Work work work

This week has gone pretty fast.  Lots of lab work, hopefully productive.  We should be finishing the stuff we've been working on for the last three weeks.  Unless something goes wrong and we need to start all over again.  So yeah.

Next week, we go to the Alps for a sampling trip near the Val Rosegg glacier.  We'll be taking benthic and sediment samples in new streams near the glacier.  For three days, and I'm hanging around for another two while we're there.  It should be pretty awesome.  

I've been watching a lot of Ted Talks, which are short online lectures by a huge array of intelligent people on any topic imaginable.  www.ted.com/talks

Market Day

I took myself on a tour of Saturday markets in the Zurich area.  It's a lovely day, as a storm this week blew out all the humid air.  First stop:  Oerlikon Farmer's market.  It's in the marketplaza of one of the bigger suburb (as suburban as Europe gets anyway).  Lots of flowers.  There was also a lot of lovely produce.  The peaches and nectarines now are quite good.  Also had some bread, cheese, butcher and fish stalls.  I bought 50g of Vacherin cheese, which the guy thought was a strangely small amount.  Maybe I can try bits of all the famous "swiss" cheeses.  They're so pungent.  And oh so good.  The market was pretty crowded and a lot of people bring along cute little baskets to carry their goods in.  

Stop 2:  Fleamarket Kanzlei near the main station.  This one is supposedly the biggest year-round flea market in Switzerland.  Today it was outside, and the diversity of goods was very entertaining.  Bikes, clocks, clothes, antiques, books, records, video games, electronic parts, you name it.  Get it here.  I scored some books for one franc each, including a cookbook for Swiss bread products.  In German.  

Stop 3:  Burkliplatz on the lake.  This market is only in the summer, but was probably bigger and more well-attended.  Perhaps due to the central location.  Again, lots of different things, but a little classier.  There was a lot of jewelry.  Many stalls also had old postcards and stamps from various countries.  There were lots of people speaking lots of languages.  I lunched on a brat mit brot.

After the markets, I wandered through the old town, visiting the two big churches, Fraumunster and Grossmunster.  They are probably the best known Zurich landmarks, and had nice stained glass. They were however, very small compared to their Catholic equivalents in other countries.  Zurich was the home of Zwingli, so the protestant movement was big here.  Having borrowed the Lonely Planet from a friend, I stopped by the most interesting sounding site:  Cafe Schober.  Home of the rich, melty, hot, milky chocolate drink.  The place had four different rooms, some inside and some outside, decorated in different styles.  Settling in the red and gold French Rococo room, I sipped the delicious drink and read for a couple of hours.  

On the way back to the station, I stopped in Globos.  It's a department store, but downstairs they have the Swiss equivalent of Herrod's food halls.  Fancy food in every flavor.  Hoity toity people buying it.  Open floorplan.  Plenty of eye-candy for foodies like me.  It turns out that Switzerland has a yeast extract product similar to marmite and vegemite.  It's called Cenovis and might be the best of the three.  Sweeter and less acrid.  I know own a container of all three, having never actually finished one.  

This week flew by pretty fast.  After getting over a little bottleneck in the lab, there was tons of work to do and things seem to be going well.  That is if we ignore the fact that a lot of our blanks are positive. . . Tuesday and Wednesday I went to frisbee which was fun and tiring.  Two of the women have been with the team for 10 and 15 years.  They were the coaches for a long time when it was open, and also coached the Swiss National team.  Pretty sick.  They're fun to watch.  

Thursday, Silke and Olivier went sailing again and I tagged along.  The wind was quite strong on the way down, but let up a bit as we went out.  The lake is kind of sheltered, so we struggled our way to Zurich lake for better breeze.  They let me steer and tend the mainsail for a while.  I'm pretty bad, but it was great fun.  And on the way back, we had a tailwind and mounted the Spinnaker, a big sail that goes in front of the whole boat.  Set-up and take-down of the boat is a lot of hassle though.

This week was also pizza week at the EMPA restaurant near the lab.  You pay 10 bucks, and can fill a shell with whatever toppings you like.  I get a little overzealous and filled mine so tall that it didn't fit in the conveyer belt over.  Tsk tsks all around.  Those piggish Americans. . . I was just trying to get my money's worth.

The marathon training schedule starts this week at 9 miles, increasing by about a mile each week until a 20-miler at the end of September.  Should be exciting.  It's a good thing to keep me occupied.  Since I've almost run through all the Gilmore Girls episodes I brought.  Sad. . .

Abroad

I've just realized that I've spent 1 of the past 3 years in another country, 5% of my total life.  Plus, I've been to every country that is part of my ancestry.  

Neuchatel

The weekend in Neuchatel was lovely.  Beautiful weather and scenery, good food, French everywhere.  Saturday morning, we went into town for the market.  In addition to the standard produce stalls, there were quite a few cheese and patisserie stalls.  There was one bread booth selling chunks of a loaf that was at least 6 feet long.  We met Aline's parents for lunch at the terrace restaurant next to the market and had steak tartare and frites.  Raw meat is oh so good.  They have a lot of good charcuterie here.  At home we have generic grocery store brands for mac and cheese, cereal, and other basics.  Here they have brie, camembert, and delicious smoked charcuterie in grocery store brand.  

After lunch, we drove down to her family's lake house, or "chalet."  Her grandmere was there, and we took a rowboat out on the lake.  There were a lot of sailboats out.  We passed a campsite that was packed with jolly vacationers.  And there are swans everywhere here.  Like canadian geese, but much more attractive and less prone to depositing large quantities of fecal matter.  

In the evening, we met up with some of Aline's primary school friends for a BBQ by the lake.  There were about 100 people in the small park with 3 grills, so grill-wars were in effect.  Everyone spoke in French all evening, and I understood about half of it if I paid attention.  Still, it was interesting to meet them and to listen.  

Sunday, we drove to the Val-de-Travers for a hike up to Cruex-du-Van.  It is a huge cliff formation formed by glaciers.  About 1 km in diameter, it cuts a half-circle into the side of the hill and has a very long sheer drop.  Again lots of people. We continued our walk down the valley along the Gorges de l'Areuse, where the river cuts its path between smooth rock walls.  The rock formations were amazing and the water below was black and calm.  It took about 6 hours for the whole hike, so we were pretty caput afterwards.  After dinner, we said goodbye to Aline's family and hopped the train back to Zurich.  It was really fun to go with her to meet her family and see her home.  

I was moderately surprise to learn that Swiss people actually use the things that we think of as typically "Swiss."  Every child seems to have a swiss army knife by the age of 10.  Sigg water bottles are everywhere.  And Swiss watches too.  Though our American version of "Swiss" cheese is thankfully absent.  

Un bon weekend

Thursday, I went sailing with a group of friends in Rapperswil, on the south side of Lake Zurich.  It was a lovely day, and though the wind was elusive at first, everyone got some good time on the boat.  We planned a pique-nique (that's French for pic-nic) for dinner, and Silke and Olivier pull out a camp stove, fondue pot, wine, nutmeg, pepper, garlic, a huge loaf of bread and a large quantity of cheese.  They proceeded to make fondue over the camp stove.  It was quite merry.  

My grad student, Aline, invited me to her parent's home in Neuchatel this weekend.  We left on Friday and got in a good wander around the old town.  There was a castle, an old prison tower, a protestantized cathedral and a lot of cute little streets.  There was also some sort of ancient bicycle convention and about 200 people rode around town on those old bikes with a huge front wheel.  Costumes included.  The town is really old (14th century?) and a lot of the old buildings are yellow-hued with colorful shutters.  There were lots of sidewalk cafes and happy looking people going for their afternoon stroll.  There were a couple of lovely gourmet food shops with charcuterie, artisan cheeses, and italian imports.

Her home is up in a valley about 5 km from the lake.  They have a breathtaking view of the valley which is currently checkered with yellow safflower fields and dotted with quaint little towns.  I met her family, who were quite charming, and got to practice my French listening skills.  I think they actually increased dramatically this weekend.  Rather I just remembered.  It's been about 6 years since I studied French after all.  And they have cheese after dinner.  

More on the rest of the weekend tomorrow.

Thoughts on being away

I've spent a lot of time out of the country this year.  When I tell people that I've taken a year off to travel and learn, they often say, "Careful, you might never want to go back to school."  I can't really imagine why.  All the time I've been away, I've enjoyed myself for sure, but I've never stopped missing home.  Nowhere I've been has struck me like, "Hey, I want to live here forever," and certainly not like, "Hey, I think I'll stay here right now and not go home."  And school?  I couldn't imagine wandering around without a purpose for years and years.  I can't wait to get back to school.  

Cheeseries and bakeries

I took the trip down to Luzern today to meet with a prof there.  Most of the morning I had free for wander time.  It's such a pretty little town at the edge of the lake and mountains.  There was a farmers market going on along the river with really nice produce and breads.  Apparently it's apple season, because there were buckets and buckets of them.  I got some fresh apple juice/cider that was amazing.  The number of bakeries and cheese stores is absurd.  I might have to change my policy, because if I visited each one, I wouldn't be anywhere very fast.  So yummy.  And pungent.  

I came here three years ago with Matt and Jamie, and it was a little strange to walk by places where we walked or had hot chocolate.  Eerie.  I must say it was much better in the sunny weather than in constant drizzle.  

Otherwise, things are same old.  Matt got a job in Colorado, so he will officially be there too in the fall.  None of that long-distance business.  monkey.  business monkey.  ok bye