In case you didn’t already know…

I’m now mainly posting updates over at http://zeisslofts.wordpress.com about our huge renovation project. Go check it out!  😀

The Woodlands Oktoberfest

Well, we’re in the midst of getting ready for a new baby, so there’s not been much time or energy for me to update this blog, even though I’ve got plenty of outings in Texas and Switzerland to share up my sleeve.

Today, though, I’ve got to share just how utterly pathetic The Woodlands Oktoberfest was. I think what made me the most angry was the admission fee. Never have I paid so much and gotten so little. As much as we were disappointed by the Tomball German Heritage Festival earlier this year, that festival made The Woodlands Oktoberfest look like a corner lemonade stand.

Heritage Village in Woodville, TX

Everything "western" looks better in sepia, no?

As usual, I am behind on posting our travel adventures here in Texas and around the US. A few months ago, my parents discovered a little place called the Heritage Village in somewhat nearby Woodville, Texas. The museum site is a restored pioneer-era village in east Texas containing period buildings and artifacts and an attached restaurant and gift shop. There’s also a genealogy research facility that specializes in Tyler County.

From our home north of Houston, it took a little under two hours to get to Woodville, and the park is located halfway between Sam Houston National Forest and the Arkansas border. We took the stroller with us, but found that it was rather difficult to get through the bumpy paths around the buildings, and had to leave it behind to access some of them. Since we went on a week day, it was virtually empty, and we only saw one school tour as we were leaving. That was nice because we could take our time through the village, but unfortunately we missed out on any of the demonstrations that are mentioned in the guide and on the website. Another problem is that some of the buildings were extremely musty, and were a bit overwhelming, so we didn’t explore some of them at any great length.

Overall, though, we had fun, and there were lots of interesting objects to admire. My dad, a huge train buff, particularly enjoyed the old Railroad Depot. My mom liked the Collier Store, with its collection of ladies boots and other odds and ends. I was fascinated and disgusted by a reproduction of a dentist’s office (complete with very scary tools). Most of it was completely over the head of my toddler, though older children would definitely get a kick out of it.

These were saws, not dentist tools (forgot to get a picture of the latter).

After the museum we went to The Pickett House Restaurant, which serves boarding house style all you can eat fried chicken, chicken & dumplings, country vegetables, cobbler, biscuits & cornbread. The food was pretty good, and we enjoyed ourselves.

I’m not sure I’d drive too far out of my way to visit the Heritage Village (two hours is pretty long for a toddler), but if you are going through east Texas, it is worth stopping in to see. More pictures that I snapped at Heritage Village can be found here.

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 in about 30 minutes. The s29 is a Thurbo, which is a commuter train with very tall windows, and each car has a bike area that easily holds the stroller. The views on the train ride through the rolling country side are lovely, full of farms and vineyards. To get to the altstadt from the train station, follow the signs heading northeast from the station. Go over the bridge over the Rhine, and you’re there in about a 10 minute walk.

Stein am Rhein is located close to the German border, and is at the point where the Rhine River connects with Lake Konstanz. It first was put on the map in 1007 AD when Emperor Henry the II of the Holy Roman Empire (which included Germany at the time) moved the Abbey of Saint George to this strategic location (a side note – all of the man-hole covers in Stein am Rhein are graced with Saint George lancing the dragon). Most of the town has hardly changed since the 15th century, and is full of gorgeous painted buildings and the loveliest altstadt (old town) area in Switzerland (at least in our opinion). It has remained a very small village and the most recent historical note was the accidental bombing by Allied forces in February of 1945 (they got the wrong town).

Most of the exteriors of old buildings in Stein am Rhein have been fully restored, and the town’s main walk is easily explored in an hour or less. On the other side of the altstadt, there are paths running along the river alongside parks and restaurants. You can even catch a boat up river to Schaffhausen or along the lake to Konstanz. For children, there’s a really big fun playground on the river front, nearly entirely all in the shade – just take the river path northwest from the town.

Tomball German Festival

On March 28, we decided to go to the Tomball German Heritage Festival. It was a nice day out, but didn’t live up to our expectations in the least. I didn’t even take any pictures of the festival itself, aside from a few of our son climbing on a permanent exhibit in the park of a red caboose. Since we have recently moved back to Texas after living in the German part of Switzerland for 18 months, we were eager to feed some of our cravings for German food and beer, and maybe even pick up some other goodies like sausage or cheese. No such luck.

The festival is free, and so is the parking (or it was for 2010 – if you are planning on going in 2011, you might want to check the festival information website). There were a small handful of booths that were selling German-themed items. Most were things that you would see in any tourist shop or airport in Germany. The rest of the booths were selling all kinds of odds and ends that you see at any other festival: clothing, raffle tickets to support various charities, timeshare scams (we almost got roped into one of those), and one very nice local artist that was selling gorgeous jewelry (got a gift for my mother there).

Since the festival is primarily sponsored by ZiegenBock (a Texas beer that got bought out by Anheuser-Busch), that was the main beer, along with several other US beers. No, there weren’t any true German beers at the festival, despite their availability in the US. Disappointing, but we can get decent German beer at our local grocery store.

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 apparently adding recycling would add something like $5 a month to everyone’s trash bill. They’d probably have a fit about it. Plus, there are quite a few retired/fixed income folks here.

When we lived in Switzerland, we recycled everything for several reasons. First, they charge your trash by how much you throw away. The system where we lived is that you buy these stickers. A sheet of 10 stickers cost about $13. For very large bags of trash (65 L, I think) you used two stickers. For your average bags (35 L), just one sticker, and for smaller bags, half a sticker. Next to the trashbins at our apartment complex was a bin for compost material. On designated days of the month, you could leave your paper (carefully bundled in strict regulated size piles) in the trash area.

Here’s what one sticker looks like, though the picture is a bit fuzzy probably to keep people from copying it. You would get a whole sheet of these, same size as a piece of paper that you get from your printer. They are as wide as the page, and yes, they are wavy on the edges.

If you didn’t have a sticker on your trash (on rare occasions, folks would try to pry off a sticker and put it on their own trash, or people just didn’t put a sticker on it for whatever reason), there is a sort of garbage police. Some poor sucker is paid to go through your trash and find out who they are so you can fine you. First, though, they usually put an orange sticker on the offending trash and leave it outside the bin, giving you the chance to put a sticker on it and make amends.

A Little Life Update

Since there are a scattering few people who use this blog as primary means of keeping up with us, I thought I’d share some pictures of our son around Easter time. We were able to take him to two Easter Egg Hunts, one done by a mom and baby group that I’m in, and one done by our neighborhood association. It didn’t take long for E to become a pro. Here’s some picture links:

Mom and Baby Easter Egg Hunt

Community Easter Egg Hunt

Houston Downtown Aquarium

A few weeks ago, we visited the Houston Downtown Aquarium. My husband and I had been there quite a few years ago when we were dating, and it wasn’t all that much to behold. We were hoping for expanded exhibits and when I got a discount through a local photography club that I am in, we decided to revisit it.

The Houston Downtown Aquarium is not owned by any sort of educational group, but by Landry’s Restaurants. Even the official website has “restaurant” in the URL address. Crammed into a few city blocks, the facility consists of a building housing a small aquarium exhibit, restaurant, bar, and gift shop, a small outdoor game arcade and amusement park, and a short train ride that goes through a shark tunnel. The aquarium boasts lots of special events, and is available for rental for everything from parties to sleepovers in front of the white tiger cage.

I was most interested to see the aquarium portion. It was sadly lacking in a variety and quantity of fish and information. I’ve seen more species of aquatic life at the Dallas World Aquarium (and they are constantly expanding and improving their exhibits). There are a few petting tanks in the middle of the exhibit, and kids had fun touching and giggling at the baby sharks, horseshoe crabs, and anemones. But, if you want to see a great aquarium, this isn’t one of them.

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 supposed to anyway. In the last month, I’ve been to Konstanz, Germany three times (long story), and Colmar, France once. I had leftover Euros from each trip, and while we usually just pool the leftover Euros for the next trip outside of Switzerland, we’re not going anywhere else for a while. So, I thought I’d try to spend my Euros here in Switzerland.

At first shopkeepers sigh or get a befuddled look on their face when you hand them Euros (at least in Winterthur). It seems that every last one of them is happy to take the paper currency, but no one wants to take the coins. It turns out that the banks in Switzerland are the same. No one wants Euro coinage. I wonder if any of my Swiss friends have experienced this?

So, now I have a big fist-full of coins that I’ll just have to pack in my suitcase and hold on to until our next trip to Europe (perhaps Ireland in the summer?).

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 this blog in the meantime. I keep up with most of my friends on Facebook, and while this blog has documented some aspects of our life in Switzerland, it was more of a travelog than anything else. I have a bunch of day-trips that we took that I’ve not yet documented here, so I’ll continue to do that for a while until I run out of material. And of course, any future adventures will be documented here.

Hope all of you are well. Happy New Year!

Our Schedule…

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

Hey Look!

I’m now on Expat Blog:

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 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.

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 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. 😉

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 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. 😉