More on the language business

Get this:  When people walk into a conversation here, they actually ask what language to speak  Deustch? Francais? English? and transition accordingly.  You can't tell me that's not awesome.  Us silly Americans.  Alas, Mandarin is little utilized here.

I had the special Swiss sausage, Servalas.  Apparently it's made from the intestine of special Argentinian kind of livestock.  Switzerland recently joined the Schegen states (like the EU but not), which ban this kind of import, so there has been a lot of hullabaloo about how to continue authentic production of the sausage.  It didn't really have such a distinctive taste in my opinion, but sausages are generally tasty anyway.  I love how hullabaloo is not listed as a spelling error.

Sidenote:  30% of Zurich residents are expats.

Aktion!

There is an Action! section at the grocery store for things that are about to pass their expiration date.  It has a big red sign with a prominent exclamation mark.  

Acclimatization

So I went to the grocery store last night around 7:10 to pick up some goods.  Turns out all the stores in town close at 7PM on weeknights.  And that's even a little late for Switzerland.  Most stores are not open on Sundays.  And it's illegal to make ruckus after 10PM in this country.  I like it.  People here seem good if a little introverted.  Like Minnesotans.  And it turns out you can see the mountains from our lab.  

We've had several gorgeous days here in the Zurich area with temps around 75F.  I started riding my bike around today, which makes things a lot faster to get to and fro.  Things are getting started pretty fast in the lab.  My grad student had just gotten the methods figured out, so there's lots of molecular biology lab work to be done.  I'm gonna have quite the micropipetting muscles be the time I return.  It'll be good practice though.  I hope to sit in on lots of seminars around the institute and learn as much as I can while I'm here.  

The people in my department are all very welcoming and very diverse in origin.  None of the professors are Swiss, and few of the students are.  It's interesting to get perspectives from everyone.  This afternoon we had "bier freitag" (sprite freitag for me) and tomorrow, one of the professors is having a housewarming party with sausages and whatever else people bring.  Should be fun.  

I haven't actually made it into Zurich yet, but hopefully Sunday is the day for wandering the town.  Or museums if it is raining.  On another high note, I'll be going on a sampling trip to glacial streams in the mountains in June.  The landscape is supposedly very pastoral.  Cows.  

I still haven't managed to stay up past 9PM, but I haven't had any naps!  I'm so good. . . Hopefully my sleep schedule will get more normals as the days pan out.  

Swiss people speak a lot of languages.

I made it safely to Switzerland yesterday afternoon after a hassle-free flight.  By the way, the Amsterdam airport is very cozy.  The grad student whose project I'll be working on, Aline, picked me up from the airport and we bussed to Dubendorf, my home for the next two months.  My flat is run by two of the research institutions here in town, and I share it with two other foreign grad students.  We sent into the office/lab at eawag yesterday to see the place and fill out some paperwork.  I also took a trip to the Migros supermarket, which, like all supermarkets, was very exciting.  It turns out Zurich is not actually in the mountains, but there are a lot of pretty fields all around.

The architecture here is all very Swiss, yet very modern, and everything seems very new and clean.  There's a nice stream running through town with a great running path.  Many churches around town are regularly tolling out the time.  It's supposed to rain this weekend, so maybe I'll hop the commuter train into Zurich and check out a museum.  To do today: get bike repaired, more aclimating.  

Away Again

It's been a fabulous couple of months here involving a lot or reading, some time volunteering at my grandpa's nursing home, hanging out with my awesome family, signing up for the TC marathon, and watching spring make it's usual jumpy start here in Minnesota.  I can't imagine a time more enjoyably spent.

I leave today for Zurich, where I will spend two months as a visiting scientist in a lab that specializes in leaf litter decomposition in streams. I hope to spend a lot of my free time wandering around the area.  I've already found an Ultimate team I can practice with twice a week.  After my Asian experience, it feels like 2 months with go by in a flash.  And Switzerland should be so much easier to get around than India or even China.  So it really doesn't feel like anything big is happening here, though I know it will be a lot of fun.  I even fit all my stuff into a medium size backpack and a small purse.  

So I should be posting pretty regularly again until mid-July.  In other good news, I have a great-looking apartment in Boulder for the fall and should be registered for classes by the end of this week.  I'm very excited to go back to school.

Home again home again

To market to market, to buy a fat pig; home again home again, jiggety jig.  I returned to the States last week, and have definitely been in a jigging mood since.  Everything is so much like it was when I left, that I feel as if my time in Asia was some strange prolonged dream that ended when I stepped inside my parent's house again.  Yet, there are so many things that I've learned from it.  It's strange, but I feel like the things that I learned abroad have helped me with completely unrelated things back home.  I can run for longer without tiring.  I can ski moguls better (which I tested out for three blissful days in Colorado on my return).  It's strange.

I think I've mellowed out a lot on this trip.  It's hard to be high-strung when you're travelling in India.  I think you would explode.  No I don't want to buy that piece of crap from you.  No I don't want to go to your hotel.  Yes I am supposed to be on this train.  No I won't marry a complete stranger.   

It's strange being back in a place that's filled with my stuff after seeing how little stuff some people have.  The kids at the orphanage can fit their belongings in a 2x4 foot crate, and mine is exploding out of my closet.  

I love being home, but it is strange to be back around so many people who haven't had my experiences (probably adds to the dream factor).  It's not really something that you can express effectively to other people.  Sure, there's poor people over there, sure it's chaotic.  But until you really see it, it doesn't sink in.  It is funny how China seems so much more like the USA than India.  

I have about two months back in the states before I head off to my next adventure in Zurich.  Plans include:  reading an absurd amount (leisure and educational), volunteering at my grandparent's nursing home, bumming around campus libraries, cooking food for my family, fitting into my pants again, rediscovering my love for classical saxophone, and catching up with old friends.  Sure I have a lot of leisure time, but life is so diverse, I know it will slip through my hands only too fast.  Thanks for reading, and there will be a European edition of baking in the snow starting in May.

Mumbai Heat and Faloodas

Our four days in Diu were immensely soothing to our travel-worn minds. One day, 4PM rolled around, and I sat on the beach asking what we did that day. Oh yeah, we woke up, had breakfast, chatted with people, went to the ice cream shop, and took a tuktuk to the beach. A very eventful day indeed. That's about how it went. There were a few other travellers staying at our lovely church hostel and we ended up having a couple of profound conversations. We did also have some strange Indian people experiences. One day an old guy in sunglasses followed us around the beach, so we started blabbing off in vaguely Cantonese-sounding gibberish with angry words inserted. On the way to the bus stop, Eman called our travel agency to double check our bus time. She must have asked, "So the bus to Mumbai leaves at 10:30?" about 5 times in the course of the conversations and was answered each time with a confused "What?!?" and the obligatory "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. . ." I think the guy couldn't really understand, but it was pretty amusing to listen too.

We got on our bus to Mumbai at 10AM. Our little sleeper cabin was a box about 6'x4'x3' that we shared for 24 hours. It actually went by really fast, though the toilet breaks were a little yucky. Since when does a tile floor with a drain count as a toilet? You just squat and go wherever. yum. We got into Mumbai around 9:30AM the next day, passing by a few poverty-sticken areas on the way.

We easily found the Salvation Army hostel ($4 for a bed and breakfast) and went for a wander around town that encompassed cricket fields, the gateway of India, lots of old victorian buildings, a supermarket, and of course some snacks. We went to one place where Eman got the South Indian specialty masala dosa. It's kind of like a crepe that's crispy and you dip it into a nice masala sauce. I got an awesome thali (set meal with about 10 different things) for about 80 cents. Walking around made us really tired and hot, so we stopped in about an hour later for falooda, a Mumbai specialty. It is sweet syrup, milk, and ice cream with noodles. Very odd but very delicious.

Tomorrow we have a date for Slumgdog Millionare in a nearby theater.