Stein am Rhein

We have since moved back to Texas from Switzerland. I first drafted this post before we left. One of our favorite places to visit in Switzerland is the tiny medieval town of Stein am Rhein. We can take a train (the S29) from the tiny depot near our flat in Oberwinterthur to Stein am Rhein [...]

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Trash Stickers

I feel really guilty. We didn’t recycle hardly ever before we moved to Switzerland because they don’t do it in our neighborhood. We still don’t have it here, but the problem is, people are tightwads in our neighborhood, and even though our annual homeowners fee is only $125, people pitch a fit if we even [...]

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Euros in Switzerland

We have since moved back to Texas from Switzerland. I first drafted this post before we left. Just a quick note in the midst of our preparations to leave… Switzerland is not part of the European Union, however they abide by certain of their laws and even accept the Euro for currency. Well, they are [...]

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Home!

Well, just a brief note. We are back home in Texas, our cell phones and home internet finally turned on, and all of our things have arrived as well (though we’re only half-way through the unpacking process – when did we acquire so much stuff?). Many of you have asked what I’ll be doing with [...]

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Our Schedule…

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

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Hey Look!

I’m now on Expat Blog:

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Unexpected Christmas Difficulties

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 [...]

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Some Helpful Langauge for Visiting (Northern) Switzerland

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 [...]

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Vocabulary Fun!

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 [...]

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Makes Cents!

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 [...]

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And the cow says… MOO!

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 [...]

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Interesting snacks

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), [...]

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Altstadt Market in Winterthur

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 [...]

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Announcement!

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 [...]

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Touring Switzerland and the rest of Europe

I was thinking today about how many places we’ve seen and explored here in Switzerland over the last year and few months that we’ve lived here and how much more we want to see, not just of Switzerland, but of Europe. Even though I’ve not written about all of them here on this blog, here [...]

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