Uetliberg - Remix, Random Acts of Kanton

We did not watch a single pitch, strike, ball or throw to first base but our home in Switzerland was, nonetheless, saddened by Yankees departure from the playoffs.  America's highest paid team could not put together the pitching needed to advance to their second consecutive World Series and my wife was miserable for a few days.  In the playoffs, it comes down to pitching and the Yankees, this year, just didn't have enough to compete with a white hot Texas Rangers lineup.

Speaking of the Texas Rangers...pretty amazing they go from bankruptcy court arbitration to their first World Series in a matter of months.  Even my wife, the devout death do us part Yankee fan acknowledged the historic run by Nolan Ryan's Rangers and stated "It's pretty cool the Rangers made it to their first World Series."  I wondered, to myself, if she was saying that seriously or sarcastically, since the Yankees have won somewhere in the neighborhood of 27 World Series!  If we were home, we'd want to watch the forthcoming Lee/Lincecum showdown.  Should be a great one...

So what have your favorite Swiss transplants been doing?  A little bit of everything and so much of nothing.  We've settled into our new place., well I've settled into our new place.  The wife is still trying to decide what to keep and what to put in storage and what to have me mule back to the states tomorrow.  I guess we're more settled not that we're not living out of a suitcase in a hotel room.

We went on a date with some other American transplants that we connected with through a friend back home (Thanks Stacey in ATL).  It was actually very similar to a date.  They took us to lunch to a place called Iroquois, that compared to most restaurants in Zurich, resembled an American establishment...even stocked with MGD.  This place is dangerous and could become a crutch, so we'll try to steer clear of this place as much as possible, even though the breakfast burrito's and bacon cheeseburgers are very tempting.  After an uncomfortable but necessar period of getting to know one another, our lunch went very well.  After lunch they took us for a walk along Lake Zurich and showed us the places to go during the cold season and the warm season.  From what we gathered, Zurich is a cold/warm city.  The in between period, which is right now, is difficult to enjoy the outdoors.  The "right now" is 30-52, so it's too cold to BBQ by the lake and not cold enough to ski in the mountains.  I guess my wife and I passed the test because they invited us to a Halloween party this weekend.  Second date, YES!  Unfortunately, neither one of us do the "dress up" thing and had to defer to another time.  I'll also be on a flight from Chicago to ZurichOur three new friends were very gracious and we look forward to rolling with them in Zurich at some point.

This past Saturday, my wife and I trekked up to Uetliberg.  If you remember from one of my blogs, I made the journey up during a cloudy day and while it was exhilarating, the views of the city or lack there of, left much to be desired.  On the train up to Uetliberg, we noticed that the train was packed with young folks toting beers, vodkas, and vino and couldn't understand what the heck was going on.  On the hike, we were disturbed by the sheer # of people smoking legal and illegal substances...and then as we arrived at the summit, we realized what was going on.  A party production company rented out the bar at the summit and were hosting a VIP party.  It was a strange scene with hikers, bikers and club kids.

    So here you go...

Lastly, I'll leave you with a few random things from my misadventures in Zurich. Until next week...

Our Chicago Flags

Our College Football

My First Thai Beer

My first Uni-Cyclist sighting

Owner of Amalfi Restaurant, home of some good eats!

Up, Up, and Away - Uetliberg Edition

First and foremost, for those back stateside, Guete Morge (Swiss German).  If you couldn't read between the lines of my blog yesterday, I really wasn't having the best of days.  Like Vegas, I set out to make my own odds and decided to randomly google "Zurich day trips."  After a bit of reading, I decided on Uetliberg, population I have no clue.   Why Uetliberg?  Good question, well it's about 30 minutes outside of downtown Zurich and I could hike to the summit which is about 2800 feet above sea level.



I also like the feeling of looking over a great city, almost as if I just conquered it and named said city after myself...not quite.  Lastly, it's something I probably wouldn't do back home for a variety of reasons; Me and Heights don't really get along, something to do with my knees getting wobbly and me collapsing to the ground and at the core I'm a city kid, skyscrapers, taxi-cabs, and corrupt politics.  So I set off on my adventure.  I want to apologize in advance because I packed up my new ChicagoBooth bag with IPOD, camera, FLIP camcorder, and gulp, laptop.  Yep, my laptop, so that I could take notes and hit up the office (Starbucks) to start the blog.  I don't know anyone else that does that so hopefully I didn't offend too many hikers.  The people want the pics and Zurich news, who am I to starve them for what they crave. Who am I to deny them their literary pleasure.  Turns out I didn't need the laptop and it was just extra weight.  Oops.   Yep, much better mood, it actually might have something to do with the Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, Adelle, Beyonce, Lady Antebellum, and Bushels (shot out to Mal Jones and his band from Uetliberg) that I'm blasting on my IPOD.  Or it could just be me.

That "hill" behind those people is my destination.

It was pretty frigid this morning as I set out on foot for the Haufbahnhof, a.k.a main train station.  My landmark is the River Limmalt.  If I can locate the Limmalt, I can get North and South pretty easy.  On my walk north towards Haufbahnhof, across the river I see Fraumunster Church which sits pretty much across the River from Grossmunster Church.  These churches are legends of Zurich, both playing key roles in Zurich's religious reformation period.  At this point, I'm walking on the east side of the river and pass three Starbucks on my way to train.

The ticket attendant tells me that the train comes every 30 minutes, which means, at that time, I have 25 minutes to kill.  Walking around the station I find an open air market and make my first street purchase.    Hmm, Hmmm good! In Zurich you get your meat with a piece of bread and from what I gather, in one hand you hold your meat and in the other you hold your bread, you take a bite of the meat and then take a bite of the bread, repeat until your hands are empty.   I'm pretty much a 6 to 7 bite guy.

Moo Moo Vacation

There are really no expectations for my trip. I know that it's a must see  and that it's elevated but when the train pulls away from the station I immediately get giddy.  Ten minutes later I see cows.  This isn't a swiss euphemism for anything, I'm talking real cows.   A few days ago, I read an article about how the Swiss milk producers wanted to produce better "happier" milk, so they let the cows go on vacation to nice spots in Zurich and eat the best grass that Swiss Francs could buy. No joke.  But it's funny right...well I know I got a kick out of it.  I thought the entire time that the train was traversing uphill that you don't realize how high you are until you get off the train and overlook all of Switzerland. It was pretty humbling, who knew that things like this were this close to a financial epicenter like Switzerland.

Take a Look:

As you can see, I literally had to walk through the clouds to see these amazing sights.  It was pretty awesome.  On my way down, the clouds were starting to clear, opening up for some panoramic delights, but i'm going to save those for when my wife and I venture up there this weekend.  It is SO worth another peak (intentional), especially with my wife.  Two amazing views, who am I to complain!

This morning I woke with a goal to have a better day than yesterday and worse than the next.  In the process, I realized, albeit temporary, that I live in Zurich, Switzerland.

...and I don't mind it.

FLAT TIRED

Post Anniversary Dinner Suisse Bar Crawl

A few readers are probably worried about me and my wife because of riots, strikes, and shenanigans that are happening in France.  Rest assured, we are safe, sound, and relaxing in our new digs.  The French strikes are very serious and I look forward to seeing how the government votes on increasing the retirement age from 60-62.  The last time we were in Europe we walked through an austerity protest in Greece.  I guess we're just the kind of "risk" that European countries try to avoid.  Switzerland, on the other hand, seems to be able to handle our presence with it's high prices, wonderful chocolate, and mix of Italian, French, and German cuisine (Still trying to figure out how they stay so thin!)

Today is the least amount of fun I've had since I've been here, mostly because I'm just tired.  I'm on the front-end of a 12 month vacation, how dare I be tired right?  We moved from our hotel to our new flat (apartment) and as the resident house husband that task fell on my broad shoulders.  It's actually been a great day, I just sat around our place, ate chocolate, picked up some take away (Swiss version of take-out) and watched a great deal of CNN.  CNN...it's one of the few english speaking channels that we have but I'm going to return to the U.S a more worldly knowledgeable young man.  Did you know that in Nairobi when you learn to drive, they also teach you how to escape car-jackings as they average 10 per day.  Oh, I also did some grocery shopping, brushed my teeth and took a shower.  The latter two will make my wife very happy.  I digress....our flat is nice, 75 square meters...a quick conversion...1 square meter = 10.7 square feet, so just multiply by 10.  Our freight delivery with our clothes arrived this morning and I realized that, maybe, just maybe, that my wife packed too much stuff.  9 boxes and 85% of which is  the wife's.  You don't really understand it until you see it.  I was going to be nice and go through the clothes but it became one of those tasks that was, well, over my head...Which clothes to unpack? Which clothes to keep in storage?, Which clothes to throw out and pretend never arrived?... ahhhh, my head almost exploded.  So I just watched CNN and looked out the window thinking, "I'm in Zurich, I should be out exploring, eating chocolate, climbing the Swiss alps, wearing my K-Swiss, listening to Swizz beats, cutting swiss cheese with my swiss army knife"  (Thanks Grier and KC for that one) Tomorrow, I'm taking my first day-trip, just give me this one day of donothingness, just one day.  Ok, my 4 minute movie that I filmed of our flat is not loading, so I'll just have to upload some pics instead...

As you can see, not a bad life we have over here...in about a month and half we'll be moving to a larger flat with a second bedroom just in case some folks want to visit us.  And yes, I'll be largely responsible for moving all OUR (my 15% too!) things to the new place about 5 blocks away.

Source of Exploding Head

AND WE'RE AUF WIEDERSEHEN....WELL... SORT OF PART 2

First things first, I'd like to thank Starbucks for their unwavering support in allowing me to set-up shop in their cafe.  This Starbucks is located just east of the Limmalt River and north of Lake Zurich and offers free internet.  The scene is very "American", even the music is american pop, with the only give away that I'm not in the U.S being the language spoken, a mix of German and Swiss-German.  Every once in a while, I'll hear some broken english and I immediately perk up, ready to get my eaves drop on.  I'm surrounded by students and a "baby mama's" club of 15 women, strollers, and babies (Photo courtesy of me)

My senior editor has warned that if I don't shorten my blogs that i'll loose my readership even though most are friends and family.  So I could either jump the shark or I can add features and innovate.  (Last sentence is ironic or something).  I'll go with the latter and start supplying pictures and links to interesting things, starting with "jump the shark".  I figure that, sans creative content, this will keep you all interested for 2-3 months.  Basically, be on the lookout for hyperlinks and pictures.

So where were we...ah yes, so my visa did not come in but my wife's did.   The amazing thing about life is that it constantly throws us fastballs, curveballs, screwballs or even an occasional knuckleball but occasionally it'll throw us a softball.  The visa delay craziness allowed us to stay home for a very special gift that my wife and I did not believe we would be able to experience for at least a year.  Our nephew Tre was born and we were there, along with his big sisters, to welcome him into this world.  I get the chills thinking about it.  I remember walking into the hospital room and my oldest niece running over to me, like she always does, with her arms wide open ready to hug and like a great little sister, my youngest niece immediately following suit.  I've always felt uncomfortable holding, rocking, or touching babies that are younger than 6 months old but holding Mr. Tre eased all that tension and for the first time, EVER, I felt ready for the task.  I can hear my parent's and in-law's smiles from across the Atlantic.  It also helped that my wife showed me the appropriate baby holding grips, postures, and other secrets. As you can imagine, for a moment, we were very thankful to the Swiss for this wonderful opportunity.
 

                                      

After we received the email from our immigration coordinator, the next step was to venture to the Swiss Consulate, where interestingly enough, they are only open from 9am-12pm.  On the way to the Consulate, I wondered aloud what they did the rest of the day.  Probably worked as Swiss spies or ate with local business leaders in the interest of Swiss business interests.  Surprisingly, the consulate "service window" was more like a Harold's Chicken, than an office, complete with bullet proof glass.  Part of the process is to supply them with passport pictures for a temporary visa.  And this is when we almost lost our minds as the Swiss official stated, "Oh, Americans smile so much, but we, the Swiss, do not allow smiling on official documents, you will need to get new pictures...it states it on our website and our 200 page manifesto on page 184"  I literally asked five times if she was kidding, FIVE.  Reluctantly, we walked to the Walgreens around the corner in which the Walgreens "official" looked at us and said "Swiss Consulate right, smiling on the photo right?"  I now believe that Walgreens pays that particular Swiss Consulate passport picture Royalties in excess of 1.2MM CHF (Swiss Francs).

Once again this blog is extending past acceptable levels for my editor so I'll bullet point the next 18 hours or so.

1. Booked 3 Flights, 2 to Switzerland, 1 from Chicago to Switzerland for me.
2. Mom and my two nieces drove us to airport, oldest niece got sad and hugged me extra tight
3. 8.5 hour flight, 2 Sleeping pills, wife slept the entire way, I slept in this fashion after devouring the book The Big Short; 38 minutes sleep, 8 minutes awake listening to engine (see Part 1).
4. Stopped by Airport information, learned about the Train, Tram, Bus and S-Bahn system.  Purchased 24 hour pass.
5. About 40 minutes later arrived at the Sheraton in the Enge District, which is basically the financial district of town. Walk around town for 4 hours so that we can better adapt to new time zone. (3 days later still adapting)

Later today, I'll try my best to describe our apartment search, which coincidently ended with the realtor, my wife, and me choosing not 1 but 2 apartments in the Seefeld District while we all sipped our beers at 3pm in Zurich's Red Light District.

Right now, it's time for me to pack up my office; Flip Camcorder, Ipod, Camera, laptop, power chord and GPS...Lunch time!

AND WE'RE AUF WIEDERSEHEN....WELL... SORT OF PART 1

Sitting here at 2am in the morning in Zurich, it would be too easy to start this one way dialogue with the story of how my wife managed to choose the most expensive flat (i'm slowly converting to european lingo) in the most expensive part of town in the most expensive city in Europe.  Far too easy, so I'll save that for Part Zwei...for now let's go back to last Thursday, the day we received the visa email.

When I'm anxious, nervous, excited or in general thinking too much about something I tend to stay up late and search the world for answers to questions that I didn't even know existed.  The world being the internet or reading The Economist.  For example, I'll start reading an article about British Parliament, then i'll stumble upon House of Commons and House of Lords, then I'll ask myself what's the difference, and then i'll read something obscure about Britain's first Civil War, and then I'll read about the Monarchy fleeing to Ireland, and then I'll find Oliver Cromwell, then Cromwell's impact on English - Irish tensions, then i'll read the difference between Britain, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom.  You get the picture, about two hours later I have all this worthless knowledge and developed some opinion on it all.  Worthless unless I make it to Jeopardy and football, basketball, and British Parliament are categories.

On this particular Thursday, this process ended with me trying to understand Quantitative Easing and U.S Monetary Policy AND around 230am.  The next thing I remember is hearing the bedroom door open.  Because my wife was entering the bedroom, I thought she just made the mistake of opening the door too loudly because that's what she usually did when I stayed up too late (now that I think about it, she probably does it intentionally) and I absolutely wasn't expecting her to say, "Good news, bad news!"  So at 815 am, with only 6 hours of sleep, I responded very alertly with "Huh, ok, wait huh..."  And then she dropped it on me.  She had received her visa and I had been left on the sidelines like Chris Farley in a game of Dodgeball.   Speaking of Dodgeball, did you know that grade school's are anti-Dodgeball, something about not being inclusive.   Being the supportive husband that I am, I was, how do I say this, supportive.  Although I was groggy I could pick up on the nonverbal signals that something was amiss.  There was an unsettled look and then all the emotions that had been building up over the past 3 months just came flowing out like Niagara Falls.

I tried to buy myself some time by getting up and brushing my teeth and walking to the kitchen to get some cereal but that just ended with me placing acne ointment on my toothbrush and getting two bowls stuck together.  Pretty much got into a fight with two bowls and lost.  But in that 5 minute period, I figured out what my first Zurich mission would be, to settle the wife down and be supportive.

What I quickly gathered was that her visa came as they put a rush on it because she is the primary reason for our relocating to Zurich.  The Swiss have a very nice way of letting me know what my role will be for the next 12 months.  My visa was still in process but should be ready in two weeks, I quickly remembered that two weeks ago, they said my wife's visa would only take 1 more week.  A long story even longer, she would be able to travel to Zurich and I would have to wait for my visa to travel to Zurich.  This was the answer to my question of the unsettled look.  In typical me fashion, I started going through options; 1. she goes and I stay until the visas arrive, 2.  We both go, I get her settled in and in 9 or days I return to the U.S to get my visa, 3.  We storm the consulate and demand visas while quoting George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  #2 is tough because flying is a serious adventure for me.  It's actually pretty weird, but if I fly once every week or two, then I'm fine, but if it's been say... 2.5 weeks then I'm Mr. Sweaty Nervous Palms and all I do is focus on the sound of the airplane engine and what those sounds could mean for an abrupt landing.  Case in point, flew directly from Hawai'i and never closed an eye but I could tell you that flying over the Great Plains in severe turbulence makes the engines sound pretty scary.

As of 245am Zurich Standard time, I'm in Zurich, so you know what option we chose.  But the whole process  was a lesson in just being there for someone.  For some reason in my wife's eyes, I just deposited about 1.5MM love points into the love bank which equates to pre-approval for guy's nights out and late night knowledge hunting without the law coming down on me.  Now I'll just need to find some friends in Zurich to spend those love points.

Seeing the wife happy and more at ease more than offsets the pain of my pending 17 hours flying over the Atlantic, listening to the sweet sounds of a Swiss Air engine.

Part Zwei sneak peak
"You can't smile in official Swiss Photographs, you'll need to come back with different photos"
A new member of the family arrives, our NEPHEW.
Lost and Found flat in Seefeld

PERSPECTIVE IS REALITY

Three Things first...

1. As you review this blog, at some point you will ask yourself what does this have to do with Switzerland...?
2. And no the visas DID NOT arrive...or shall I say, the email from our relocation coordinator in Belgium did not come telling us we could pick up our Swiss visas at the Swiss Consulate located in Chicago, IL, USA. More on that later.
3. Thanks for reading our blog, it means a great deal to us as we put almost no time into it, and for some not on facebook, this could be the only communication you have with us in the next 12 months
4. OK, so there's a fourth, sue me...This will be long so set aside some nice quiet time to review

Keeping with our usual schedule, my wife and I set aside some time to watch the Chicago Bears/New York Giants football game.  Typically this game would just mean the two of us rooting for the Bears, me complaining about how we have no running game, our offensive (double meaning here) line is worthless, and then wondering aloud how the heck we managed to pull out a victory.  But this Sunday Night was different for so very many reasons.

My wife matriculates from New Jersey which depending on where you live, North or South, is either a suburb of New York or Philadelphia.   I'm not too good with maps but what I do know is that she's a Die Hard Yankees and Giants fan. Me, on the other hand, I'm a White Sox, Bears, Blackhawks, and Bulls fan.  Most times it works out and then some other times it kind of works out and then other times it's just ridiculously uncivil.  (I was going to use Civil War but that has too many bad undertones for this blog).  Well this time it was just disgusting.

At halftime the score was 3-0 with the Giants leading.  My Bears had allowed 10 sacks in the first half and the Giants managed only kick a field goal.  We NEVER quit on our teams and usually our teams never quit on us but we'd rather watch DVR'd Rubicon, Brothers and Sisters and, yes, Gossip Girl than deal with this nonsense.

Then it hit me.  I need to look at this from a different, wait for it, wait for it, PERSPECTIVE.  No denying that the game just stunk.  It's still stinky but hold on a second, this was the Bears first loss, we sit atop the Central Division and own the tie-breaker with the hated yet respected Green Bay Packers.  The Giants are in a three way tie with Philadelphia and Washington.  The same Philadelphia that has two injured QB's, one with 3 broken ribs and another one that is concussed.  Washington lost to the St Louis "2 and 30 the last two years" Rams.  I have no clue what it feels like to have three broken ribs but my wife does and she says that every breath you take is painful and sleeping is virtually impossible.

What does this have to do with Switzerland?  Everything and nothing.

As I mentioned the visas have not arrived.  Timeout...from now on, visas will be "#$%@&".  So the #$%@& have not arrived and it pretty much has consumed my wife.  Which means it has consumed our life. Oh and my life too.  It's debilitating.  My wife is amazing, pretty much the smartest, sharpest, wittiest, cutest, most beautifulest person that I know. Yep, I'm making a few love deposits into the love bank there but it's all true. On the other hand she has two, count them, two flaws (Thanks Mom, Thanks Dad).    One is impatience and the other is uncertainty and guess what #$%@& has managed to do, you got it, combine her impatience with a cold side of uncertainty.  Jay Cutler's concussion was the answer.  One man's concussion was this man's treasure.  As the main support system and resident Teddy Bear, I had to step in and say something.

The #$%@& situation should not be we're stuck at home trying to get to Switzerland but we have a free trip and time to explore one of the greatest cities in the world.

Frank Sinatra wrote a song about it, Sweetness (Walter Payton) showed us class and humility while running for a lot of yards, we have a museum district, a theatre District, a comedy district, windy politics not weather, two baseball teams and a variety of neighborhoods with rich history and even richer foods. The place where you say Jordan and nobody thinks about the land mass between Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria.  The City flag has 3 white stripes, 2 blue stripes and 4 red 6-pointed stars that each symbolically mean something.  Starts with a "C", ends in "O" and in the middle is "HICAC".  That's right, "CHICAGO!"  We just need to change our perspective a bit and allow ourselves to enjoy it.

And so we did.  My wife stumbled upon some free spinning classes at a new gym opening in our soon to be old neighborhood and after she assured me that it didn't involve Ghosts, Whoopi Goldberg, and Patrick Swayze I agreed that it was a good idea.  I finally stopped reading about Central Banks and Monetary Policy on the Internet and decided to play 9 holes of golf at the park district course.  And guess what happened, all good things.  The new gym owner picked my wife's brain about marketing and getting the word out about the new business and I was randomly paired with a restauranteur who invited my wife and me to dinner.  Later in the evening he would even serve us our dessert and tell my wife in his Italian accent "Your husband's such a nice young man", in which I embarrassingly smiled, "but he's not so good a golfer" which I embarrassingly frowned.

At this stage, I was going to compare our #$%@& situation to a couple constantly being asked by friends and family if they were pregnant yet and ramble about our friend Rosesa and her 10 amazing  and awesome things to do in Europe and the many recommendations we got from our friends but my wife and senior editor (the same person) will already be alarmed by this novella that I have just jumbled together.

I'll have to tell you all about how we received our #$%@& after we visited the Museum of Science and Industry and took a walk along Lake Shore Drive in this wonderful fall weather.

We hope that we can share our new perspective with you for many weeks to come because, well, it's our new reality.