Have a couple weeks worth of writing to catch up on, but rather than catch-up, I’m going to go with the semi-quick version:
* Thanksgiving: We invited some people over, found a turkey, cooked it, ate it, and all was merry.* The following weekend: Wow – I can’t remember what we did this weekend! I think we sat around and watched a movie. Watching movies rules.
* Same weekend: Ok, I remembered what we did – the movie part is true, so I don’t need to reiterate that. But on Sunday, we went to Montreaux for their famous (or at least mildly well-known-within-Switzerland) Christmas market. Yeah – Soph was pestering me something fierce to take her to a Christmas market, and for whatever reason I caved. I need to enact a zero-tolerance policy for that, as my caving just reinforces her behavior – but enough about psychology and how to deal with terror tactics. So we went to the Christmas market, it was kind of cool, we had a good time, and went home.
* Last weekend: This was a pretty good weekend. We left early Friday afternoon for Lucerne, and stayed there for a night. Lucerne is similar to Geneva in that it’s on a lake, has a river running through it, and is surrounded by mountains – but it seems to be a lot prettier. Not to take anything away from Geneva, but Lucerne was something new, and therefore we had city-surrounded-by-mountains envy. Hey – it happens to the best of us
. Anyway, we got in kind of late, hung out a little, got up early the next morning, and then walked around the city the rest of the day. Turned out to be beautiful weather, and the combination of cobble-stoned streets and fresh mountain air made for a wonderful, leisurely day.
. Anyway, we got in kind of late, hung out a little, got up early the next morning, and then walked around the city the rest of the day. Turned out to be beautiful weather, and the combination of cobble-stoned streets and fresh mountain air made for a wonderful, leisurely day.* Side-note: there is some festival going on in the park by where we live. This town always seems to have some festival going on, which is nice I guess, but I find it odd to have rollercoasters and such in the middle of the city. Makes for cool pictures, though.
* This weekend: Stayed in Geneva, went over and hung out with some friends one night, and then had some people over another night. Also, walked around a little and happened upon some sort of zoo. Yeah – you find odd things in Geneva if you just kind of wander – not that a zoo is odd, but it sort of simply appeared in a place where it didn’t make any sense to have a small zoo-like park. But, it was fun, so whatever.
Ok – so that was the quick version. Now, I'll talk a little more about Lucerne, since it’s worth describing in more detail. I didn’t realize this, but Lucerne is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Of course, since pretty much all of Switzerland is in the German-speaking part except for Geneva, this should have come as no surprise, but it kind of did. The point is, I realized I only kn
ow 2 words in German, and one of them is "blitzkrieg", so it kind of narrowed down the amount of communication you can do when in Switzerland. That was fun – as if I haven’t yet experienced having to try and speak in a language I don’t know or understand. Sigh. Anyway, we were able to make due on the speaking end, which was good because the markets in Lucerne were so vastly superior to the Geneva markets, that we pretty much flipped out. And by "flipped out", I mean we started running through the streets with cheeses and sausages flailing from our limbs. Seriously – the cheeses were amazing – stuff I had never even thought of before. Geneva is pretty big on the "stinky" and "veined" cheeses, and then a couple of solid standbys such as Gruyere and Tomme (which might just be the French word for "generic", but it’s still good stuff). But Lucerne – whoo Nelly! I still have no idea what some of them were called, but they ruled. Unfortunately, none of them survived the trip back to Geneva. Because we ate them all. But we did go on a cheese run on Sunday, and now our refrigerator reeks as a result – but it’s a good reek.
ow 2 words in German, and one of them is "blitzkrieg", so it kind of narrowed down the amount of communication you can do when in Switzerland. That was fun – as if I haven’t yet experienced having to try and speak in a language I don’t know or understand. Sigh. Anyway, we were able to make due on the speaking end, which was good because the markets in Lucerne were so vastly superior to the Geneva markets, that we pretty much flipped out. And by "flipped out", I mean we started running through the streets with cheeses and sausages flailing from our limbs. Seriously – the cheeses were amazing – stuff I had never even thought of before. Geneva is pretty big on the "stinky" and "veined" cheeses, and then a couple of solid standbys such as Gruyere and Tomme (which might just be the French word for "generic", but it’s still good stuff). But Lucerne – whoo Nelly! I still have no idea what some of them were called, but they ruled. Unfortunately, none of them survived the trip back to Geneva. Because we ate them all. But we did go on a cheese run on Sunday, and now our refrigerator reeks as a result – but it’s a good reek.Anyway, that’s about it. Lucerne will probably go down as our final 2007 European trip, although since we’ll be flying through the Frankfurt airport on the way back to the States, who knows what adventures lie ahead of us. Probably an airport prison, if our last Frankfurt experience is any indicator, but that’s a whole other story.
Next week: the 2007 Europe awards!
