Ich Bin Ein Berliner

We love Berlin.

We never thought we'd feel this way about this city, but we do. It's a fascinating city and our three days there were entirely inadequate. Maybe it's just the summer influx of tourists, but people from everywhere are there. Almost everyone speaks English, the transportation system is good, and the people were friendly and helpful. We'd go back there in a minute.

As promised, here is the picture of Barack Obama as he shakes Russell's hand on Thursday. Due to the crush of people behind me (Sylvia), I couldn't get the shot I wanted, but this is pretty good.




Here's the other shot I got, but now Barack is shaking hands with other people.



Friday, we went on an amazing free walking tour led by a young Scottish ex patriot, Em, who packed her bags last year after graduating university with a degree in history and moved to Berlin. Her love for the city came through at every stop. Here is a picture of Maya chatting her up.




We went to Shabbat services on Friday night in the Neue Synagogue, which has been restored. There were about thirty people in attendance. The leader of the services (not the rabbi) told me that the synagogue has many converts, most of whom are German women. Some of them suspect they have some Jewish heritage based on their family names, but they aren't sure. In any case, he told me that they are very devoted members of the congregation. I saw a few blond, blue-eyed Jews (besides Josh) in the chapel.

Saturday, we went to the Jewish Museum. We really needed two days to do it justice. The exhibit covers the history of the Jewish people in Germany from medieval times through the present without whitewashing anything. Between this museum (located in the old West Berlin) and the new Holocaust Memorial and Museum, which are centrally located right outside the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin seems to have made the decision not to hide from its past. Members of parliament have to walk past this haunting memorial every day to work and the hope is it will have a rational and humane influence on policy. Memorials are also planned for two other groups, gays and Gypsies (Romani), that were persecuted during the war.


Saturday afternoon, we went swimming in the Wannsee, a lake near Berlin. Russell and I (Sylvia) swam out to this platform and went down the water slide twice. It was a challenge for Russell, but he rose to the occasion and had fun.





Here's our family photo after the Obama speech with the Victory Tower behind us.




Please note: Portions of this blog were contributed and/or edited by Josh.

Where's Waldo? Berlin Edition

We got to Berlin's Tiergarten Park at 1:30pm thinking that Obama's speech started at 4pm. Turns out that the speech started at 7pm, so we were really early. See if you can find Russell and Maya in this photo that Josh found on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle online. The answer is on the next photo.





Below, Josh enlarged it and put arrows on it. Maya is on Josh's shoulders.





The speech was great. Basically, Obama said what Josh told Radio Deutschland he would say, part of which was, "Europe has got to get off its butt and help out more with the situation in Afghanistan," but Obama phrased it a little more diplomatically than Josh did. Obama said a bunch of other things about hope and change, no nukes, and global warming. Ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.

Then, at the end, Obama came off the podium and shook hands with the crowd in front. Russell shook Obama's hand. We'll upload the close-up photos we took when we get back to Zurich on Sunday.

Russell says he's never washing his hand again.

We're in!

We're 2nd row, to the left of the podium, about 20 ft. from where Obama will stand. The gates just opened. They're screening every bag and person. The speech is scheduled to start at 7pm - 3 more hours! The kids are doing surprisingly well considering the amount of waiting they're doing.

This may be the only political rally we attend where we can buy beer and bratwurst!

Live from Berlin

We are waiting for the gates to open in Berlin's Tiergarten Park for Barak Obama's speech. The speech is at 4pm - it's 2pm now. The crowd of all kinds of Europeans and Americans is growing. Josh and Russell were just interviewed by Deutchland Radio. A TV crew from ITN in the UK is here, and some kind of German warm-up band is playing. We're all excited to be here!

A Tour of our Pad

Sylvia has done such a great job blogging that I thought I'd take a turn and chime in with a photo tour of our building.

We are living on the border of the Kreiss 5 neighborhood of Zurich which is known as THE destination for young hip professionals (just like us!). Think South of Market but with a little less graffiti and black apparel.

Below is a picture of the front of our building which, until I took the picture, I didn't realize was called ZurichParis. It was originally built in the 19th century and was a pottery factory. After the surprising crash of the formidable Swiss pottery industry (many people predicted it would be Credit Suisse instead), the building went through several incarnations (e.g. night club) before falling into disrepair. About 10 years ago, the building was restored and is now mixed use. Approximately half the units are residential lofts and the other half are trendy/arty businesses such as architecture, software, and PR firms. The most prominent business, Spheres, is on the ground floor on the right side of the picture (big windows in front) and is a popular bar-cafe-bookstore. As loyal Simpsons fans, we call it Moe's.



Let's enter the main lobby which is through the door to the left of Moe's. Quick digression....the Swiss, in large part, live very healthy lives. They walk and bike everywhere. Life expectancy is very high. Hence, the prevalence of cigarettes is a mystery. But I wouldn't feel like we were having an authentic experience without a machine in our lobby that dispenses PallMalls along with a warning in three languages under a Vogue/Inspiration sign that "smoking greatly injures your health and the cells of your body".



Turning right into Moe's we happen upon two regulars at the bar, one of whom appears to have passed out.



Our loft is on the ground floor towards the middle and back of the building. Upon entering is a large room, which is a combination kitchen, dining room and living area. Below, occupying half the space, are our two bedrooms and one bathroom. The flooring upstairs is from the original pottery factory and is laid out in a traditional 19th century Helvetic zig-zag pattern (I understand that blogging allows you to claim expertise in anything you want).



As urban as our front view is, the back view is almost rural. The rear of our apartment faces the west bank of the Limmat River which flows from Lake Zurich eventually to the Rhine. Amazingly, the river is clean enough for swimming.



We hope you've enjoyed this tour. The address is 66 Hardturmstrasse. There is still time to visit!

Berlin or Bust

As the title indicates, we're planning a trip Wednesday afternoon to Berlin to coincide with Barack Obama's speech there this Thursday. Truth be told, this was Josh's brainchild. We may try to blog live from Berlin, so stay tuned! We hope to get there early enough to get good seats. Josh read an article speculating that anywhere from 10,000 to 1,000,000 people may be in attendance. If we don't get to see Barack, at least we'll spend a weekend in Berlin.

This past week and weekend saw us slowing down and getting more comfortable with our surroundings (read: we did lots of laundry and grocery shopping). Thursday, I took the kids to Zurich's tram museum, where there is a kid-scale tram that kids can power themselves. See video below. At the end of the video, Maya's slight distress is caused by her fear that I was in danger of being run over.




Friday morning, the kids and I went to the farmer's market closest to us, in Helvetia Platz. One of the bakers gave free rolls to Russell and Maya. When we got back home, I had five kinds of cheese in the fridge, including fresh goat cheese so mild that it tasted like cream cheese. A cheese I bought at the supermarket by mistake turned out to be amazing. It was a round of goat cheese surrounded by a layer of brie. Who thinks this stuff up? Cardiologists? I may be eating too much cheese. I may need to balance this out by eating more chocolate....

A note about shopping: you bag all your own groceries in bags you bring to the store. Grocery stores charge you for paper bags ($.30) and durable plastic handle bags ($2), so people are incentivized to reuse these bags. I am learning to bring bags with me when I go to the store, and our kids are learning how to bag groceries so that the pears make it home on the tram without getting too bruised.

Friday night, we had a lovely dinner with one of Josh's colleagues and his family. Saturday, we set out to Appenzellerland, in the Northeast of Switzerland. There, in Jakobsbad, we rode luges on rails down a mountain...




and played at another playground with a zip line, but this one also had a trampoline.




We also walked part of the Barefoot Trail through meadows and a special river area to clean off your feet. According to Rick Steve's Switzerland guide, the walk follows the philosophy of a 19th-century therapist who sought to treat medical conditions with water of different temperatures and pressures. Actually, only Josh and Maya did it barefoot, but I couldn't resist the family photo op at the river.





Another laundry note: I am realizing that in the daytime, the cafe in our building also utilizes our washing machine and dryer. (Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think this would happen in America.) I met a nice female employee of the cafe in the laundry room this afternoon and asked her how much it costs to do a load of laundry since I'm still getting inconsistent amounts of change back from the machine. She said it depends on which wash cycle you use - the hotter the temperature, the more it costs. (I appreciate the energy-conciousness of the Swiss.) Then I asked her how much the hottest wash costs. Her answer: "I don't know. We just put money in, and the machine always gives us money back." This evening, the machine returned to me the entire amount I had fed it to do a load of laundry.

Auf Wiedersehen, Ellen!

Our friend, Ellen, returned to California early Wednesday morning. We are sad to see her go.


Here's a picture of our goodbye dinner with Ellen. We ate at Samses, a vegetarian buffet restaurant a few minutes away by tram. You pay for the buffet by the weight of the food on your plate. It's a lot tastier than Fresh Choice.

Ellen helped our transition to Swiss life go smoothly. A big thing she did was help us figure out the transportation system here and all the various cards and passes one can buy to pay for trains, buses, trams, and cable cars. I now have a half-fare card the gives me half-price on most of my transportation in Switzerland. I also have a pass for Zurich's zone 10, so now we don't have to look for change every time we want to go somewhere in town. For 40 Swiss Francs, Russell and Maya have Junior Cards which entitle them to a year's free travel with Josh or I anywhere in the country.


Other things Ellen taught us:
Gurken means cucumbers in German. (I used this today at the farmers market in Helvetiaplatz.)
The Sprungli confectionary chain has many locations in downtown Zurich. (I'm sure I'll use this in the future.)
Maya loves to hear the stories and songs of Broadway musicals Ellen has seen. "Ellen, tell me the story of Wicked." "Again?"


Our homage to Ellen continues in photos:


Ellen and Maya listening to music in Montreux.


Ellen and Russell in our hostel room window in Vevey.


Ellen, Russell, and Maya in the smallest elevator the kids had ever seen. (Vevey)


Maya took this picture of us on the Flower Trail in the Alps.


Bye, Ellen! See you when we get back!


P.S. Did you forget your pen?

The Planet Walk.....and Cows

Today, Ellen, the kids, and I completed the 5km Planet Walk which is located on a mountain west of Zurich, the Uetliberg. The hike features a 1 billion to 1 scale model of the solar system. We started at the sun and made our way, 5 km later, to Pluto. Did I mention that it was 5 km?



Here's our victory picture with the planet (or non-planet), Pluto. We're pointing to the tiny Pluto encased inside the stone marker.


The hike gave us many wonderful views of Zurich, its suburbs, and the surrounding countryside. A working farm sits alongside part of the trail.


Swiss cows do wear bells. Here's a (visually boring) video I made so you could hear the bells, too.


We finished this hike with a Swiss-style lunch in one of those mountaintop restaurants with a playground, then took a cable car ride down the mountain and travelled by train back into Zurich. This place is truly amazing.

Food note: Ellen and I shared the apple strudel with vanilla sauce for dessert. It was good.

Yosemite on Steroids

This weekend, we traveled to the Alps and did some hiking and sightseeing in and around the Lauterbrunnen Valley, what Josh called Yosemite on steroids. Here's some of what we saw.



One of several waterfalls coming off the cliffs into the valley.



The view from the Stechelberg cable car - not to be confused with San Francisco cable cars. These are actually gondolas suspended from a cable. It's a little nerve-racking the first time you're on one of these things.



We hiked a bit of the Flower Trail in Murren.



The next day, we rode this funicular up to a restaurant with a playground (lots of these establishments here) and hiked back down to Murren.



Along the way, we encountered a playground amongst huge trees with a rope swing and zip line.



Maya enjoyed identifying Alpine flowers.



The view from our cliff-hanging hotel in Murren.

Things We've Learned So Far....

In a cozy restaurant at the top of Zurich's 'home' mountain today, I took an informal poll of my kids and Ellen to discover what we've learned so far.

Maya:
The hot chocolate tastes different than in California.
We are learning to be quiet on trains and in restaurants. Russell keeps shushing me.

Russell:
Forest Berry Tea is good.
Pop your ears when riding trains and cable cars.
I'm learning about different train lines.


Ellen:
Don't eat fondue and rosti at the same meal.
Service is slower than in America. If you don't ask for the bill, you can sit for hours at a restaurant.
Portion sizes are often measured on cups and glasses.
All drinks are from bottles, i.e. iced tea from a bottle, no one drinks tap water.


Josh: (added after returning from work)
Coffee/tea is not allowed at people's desks and only is drunk collectively in the common area, it seems. People arrive between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning and work until 9:30 when they all head downstairs to the cafeteria for a first cup. The second session happens directly after lunch with the final collective gulping occurring at about 3:30. If I drank coffee, it would only be espresso. Instead, I drink tea and put in two tea bags. My Swiss colleagues are very good English speakers and are very considerate about using English when I'm around. Occasionally, I might hear something like "blah blah blah blah Josh blah blah blah" in the background and then I know that I'll be asked to do something.


Sylvia:
For daytrips, I need to travel with a full loaf of (amazing, whole wheat) bread in my backpack in order to maintain everyone's blood sugar levels and my sanity. There are many places where you cannot get a meal between 2 and 6pm. Our lazy vacation schedule puts lunch right into this time slot.

I must look Spanish here as everyone who sees me struggle with German asks me if I speak Spanish. My very poor Spanish has served me well, as has my even sadder Yiddish. There's a sign outside our building prohibiting parking and warning that your car will get "schleppt" if left there.

Swiss hikes are dotted with playgrounds, water fountains, and guesthouses serving hearty food. It's amazingly kid-friendly. My kids walked 5km today! See the Planetwalk photo once I upload it.

More mundane matters: Recycling happens in Zurich at the neighborhood level. There are big bins out in a central location, and you schlep your recycling to it. It took me a while to figure out where 'our' location was. In the meantime, we had a nice, smelly pile of recycling in our apartment.

Dirty laundry: The lack of printed prices and documentation in English have confounded me when it comes to doing the laundry in the basement of our building. You put money into the coin box, but when you're done, some money comes back to you, but not the same amount each time. But the machine starts without any money in it. This confusing feature lead me to do several loads of laundry that apparently had soap and water applied but no actual washing. The dryer also starts without money but then stops, so we ended up hanging our laundry out on the folding drying rack that came with the apartment. It all felt so European and energy conscious until I learned that the laundry wasn't really clean. The nice building custodian and I had a conversation in Spanish/English/German about how the machines work. I still don't really understand, but now the clothes are getting cleaner and dryer. Josh is going to try doing the laundry tonight. Maybe he'll figure it out.


Josh feeding coins to the washing machine in the basement laundry room.

Don't say "Crape"

Wednesday and Thursday this week Ellen, the kids, and I went to Vevey and Montreux on Lake Geneva. The Montreux Jazz Festival is happening now and attracts many huge music stars. This year Paul Simon played, and Russell and Ellen got to see him.

On Wednesday, we asked at the hostel for a crepe restaurant, and they didn't understand our American pronunciation. I finally had to write the word down and they understood. We all laughed. But now we know that we can't say "crape". We must say "crep", with that deep 'r' sound. Maya inhaled a goat cheese crepe!



Russell on a train.



On a train, Maya practices card shuffling. Thanks to Abby for the Hello Kitty playing cards. They have provided hours of entertainment.



The view from our hostel in Vevey.



Russell's opinion of his first hostel bed.



Listening to music at the Montreux Jazz Festival



Maya on the swing at the Montreux Jazz Festival. It turns out that Maya was more interested in the playground than the music.



The Chateau Chillon on Lake Geneva. Swiss castles have clocks!



Russell on a castle latrine. The reading material was his idea.



Playing on a see-saw in Vevey during the afternoon siesta when you can't get a meal at a restaurant.
I am so thankful for the well-placed mini parks that we have run across.


In Montreux, hours before Ellen and Russell saw Paul Simon in concert.

Lost in Translation?

Lost and Found

Maya left her jacket in Rapperswil yesterday. Today, she and I (Sylvia) had to trek back down there (Russell's note: on an S-Bahn commuter train), at the other end of Lake Zurich to recover the jacket. She left it at our first Swiss restaurant experience. The main dish was locally caught deep fried fish. We also tried the Swiss potato specialty known as Rosti, which are basically hash browns cooked in tons of butter. What's not to love about that? Normally, one doesn't eat Rosti with fish, but the chef broke the custom for us.


Maya with her recovered jacket, outside of the Rathaus restaurant in Rapperswil.


This morning, we walked from Zurich's main train station to the old part of town. We climbed up a church tower, saw Marc Chagall stained glass windows, ate at a sidewalk cafe (Russell actually ate a Focaccia and melted Brie sandwich), and had some gelato.

Russell's report:
I went trainspotting today at the main station and saw four different kinds of S-Bahn commuter trains. I saw an ICE high speed rail train and a TGV train. I also saw an InterRegio train which is the S-Bahn commuter trains' main rival and saw that it was inferior to the S-Bahn trains due to an oil leakage, not being as clean, lack of accessibility, and having only one floor in each carriage .


Russell and Ellen next to a TGV train.

First Excursions

Hi Everyone,
Our friend, Ellen, arrived on Thursday. We are so happy to have her stay with us for a few weeks. (Anyone else who wants to come is welcome! We have an extra double bed in the kids' room.) Friday morning, Ellen, the kids, and I went to the big farmers' market in downtown Zurich at Burkliplatz. The market was exactly what you think of when you imagine a European farmers' market: a bounty of fruits, vegetables, breads, cheeses, pasta, meats, flowers, live plants, and fish along with Europeans carrying their market baskets full of goodies. I keep finding myself saying,"This is right out of a magazine."



Ellen bought some cheese at this stall.


Later that night, we attended the 4th of July party put on by the American Club of Zurich. The party was nice, the band was good (Josh got them to play Sweet Home Alabama), and the fireworks were amazing. Slightly disturbing was our conversation with the evening's MC who challenged us to find a better place anywhere to live than Zurich. He's been in Zurich for 20 years and he seemed really glad to have left the States behind. It was not the kind of sentiment about the US that we expected at this event.


At the American Club of Zurich's 4th of July party.

Saturday, we attended the apartment house's annual sidewalk sale and met several neighbors: Susan, the yoga teacher whose studio is steps away; Diana, Vasil, and their toddler son, Neo; and Ava, Rolf, and their son, Enea, age 13. Enea is into Kendo which I believe is a martial art involving swordlike weaponry, so Russell and Enea had a nice time checking out Enea's swords in his family's hip, urban, straight-out-of-a-magazine flat on the third floor.



After the sidewalk sale, we walked over to Helvetiaplatz for the Caliente Latin Music Festival. There was some good music and interesting street food - Russell now likes chicken curry. More interesting was what we found on the walk over. We walked through a large park with many play areas for kids and adults. The park also housed a community center and attached restaurant (open daily from 10am to midnight!) with lots of outdoor seating. You would never know that this neighborhood is considered one of the worst in Zurich. They call this bad? If Office Hours (Sylvia's weekly coffee and friends meeting) ever gets moved to Europe for a summer, the Quartierzentrum Aussersihl gets my vote.