The Neutral Zone

Paris, France - We've returned to Europe for a three-week sojourn in France, Switzerland, and the UK. We're obviously very excited. We arrived in Paris Sunday around 11AM. Our approach to jet lag is akin to tearing the bandaid off quickly: We purposely sleep little if at all on our transatlantic flight (below is a photo of Hannah, trying not to sleep on the flight), consume copious amounts of caffeine after we land, slowly descend into irritability and mild delirium, and then collapse after staying up as late as we can on our first night in Europe. Our body's, overcome by shock from this maltreatment, eagerly accept a full night's sleep, even if it's offered at an hour that's entirely out of keeping with our normal schedule. Works like a charm.  After depositing our things at the hotel, we aimlessly wandered around Paris for a few hours before meeting up with Maggie, an acquaintance of Hannah's from work. Maggie took us to the wine bar Delicatessen where we ...

Albany, CA - In our time living abroad in Switzerland, I learned a very little amount of German. German is a confusing and wonderful language and I'll take you on a brief journey of the things I learned. Compound Words German is famous for its compound words, of which there are many. In fact, once you know a decent amount of root words, you can sometimes figure out the meaning of new words just by breaking the word apart into its various components.  For example: dafur: da (there) fur (for) - therefore Zahnfleisch: Zahn (tooth) fleisch (meat) - gums Zahnarzt: Zahn (tooh) arzt (doctor) - Dentist The Zeugs: there are a number of these... flugzeug: flug (flight) zeug (thing) - airplane fahrzeug - fahr (drive) zeug (thing) - vehicle feuerzeug - feuer (fire) zeug (thing) - lighter  Spielzeug - spiel (play) zeug (thing) - toy Tongue Twisters German is famous for its long and hard-to-pronounce words. Here are a few I encountered.  Geschwindigskeit - speed verpfliptichgung - obli...

Zug, Switzerland - I visited the office today to pack up my things in preparation for our impending departure from Switzerland. While I was there, I noticed a curious icon on the office's dishwasher. Further investigation revealed that the icon was for a fondue/raclette wash function. The icon is pictured below. The manufacturer, V-Zug Ltd. (subsidiary of Metall Zug Group, a Swiss industrial holding company), describes the fondue/raclette function this way: "The typical Swiss programme for the Swiss market from the Swiss manufacturer! Caquelons and raclette pans are cleaned to perfection without having to soak first. The programme can also be used as a 'super-intensive' run thanks to its active soaking phase. Pre-rinsing of burned-on soufflé or gratin dishes is a thing of the past." V-Zug apparently makes this feature available on several of its Adora models of dishwasher.  Upon discovering this, I of course rushed home to investigate my own apartment'...

Zürich, Switzerland - We've spent much of the fall hiking and taking in the colorful foliage. For some of these trips we've ventured out on our own - just Hannah and me - while on others, good friends joined us.   Lech Lech is among the more posh ski towns in the alps. Wikipedia describes Lech this way: "Catering to wealthier clientele, particularly to the international jet set and foreign royalty, the municipality is an internationally known winter sports resort on the mountain range Arlberg. The Dutch royal family and Russian oligarchs regularly ski there." We visited in the fall shoulder season between the peak summer and winter periods. Many of the restaurants and hotels were closed ahead of the winter rush. When you're plebs like us, this is how you afford and gain admittance to such an exclusive place. Needless to say, we did not rub shoulders with royals or oligarchs. We visited Lech with our good friends Ben and Laura where we celebrated their recent enga...

Zurich, Switzerland - Several weeks ago I regaled you with our trip to the Netherlands. Here, I will share some details from the second half of that trip, in which we visited Belgium. Ghent Our first stop in Belgium was Ghent, a major European city in the middle ages and during the early renaissance. It was for a time the second largest European city North of the alps (after Paris), as we were reminded countless times by various informational plaques and various audio guides at historical sites.  Owing to its prosperity, Ghent built some wonderful gothic and Medieval architecture. The city's well preserved Graslei and Korenlei are fine examples. This was the quay and the heart of the Medieval city, home to merchants, guild halls, and storage depots. Today it's a popular tourist destination and home to many cafes with terrace's along the water. Speaking of cafes, during its Medieval heyday, the city seems to have built gothic cathedrals in much the same way that we build Sta...