hanging out and chasing lizards

Sorry for not blogging sooner - life is just flying by here. We have been to Geneva (or thereabouts), Italy - Sue even got back to California in the mix. There were so many funny little stories to tell, and yet nothing so exciting that it had to be told. We have tucked in lots of hiking and lots of eating, lots of biking and lots of sleeping. Sounds like we never left California...

Being here is different,though. We had a nice picnic in the park with a set of parents and kids from the school: a couple from Toronto (husband here for some banking job) and another from Houston (husband in the shipping business). They had been here 9-12 months, and said that you never really feel like you are here. I don't know if that is a function of thinking this is temporary, or not fitting into the culture, or the fact that it feels like vacation everyday because you are surrounded by people who talk a foreign (to you) language and hence you logically conclude that you must be on vacation. I have hope that when we move to our "permanent" housing in July that we will feel more settled - but then the parade of California friends will start arriving, bringing on that vacation vibe - practically the entire summer. So maybe, in September or so, when everyone is gone and the kids are back in school, maybe then we will start to feel settled in and "at home"...or maybe...

Our friend Aslam drew a graph on a piece of paper the other night. He said he had gotten the chart from a friend who had been an expat a while back. Imagine a line drawn from left to right showing time marching on, with a little hill at the beginning, followed by a huge trough at least 5-10 times as big as the hill, followed by an flat line that is a small amount higher than where you started. He said this is your mood on an expat assignment - excitement at first, followed by a long, large deep depression, followed by some level of acceptance that makes you a tad happier than you were when you arrived but not as high as the high you had on the little hill when you first got here. It was actually quite depressing because I could imagine it isn't far from the truth - isn't this supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime, this amazing life experience you can't have just staying at home?

Well, when we went for a bike ride this weekend, we passed by a set of garden plots. It is quite common here, as so many people live in apartments, that they can rent a piece of land (probably 20' X 30' or so) and have a nice garden, often with veggies, flowers, an occasional pond and most often a shelter with table and benches and a grill. So as we passed the garden plots, we saw group after group - be it family or friends - with wine and beer and the grill going, out for a Sunday meal together. That to me, was witness to an amazing life experience. Getting together with friends and family to eat and celebrate nothing more than the joy of another weekend is really as good as it gets - anywhere in the world.

But wait - I finally rememberd a story worth telling - and I have a picture to boot. On one of our great hikes in Italy (props to the two boys for being good sports and keeping up) we found a bright green lizard with a bright blue head. You would have thought we were in Costa Rica or something - what is a technicolor lizard doing in Northern Italy? Anyway, Eric and Karl became obsessed chasing this lizard to get the perfect picture - they must have spent 15 minutes chasing it from one bush back to another - you could see the poor thing breathing its little lungs out from exhaustion (I was praying it was not some rare almost-extinct species). Finally they chased it up the tree, and - wala - our nature photography at its best.

Anyone who can ID the lizard for us gets a prize!

Ciao!

The Three Year Old Man and the 1017 CHF Parking Garage Fee

In the last few weeks we have really begun to settle down and start a routine: Eric getting the kids to school, Sue getting to work, dinner together in the evening, homework and then off to bed. A quick yet welcome disruption to our routine was the final arrival of our air shipment. It had been delayed for a week or so due to the volcano, but finally arrived bringing a series of Christmas-like events of toys (for the kids) and shoes (for Sue) that had been absent for the last four weeks. Now it is surprising how once you don’t live with something for four weeks, you really don’t miss it anymore (except shoes). So we are now in a mix blessing state of liking all the new things we are rediscovering traded off with the fact that more stuff needs to be put away and more stuff needs to be cleaned up. It is amazing how little you can actually live with…

One of the recent trips we took was up to Schwieberdingen (outside of Stuttgart in Germany) to visit Sue’s cousin Michael Hatbauer, along with his wife Iris, 6 year old daughter Sina, and 3 year old son Tom. Michael had spent the summer with us when we lived in Emeryville, so we have the close relationship with him that comes from having lived in tight quarters for longer than a few days. So we were welcomed with open arms, but only seconds after arriving, Michael had an announcement to make: die ganze Wochenende sollen wir nur auf Deutsch reden (the whole weekend we only speak German!)! Eric protested, but again Michael knows Eric – so there was no arguing. About half way through the weekend Eric had a bit of a breakdown, and he admitted that he felt like a 3 year old man with his struggles with the language (though truthfully Tom was speaking better German than Eric). To his credit, Eric did a great job, and the kids even joined in the German fun – Eric is more committed more than ever to learning German – and as he is using it everyday we expect fast progress.

The weekend with the Hatbauers was a ton of fun. There was lots of eating, and lots of Kaffee und Kuchen! We went to traditional May Day festivals in the town Iris grew up in – complete with May pole, little girls dancing and weaving ribbons around the base, and an umpah band right out of the Music Man with men fashioning handlebar mustaches. Perhaps our little town of Corte Madera should erect a May Pole??? We then spent Sunday on a great hike through towns to a Besenwirtshaft Festival – effectively a farmer’s cooperative / wine inn which once or twice a year throws a weekend festival of bratwurst, French fries, and potato salad along with big beers and local made wine. All was good except Bennett’s non-stop whining on the hike, but you can’t blame the kid as it was raining slightly and was his fifth or sixth big hike (>2 hours) in less than three weeks. Mom and Dad – can’t we just stay in and watch TV once in a while?

We celebrated Karl’s birthday this Monday – the big 0-9! We went out to dinner (now a special treat – I still gag at ordering a $5 soda for the kids) and Karl got his Swiss Army Knife (don’t you give your kids knives on their birthday?) but he really lit up at getting a cactus – just like his Oma! After dinner the family headed to Sue’s work as she had taken the car that morning to drive her boss around. She parked in the nearby garage, but had gotten an exit ticket from her admin so we could leave cost free. We were all a bit tired and bordering on cranky but got to the car and started driving out of the garage – only to find that the ticket would not let us exit, but that we owed 17 CHF. With a heavy sigh, Sue backed up the car and parked next to the exit and Eric got out to pay the ticket so we could just get home.

Time passed. And passed.

It must have been close to 15 minutes when Eric finally came back, with one of the garage attendants. You could hear Eric getting friendly with the attendant in German:” mein Sohn Karl hat Geburtstag heute!” echoing off the garage walls as he approached. “You won’t believe this “, he started as he got to the car. Turns out he found the kiosk and put in the ticket, and then followed it with a 20 CHF bill to pay the ticket – turns out that it then asked for more money – 997 CHF as a matter of fact. So our little exit ticket must have been another exit ticket I had from entering the month or so before – asking us for 1017 CHF, instead of our naïve assumption of the bargain price of 17 CHF. The kind attendant, probably mystified by the outrageous ticket as well as tired from Eric’s broken German let us out for free. Nice to know there is a limit to how expensive things can be, even in Switzerland…

This weekend it is off to Geneva to visit Suze and Didi – old friends from Genentech. And stay tuned - Eric will tell you tomorrow about the tram wreck he was in…