Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market)

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving for everyone in the U.S., but sadly it was just a normal day here.  We had leftover mushroom lasagna.  The one exciting thing was the opening of the Weihnachtsmärkte (Weihnacht(en) = Christmas, märkte = markets, Germans just throw nouns together to make a new noun) around Zürich.  Christmas markets are a tradition of the Christmas season in Europe.  They are equivalent to typical arts and crafts fairs in the U.S., but with a Christmas theme.  In addition to selling handicrafts, vendors also traditionally sell raclette (melted cheese served over boiled potatoes) and glühwein (warm, spiced wine).  I think fondue is superior to raclette, so we didn't have any while we were there.  The opening of the markets begins with the Bahnhofstrasse lighting.  The lights were pretty, but not as awesome as I had hoped.  Below are some pictures and a video of the lights on Bahnhofstrasse.

There are five different Christmas markets throughout Zürich, but the largest one is inside Hauptbahnhof (central train station).  Sorry, travel guides are in the air shipment, so I don't have any background info on Hauptbahnhof.  I'll write about it some other time.

Sorry, this is blurry

The picture below shows the inside of the main terminal in Hauptbahnhof, where the Christmas market was.  There were several rows of little house-shaped stands for each vendor to sell his or her goods.  You can see way at the end there is a very sparkly Christmas tree.

That is the Swarovski Christmas tree covered with their dazzling Christmas ornaments.  I don't think there were actual lights on the tree, but it just looked bright because of the light reflecting off of the crystals from spotlights above.  It was pretty awesome and probably my favorite part of the Christmas market.

Wish I could have these on my tree!

In terms of the vendor stalls, some were interesting and cute like this one below where they were selling apple products.  But most were not selling "cute" Swiss handicrafts, which were the kinds of goods I was looking for.  It was mostly things like Pashmina scarves, beaded jewelry, etc.  So I didn't find anything that was worth buying and sending home.  But I won't give up and intend to go back and try again.

Outside of the Hauptbahnhof, on one of the little streets off of the Bahnhofstrasse, was a singing Christmas tree!  Each night until Christmas, different choirs will perform in the tree-shaped stage.  I don't remember the name of this group, but they were cool.  You can watch a clip of their performance below.   Yes, they are attempting to sing in English.

We had a good time, but it was definitely chilly.  It snows about every day now so the temperatures are hovering around freezing.  I still love snow!  The weather is perfect here where it is cold enough to snow, but it warms up a bit (36 or 38 degrees) every few days such that most of it melts away.  This means that big ugly piles of dirty snow don't accumulate for several months and it all gets plowed onto the sidewalk where I'm supposed to be walking (I'm talking to you, Boston).  It may get this way later, we'll just have to see.  Until then, I will jump for joy every time it snows!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Where do we live again?

According to our visas, our bank statements, and our Facebook pages we currently live in Zürich, Switzerland.  I thought when we moved here, that I would feel different somehow now that we live in Europe, but really, life is pretty normal.  It's kind of like when you turn a certain age, like 16, 18, or 21 and you think you are going to feel different because you reached some milestone, but you feel pretty much the same, unfortunately.  Now, there are things that are very different and breathtaking, like when I was walking around downtown last Friday and tucked in with all the other buildings is a 12th-century church.

Grossmünster

You know, no big deal, it's just a church that's been around for 800 years (!) that you pass by on your way to the grocery store or to work, etc.  Or you know, as you are on your way to meet someone for lunch you might pass by this amazing view.

Not the view of the crane, I'm talking about those Swiss Alps

So yes, there are things that are very different.  The Swiss do like to think of themselves as rule followers and they do have strict rules when it comes to some things.  But people still cross the street wherever and whenever they feel like.  They still push people out of the way to try and get free chocolate.  And even though there was a four-page document about all the rules when you live in an apartment (don't take a bath between 10 pm and 6 am?  The noise might wake people up?), our relocation agent specifically said to ignore them.

But most other things are pretty close to what we are used to in the US. Darren goes to work and speaks English all day and gets free food, which I then covet.  I go to the grocery store, stalk people on Facebook, talk to my mother mostly every day, and learn German.  Everyone around us is speaking a different language, but well, in California our apartment complex was 70% Indian, so we never heard people speak English there anyways.  We go to Asian grocery stores, buy ramen, I attempt to remember any of the Chinese I supposedly learned in college, and Darren tries to get me to buy kimchi.

We go to Ikea where everything is in Swedish and wander around and about halfway through we are so tired, we just want to get out of there, but have to just walk through the whole thing because there is no escaping.

Good old Poång

All of this is to say that with today's global economy, we still buy our clothes and our furniture from Swedish companies, we still drool over German cars, we watch American movies with all British actors, we want the latest Taiwanese cell phones, and I still need soap from a Swiss company that my dermatologist recommended, but now we just do it from Switzerland. :)

At a much higher price. :(

Lindt Chocolate Factory

Last Tuesday we attended the Lindt Chocolate Factory lighting ceremony.  Darren had gotten an e-mail from work about it, but it didn't have much information and the Lindt website didn't either, except that Roger Federer would be there! (The Swiss are in love with their Roger Federer.)  We thought maybe it would be something like the Christmas tree lighting in Rockefeller Center.  The Lindt Chocolate Factory is in Kilchberg, so we took the train down there and walked over to the factory.  Around the factory area, they had set up all kinds of Christmas things like free chocolate tastings, a place to meet Samichlaus (Santa), and of course, places to buy Lindt chocolate!  We thought this mysterious lighting ceremony would start as advertised at 6 pm, but when we got there, the sign said it wasn't going to start until 7 pm.  With a little over an hour to kill, we went around to do all the things they had.

We tasted several types of chocolate at the different stations:

All the free chocolate was very tasty and you can see from the pictures that they are very serious about their chocolate.  They had their professional confectioners making the chocolate right in front of you!  However, as time went on and more people showed up, people started to get pretty pushy to try and get some chocolate, so we moved on from that.  We didn't go visit Samichlaus because he only spoke Swiss German, so he probably wouldn't understand what we were asking for Christmas.  We headed over to the Lindt chocolate store to see what they had.  I think Grandma Yvonne would have bought the whole store! ;)  P.S., the chocolate factory store is the cheapest place to buy Lindt chocolate, so put your order in now for Christmas. :)

We had to wait around a little longer for the lighting ceremony and we weren't well prepared for how cold it was outside, but we managed through it until it was time to see Roger Federer!  We were far away from the stage where we was, but thanks to our awesome new camera with 35x zoom, Darren (the one with the steady hands necessary to get some decent pictures) was able to snap some pictures of him. We had absolutely no idea what anyone was saying though since they were speaking Swiss German.  Oh Swiss German.

Then it came time for the lighting ceremony to start, we assumed, because Roger Federer pushed/pressed/touched (?) the giant Lindt chocolate ball.

So what happened?  They literally lit up the factory with Christmas projections.  Yes, they did actually mean they were going to light up the factory when they said it was the Lindt Chocolate Factory lighting.

Here is a short video of what happened for basically ten minutes.  They put up different projections and played different *American* Christmas pop songs.  We contemplated why they were playing American songs, but I think we are the only country that really has any pop Christmas songs.  Maybe also Britain? Or everyone just likes American music.

Lindt Video

Anyways, it was well different, but I still liked it!  Let the Christmas season begin!

Stuttgart, Germany

Quick update: We got an apartment!  We applied to four places and we got one!  The best part is, it's in Enge, right next to Darren's office!  We move into our new place December 1st.  We won't have the bulk of our furniture for the first month, but oh well, we'll have an air mattress, a pot, and a pan. :)

So back to the travel log.  On Sunday we went up to Stuttgart to get our visas.  The Swiss embassy is only open from 9 am to 12 pm, so we had to make sure we were there in the morning, which meant staying overnight.  I'm glad we did though because Sunday was gorgeous and Monday was rainy and cold, so we at least got to see the city in good weather.  We took the three-hour train ride to Stuttgart that went up through Swiss and German countryside.  It only took an hour to reach the Swiss/German border and then the rest of the ride was through Germany.  These countries are so small!

The train wasn't too busy the whole way there because most people got off before we got to Germany.

Quaint town in Germany we passed by

German countryside

We then arrived at the Stuttgart train station around 2 o'clock.  And since it was the first time either of us had been to Germany, we wanted to sample the local cuisine, so we went to McDonald's. ;)  We didn't have our pomme frites (french fries) with mayo, though.  People were doing that, but I just couldn't bring myself to.  

The Stuttgart train station on the left

We then walked over to our hotel, The Arcotel Camino, which was just around the corner.  It was a pretty cool building, though that's all I know about it.

The hotel room was nice, but a little different!  The shower wasn't in the "bathroom", it was just inside that tiled area there where the sink is.  There wasn't even a shower curtain.  The toilet was the only thing in the "bathroom" (really it's called a water closet if there's just a toilet).  The nice thing though was that there was only one mattress on the bed, instead of the silly two mattresses thing here in Schweiz (Switzerland).

Once we got settled in the room, we went out to go see some of the sights while there was still some daylight left.  This region (Northern Switzerland, Southern Germany) is around the same latitude as Seattle, so the sun sets early.  Stuttgart is known for its automobile industry roots because Porsche, Mercedes, and Maybach cars are all made here.  Porsche and Mercedes both have museums here, but we didn't have time to see them when they were open on Sunday and they were not open Monday.  In fact, the other museums were not open on Monday, either.  We knew this when we planned the trip, but this was the only day we could go up there, so we'll have to come back to see these things.

The Mercedes logo on the Stuttgart train stations

We just walked around the main downtown area of Stuttgart, which is a mix of some old buildings and mostly tons of shops.  It is a very large shopping area with wide walking avenues.  A lot of the city was destroyed during World War II, so there are not many old buildings left.  I didn't spend much time reading all the signs to figure out what all these historical things were (plus my travel books are in our air shipment), so I'll just show you the pictures I took.

 The deer and the lion are jumping over men with no heads??

The Christmas market (Weihnachtsmarkt) wasn't set up yet (I'll talk about this next week when the Zürich one opens), but they did already have some stalls and an ice skating rink set up.  The Christmas season is beginning!  No Thanksgiving here, so no pesky holiday to get in the way of getting Christmas going in November.  I know a lot of people in the US do the same regardless of Thanksgiving, though. ;)

Those are all the pictures I have because right on schedule, the rain and cold weather swept in that night, so there was nothing nice to look at.  We got up Monday morning and headed over to the Swiss embassy, which was located in the shopping area.  We got up to the office and there was practically no one else there.  We got up to the counter and we have all of our documents in order: our applications, our passports, and our pictures for our visa.  However, the lady says she cannot accept our application because we have not cut out and glued our pictures to the application.  Well, that should be an easy fix, so we ask her if we can borrow some scissors and some glue and she says she cannot give it to us because it is against the rules...  Even though they are sitting right there on her desk, we have to go run out and now find scissors and glue in a foreign country and make it back in time before the office closes. Well after frantically dashing around, we finally do locate some scissors and glue, and glue the dang pictures on and run back to the office.  Then, even though there is still no one else in the office, she says it will take them four hours to get the visas printed and glued into our passports.  So we end up spending most of the afternoon in a book store looking through travel books.  

The highlight of the afternoon, though, was the delicious lunch we had at a random cafe in the shopping area.  My friend, Angela, who was just in Stuttgart, recommended a great place to eat, but unfortunately, it was not open for lunch.  So we just stopped in some other place, but they did have the same main dish she ate while she was in Germany that looked delicious.  I'm stealing her picture here because I forgot to take one myself.  The dumplings in the center are called Maultaschen and mine were filled with sausage and some other vegetables.  It was delicious!  And cheap!  Well, compared to prices in Switzerland, everywhere else is cheap!  

Darren says it is a traditional Swabian dish (picture not taken by me)

After some more waiting, we then picked up our visas and got on the train to head home.  We really enjoyed Germany even though we were only there a short time.  Prices are cheaper, and there is only one official language.  Amazing! :)

Google Office

We've had a busy couple of days!

On Saturday, we had to go over to Darren's office to scan some apartment-related documents, so I took it upon myself to take some pictures of his awesome building.  This is me prepping for when I'm a mom someday by taking totally embarrassing photos like this one below.  At least I waited until no one was in the office.

Each floor in the building has a different color and so each floor is decorated with things associated with that color, I'm guessing.  Darren's floor is blue, so his hallway is ocean-themed.

I don't think Heidi would like working in this hallway...

I don't know what this has to do with the ocean, but this picture below is of a meeting place on Darren's floor.

 The top floor is space-themed, so one hallway is a bunch of Star Wars stuff, of course.

It also has a sky lounge, which is where I took these pictures from.  All the pretty leaves were knocked down during a heavy rainstorm last Friday, but then it cleared up and warmed up, so Saturday and Sunday were lovely.

We can hear the clock bells from that church every hour, I really like it

Another floor is jungle-themed, so here is the jungle lounge.

Since everyone's desks are just crammed right next to each other (no cubicles or offices), they have conference call rooms for you to take your calls so you don't disturb everyone and if you need multiple people to join in from the office.  Instead of boring old rooms to sit in, the office has things like these below where you can take your calls.  There are speaker phones inside.

The alligator has a foot in his mouth...

 Another funny room is what I call the fish room, since I don't know it's actual name.  The room is dark, except for the lights on in the fish tanks.  There are a bunch of chairs in there where people can go and relax for a while.  I don't think Darren has ever been in there, though, so I'm not sure how often it gets used.

Why did I pick the bathtub and not the massage chair?

After the office visit, we went around to some more parts of the city to look at housing.  This is a picture from the train as we traveled by Lake Zurich.

Just another picturesque street in Zurich :)