter mile from a little forest on top of a hill filled with nice trails for walking, running, or biking. All of the hills surrounding Zürich are covered with such trails. You have to walk up a steep hill to get to any of them, but once you're at the top and surrounded by forest it's worth it. It's an easy way to get away from the city and feel like you're in the middle of nowhere for a little while.

So this morning we went for a walk in the woods behind our apartment. First you walk up a steep hill (though fairly short in comparison to other hills around Zürich).

These are the cows at the farm right on the outskirts of the forest:



And here's the view that the cows have while they eat their grass:



You can see some of this view from one of the balconies at our apartment but you have to look between two other buildings and around a really big tree to see it.

There are lots of these big piles of wood in the forest. There are also some piles of neatly stacked chopped wood. Dad you'd appreciate them ... I didn't get a picture of the chopped wood though. But if possible the piles are even neater than yours! Martin and I aren't sure how much wood costs here, but we're nervous that it will be expensive so we're keeping the supply of wood in the forest in mind in case we need to steal some to have fires in our fireplace. j/k.



And here's a picture of one of the trails through the woods:

The new apartment

We have space now! I just realized I didn't take a picture of the fireplace but I don't have time to take one and upload it right now because today is pretty busy. This entire week is going to be incredibly busy. So here are some pics of the new apartment. Let's call these the "before" pictures.

The master bedroom (love the king sized bed!):



The door to the balcony off the master bedroom (this balcony is also off of the second bedroom):



The guest bedroom. It is quite spacious. It currently has two twin beds in it but we are replacing them with a double bed. We just have to figure out how to dispose of two twin beds ...



This is the view right when you walk in the front door. The master bedroom is immediately on your left (you can't see the door), with the guest bedroom next on the left. The bathroom is on the right. Our awesome kitchen table and chairs are straight ahead. I plan to replace those chairs before anything else.



And here is the kitchen. It's pretty small but plenty big for the two of us. And it's huge compared to our closet kitchen in our studio apartment.





A view from the kitchen over into the living room. The fireplace is where the bit of bricks are sticking out of the wall on the right hand side. Yes that is a dryer in the bottom right corner. We plan to get rid of that but have to figure out how to sell it or dispose of it. We don't want or need a dryer in our living/dining room!



More living room:



I love all of the huge windows there are here. The apartment gets amazing light all day long. The bedrooms and kitchen face East, which I prefer because I'm a morning person. Here's the side balcony, which is bigger than the one off of the bedrooms. It has an ugly table and chairs on it that we plan to get rid of and replace. Or maybe store in the basement in case we need emergency chairs and a table for a dinner party.



We have kind of a foresty area behind the apartment, as you can see off the side of the balcony above. But we're surrounded by other buildings on the other 3 sides of our building. But there's still a lot of grassy areas here and it's much more wooded and green than our downtown apartment was. Just behind our apartment is a forest with trails through it that you can walk/run/hike/bike on. I haven't gone exploring in it yet but maybe I'll get in there this weekend if it's not raining.

Oh and the bathroom! Double vanities! Yay!

Schloss Kyburg

This afternoon, despite 48-degree temperatures, wind, and rain, we went to visit Schloss Kyburg. Schloss Kyburg is a castle about 30 minutes outside of Zürich ... 10 minutes by train followed by about 20 minutes on a bus. But when you're on the bus you're traveling through tiny towns/villages(called Dorfs in German) and lush green forests so it's quite nice. But of course everything here is lush and green because it never stops raining!

So we traveled to the castle and started wandering around. It was a very kid-friendly place with lots of games in every room and fun little things to do. In the bedroom you could pack a suitcase with things to travel to Paris with back in 1780 which was interesting. They wouldn't let me pack my cell phone or credit card because I guess they didn't exist back then. Who knew. It was nice to see someplace trying so hard to get children interested in history ... we've never been to a historical site that has been so kid-friendly and so interactive. It was kind of like being in a children's history museum, except it was all about the Kyburg castle and the people who lived in it.

One room was filled with games (cards, chess, lots of little kids games). And Martin entertained himself for awhile:



He was not successful.



We also found a room with a lot of weapons:





Some pictures from the courtyard of the castle:





The castle was not very big but there were a lot of rooms in it that you could wander around in. Here is a view from the outside of it:



And some pictures of the Dorf that the castle is in (there were several cats around too but they didn't want to have their pictures taken today apparently):





We always see a lot of cats in our wanderings here in Switzerland. On my morning runs I always see one or two, and almost always different cats too so most people here must own cats. Only a few of them have been brave enough to come over to me and let me pet them. They're lucky I haven't taken any of them home with me yet because I've been really tempted.

So after being in the cold and rain for a few hours Martin came home and had to be revived with a beer, a soccer game, and a warm blanket:



In 3 days, we will be able to drink our cocktails on a sofa instead of on a bed because we won't be living in a one-room apartment the size of a dorm room anymore.

Random

Below is my new orange umbrella. It makes me happy when it rains outside. Since I can't afford a rain coat here, I will just always have to carry my fun orange umbrella with me.





And, Martin went to the store today and came home with corn on the cob. From Florida, of all places. We'll see how it tastes when we cook it up tonight:



Those are my random posts for today.

Bread

Since it has been cloudy, cold, and rainy here for a solid week now and it doesn't look like it's going to clear up for almost another week, I decided to write a post about my favorite breads (which is a post that I don't have to get outside to take pictures for).

My first favorite bread is Zopf. Zopf is a braided bread that the Swiss make on Sundays and holidays. It reminds me a bit of egg or challah bread in appearance, except it's lighter (it doesn't use much butter or fat). It is somewhat sweet, but not too sweet. Just sweet enough that you can't stop eating it. Or at least I can't when I have one in my hands. I have been researching Zopf recipes because we will have an oven in our new apartment (which we move into next week!) and I plan to try to perfect the art of making Zopf from scratch.

Bakeries and grocery stores here sell Zopf on Saturdays (as most stores are closed on Sundays so you have to stock up on Zopf on Saturday) but a few stores sell Zopf all week long for us foreigners who can't wait until Saturday to eat it.

So here are a few pictures of Zopf:





If anybody is interested in the recipe, there are lots on the internet. I could just ask some Swiss people here how to make it, as almost all of them have a family recipe, but I'll just start with some internet recipes for my first few tries and see how they come out.

My other favorite bread here I call pretzel bread. It's basically the same thing as a soft warm pretzel, except in a loaf of bread. So it has a slightly tough outside to it (it doesn't have salt drizzled on it) and then it's all warm and soft on the inside and a little salty. There is salt baked into the inside of it. Just a little bit, so it's just like a fresh pretzel, only bigger.





So those are my two favorite breads here. Other than croissants, of course. Those go without saying.

Uetliberg Hike

Yesterday we took the S10 train from Zürich to Uetliberg. The S10 is Europe's steepest normal-gauge adhesion railway. I actually thought it would be impressively steep but it didn't seem like anything spectacular to me.

Once at Uetliberg, we hiked along the ridge of one of the hills that runs along Zürich and the Zürichsee (the lake). It was cloudy and foggy out so the pictures aren't spectacular but I figured I'd post some pictures anyway. It was different to be hiking on the Western side of the lake as prior to yesterday I had only been North or East of the lake when hiking/wandering around.

As soon as you start hiking, there is the Sun. The hike along the ridge has models of the planets along it on a scale of 1:1 billion. Neat. So here's the sun:



The Sun is obviously the largest modeled object. We continued to walk on up to a hotel and viewing tower with 360-degree views of Zürich and the lake and the surrounding mountains/hills:



As you can see, the weather was spectacular. But at least it remained dry for our walk.





Further along the hike we found some cows. They had cow bells on so you could hear them from pretty far away:



We continued to walk on trails through the woods and through open fields. You got nice views over the lake and also out to the West over the green hills.



We found Saturn. The other planets were pretty tiny, just little specks really for Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, but Saturn was large enough to take a picture of. And, it's easily recognizable with its rings:





At our halfway point there was a cafe (of course) where we stopped and had a big beer and enjoyed a nice view:





This is looking back towards Sürich:



And then we turned around and walked back to the beginning and got back onto the S10 to go home.

Flowers!

There are so many gorgeous flowers around Zürich. I see different flowers every time I go for a run and I finally took my camera out one day to get pictures of some of them.







Annoyingly, there was some sort of speck of dust on the camera lens for all of these pictures. It's not noticeable in most of the pictures, but it annoys me in this one in particular:







These are a close-up of some purple flowers on a bush.



The bush is actually covered with these little flowers:







You can't really tell here but these flowers are fairly large and they really stand out with their yellow centers:





I think it's my new favorite flower.





That's my Zürich flower show for today.