Gruetzi From Basel!

So on Sunday we decided to be adventurous and try out a day trip to Basel..plus we found cheap train tickets hahahaha! Here are a few pictures to sum up the city:

The first picture is one of the first cathedral's you see as you come out of the train station Elizabethenkirch. Then if you keep walking you hit a bridge and cross the Rhine River. It was so clear...just like Lake Zurich. The old historic town is to the left of this picture and the residential area is to the right of this picture on the otherside of the river. Basel was cool but pretty much looked like Zurich. However there are some pretty crazy people living in Basel if you look below you see a bridge from far away and then the picture after is looking down from the top of the bridge...

Ok so Adam and I were sitting along the river quite a ways away from the bridge when we heard this loud splat and splash. We looked up long enough to catch the second jumper jump off the bridge, do 3 or 4 flips then dive into the water. We were hoping they would jump again but that didn't happen. I'm guessing it was illegal and they high tailed it out of there before they were arrested.

I'm not sure what this place is. We think it was the original gate leading into Basel. They used to have a huge wall around the whole city! Regardless Adam wanted to see it so we walked up quite a few hills and past the hospital to find it. Has anyone ever heard the sirens on European police cars and Ambulances? They sound just like in the movies and are also just as annoying and loud. Now Hangout by a hospital...it was awesome! We wanted to get out of there quicker, but it was the up hill part so we were already exhausted.

The statue below is in the town hall in Basel. Adam of course said "Hey you can see up the statue guy's dress/skirt!" and of course I look and he takes my picture looking up the statues dress...eh what can you do :)

We found the other side of the city with the back gate. There were less people to witness Adam doing something wrong and possibly getting arrested so he decided to try and jump up on the long lever to lock the door with. He tried on the other door and it was too tall hahahaha. This door was shorter :)

And that was Basel in about 6 hours. Throw in a lunch at Movenpick...the best ice cream place in the world and hanging at Starbucks before our train left, you've seen everything!! We got home around 8 and decided that for our last weekend at our apartment we would order pizza from the domino's downstairs. Ironically none of them spoke english so we had to look up and figure out what our toppings were in German...mushrooms are funghi, ham was schinken, and salami was actually pepperoni. It was Awesome!!!

It's Raining it's Pouring

Well Friday is grocery shopping day for me before the weekend. Saturday's are crazier because everyone is off work and sunday everything is closed. Every day this past week has been sunny and around 75ish...beautiful weather...and then Friday, Rain all day long. Usually this is not a problem at home...when I had a car. Things change when you are walking a couple blocks to the store and then carrying all of your grocery's home as well. It was Awesome! I know my friend Lori understands, she hates it when her clothes get wet too! Especially while schluping around with the bottoms of your jeans soaked, then you end up stepping on them all the way home. I can't complain thought after hearing about all the storms at home and all the rain and flooding. It's awful! One day of rain...not awful.

Luckily the rain cleared up just as Adam was coming home from work. We were both looking forward to our Friday night dinner date. We were finally going to get some meat added to our diet.  I cooked pork tenderloin, broccoli and potatoes. Of course the tenderloin was less than half a pound and still 14 bucks. Why meat why!!!

After that of course we took off and went for a walk by the lake. After a rain here it doesn't get muggy and humid it actually drops the temperature down a lot. We both ended up in jeans and hoodies and I think it was around 40 degrees by 8pm. Perfect date night!!

Also, We have tested both the Lindt and Sprungli chocolates made here in Switzerland and so far our verdict is that Lindt is the best chocolate. And...it's sold in the great US of A. So you all can try it at home and think of us. Plus you are paying a better price for it at home hahaha.

Weekend Update!

Hey Everyone I thought I'd give an entire weekend update since I've been a slacker and haven't posted since thursday.

Friday: I made dinner for Adam and I at home since eating out is so expensive here. Then we decided to go for a walk by the Limmat River North of the city. We hadn't been there yet so we thought we would see what was in the part of town...Never again though! So along the river as you go north it turns into a hangout for pretty much every kind of person. There are a couple restaurant/stands for you to get food at, but mostly open areas for people to hangout. We didn't hang around to see what people do but probably hanging out responsibly to not hanging out responsibly :) We walked all the way up to a bridge after the possibly sketch area to find yet another sketch area. As you cross the bridge and head back down the other side of the Limmat, also an area where our last apartment was located in our home search, were a ton of hookers. We walked very quickly  out of that area after that. After getting back to the main city center we found a really nice park and museum that hopefully we will make it to some other time.

Saturday: Saturday was a planning day. Now that we have our apartment we have to find furniture. We were searching on IKEA's website and English forum, a website for a lot of expats coming and going into the country, for furniture. General grocery store stuff and then the best part of the day...we got to skype with Scott and Amanda which was awesome. Thank goodness for skype. It definitely makes this process easier. After we finished  our call with scott and amanda we were off to find IKEA. I use those words loosely. We had to take a bus to a tram and then to another bus. However the tram/bus stop were not the same therefore we had to walk for awhile and ended up at a bus stop...not the correct one but it got us there. Then after leaving IKEA around 9pm we got on the wrong bus and got dropped off at the very last stop and had to wait for another bus in the burbs of Zurich, then had to take it all the way to the end again :) After that we just decided to stay on the tram all the way. It dropped us off 3 stops before ours so we could switch to our tram. All in all our IKEA trip took around 5+hours. Hopefully next time...not that difficult!

Sunday: Sunday was definitely a day of rest again. I ended up cooking in the kitchen for the late morning and early afternoon. It's asparagus season here so we were trying a new recipe with it. Bacon wrapped green and white asparagus baked with an egg on top, adam wanted the egg but it was good. I also made Rosti's which are glorified hash browns...but really good. We were just working on getting organized for the week until church started. The english speaking service is at 5pm here so we went to that one. The service was great except  for the outburst from an interesting fellow in the back of the room. He started shouting out inappropriate things unrelated to the service.He ended up being removed upon the pastors request. I don't know if he was homeless, on drugs, or just an interesting character. Could have been either or for him. Definitely nothing we have experienced before. After church they all get together and have dinner at the church, giving new people the chance to get to know one another. We met a very nice couple in town for a couple days. They are moving here permanently July 1st, so it was really nice to connect with people who are in our shoes. We also met some small group leaders from the USA with tons of answers to our newbie european questions...there for we love them! Oh and good news...we finally finished the Stinky Cheese. We bought some at a local market and it has taken so long to finish it off. The taste is fine...the smell is Soooo Gross! It's finally done and out of our house!!!

The Apartment Hunt is On!!

Yesterday was our first full day of apartment hunting...which means horrible sticker shock for the accountants! We started at 10am and finally ended at 6pm. All of the apartments were between 500 sq feet and 800 sq feet...Yikes! Most of them were cute, modern, and expensive. One had the most interesting landlord...by interesting I mean scary! Very hippy ish with bull horns above his apartment. Scraggly beard and wearing an amsterdam red light district t-shirt. Even Beatrice our representative said lets get out of here! We broke for lunch and went to a restaurant on the hill where you could see the whole city of zurich

The Alps behind Lake Zurich!

The Town of Zurich from our Table

The Alps

The views from this place were amazing! So I hope everyone who comes to visit us is looking forward to this restaurant because we will probably be taking them to it.

After lunch we had time to kill so Beatrice took us to Gross Munster Cathedral! We hiked all the way to the top of it and saw some incredible views of the whole downtown city of Zurich...we took some pictures for everyone.

We saw the rest of the apartments and then went walking around one neighborhood of the apartment we liked after dinner. Today we are going to hit the other neighborhoods and see how it goes. I know everything will work out the way it's supposed to, so i'm excited to see which one we are supposed to be in. They are also helping us to appreciate our home in IL as well...we are very blessed!

A day in the life of a swiss housewife!

Well Montag (monday) was Adam's first day of work and my first day at home alone. His work day went well. He got to meet the rest of the group, get his computer, and start setting up. Everyone is very  nice at his office. There is just a lot going on all at once. Not a whole lot of time to ease his way in.

I got to start my day by going to the grocery store. You wouldn't believe the price of food here. Six normal size chicken breasts in a package is 20 francs! I haven't even tried pricing beef yet. I heard it's worse. Guess meat is a luxury item over here hahahaha! I also attempted laundry yesterday. We are on the 5th floor, 2 flights of stairs per floor, and the washer and dryer is in the basement :) I got a lot of free stair stepping workouts yesterday to say the least. I think it took around 15 minutes of me staring at the washer and pushing all the buttons to realize that they didn't have the power turned on. I finally found a turn knob and hoped for the best...it worked! Luckily one of the washers is set up in english...thank goodness! All the directions are either in German, French, or italian. So now in the apartment search I'm hoping and searching with a place that has a washer/dryer in the apartment. It's rare though. I will try my best though.

It's raining it pouring!

Well saturday and sunday were very strange. The rain is kind of like home. One minute it's pouring rain the next the sun is shining. Of course at one point the sun was shining while it was pouring. There is not a lot of humidity here though which is fantastic!! Because we rely on public transportation we had to hang in the apartment a lot. Saturday we kept leaving, then coming home, then trying to leave during the nice non rainy times. Finally we just decided to leave and run around in the rain. We went to look at some apartments we found online, to see what the neighborhoods were like. Adam sure can find them. One seriously was a hike half a mile up hill on their cobble stone streets. The rest luckily were closer to the main strip in Seefeld. We also dug into some traditional food for dinner. Brotwurst and rosti's. Rosti's are basically the shreded hash browns. Good stick to your bones food since you walk everywhere.

Sunday we got up and went to the ICF church. Unfortunately we were the dorks wearing the headsets so we could understand the preacher in english. They do have an english speaking service that the expats go to but it's at 5pm...so we are going to try that one next week. Getting a direct translation during the service was interesting. At one point the preacher probably said in german the child had a stomach ache...and the translator said in english the child had a stomach dilemma. Ahh well it was nice to be at church it made life more familiar. We met a lot of nice people but most of them did not speak German well. Hopefully by the time we leave maybe we can go back to the german service.

After church we just hung at the apartment for lunch then walked to see a couple more apartments in Seefeld. It is an area close to the top of the lake on the East side. On Sunday's almost everything is closed...they actually use it as the day of rest. Luckily the swiss ice cream place was open!!

KPMG Welcome Dinner for Adam!

Last night was Adam's welcome dinner to KPMG! We went to a spanish place called Casa Aurelio. It was amazing. Two of the partners were there and 3 managers in his department. They are all fantastic which is great for adam since they will be his co-workers for the next 2 years. Back to dinner though. The food and wine were great lots of fish, veal , and filet mignon for the meals. However the people were even more awesome to watch. Everyone but us in there seemed to know one another. We don't know if they are all related some how or what? It kind of reminded me of the Hill in STL. After dinner nobody wanted to go home so we went to a bar where they play foosball in the basement, and man are they intense. They apparently have tournaments there. Two young guys were so intense they were sweating. They both had ridiculous pit stains and were completely focused on each and every game. One of the partners played with a local 3 times against pit stains and his partner....lets just say he didn't win. I won't even give out the score hahahaha. After that we all walked to the tram to head home. We got on and went one stop then the conductor got up and started talking in german and walking down the aisle. We thought he was checking for our passes. But instead he was kicking everyone off. Apparently the tram was done for the night and didn't start again till morning. We were only a couple blocks from the apartment so we just had some extra walking to do. Good for us since we ate so much at dinner! We really need to work on our German!

Eating out in Switzerland!

Well Thursday May 12th was our 4 year anniversary so we decided to go out to eat for it. It's so expensive to eat out so it was our first run at it. We made reservations at an italian place on the river "Ristorante Frascati" It rained off and on most of that day so by the time we got there we were soaked. Thankfully they still let us in. Our waiter only spoke italian which made this process harder. Plus I guess here you eat a ton at lunch and light amounts at dinner. So after we ordered what would be our normal meal at home he asked"why so much food?" Whoops! The dinner was ok but the tiramisu was the best part of the night.

WE HAVE ARRIVED!

Well it took some time getting here...mostly because our first plane decided not to start. After many hours of travel we are here and have gotten a good nights sleep! Today was our first day out on the town. We hit the local grocery store where we angered the cashier because we forgot to weigh our bananas. She did it for us eventually when she realized we have no idea what she said...whoops! We came back and made some much needed coffee. We ventured out to find an adapter for our electronics and stumbled upon a market in the train station. We tried some stinky cheese which tasted good. It's a very expensive town. Take the normal food at home and multiply by 2-3 and you've got prices here. For example, a grande carmel macchiato at Starbucks will run around 4 bucks at home and is 8 franc's here, and the conversion is not in our favor. But we are impressed with the crystal clear lake and river, and clean streets. That must be the price you pay for living in a clean eco-conscience city.