This morning, we woke up and decided to take a 20 minute ride to Divonne, France, where every Sunday there's an outdoor market. Here you can buy just about everything you can imagine. If you can find the space to walk!
An accordionist serenading the market
We arrived around 10 and by then, the market was in full swing. First stop was a vegetable and fruit stall where we tried out some olives and bought a fresh olive tapenade for dipping with bread. Very fresh and very strong. Next, we (meaning CW) visited a wine vendor (just because he happened to be at the entrance to the market, he spoke English, and it's 5 o'clock somewhere). He's been coming to the market every Sunday for 16 years and was quite chatty.
Julia's new outfit
As we walked along, SweetSwissTeen found a clothing stall with some frilly, flowing skirts and tops. She was quite excited and ended up getting a pretty blue and white outfit. Later, she found some blue Converse tennis shoes to go along with it. They will balance out the 'daintiness' of the lace. Right?
The smells were great (mostly). We walked past one booth that was nothing but spices laid out in bowls which you bought in bulk. A number of stands sold rotisserie chickens and pork. Of course, there were many cheese stands (or as All American Boy put it, "stinky cheese stands") and some great bread stands--we purchased a chocolate chip-filled baguette that was great. One area of the market had a concentration of seafood--everything from oysters to fish to sea urchins to squid and octopus (with the heads still on).
The spice stand
The market fills up
CW found a shwarma stand and ordered a turkey shwarma. It looked wonderful, but as he walked away from the stand and took a bite, he realized that the shaved meat wasn't cooked completely. After his chicken sushi adventure in Japan a couple of years ago, CW decided that discretion was the better part of valor and disposed of it. Too bad, really. Next time CW thinks he'll try the paella.
By the time we had been through the market, it was about noon and it was very crowded. So we left and headed down to the lake in Divonne where the kids rode their scooters around the lake and mom and dad had a nice walk.
Spring is in full bloom here and we'll be going back to market often!
It’s been almost three months since our last entry and
there’s much to catch up on. It’s been
a busy winter—and we’ll try to bring you up to speed.
We went home for Christmas at the end of December and had a
wonderful time seeing family and friends.
But as you know, we returned to the Motherland for New Year’s Eve—it
always takes a bit of time to readjust after coming back.
Stacking dice on tongue depressors
But we had much to which we could look forward. In January, we hosted our first get
together at Chez Ahlstrom—a 12th Night Party. Never heard of that before? Neither had we, but some of our new
friends introduced us to the idea.
Twelfth night is actually the last night of the 12 Days of
Christmas. In some traditions,
it’s the evening before Epiphany; in others, it’s the evening of
Epihany. Often it was believed
that it was unlucky to leave Christmas decorations up after Twelfth Night
(bummer for us—our party was actually a bit after Epiphany). A TNP consists of 12 people—in our
case, 6 couples from church. The
idea of the party is that each person is assigned a number and must then come
up with an activity for their number.
For example, SoulSwisster drew number 1 (CW believes this was rigged)
and her activity was a “Minute to Win It” contest that involved several
mini-competitions each lasting a minute.
These included transferring M&Ms from one table to another with a
straw, bouncing ping pong balls into cups, and stacking dice on tongue
depressers. CW had number 4 and
organized everyone into playing Mastermind using people as the pegs. Other games included: a speed memory
game of matching pairs (2), a Newlywed style game (5), a Where’s Waldo kind of
activity sheet for the 12 Days or Christmas (8), and a puzzle involving matches
(9), and playing We Wish You a Merry Christmas using water glasses (12). There was much wine, cheese, and
laughter.
In late January, we went on Scout outing to a city called
Kandersteg in eastern Switzerland.
In Kandersteg, there’s an international scouting center that consists of
a large property and a number of dorm arrangements.
All American Boy’s cub scout troop went as a group. On Friday evening, we drove up and
before we arrived, it started to snow.
Not light, friendly snow—blizzard-type snow. But we got there just fine, checked in, and spent the
evening building an igloo.
Or rather the dads spent the evening shoveling snow into plastic forms
so the scouts could stack them.
This worked well enough until the igloo was complete enough to enter and
then it was the dads doing all the work.
All the while it was still snowing. The next day, we got up and went skiing. Yes, the flatlanders from Houston
strapped boards to their feet and went up the mountain. We had lessons (kids and parents
separately!) and spent the day trying the bunny slope. It was particularly embarrassing that
we (at least CW) continually fell holding onto the tow rope to go back up to
the top of the slope (OK, yes, it was a very slight slope, but a slope
nevertheless--gravity is not our friend). And you'll note that SoulSwister had control of the camera. Everyone had a good
time, though I’m sorry to say we haven’t been again.
The after-ski was a cub scout bonfire and then a fondue
dinner. SoulSwisster has reminded CW
of two more exciting elements of the day.
The first was the fact that the ski rental shop was about a mile from
the gondola. That meant walking. Up hill. In ski boots. Carrying skis. For the first time ever. It was an extremely long mile. The second was catching the wrong bus
back to the scout center. Which
meant we ended up walking about 2 more miles, but at least we had regular boots
on. CW had just blocked those
things out of his memory. It’s
better that way. To get home, we
put the car on a train and rode it for about 15 minutes through a pitch black
mountain tunnel. We came out in an
area called the Valais (valley) and drive home from there. In any case, a good weekend!
That isn’t the only winter fun we’ve had. Close to our house is a little sledding area, or as they call
it over here, “sledging.” We drove
up past St. Cergue, which you might remember as the site of Des Alpes, the cow
festival, and parked by the side of the road. Then SwissSis, All American Boy, CW, and their friend Aiden
tried their hands at the hill.
Having forgotten the basic principals of mass, gravity, and frictionless
surfaces, CW took off—literally.
He still can’t sit on hard surfaces. Did we mention gravity is not our friend? AAB also failed to emerge unscathed—he had a strawberry on
top of a goose egg on his forehead.
Who knew that icy snow could be so hard? We do now.
The weather is starting to get nicer here in
Switzerland. In the past weeks,
it’s gotten up to around 60. Last
weekend, Dash had a cub scout outing at a place called Maison de Salève
in France. It’s an 18th
century farm with a large area for nature walks. We took a 3 hour hike looking for animal tracks and
signs—specifically foxes and wild hogs (who the guide assured us were
nocturnal—at least I think she did, it was in French). We entered the woods and it was
incredibly beautiful—it looked like we had emerged in a scene straight out of
the Lord of the Rings. The kids
had a great time climbing on the rocks.
We also had our first guests as Tina and Matt Richards came
to Geneva on the first leg of their European honeymoon. We drove over to Chamonix in France and
went to the top of Mont Blanc.
It’s a bit of ride—two separate gondolas to the top at about
12,500’. And then you can take an
elevator up another few hundred feet.
It was quite chilly and there’s no air up there, but the view from the
top is absolutely breathtaking...literally!
Lastly, we just had All American Boy’s cub scout Blue and Gold
dinner which is one of the Scouts’ fundraisers. It was last night, so the theme was built around Ireland and
St. Patrick’s Day. Dads and sons
were supposed to bake a cake or pie to be judged in a contest and our den also
was supposed to make hats for a skit (hence our hairy little leprechaun!) The skits were all quite cute and
included an appearance by U2, St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, and the Lord of the Dancers-in-Training.
More Photos
Tina and Matt
At the top
Future Ice Derby Queen
Well, that about catches us up. We’ll try to stay more current in the future. Happy Spring everyone!
6 For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end,
Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,
To order it and establish it with judgment and justice
From that time forward, even forever.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
Merry Christmas to all!
A day to move beyond the presents and count our true blessings: Family, Friends, and our Savior Jesus Christ.
Well, first
things first—there is no Thanksgiving
in Switzerland. None. Zilch. Nada. No
Pilgrims (the Swiss wouldn’t have the slightest clue why someone would want to leave Switzerland, the center of the
universe, and certainly not for religious reasons), no Indians (well, actually
not true in a manner of speaking, but more on that later), few turkeys, no
pumpkin pie and of course, no Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. So for CW, Thursday was just
that—Thursday. Our Swiss office doesn’t
close down for Thanksgiving. I did
leave a little early and got home to find that SoulSwisster had cooked
Thanksgiving dinner, which was a nice surprise. Well, she actually cooked the side dishes…But no
turkey—they’re hard to find here.
So SS and CW hopped in the car and drove to the grocery store to get a
couple of substitute rotisserie chickens.
We were gone about 30 minutes and when we drove back into the driveway,
SwissSis was looking out the window by the door, acting a bit like a
sentry. “This can’t be good,” we
thought. Boy, were we wrong!
Frying onions to top the green bean casserole
While we were away,
the kids had gotten themselves dressed in nice clothes and set the dining room
table, complete with candles, placemats, silver, and had even gotten the china
out. And when we walked in, they
presented themselves and the table.
What a great surprise! We
carved up the chickens and had a very nice Thanksgiving evening.
CW must admit,
it was a bit strange to be disconnected from Black Friday. No Blackness for us, just another
day. But you should be a little
jealous. While some of you were
staying up until midnight to get online for those early bird specials, we could
hop online at 7 AM, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Well, as bright-eyed as we get at 7 am. But we didn’t…no Black Friday shopping
for us. But we could have! J
Dash receiving his Bobcat
Friday night was
All American Boy’s first Cub Scout Pack Meeting. There must be about 8 or 9 dens, each with 6-8 boys so it
was, in a word, chaos. Absolute,
utter chaos. But a good time. CW didn’t particularly care for the
fact that the color guard presented the UN flag—something just not right for a
Boy Scouts of America organization.
AAB was awarded his Bobcat patch.
That means he knew the oath, the handshake, etc. Doesn’t he look sharp in his
uniform? The patch is put on
upside down and you’re only allowed to turn it right-side up when you’ve done a
good deed. AAB has been drying
dishes after dinner for quite some time hoping he’s done enough to flip that
badge right side up. Wonder if we
should tell him SS has already flipped the patch and adhered it to his
uniform? Nah…it’s nice to have
extra help in the kitchen!
A little excited
Saturday, we did
celebrate Thanksgiving. Our
church, Westlake, hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for ex-pats as well as the
curious. SS and a new friend,
Karen, organized it and it was a great success. About 65 people came including more than half
non-Americans. SS and Karen even
found turkeys to cook and trust us when we say that a Swiss oven is not built
for a turkey, particularly not a 20 pounder, which takes up the entire oven
space. The turkey cooking started
on Friday and went for 4 hours before we had to go to the pack meeting. When we got back from that, the turkey
went back in for a few more hours into the wee morning time. At 4 a.m. it was still not done. So SS had to get serious. She pulled it out, cut it up into
pieces and finished roasting it in parts.
All-in-all, probably about 11 hours. The turkey almost won…But in the end he was very moist and had
good flavor. CW was
volunteered/drafted for set-up work at the church, including the carving which
CW and another ex-pat did. Two 20
lb. turkeys and about 18 lbs of turkey breasts takes about an hour to
carve. Thank goodness Karen had
her transformer and her U.S. electric knife! Everyone brought something to share, so we had mashed
potatoes, stuffing (also hard to make as will tell you!), sweet potatoes
with brown sugar and pecans, corn casserole (from other displaced Texans), some
salads, cranberry sauce, and of course, wine (no meal is without wine here!). We sang a song, ate,
visited, put on Charlie Brown, and then cleaned for about 3 hours. The church has the coolest thing—an
industrial dishwasher that does a load in exactly three minutes. CW wants one at the house. Ours takes two hours!
Lauren preparing to blow out the candles
Remember we
wrote no Indians here? Well, some
of the kids, including AAB and SweetSwissTeen, participated in a little
Thanksgiving skit Caryn found to help explain to everyone what Thanksgiving is
about. It had the Pilgrims and of
course, the Indians. But when it
came time for the Indians to speak, the strangest thing happened. These Indian actors turned out not to have
Western Indian accents, but Eastern
Indian accents. When CW first
heard the accents, he did a double take and then laughed harder than he has at
anything in a long time! And the
kids playing those parts were Americans—though they never have lived in America,
which made it even funnier!
Anyway, a good
time was had by all and people are already asking if we’re going to do it again
next year.
Look closely--you can see Radar enjoying the tree
To close the
weekend out, we celebrated SwissSis’s 11th birthday. She asked if we could decorate the
house for Christmas, so we put up the Christmas tree (borrowed from a friend
since ours is in storage—didn’t make it on the truck) and got it mostly
decorated. CW grilled some steaks—we’re
sure the neighbors will be wondering what the crazy Americans are doing outside
grilling when it turns really cold,
but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!
Then we ate cake and she opened presents.
There you have
it. That was our first Swiss
Thanksgiving. Actually, it was
pretty packed—which was a good thing.
And we have so much to be thankful for, like all of you reading this—our
family and friends. We miss
you! You’re in our thoughts and
prayers! Hope that your Thanksgiving
was blessed and that you had time to remember all the real reasons we have to
be thankful.
So, we’ve been here approximately 3 months now and decided it was time for our first big trip. Actually, we decided we were tired of spending every Saturday trying to get to Ikea or the outdoor store or some supermarket in France. We needed to get away. And what better weekend to do it than All American Boy’s birthday?!? And where to go? Paris! It’s actually quite close—about 3-1/2 hours by train. And reasonable as well—about the cost of a round trip flight depending on where you want to head.
CW will let les enfants give the details of what we did, but he did learn some lessons:
1)Book early. We decided about a week in advance and it was tough to find a place. We ended up in a small boutique hotel that was going through some reservations, but generally had nice staff.
2) It’s hard to find rooms for 5. In fact, it’s impossible, so much like in the States, you’re going to be booking two rooms. Who knew the extra child would cost so much more! In some hotels we looked at, we couldn’t even find rooms for three. So just finding a place to stay is a little bit of work.
3) Did CW mention “book early?” Sorry—just wanted to emphasize that point. But also to give a plug for another suggestion—Vacation Rental By Owner or www.vrbo.com. This is a great idea (at least in theory, because we didn’t get to use it). People who have apartments rent them out online. We were amazed by some of the great apartments that were apparently available, CW notes “apparently” because one thing we discovered, even though it wasn’t clear on the site, is that a minimum stay (at least in Paris) is 3 nights.Had we done that and..wait for it…booked early, we could have secured what was likely a fantastic place to stay.So maybe next time on that.But appeared to much more economic than hotels.
4) Riding on the second floor of a train is a bit like being on water for SoulSwisster and SweetSwissTeen. Pack Dramamine.
5) Better meal planning. If we were home, we’d just hop in the car and drive until we found something. And there would always be something familiar. Not the case in Switzerland, but I thought in Paris, it might be better. Wrong. Trying to find a kid-friendly café not serving foie gras? Not as easy as it might seem.
6) Understand how to order meat. We finally did find such a place. Even served cheeseburgers! But be careful ordering meat in Europe. There’s an aversion to actually cooking it. Lots of tartare—per se and by default. So the cheeseburgers arrived with an echo of ‘moo’ in the air. Best to ask for well done—bien cuit—and hope for medium.
So there you have it—just a few CW’s handy-dandy travel trips. Now enjoy what les enfants had to say about their visits!
The Eiffel Tower
By
All American Boy
For my birthday my family and I went to Paris. My favorite landmark was the Eiffel Tower. Did you know that the Eiffel tower is a 1063 ft, or 324 meters tall tower made of iron. Gustave Eiffel made it for the world fair. It took about a year and a month to build. The restaurant on the 2nd floor is called Altitude 98 because it is 98 meters above sea level. The Eiffel Tower raises 3 inches in the summer because of solar heating and shrinks 6 inches in the winter.
Sadly, the top of the Eiffel Tower was in a cloud so I could not see anything at all. At night, on the bottom, there was a very cool view of the lights on the Eiffel Tower. After all, my birthday trip was very good!
Dash’s Birthday Trip
By
SweetSwissTeen
On Friday, when we woke up, there was a lot of hustle and bustle. We had to get dressed very quickly in time for the taxi. We gave Radar fresh food and water, and brought the luggage downstairs. The taxi that picked us up had two seats going backwards. It was really cool. When we arrived at the station we took a train to Geneva and then caught another train to Paris! On the train I sat by a window, Mom, on the other hand, had to sit next to someone who was not the best seatmate [I won’t elaborate]. When we got there, we went to our hotel and one of the rooms did not have a shower, but the other one did.
That night we went up the Eiffel Tower. Did I mention it was foggy that night? When we went up, we first went to the second level, and looked around. We were very high up. The cars looked like marbles and the people looked like ants! Then we took the elevator up to the very top. We were so high that we were in the clouds! Since there wasn’t much to see we soon went back down.
The next morning we went on a tour of the Louvre. It was amazing! We got to see the Venus of Milo, Winged Victory [both of whom had no arms. What is with that?] and the Mona Lisa [by the way “Mona” means “Lady”]. I hate to complain, but it looked under whelming. Because it was small! Did you know that Italian tourists stole the Mona Lisa in the 1900’s? It was found two years later under a carpet in Venice!
Afterwards we spent the rest of the day wandering the city. The next day we went to “the biggest aquarium in Europe” which took one hour to tour. The ride home was much more pleasant for mom, and when we came home Radar was waiting.
Dash’s Birthday Adventure.
By:
SwissSis
Last week we went to Paris for my brother’s birthday. Everyone was frantic except for Mr. Lazy Bones, A.K.A Radar the cat, the morning we left.
The train ride was long and tiring. After we checked into our hotel, which had a cute dog that liked me, but not Julia, we walked around the Eiffel Tower. Then we took the long, and cold, double-decker bus tour. On it we saw the Petite Palace and the Grand Palace. We also saw the Grand Arch, the Obelisk, and the Pont Neuf bridge, which we crossed about three times and which the tour guide announced three times. It was so cold that Dad and I were the only ones up top. While my mom was down in the roofed area with my brother and sister, they saw the bus driver stop the bus, get out and stick his tongue out at the cars behind us. The people on the top thought he was just letting passengers off the bus and on the bus… or so said the tour guide.
Eventually we got off, had dinner, and went up the Eiffel Tower. We couldn’t really see anything at the top because we were in a cloud. On the bottom decks, we could see things because we were not in a cloud. My sister, Julia, wanted to go up the most but I did not. I went up to the top and went over to the edge and looked down… don’t worry! They had a big gate. Even though Julia wanted to go up the most. she wanted to go down the most, and I wanted to stay up and look down. After that we went back to the hotel. In the morning we had breakfast at the hotel and I stashed sugar cubes in my pockets. Unfortunately the dog wasn’t there. After breakfast we went to the Louvre.
We saw the Mona Lisa, and one by David called The Coronation which is a painting where the painter painted himself in and “photo-shopped” Napoleon’s mother in later. We also saw the Venus De Milo and The Winged Victory. The Egyptian center was awesome. So was the Greek and Roman center. After the rest of the Louvre we walked around, relaxed at the hotel, got dinner, and went to sleep. In the morning we walked around and even went into an aquarium until 2:00. That’s when our taxi came to take us to the train station. The ride home, amazingly, didn’t feel as long. When we got home, Radar embraced us as if to say, “ You took way too long.”
Well, there we are. One last thing. AAB forgot to mention that we offered up his dishwashing and/or cooking services in exchange for dinner one night. That's how he wound up in the apron. Hard to believe we have a big 9 year old! Especially one who’s been to Paris! Where to next?
