Hiking in the Jura

The Jura mountain range is in western Switzerland and is not as high or as steep as the Alps. They're really more like big hills. And since they are so low it means they don't get nearly as much snow as the Alps. Which means you can hike there in March! At least you could this year. We had a gorgeous 60-degree day and Nico wanted to do a specific hike that leads you by a restaurant with excellent food and we couldn't argue with that. Actually, the hike led us by 4 different restaurants and we stopped at the first two for a drink and the last one for a full meal. Not a bad day!

There actually was a little bit of snow. Which led to a little snowball fight:



A pretty view:



The sweetest dog ever at the second restaurant:



Drinks at the second restaurant (that's coffee schnapps for Nico):



The second restaurant was actually a farmhouse more than a restaurant. Here's what was being done in the fields around the restaurant (thankfully we were upwind where we were sitting):



And, finally, dinner at the fourth restaurant. The guys all ordered foal steak (baby horse). The portions were enormous yet much cheaper than what you'd pay in Zürich:



Doesn't look like we did much hiking, does it? The hike itself was about 6 miles and the first hour was a steep uphill but after that it was pretty easygoing. It wasn't as picturesque as hiking in the Alps but for a March hike I'd highly recommend it.

Öpfelchammer

Last night we had dinner at a restaurant called Öpfelchammer (roughly translates to apple room in English). This restaurant serves traditional Swiss food that is very tasty (and expensive). Martin and I have wanted to go to this restaurant for the past year and a half so we were happy to finally get there before we left for Germany. What makes Öpfelchammer unique is that there is a big wooden beam that goes across the ceiling and each customer is challenged to jump up and over it, squiggle across the beam next to it, and then hang upside down while drinking a glass of white wine. If you can do that, you get to write your name on the wall.

This all takes place in the Weinstübe which is a small cozy room where the only beverages served are wine, water, grape juice, and port. Here's a picture of the beams that you have to get yourself up and over. The space at the top is very small so it's a lot harder to do than it looks. A lot of people hit their heads on the ceiling pretty hard while trying to jump through:



Writing on the walls from people who have made it over the beams:



Here's one guy trying to do it ... there was a bachelor party there and they were all wearing shirts that said "Letzter Tag in Freiheit", or, "last day of freedom". This guy is failing miserably and he actually hit his head pretty hard several times. I think he was the groom so he was probably already three sheets to the wind and didn't feel it anyway:



Here's one of the guys that was successful, drinking the wine while upside down. I think he must have been some sort of gymnast though because he did it right away and made it look easy:

Mmmmmmmm ... chocolate.

I took a few pictures of the chocolate selection in our local grocery store here in Zürich. 100% swiss chocolate ... I will miss it when we move to Germany.





Easter is the biggest holiday of the year in Switzerland. The candy has been out in the grocery stores for weeks already. So many chocolate bunnies to choose from, so little time. Here are some neon colored chocolate bunnies by the checkout counters:



I've held back from buying any chocolate bunnies yet this year. I will likely buy a little golden Lindt chocolate bunny at some point though ... they're too good to resist.

Cross-country Skiing in Davos

This past weekend we went to Davos for a little fun in the snow. I really like Davos because there is a lot to do there. There's a huge swimming/spa center, a sport center, 50 miles of cross-country skiing trails, downhill resorts, winter walking trails, shopping, etc. It's definitely a possible location for a second home, once we figure out where our first home will be!

I took a few pictures while I was xc skiing on Saturday. I didn't take any on Sunday because it was a blizzard and it wasn't worth bringing the camera out just to take pictures of white on white. So here are some of my views on Saturday.

Our New Apartment!

Last week we drove back up to Germany for another round of apartment hunting. And we found a place. It's in Bad Dürkheim which is about 20km west of Ludwigshafen. It's abutted to the west by rolling hills and the Palatinate Forest and it's located on the Weinstrasse and surrounded by vineyards. Plus it's a cute town.

We managed to forget the camera when we when apartment hunting last week but I do have a floor plan and a picture of the view from the big balcony (the apartment has two balconies, this one is bigger than the kitchen) looking south:



Unfortunately the commute from Bad Dürkheim is not ideal for Martin ... 10 minute walk to the train station, which is fine, followed by 40 minutes on an above-ground tram to get to Ludwigshafen, followed by another tram or train ride to get to BASF. So it'll probably be about an hour for him each way to work. So we will continue searching for a more ideal location to live in after we move in late April. But this is a start - at least it's in a much nicer place than Ludwigshafen and there are no smoke stacks in the view!

Ludwigshafen: First Impressions

The first thing out of my mouth when I saw Ludwigshafen on the horizon was something like "Are all those smokestacks in Ludwigshafen?". It turns out that, yes, they certainly are.

Okay I know I've been spoiled the past few years living in Zürich. It's clean, it's organized, the public transport system is the best in the world, and the scenery is some of the most beautiful on earth. There is almost no traffic, the produce is fresh and plentiful, and there is loads of green space filled with trails to wander around on. The buildings are capped at 6 stories, there are no major highways going through town, and no major industrial companies here to make it look ugly.

Now take most of those statements I just made about Zürich and reverse them and you have Ludwigshafen. Sure there are some cute areas in Ludwigshafen ... here's a pic of one of them with some smokestacks in the background:



We viewed four apartments while in Ludwigshafen yesterday. The one with the most potential was on the 12th floor of a 21-story building. There was nothing wrong with the apartment - clean, hardwood floors, enormous balcony that you can go out onto from any room in the apartment, and it faced south and east so it will get lots of daylight. But here's the view:



Here I zoomed in a bit:



I lost count of how many smokestacks you can see from this apartment. Okay to be fair those big fields are probably green and lovely in the summer and that big snowy patch is a lake and there's got to be some sort of pathway to walk or jog on around it. The view above is to the left ... straight ahead is another high-rise apartment building ... to the right is a major 4-lane busy road and next to that are the train tracks. Though to be fair there are no smokestacks in that direction and you can even see a few hills far in the distance:



You can see that the balcony is enormous, every door there goes into the apartment and the balcony even wraps around the other side of the building a bit.

I asked our realtor how I would go about getting to a grocery store on foot and she said well you take your car. I said, we don't have a car to which she replied then you go on bike. Well we don't have bikes either. I have gotten so used to being able to walk everywhere and not depend on a car it's kind of depressing that I will have to start driving everywhere again.

The other thing I found amusing about Ludwigshafen is how much of it is taken up by BASF (it employs over 30,000 people which is about half the population of Ludwigshafen though of course not all BASF employees live in Ludwigshafen but I'd guess about half of them do). Two of the apartments we looked at were right across the street from it ... one of them right across from the building that Martin will be working in. I could buy some binoculars and spy on him throughout the day from that apartment. Here's a pic from the kitchen of another apartment ... it's just an eyeful of BASF:



And that's right, that kitchen is empty. Germans take their kitchens with them every time they move! Appliances, sink, countertops, cabinets ... everything. So when you move to Germany add about $5k to your moving costs because you have to buy and install an entire kitchen wherever you move in to. On the bright side, that kitchen is yours for life and you get to take it with you when you leave. Isn't that swell? Ha. Because what if the cabinets don't match where you move to next? Or don't fit properly into the new kitchen? Or what if you're moving overseas and the shipping costs of your kitchen appliances are too high to take them with you? I just don't understand why Germans carry their kitchens with them everywhere, at least not when they're renting apartments.

Okay but there were some good things about Ludwigshafen as well like the cheaper prices compared to Switzerland, the number of days of sunshine per year (much higher than that of Zürich for sure), and the number of Turkish people there! We found a döner kebab place for lunch and saw a Turkish specialty grocery store and one of the apartments we looked at was being rented out by a couple of Turkish guys. Not sure what they all find so appealing about the area but I will be happy to eat their food on a regular basis. If only they'd export their wine to Germany too!

Let's end this blog post with some relaxing pictures Martin took on a snowy walk in the woods behind our apartment in Zürich:





Ahhhhhh. Now that's better. Thankfully Zürich is only a 3-hour train ride from Ludwigshafen (Basel is only about 2).

Apero

A fun concept here in Switzerland has been that of "Apero" which more or less would translate to "cocktail hour" in English. It's basically a time of drinks and snacks, usually before a meal. When I meet with my Swiss friend Petra we meet for an apero after work ... when we go to a dinner party it starts with an apero. The word is the same in any language it seems. Most interesting is that Martin's lab group has regular aperos. Every time a member of the group defends a dissertation or leaves the group for a new job that member has to throw an apero. This involves buying a ridiculous amount of alcohol since there are over 20 20-something men in Martin's group. There is also usually a nice spread of food like bread and cheese, nuts, chips, and other snacky fare. The entire group gathers at 4 or 5pm and they give a nice gift to the member who is leaving and then they drink and snack for hours on end. It usually rolls into dinner and then into post-dinner drinks as well. It's a nice way to send somebody off on a new stage of their life be it to a post-doc or a job.

It's kind of silly to put up pictures of an apero because they're just pictures of drinking but here are a few pictures of an apero for our friend Nick from yesterday. He is leaving for a job at Dupont in Delaware. As you can see, the apero is just in a classroom in the chemistry building. Sometimes they are outside but since it's cold and rainy here that wasn't possible. I only arrived one hour after it started but all the food was already gone (it's impossible to keep food around with so many hungry men) so I didn't get any pictures of what it should really look like. In this picture is the one girl in the lab group, Camille:







And this is from last year's Christmas party (all of these people were in Martin's lab group, plus there were more sitting behind me):