something bad finally happened (well, almost)

So when Eric and I traveled through Asia we sent email to our frends (1999 - this was in the days before blogs even existed) and our motto at the time was "the worse the situation, the better the story". So here in Switzerland I have been waiting for something "bad" to happen so I could tell a good story. And I have been waiting, and waiting... and life here has been, well - normal. We are making new friends (thanks to Eric, the social king), having people over for dinner, Sue goes to work, the kids play with kids in the neighborhood, the take piano lessons, and blah blah blah... So it has been hard to muster up a good story to tell without boring myself, much less someone else who would care even less (except the grandparents - they want to know everything).

Well last week I finally had my chance. Eric calls me on Tuesday to let me know that he can't find Bennett's passport. This would be OK, except for the fact that we are leaving on Saturday for vacation in the Canary Islands - and we can't go anywhere without that passport. So I tell him to remain calm, we will find it - a motto in our family is that "we always find everything" - which we do, though I think we are in contention for the "Most Lost Things" award. I swear we could get so much done if we just stopped having to always look for everything...

Now the fact that the passport was missing was not so strange in itself. Bennett, destined for life as a spy or a CIA agent, has been caught previously playing with it - making photo copies and crafting fake passports (that is along with photo copying money, which we explained is a federal offense). So he played with it, and we just have to ask him where he put it...

So with Bennett still at school, Eric, who always gets a bit anxious before we travel due to all the logistics, starts to really panic. He sends me emails during the day that he has looked everywhere; he called the consulate and found out we would have to go to Bern the next day to get a replacement with no guarantee of timing - and it would have to be all of us so I would have to skip work; and then he finds out that we would need to have a police report to file for a replacment which means we need the police to come over on Tuesday night... so I, who really believe that we find everything, start to panic myself a bit. I send him a list of places to look for the passport: in the kitchen drawer, under Bennett's bed, in the kid's safe, under the carpet in their room - I am coming up with anything I can think of, because I know if Eric can't find it quickly he will just explode with stress.

No luck, no passport found by early afternoon. So Eric is off to school to pick up the kids, and I reassure him that Bennett will know where he put it. I sit at my desk at work and start speed dialing Eric at 3:20 so I can hear that all is well and Bennett knows exactly where it is... I finally get through, only to find out that Bennett does not know where it is.

So now I start to panic.

I have been looking forward to this vacation for months - a warm beach break from increasingly cold Basel. I am starting to mentally rearrange my meetings for the next morning so we can go to Bern - and then there is figuring out how we find the police department that is open late so we can file the police report - all the time knowing if we just look further we will find it. But what if we don't??

I had a pretty intense work meeting from 4 to 6 pm - but the whole time I am distractetd on what we are going to do if we don't find this passport. I want to get home so I can help look and get this behind us. And all during the meeting I keep checking my email in the event that Eric's luck turns.

And the email comes: "Found it. I am a loser."

Relief floods my whole body - vacation is on! It turns out it was exactly where it should be: in the desk drawer. It turns out in his haste, Eric did not see the passport as it was separate from the others and tucked between two pieces of paper.

Moral of the story: We always find everything...

Next stop: Canary Islands....

Zahnfee

So we just finished a great visit from Eric's friend Larry. He stayed for two weeks and got to experience some of the great European lifestyle (we packed him home with reusable shopping bags and he was eyeing our electric water kettle...) and got in a lot of bike riding.

We actually took part in two Slo-Up bike events - one in Basel and one in Zurich, where they shut down sets of streets for the day and you can bike with the kids with the freedom of no cars going by. We did 41 km in Basel in perfect weather - kudos to Bennett who has the highest bike weight to body weight ratio!

Zurich the next week was a bit wet, but had a lot more swag - couldn't go more than a few kilometers without hitting free drinks, granola bars, or water bottles - the kids were besides themselves, as nothing in life is better than free stuff - and despite the distractions got in a good 35 km as well. We snacked on wurst with mustard and bread mid ride (note the big wurst in the picture)- nothing better. Bennett always complains to get out of the house for a ride, but then on his bike actually sings to himself the whole way - and really never gets tired. I LOVE biking with the kids and am thrilled that we all have so much fun getting out in the fresh air...


Related, Eric and Larry took a overnight trip to France to bike up the Alpe d'Huez - an apparently infamous climb in the Tour de France. On that night I had the kids to myself, and low and behold Bennett comes home with a tooth gone. Luckily the tooth was found and carefully packaged by the teacher - so now the question was, does the tooth fairy come to Switzerland?

A little Wikipedia search shows that yes, the Zahnfee as he/she is called in these parts does make an appearance at night. So Karl and Bennett were finishing their go-to-bed activities, and when I asked for lights out Bennett jumped up and stopped me, saying he had to write the Zahnfee a note. He, clever little guy, then proceeded to write a note in broken German(because heaven forbid the Zahnfee can't read English and screws up the whole process). I have looked high and low for the note - when I find it I will post it because it was so funny - but to paraphrase: please leave me 1000 CHF (about $1000) and can I please keep my tooth?

The kid is bold. Remind me to tell you about how he finally got in trouble at school by locking all the the boy bathroom stalls with a paperclip...

So low and behold, the Zahnfee did come. He/she left a 5 franc coin, so not quite 1000 CHF but nothing to sneeze at - and the tooth was left as well. Nice to know some things work all over the world.

What we love (and don't love) about Switzerland

So at dinner tonight, I asked everyone what they like and don't like about Switzerland - here are some of the responses:

Bennett: He likes the chocolate, and the cows. When probed on the cows, he commented that they make such good milk here. We asked if the milk tasted any different, and he said no. Perhaps just the fact that he has met cows here (which you don't often get the chance to do in California) now makes the milk a bit more personal.

Karl: Trams. Actually, on our ride home today, Karl asked to stop so he could take the tram the rest of the way, that is how much he likes it. He can quote any tram # and describe it's route - he has amazed us when we are in the middle of a part of town we have never been before but he can tell us exactly what tram line runs through.

Eric: He likes that the pace of life here is a bit slower - and it really feels nice. It is puzzling, but somehow being on the hamster wheel of life you don't often think there is any other option but to keep on spinning. Eric also commented previously how much he likes our house here. We finally did the final push to unpack - see Bennett lost among the boxes - and now it really feels like home.




Sue: She loves the walking - that you walk everywhere, and you find the time to do it. At home the Safeway was a 10 minute walk from our house and we would rarely think to do it (because we were on that hamster wheel - can't get off - too much to do!), where here she has frequently walked to work (30 minutes) - even in the rain! The other thing she loves is the outdoors - the forests, the mountains... here is a snapshot from a recent weekend hike:



The nature is really breathtaking, and we can't wait until winter to do it all with snow as well!

For the things we don't like, Karl mentioned cheese, which is just a continuation of his cheese ban from California. Bennett, a cheese lover, chimed in that what he does not like about Switzerland was the cheeses he doesn't like - can't argue with that reasoning. But the winner of things not to like in Switzerland, with resounding agreement among all of us is the smoking. Even though it was just banned in restaurants in April, it is still common and prevalent at tram stops, walking down the street, and any teenagers hanging in a doorway. And to make matters worse, one of our childhood memories is here:



Candy cigarettes! Karl and Bennett are fascinated by them, and beg for them often. They will chant until the cows come home how bad smoking is for you, but the allure of the candy cigarette - a little naughty without being harmful - is this a habit in the making or a passing fad?

And it goes without saying that one of the things we don't like about Switzerland is that all of our family and friends are not here! We are slowly making new connections, definitely helped by school starting again - but nothing replaces old friends! Don't forget us, because we are not forgetting you!

a new era of Monopoly

So - this has nothing to do with Switzerland, except for the fact that if we had been at home, we would have had a TV and might not have had to find other ways to entertain ourselves. See, we seem to have had bad luck with our electricity conversion: first blew the cable converter (actual smoke came out) by plugging things in the wrong order (we actually still don't know what we did wrong, as we thought we understood electricity but obviously don't). Two weeks later, for no apparent reason, our TV then stops working as well. So now we are here with no TV, no videos, so what do we do...

Someone had the bright idea to bring out the board games, and we played Monopoly.

Now I have not played Monopoly in years - might be decades. Last I remember playing Monopoly was in high school at Greg Flynn's house with Bob Miller and possibly Keith Porter - up until 5 am making alliances and destroying people. I remember the game being long, and you had to make the right alliances or you were out fast.

So what surprised me is how my boys, age 9 and 7, could pick up the rules so fast and quickly understand concepts like mortgages and rent. Of course mom and dad helped a little with the strategy, and made deals happen in their best interest (to the point that they always won) but after a few games they started getting that, too. They have become obsessed - who can play Monopoly every night?

The other funny thing is that we actually read the rules, and again it could be time, but I don't remember half these rules: three doubles and you go to jail? You can only borrow money from the bank? I was just reading an opinion piece by Jon Carroll of the SF Chronicle where he discusses the concept of Monopoly "house rules" - and now, after reading the real rules, realize that most of our alliance making and deals that I had assumed were how the game was played was actually our version of the game. What is even funnier is how quickly "house rules" become part of the game - one of our visitors played with the boys (as we were exhausted after game 7 in one week) and he introduced a "house rule" of getting $500 every time you landed on Free Parking - and the kids felt so cool - like it was their personal game.

Already the kids are developing their Monopoly "norms": Karl hides his money so know one can know what he has; Bennett loves to make the stacks of money in order for everyone at the beginning of the game, and during the game surrounds his stack with all his properties in a sort of fortress formation. It is also great to play with Eric - who grew up with a whole other set of strategies and house rules - way more aggressive than I remember, and truthfully he hasn't won yet...

So if you haven't played in a while, or thought your kids were too young to play, think of dusting off the game and play one night. Would be curious to know your "house rules"...

And the photos that wouldn't fit...

Let's not forget the Zecs...And now a picture from the Casendinos...

Photos from our visitors this summer

Yes - we have had seven different families come by this summer - here are some great photos from their stays. We don't have any of the Casendinos, but hopefully they will send snaps from their camera after they return to the US later in August...

Hope you had a great summer too!

So who did Uncle Ben sleep with?

I feel horrible that it has been so long since posting. Really. Life has been a hectic whirl here: we moved locations and are now in our permanent residence in Basel, went on vacation in Greece (actually ended up doing that the same time as we moved - longer story), traveled to California for work, and tomorrow will mark the arrival of our 7th family arriving to visit - that's right, 7 in the last 7 weeks. We have been blessed with lots of friends from California who had plans to come to Europe anyway, and were able to swing by for a day or two and hang out in Basel and the surrounding areas - if you want to know how we are doing, just roam around Corte Madera or Larkspur and you are bound to run into someone who visited.

Eric has done most of the entertaining, but Sue has been able to free herself from late night meetings and travel to join in most of the time as well. We now have a standard city tour down pat, but we had the chance to take people floating down the Rhine, watched a lot of World Cup Soccer, visited a few museums, got out on a fair amount of hikes, lots of time at the Bottmingen pool, and our favorite: grilling in the forest. Eric actually said he is sick of meat and grilling - and we have been eating vegetarian all this week. We will see if we can muster up the "meat" energy for the Zecs who arrive tomorrow.

It has been fun to share our house (still in a state of being unpacked) and connect again with what is going on in California. The boys have been thrilled to have new playmates every week, and it really has made it feel like San Franicsco is not so far away.

One thing people have asked is what we miss from home. Hmmm - this is really hard, as you can anything you want here. Mexican ingredients? They have it. Peanut butter? No longer a foreign item. We even found a asian market that would give stores in Chinatown a run for their money - every spice known to mankind and things with no english that look like they are fermenting in the jar - things that are probably illegal to sell in the US (we will have to see how adventurous we are feeling...). But one thing has absolutely alluded us...

Long grain white rice.

I don't really care if it is from California - just some good old plain long grain rice. When we first got here we bought rice assuming it was long grain (it is hard to tell how long a grain is if you don't have another grain next to it to compare it to). When we got home and made it, it became quickly clear that it wasn't the right stuff - and further inspection of the label showed that it was...par boiled...rice.

Yuck.

I don't want to pass judgement if you happen to like par boiled rice. I just don't. The rice is off-white and all rolls around on the plate with each grain separate, and it really tastes like all the life and vitamins have been stripped away. I want the white stuff that kind of sticks together and feels really heavy(keep your brown rice vitamin talk to yourself. I like brown rice, too, but white rice is what I am focusing on). The asian market did have jasmine rice which isn't a bad alternative - but it isn't long grain. My last pass at the supermarket actually showed that the whole rice aisle was Uncle Ben's rice. Rows of red boxes with Ben smiling up at me - who had the marketing savvy to knock all the other rices off the shelf? Do the Swiss know what they are missing?

So last time I was in California, I, like all good Japanese tourists, bought myself 10 lbs of California long grain white rice. If you are reading this in California, realize how lucky you are. If you plan to come and visit, be sure to throw a bag in your suitcase for us!