Monday, July 13, 2009
the week ends the weeks begins...take these chances...lights down, you up and die
As for my command of German it has improved greatly since I’ve been here, but before I came I was fortunate enough to take German from Janet and Karein in the RC and so I felt very prepared when I came here. I get compliments on my speaking all of the time and people don’t believe how short of a time I’ve been speaking. I am able to follow conversations and participate and even a bit of swiss german, though it is certainly more challenging. Fortunately many of my coworkers are German and the Mittagsvisite every day is carried out in hoch Deutsch and most Swiss (read all Swiss) speak hoch Deutsch with me. What I really find funny though is Barysch. When I met my Münchner friends in München they would speak Barysch to me every now and again and I had absolutely no idea what was goin on. I love the Barysch accent though. My boss is originally from Bayern and whenever I hear him or any of my other Barysch friends speak English it sounds just like Konan the Barbarian and it brings me great joy.
Last weekend I went to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. Montreux is a small French-speaking town on the banks of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva though the Montreux people hate it when people call it that because it implies that Geneva owns it or something like that). The festival is the most famous in Switzerland and one of the most prestigious in Europe. Though originally exclusively a jazz festival it now includes every imaginable genre of music. Saturday morning I woke up and started heading toward the festival area around 8am or so. I stopped and asked a man if he spoke English and he said no, but he called his friend over. I insisted that it was ok and that I would be fine but he said “No! Gentlemen.” He said assertively. And as he hollered at his friend he referred to me as a “jolie mademoiselle” and even the zero French speaking I understood the compliment. He told me that I should go to Château de Chillon, so I did. It is the most visited historical monument in Switzerland. It was very beautiful and old and the nice man at the door let me in before it even opened. It’s on a little island and very, very cool. After that I had gar keine Anug what I should do so I asked the guy in the gift shop and he said well you must go to a vineyard.
Apparently the little towns on the shore of Lac Léman are quite well known for their vineyards. I proceeded to a little town a couple towns down to a vineyard that the gift-shop-man had recommended and I wine tasted there with the family. The vineyard had been in the family since 1843 and four generations of vintners were sitting there in the room hanging out with me: a half American (mom from LA) 3 year old adorable little girl, her dad, his dad, and his dad. The vineyard had beautiful view over the whole vineyard, the town, and the lake. The tasting involved white wine which the area is known for, rosé, shiraz, red blends, etc. There was yummy bread, gruyere (the only cheese according to one of the vintners), and various meats (some homemade from the butcher next door). It was a lovely afternoon. The room was filled with cow bells that one of the vintners had won in “Swiss fighting” matches. Afterwards I went back to Chillon with one of the vintners and we went swimming at the beach there. We hung out there for a while and then I headed into the festival. Surprisingly I saw a familiar face and after exchanging greetings I hung out with some of Luk’s crew for a while and listened to music in the park. After that I went to the Steely Dan, Dave Matthews Band, and Chickenfoot (w/ Sammy Hagar) concert. It was mind blowing. All of them were such excellent entertainers, I was thoroughly impressed. Afterwards I met up with the crew again and then headed back to the hostel. The hostel was great and included breakfast which was nice. Sunday I got up and headed over to Old Town and cruised around. There was a beautiful Überblick of the whole town and Lac Lèman.
I then headed back to the festival and laid in a canvas reclining beach chair for hours on end and listened to big band jazz in the park and read the Time Traveler’s Wife between acts. I took the train back to Zürich after buying mom a surprise present and went to bed. Monday after work I headed down to the river with a kilo of cherries and celebrated the cherry festival by swimming, spitting pits, and reading. Wednesday I went to the Kunsthaus (art museum) and that was nice. It would have been nicer if I was someone who understood art, but I einfach don’t so…jedenfalls. Thursday Dr. D gave a lecture at a five star hotel off Bahnhoff Strasse. It was quite lovely and they fed us cute little sex-and-the-city food and really good orange juice, afterwards we hung out in there super chic bar down stairs with Dr. D, a few residents, and an Oberarzt.
Friday after work we met at the Bqm as usual. Afterwards we headed to Nooba an Asian fusion place and ate dinner.
Saturday I got up early and took Zino to the zoo. There is a really cool "Moasaalle Halle" which is a huge green house/ rainforest with all of the animals and habitat of Madagascar: bats, monkeys, birds, etc. The monkeys would come right up to you! In the main part of the zoo we saw the lions, jaguars, elephants, hippos, rhinos, zebras, camels, a baby alpaca that had just been born and was still wet and wobbly, masked bears, snakes, fish, lizards, and every imaginable interesting animal under the sun.
In the evening I went to the VB's for Kapar's birthday party which was very very fun. Great food as always, good wine, and fun conversations and debates. I met Kaspar's mom who is so sweet and adorable. Her English is perfect and she always insisted on speaking English with me. Afterwards Luk and I headed to Corazon to meet Marjam, her friend from Germany named Clare, and Jean Marc (the mathematician friend of Keith). We hung around there for a while and talked, laughed, and told lies. All in all it was a perfect Saturday.
Sunday I did some sleeping and went to dinner at the VB's again which was lovely. Tonight I will go to Brüno with Luk and Tuesday I will go to the first soccer game of the season. "Wait!" you say, "I thought ya'll just had the championships and you were the Schwizer Meisters und so weiter...it was just the end of the season!" Well don't feel bad, I thought the same thing. But it is true it is already the beginning of the next season.
LG oxox
Lauren
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wound Conference, Case Report, Freitag Bier, Interlaken Adventures,
XOXO from your back country blogger
Monday, June 15, 2009
Roma...and falling in love with Italy.
As I write this blog I am siting on a high-speed train from Rome to Milan reflecting on the unforgettable weekend I just experienced.
Friday I was planning on taking the night train from Zuerich to Rome, which was scheduled to leave at 21:23. Because I’m an idiot and cannot manage to add/subtract or wrap my head around the concept of military time, I showed up at Hauptbahnhof at quarter to ten thinking I had left myself plenty of time to find my platform, grab a bottle of water, and get comfy in my couchette. I pulled aside a train-looking man and asked him which platform this train was leaving from and he kindly told me “Es schon weg” ( it already left) I promptly began to cry. He talked me down and explained an alternative route to me which would get me into Rome an hour later and that made me stop crying. J I wrote Mandy an email including my new arrival time and hopped on the train to Chiasso. I had a minor layover there and after meeting a guy from Steamboat who handed me over to some policemen for protection, I made friends with some other young backpackers: two guys from Bombay, a guy from Singapore, and a guy from Newfoundland. They filled me in on canyoning in Interlaken, hangliding, skydiving, and all of the other adventury things one can do there. I took the train from Chiasso to Milan (on which an old Italian man, who set down newspapers before sitting on the train seats, commented on how big my feet were) jumped on the Metro to Milano Centrale and hopped a train to Roma. On the train I met a nice Egyptian guy who taught me some important Italian phrases and invited me to come visit him in Florence. After he left the train my cabin was infiltrated with Americans. For the record, after living in Switzerland for a month and a half and adjusting to the way things are there, the way people are there, it was a little weird spending a few hours with these ladies. I can see how we can seem a little…irritating to other people. One of the women spilled white wine on an Italian lady that was also in the cabin, they were making fun of the Italian accent/telling stories about all the problems they were having with it and gossiping about everyones’ business…I was a little embarrassed to be an American on that train ride. I also met a cute Italian guy on that train who told me “You are very beautiful.” He tried to convince me to come to Naples with him…I was tempted. I got off the train and went to the Nike store where Mandy and I were to meet, but as the train was significantly later than it was supposed to be she was of course not there and I needed to find some internet to get in touch with her. I talked to the guys at the Nike store who had told me that there had been a very beautiful blond girl standing outside earlier but she had left. Then a nice Romanian guy from the Nike store took a break to go help me find internet. He was very nice, and we are now facebook friends J I got in touch with Mandy in an internet café, and took a cab to her place. We met up with Mandy’s friend Megan and went sightseeing. We went to the Pantheon, the Colleseum, Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, Piazza Navona (where we proceeded to get Henna tats), the Roman Forum, and Campo de Fiori where there was a HUGE Europride (gaypride) parade/party going down. Beautiful people dressed in really bright colors, wearing angel wings and hotpants (one guy was wearing a priest outfit and angel wings J) were dancing on floats to Katy Perry’s I kissed a Girl amongst other wonderful dance beats. It was wonderful. In the evening we had pasta for dinner at their flat and proceeded to Scholars, an Irish pub on Via del Corso. The music selection there was top notch, and the Italians would come up to us and ask, “What is this song called?” and we’d say, “Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey,” and they’d say, “Believe in Me?” “No, Don’t Stop Believing” and it would go back and forth like this for a while; it was beautiful. We met a few italain students from Naples named Alexandro, Carmela, and Francesco. I was quite fond of Francesco…he was a very beautiful Italian creature who didn’t speak a word of English. We had a great time with them singing American classic rock: Sweet Home Alabama, Don’t Stop Believin’, All Summer Long...etc. We exchanged coasters with information at the end of the night and were going to meet up again on Sunday night. All three of them are also now my facebook friends. SUNDAY: Got up, showered, ate some yummy bruschetta and tiramisu for breakfast and headed to the Vatican. We went to mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica (which is a beautiful building). When it was time for communion I went up to be blessed and did the hand crossy/crossy thing that in English means “I’m not planning on taking communion” but the priest gave it to me anyways: maybe there’s an Italian body language way of saying “no communion please.” Afterwards we checked out the catacombs; they were really neat and saw the tomb of John Paul IV. After that, the rest of the girls went grocery shopping and I went to the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. Both of which were beautiful. I met the girls back at the apartment at 7:30 and took Mandy out to dinner for squash Gnochi which were delicious. After dinner we met up with a group of students and went to dessert (I had some yummy Ricotta thing with candied fruit…the candy fruit was somewhat weird but the waiter told me it was from Cicily and was excelente, so I had to try it. After that we went to a nearby piazza and watched the street performers. One guy did slapstick comedy that was really funny and only mildly crude. Another performer was dressed as a Sphinx, and there was a group of jugglers with colorful, glowing clubs that were really good. MONDAY: woke up said bye to Mandy and walked to the Vatican Museum because I wanted to see the Sistine Chapel. It was beautiful but different from what I was expecting. After that I took the Metro to the Palatino Hill where I saw the house of Augustus, lots of ruins, and a very pretty overlook of the whole forum/contantine arch/colleseum. After that I went to the Colleseum and hung out there for a while before heading back to the train station and getting on the fast train to Milan. In Milan I am scheduled to take a train to Zuerich, arriving at 10:30 tonight. Well as it turns out, as things generally seem to turn out in Italy, the train will be arriving in Milano 80 minutes late, conveniently causing me to miss my connection to Zuerich. Customer service will pay for me to stay in a hotel here in Milano and I will take the first train out of here in the morning after sending an apologetic email to the derm dept. According to a girl from Illinois that I met on the metro in Roma there is a saying that goes, in heaven the police are British, the cooks are French, the engineers are German, the administrators are Swiss, and the lovers are Italian, and in Hell the police are German, the cooks are British, the engineers are Italian, the administrators are French, and the lovers are Swiss ……..I suppose you take the good with the bad. How can you expect the world’s most beautiful, tanned, love-loving people to also keep their trains running on time. In a world of choices and priorities I’d put kissing skills, love, tan-ness, tiramisu, pasta, and courtship over punctual trams any day J (not that I don’t absolutely adore punctual trams and die Schweiz)
As a sidenote: After this trip I think I was born in the wrong country. The passion (at least from what I’ve seen here in the past couple days) here is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. People are passionate about their food and about love, especially love, like I’ve never seen before. Everyone is so open and warm it’s really beautiful. The streets may not be as clean as Zuerich’s but the way the language sounds, the way everything is done with passion and intention, the hand movements, the inter-human interaction is all very beautiful. I will learn Italian and live here someday, for an undefined period of time.
Friday, June 12, 2009
SGDV, BBQ...exciting learning times.
OXOX love from zueri/rome
Lauren
ps-if you need sunscreen i'm your girl.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
the past 17 days of varying levels of swiss and german crazy.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Teargas and 2% Beer...
Bis Bald!
ox
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The past 5 days or so...
Love and Hugs from Zueri
-L