Another Walk and Where Martin Works

Yesterday we took a stroll up and over the big hill behind our apartment. On the top of the hill is the science campus of the ETH, where Martin works. We took a few pics of it because I've been meaning to blog about it since I arrived in Zürich:



He works in this huge building with five "fingers" to it. You can't tell but you can see the mountains (on rare clear days) from these buildings and they all have balconies outside of their labs so you can wander outside and get some fresh air whenever you want to.

Here's a sign for the campus:



The same big building but from a different angle (Martin works in the middle one). There are other buildings on this campus as well but this is the biggest:



Sometimes there are cows in the fields around the buildings but when we took these pics they were in their barn across the street mooing at us instead.

We kept wandering over the hill and down the other side where you get a great view of Zürich (and the mountains, when it's clear but today it was very hazy). You can barely make out the lake in the picture below but on really clear days this view is amazing:



There are lots of benches up at the top and a nice restaurant that we keep meaning to go to but never do ... the weather has to be nice so you have a good view or it's not worth it.



The two pictures above show a path with some hedges and buildings on either side of it. We should have taken pictures of these areas because they're garden plots. They're all over Zürich but up on this hill there are a few hundred and they have a killer view. Each plot has a shed, which some people use as a kitchen, and a small amount of land where you can garden and grow things. Some people were having barbecues while we were walking by ... you can set up a little table and chairs on your plot too and have friends over and eat all the things you've grown. And look at the view these plots have!! I'd love to have one but Martin and I think these plots must be impossible to get and are just handed down from generation to generation within a family.

There are also deer up at the top ... I'm not sure why but there's a fenced in area filled with deer. Here I am entranced by them:



And here's the resident buck. They're not quite like the deer from the US but definitely very similar.



And that was our walk yesterday.

Cat Grass

I bought something called "Cat Grass" at the grocery store yesterday which I thought was catnip but I brought it home and fully read the tag (when I realized Onyx wasn't all that excited by it) and it's actually just grass with "healthy necessary minerals" in it that cats need. It also somehow helps with hairball digestion. So, I tried to buy Onyx catnip for Valentine's day but failed. He is now in his fifth month without catnip here but I'll find some eventually!

I learned this past week that there are 1 million cats in Switzerland. 8 million people and 1 million cats ... that are registered. Plenty more feral cats in the barns in the mountains for sure. In my mind, this means that almost everybody here owns a cat since most households have more than one person in them and many cats are not registered.

Anyway here are some pics of Onyx with his cat grass, which he thankfully did eat a little of so I didn't waste $2.90 buying it.





And here he is enjoying his mid-morning patch of sunshine in the living room:



On sunny days that's where he sits from 10-11 in the morning because that's when the sun comes in through the balcony door.

That's the Onyx update for now.

Corviglia and Diavolezza

Corviglia and Diavolezza are the ski resorts we went to in St. Moritz. I think there are 5 ski resorts in the St. Moritz area, though one is just for sledding which is pretty neat. This southeastern area of the Alps, which includes St. Moritz, is known as the Engadin and it is known for sunshine (it has 322 sunny days per year which is more than Colorado) and plentiful outdoor activities.

We went to Corviglia on Saturday and I really liked it there. It was easy to get around, it was sunny, the trails were nice and wide and not too steep, and the snow was packed but not icy. I took some pics of the clouds starting to roll in from below:





And some more mountains from the top ... I was sitting on my butt to take this picture and nowhere near the edge so it's not the best view but you get the idea.



On Sunday we went to Diavolezza. We really liked it there. It has one really long run that covers 1,000 meters of vertical and a couple of shorter runs you can do on a small lift at the top and that's it. But that's all you need! I was nervous going here because there are no easy trails, it's all intermediate or advanced and the shorter trails at the top should be labeled as advanced, no joke, but they're not. Intermediate trails here range from somewhat flat to terrifyingly steep ... which ain't right. You never know what you're going to get until you try it. Thankfully the long run at Diavolezza had an advanced route and an intermediate route and the intermediate route was just right for me ... wide open trails. It had a few flat areas one of which I (along with all the other snowboarders and some skiers) ended up hiking every single time.

The views at Diavolezza were breathtaking. They rivaled the views we had while skiing at Lake Louise or Sunshine in Banff. But, enough words, here are the pictures:

These two I took from the top:





Here I am resting on my butt again:



In the afternoon Martin skied down a glacier. Instead of doing the long run down the front, you could go over the back of the mountain and ski over a glacier. The down side was that you had to wait at the bottom for a train to get back to the base of the mountain. Since Martin had no idea when the trains ran he of course just missed one when he got to the bottom and had to wait for an hour for the next one. But he got some great pictures on his way down!





You had to stay between the poles on this run to avoid falling to your death but thankfully the trail was well marked. I'm glad I didn't try it in the end because Martin said it had a lot of flat spots that I would have had to hike through.











Just look at all those glaciers ... global warming can't possibly exist. :)

Here are some pics we took from the car on the drive home ...





The Engadin is absolutely gorgeous ... I highly recommend making a trip there, if you have the time and the money. Martin and I decided it was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, until we get rich and can afford to get back there again.

A Bit About St Moritz

We stopped skiing early on Saturday to wander around St Moritz a little bit. It's filled with expensive designer shops, just like Bahnhofstrasse in Zürich. Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc. The pedestrian area is not very large or unusually ritzy or upscale. Almost everybody there was wearing fur which I found somewhat disconcerting. Lots of long fur coats, fur hats, fur boots, and even big furry mittens. Ridiculous ... especially the big shaggy boots. I would have gotten a picture of some of them but I wasn't brave enough to take somebody else's picture on the street.

I got a picture of the back of the big 5-star hotel, Badrutt's Palace Hotel (I think there's a woman in a fur coat in this picture):



If you go to this website it shows you the "big 5" 5-star hotels in St Moritz:

http://www.stmoritz.ch/index.php?id=595&L=1

There's a big lake in front of Badrutt's Palace Hotel where there were lots of tents and people. Looks like there are horse races on the lake, which is different. There are also horse and buggy rides through the town ... we saw a few ... maybe people in St Moritz use those instead of cabs.

Here are a few other pics from around the pedestrian zone:







Anyway, I wasn't all that impressed with the town of St Moritz but the surrounding mountains and available outdoor activities were certainly impressive. There is a cross country skiing marathon that takes place there every year that looks quite popular. And there were countless people snowshoeing, ice climbing, skiing, xc skiing, and just wandering around on the big lake and on the streets. I hope to post some pics from skiing sometime over the next few days but our cell phone is currently refusing to speak to our computers so we'll see.

Here's a picture of the Engadin xc ski marathon:

Some Skiing Pictures

I don't even know the name of the place that Martin and his friend Julian skied at last Sunday (though I think they went to Lenzerheide but I could be wrong) but Martin took some pictures with the cell phone so I'm going to post them here for your viewing enjoyment since I have failed at getting pictures of ski resorts here so far.











This coming weekend we're going to St Moritz for some skiing and snowboarding so hopefully I will take some good pictures there. St Moritz is where all the rich and famous go to ski so it should be interesting.

Swiss Fondue

Last night we gathered at Nico's for some cheese fondue. Martin's parents make cheese fondue fairly often so I was interested to see how a Swiss person would make this Swiss specialty ... if it would taste any differently or if any secret ingredients were used.

Obviously, they can use slightly different cheese in Switzerland that is not available in the US. They still use gruyere and emmentaler but they also use Appenzeller which you can probably find in specialty stores in the US (I've never seen it) but it probably costs quite a bit.

Nico decorated the table quite nicely with Swiss flag napkins:



I'm not sure there were any secret ingredients involved that I was unaware of other than the use of Appenzeller cheese but the fondue tasted very different to me. More cheesy and less winey, at least in our pot. The pot on the other side of the table tasted more winey. They were both good, of course. Here's Martin digging in:



And to go with fondue, you apparently have to drink cherry schnapps. Nico said there's an argument and some people like pear schnapps better but the tradition is cherry schnapps. The one on the left is cherry schnapps, unlabeled and sketchy looking because it's homemade:



It was quite tasty and possibly better than the store-bought bottle of cherry schnapps we moved on to when we ran out of the homemade stuff. In Switzerland you have to have a license to make your own alcohol ... unless you own a cow. If you own a cow then you don't need the license. Maybe that's why there are so many cows in Switzerland! But they sure are happy cows with all the pretty vistas they have in the mountains.

Here's our American friend Nick, on the right, and his friend Tom who was visiting from the US. It was his first try of cheese fondue and he was a big fan:



Here's a round of schnapps. It is some sort of rule that when your pot is half finished you do a round of schnapps. Then afterwards I guess you just do them randomly or sip schnapps at your leisure because it supposedly aids in digestion.



It's also traditional to drink tea throughout the meal, hot tea, either black or green or herbal I don't think it matters. I drank some herbal mint tea and I'm pretty sure that that helped my stomach more than all the schnapps.

And of course here's our host Nico, on the right, with Oliver and Oliver's girlfriend whom I managed to catch in the middle of saying something:



Another thing Nico invited some people to try was snuff which is basically tobacco that you snort through your nose and seems popular in Switzerland. Nico is in the middle of his annual three weeks of Swiss army training and apparently they do snuff all day long during training (but don't touch it the rest of the year because it will ruin your nose). I think they have to though in order to stay awake for 18 hours per day hauling heavy packs around in the mountains (I believe Nico said he has to carry around anti-tank missiles). He's in the mountain infantry so mountains are what they do. Anyway you just put it onto your hand and inhale it and before everybody did it they all had to hold their hands in the middle like you see below while some funny Swiss saying was read (it was different every time but always funny):



None of the ladies would go near it (and some of the guys stayed away as well). Definitely not my cup of tea!

Portugal: Lisbon

We stayed at a great hotel in Lisbon with a great view of the city. Here's a view of the castle from our hotel:



And a view in the other direction:



The only downside to our hotel was the hill it was on and all the confusing turns you had to make to get down to the main part of the city. But once you figure out the route it's no big deal. We would often take cabs home at night to avoid walking up the hill though. Good luck finding a hotel that's not on a hill in Lisbon - it has seven hills and they're all good sized.

We have now been to Lisbon three times and have never been bored or disappointed. Our first time there we visited the Monument to the Discoveries:





And we happened upon the gay pride parade:



And we visited the castle, where there were lots of cats:





And we visited a neat church which had great carvings on the inside of it but I only have a picture of the outside:



And here are a few more pictures of Lisbon from a different vantage point. The castle:



The straight streets in this picture are in the area known as "Baixa". It contains lots of shopping and some pretty big bakeries filled with goodies:



Here's a street-level view of Baixa:



We always go to the area of Lisbon called the Bairro Alto to grab some drinks and dinner. The Bairro Alto is filled with restaurants with all different flavors of food to choose from (it is also filled with bars so you can hang out in that area all night long). And we always go to a Brazilian steakhouse named Sul for some mojitos because the mojitos are good there. I highly recommend it.

When we were in Lisbon just after Christmas, it was filled with Christmas lights. It was nice just walking through all the streets because every street had a different theme and different types and colors of lights.