In case anyone wants to know how crazy things are, and how you might be able to fit in and help…

December

17/18 – phone calls about bills, packing
19 – get back and give back loaned items
20 – Westfield family Christmas (take 1)
21 – shopping for stuff to ship home, packing
22 – laundry and final packing (could use a baby wrangler, might as my neighbor Roz)
23 – shippers take away 99% of our things, Rosie flies home, Dinner at Regina and Werner’s
24 – dinner @ Stacy and Oliver’s
25/26 – possibly taking a day trip somewhere in Switzerland
27 – going away party
28 – possibly taking a day trip somewhere in Switzerland
29 – laundry, packing, give away all remaining food
30 – flight home, parents picking us up at IAH

31 – IKEA, grocery store

January

1 – REST ! Unpack just a little, and put together things from IKEA (namely the dresser I need to get), Westfield family Christmas (take 2, this time with grandparents).
2 – UNPACK SHIPPING CRATE AND POD – both should be in in our driveway by then. Anyone in the Houston area welcome to come by in the morning and help. I say Houston area because we have limited crash space because my parents are staying with us for a few days; floor and one air mattress available, but probably not advisable, as we need room to shuffle boxes, etc. (nice run-on, Krys)
3 – unpack, shop for clothes for H and jeans for me.
4 – H goes back to work, I continue to unpack.

early January: I go back to work part-time (possibly? Sharon needs to let me know when to start)

mid-January: welcome back gathering at our place, weekend trip to Dallas to get Jake (our other dog) and see friends and family, MIL visits?

late-January: San Jose to see my new baby nephew.

Early to mid February: Possible road trip (just Eddie and I) to destinations north and east to see friends and family. Hope to get to see my grandpa on this trip.

I’m now on Expat Blog:

He may be a little young for it, but we decided to get our son a toddler bike similar to this one:

Most kids here learn to ride a bike this way, and they start as a toddler. He might not use it much until this spring, but since there are such a wide variety of these bikes we wanted to get him one while we were here and had the means to ship it home.

I found a model on sale at one of the larger local stores, and need to do some grocery shopping. I lugged back my groceries and this large box with the bike in it as well as one of those “doodle-pads” (the latter of which we hope to use to keep him occupied on the plane). And it was raining and cold. It was one of the rare times I wished I had a car.

As soon as I walked in the door my overly excited husband started opening up the box. He’s really loving being a father, and can’t wait to help his son ride a bike. Being Switzerland, he of course found instructions in German, Italian, and French. “Good luck, honey,” I said as I went to put my groceries away. I’m pretty proud of him, though. Using only the pictures, and asking me for help with one word in French, he put the wee bike together.

Ok, so my phonetics are probably a bit off, but I thought this might help someone so I’m publishing it anyway. One of our visiting friends wanted to learn a few more phrases, so I made this list for her of the words and phrases I use the most in my every day speech here in northern Switzerland and I think would be most helpful to a visitor. These are spelled as I hear them, definitely not written correctly. The accented syllables are in all-caps. I also simplified the pronunciations, as the subtleties in the language are hard to understand unless you hear them.

Hello/Good Day: GROOT-zee

Good Bye: Off-VEE-der-shane *or you can say* AD-dju

Please/You’re Welcome: BIT-eh

Thank You: DANK-eh

Good Evening: SHONE-en-AH-big

Good Morning: GOO-teh MORG-eh *or you can say* MORG-eh

Check, Please!: TZAHL-en BIT-eh

Excuse me/Pardon me: en-TCHOOL-deh-gung *or you can say* eh-SKOOSE-ee

How much does this cost?: vee feel costet das?

I am sorry, I don’t speak German. Do you know English?: en-TCHOOL-deh-gung, ich SPREK-eh KINE-eh deutsch. KENnen-zee ANG-lish?

Bag or Sack: TASH-eh

A few numbers:
1 ein
2 svie
3 dry (or in Swiss German “dru”)
4 fear
5 funf
6 sex
7 zeben
8 ahhcht
9 noyn
10 zehn

Feel free to correct my pitiful attempt or add to it.

Even though I got really frustrated with learning German, it wasn’t always a struggle. One of the interesting things about learning German is how certain really long words are just a series of words strung together. Once you figure out which word is what, you can usually decipher most or all of the word. One of my favorite words to say (that I have utterly no use for in everyday conversation) is the word for hot air balloon: Heissluftballon. Heiss is hot, Luft is air, and Ballon is balloon. Easy!

I also like how clear-cut and logical the language can be. The word for shoe is Schuhe. The word for gloves is Handschuhe. Get it?

I think that with any language, the first words you should learn are yes, no, hello, please, thank you, and good-bye. Swiss German has some really unique alterations to those basic commands. Most Swiss folks drop the “n” sound off the end of nein, and sometimes their ja sounds more like a “joh”. Bitte is always “please,” but I’ve heard about a half a dozen variations on how to say “thank-you.” The proper (high German) way to say thank-you is Danke schön. You’ll also hear Vielen Dank, Merci Vilmal, Danke Vilmal, Danke, and Merci (said with a German and not French accent). Saying hello the wrong way can also immediately place you as an outsider. Guten Tag may be the proper way to say hello in German, but everyone in (northern) Switzerland always says Grüezi. For more than one person, you can say what I like to call the translation of “Howdy Y’all” or Grüezi Mitenand. You can also tack on the word Mitenand to your good morning (Guete Morge, short for Guten Morgen) and good evening. I have no idea how to spell how the Swiss say good evening, much less pronounce it, but it is a take on the proper Guten Abend and sounds like “chairnobik” to me. The Swiss good-bye is different from high German as well, though you will hear a lot of shop folks say Auf Wiedersehen because it is considered polite. Uf Widerluege is goodbye, but so is the more informal Tschüss or Ciao!

And of course, in any language, you need to know how to order a beer: ein bier, bitte!

Eddie has a German picture book (Mein kunterbuntes Wörterbuch) with all kinds of vocabulary in it – food, animals, parts of the body. I think one of the funniest is the word for skunk, an animal that only lives in the Americas: Stinktier or literally “stinky animal!”

NOTE: In case you were wondering, all proper nouns when written in German have the first letter capitalized, which makes me a little nuts, but I wrote it correctly in this post.

Pardon the pun. I recently saw an article about the decline of popularity of the American penny. It got me thinking about the Swiss money system. The Swiss equivalent of a cent is a rappen. You can only get rappen as small as 5. The denominations are 5, 10, 20, and 50.

Also, the Swiss Franc paper money doesn’t start until the 10 Franc note. You can only get smaller Francs as coins in denominations of 1, 2, and 5. Another interesting note (ha! full of puns today!), if you withdraw money from an ATM, you will receive the highest denominations possible, unless you select otherwise (if the option for smaller denominations is available). Heath’s eyes bugged out the first time the ATM spat out a 200 CHF note at him instead of a wad of 20’s.

All in all, I think the Swiss system is, I think. Although I did have to buy a new wallet with a coin-holder!

Sorry, we’ve been reading far more children’s books than adult’s books lately. But it relates to my quick post of the day. For some reason over the past week or so, if I have the north-facing windows open, I will quite clearly hear a bellowing cow. The nearest ones I know of are a handful that were brought from some higher pastures to some pastures that are in between the line of houses of our area and the wooded walking trails. Like this guy:

And he’s probably a half a mile away! I guess that the acoustics of living on the side of a hill account for some of it, and that the cows here are just really loud.

I always like to try new food items and you never know what wacky food combinations will work well. This week I grabbed two new snacks, Snips and Schoko Pfeffer-Nüsse, and two favorites I discovered last year, Lebkuchen and Quarkini.

Snips are the same consistency of Cheetos (maybe a little less gummy on the teeth), and instead of cheese flavoring, they are made with peanuts. It is sort of like eating puffed rice peanut butter. Not bad, but not something I think I’ll be madly craving when we go back to the states.

Despite my hope that all things Christmas would not appear in shops until after Thanksgiving, most grocery stores have started selling Christmas candy and cookies. In one such display at the checkout line, I grabbed a bag labeled Schoko Pfeffer-Nüsse. Schoko is short for schokolade, or chocolate. Pfeffer is pepper, but I temporarily forgot this, and thought it meant peppermint. And Nüsse is nuts. I was hoping it was some sort of chocolate peppermint and nut cookie. No such luck. These were a soft gingerbread cookie flavored with real pepper, and dipped in a chocolate and unknown white candy shell. Not all that great, and I’m a fan of mixing things like chili and chocolate.

My favorite treat right now is definitely the Lebkuchen. They sell it in little packages and at the markets and grocery stores. Even the cheap ones at the drug stores are good! The Swiss version of Lebkuchen is a tiny (usually heart-shaped) cake or really soft gingerbread cookie, filled with a dark apricot preserve, and the whole thing dipped in dark chocolate. They are extremely addictive, and I will buy as many bags as I can to take home with us.

Last but certainly not least is the Quarkini, found at local bakeries. They remind me of a cross between a really good Cruller donut with a slightly creamy, but light and airy center, shaped like a large donut-hole and rolled in sugar. I’m not sure why these only appear in the winter, but I love them! They almost never make them home, as we eat them while walking. Too bad they usually cost at least a Franc each, because I could probably eat a dozen at one sitting! Based on the name, I believe that these treats are made with Quark (a type of curd or cream cheese that is often added to desserts or yogurt over here).

Quarkini

All this snack-talk is making me nibbly. I think I’ll go see if there are any more Lebkuchen in the pantry!

One of my favorite things about Switzerland is all the local food. I’m a big advocate, whenever possible, to eat locally and try to reduce our carbon footprint by regularly eating goods that are transported hundreds or thousands of miles. The Swiss are very proud of their local foods, and all foods are required to have the country of origin located somewhere on the packaging (or in the case of the grocery store, on the sign). Sometimes you pay a bit more for Swiss goods, but I think it is worth it.

Every Tuesday and Friday in the Winterthur altstadt (old town), there is a farmers market. I’m not sure what time the shops set up, but at 10:45 AM every one of them begins packing up goods (but a please and a smile will get you a few last-minute goods). Usually all of the food is local, with perhaps cherries from France or olives from Greece, but usually no further than that. There are copious amounts of small farms with stands packed with the season’s best and tons of florists. (The Swiss are keen to keep fresh flowers on the graves and in their window boxes. I’ve seen some truly outstanding gardens as well.) There are also two fish stands, a number of cheese and bread stands, some selling fresh homemade pasta, and a tiny spot for a lady that only sells fresh organically grown herbs.

I love going there whenever I can. The folks are always incredibly nice and helpful. I often get free samples offered to me, and sometimes they’ll toss something extra in my bag when I buy stuff. I’ve gotten free mushrooms, a bag of fresh egg noodles, extra Japanese Lantern shells, and even extra apples. Unless there is an event in the altstadt, pretty much each shop is in the same spot every week. It is nice when I want to say, just get some fish and some bread, or I’m craving a slice of lemon chocolate chip cake from a baked goods stand that is all the way at one end of the market line.

The market is year-round, but there are fewer stalls in the early spring, when there’s not much produce to sell other than stored apples and potatoes and eggs. During the month of December the Christmas Market competes for space in the altstadt. Practically each town in Switzerland has a farmers market once or twice a week – there’s even one in the middle of the busy Zurich hauptbahnhof (main train station)!

Here’s a few pictures of my cherished Winterthur market, mostly taken earlier in the summer.

A few more pictures can be found here.

We are moving back to Texas in January!

Lots of details still to be ironed out, but I’m sad, happy, worried, and stressed all at once.

We still plan to take a few more day trips and at least one weekend trip within Switzerland, so I’m sure I’ll have more to post in the next few months. I’ve also got a backlog of posting that I keep meaning to get around to. And since this blog isn’t just about us living in Switzerland, but also about our travels, I’ll be sure to update any future interesting adventures.