Lenk pt.2

Lenk.

Currently we are in a mountain resort town called Lenk. We were invited to come here with some friends, and its been just an awesome time. This is a 7 night trip, we’re about halfway through it I guess. Today Shelly, Roo and I did some all-star mountain walking, pics soon to follow from that, but I will start off with an eagle-view pic of Lenk from the ski lift (the window was all scatched up and you can see that in the photo). Click on the pic to blow it up, and you can see the town under the snow.

Last night there was a lotto held in the town, they had a lot squared off with two cows in it. They were placing bets on where one of the cows would poop first. We had position 294. We didn’t win..... In fact we were pretty frozen and we left, but our friends said the cows never went and they ended up drawing the number out of a hat. While we were there we had a front row viewing, and one of the cows kept coming over to us, and I thought for sure Roo was going to be the one dropping the load.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

So it had been a little while since we had ventured out of the region. Since I have some time off work, we decided to get up early on Monday and catch the train to Luzern (Lucerne). We spent the whole day there, enjoyed some wine while touring the town. The weather had let up, and while it was a little chilly and maybe a little cloudy, it was a great day to take in this beautiful town.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Monument

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff — for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. How head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion — and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.

– Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, 1880

the above pic inclueds 3 awesome towers of the defensive walls of Luzern, as well as a mountain, and looks like a castle to the far right in the distance. Good Job Me!

Shelly Nicole Hoffman, world traveler.
View over Luzern from the inside of those defensive walls... Mountains? check.

Above and Below: historic Jesuit chuch in downtown Lucern. With the well fed swans hangin out front.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapellbr%C3%BCcke

random pic. taken in Holland.

throwing snowballs for Roo.

random pic.

!Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving!

It is really weird working on Thanksgiving. Everything is just another day here, naturally… but when you know that its Thanksgiving… its just the weirdest feeling. Some new friends had us over on the applicable Saturday night.. and that was just super awesome of them. They lived in Motor City for a few years, so they knew the drill. Awesome people, we look forward to returning the favour somehow.... !!! See that favour? I’m typing this at work, and my Microsoft Office spellcheck thinks I must be British. Bob's your uncle. Sheesh. Please be patient with any unintentional weirdness brought on by this. What a bunch of rubbish.

Back to Tday. We wanted to spread the American spirit with our other Swiss friends as well, so, we had our Thanksgiving dinner Sunday night. Everything was made from scratch, so we were mega busy all weekend. In Switzerland a turkey costs 80 francs, so you better do it good.

We started at 5, and finished off at about 2am, and going to work on Monday was just… ugh. We had 5 Swiss guests, Christoph, his bro Michael, Michaela, Robi and Sandra. Here are the results:

Appetizers:

Devilled eggs: The Swiss were mystified, never seen them before. They seemed to like them.

Salami Rolls: salami w/cream cheese. Also a new experience, they ate all of them, or maybe Shelly ate all of them, not sure. Shelly likes these with pickles in them, but we couldn’t find pickles that weren’t totally disgusting. We bought some different types, all were sweet, and none were crunchy.

Jell-O: Scared the crap out of them. They were putting on their coats when I told them that I made the Jell-O with vodka instead of water, and then they decided to stick around and try it. They totally hated it, but for some reason ate all of it. Helps with digestion I guess.

Chocolate candies w peanut butter fudge filling: Shelly has a mold, which she paints with melted chocolate, then fills with peanut butter fudge, and then seals with chocolate to make these. This is an art that was learned from Lisa. Pretty cool. Peanut butter was non existent in Switzerland until like 5 years ago, so many have never had it, don’t know what to do with it, and the idea of PB&J is freaky. The ones that tried the candies thought they were very impressive.

Dinner:

Turkey was killer, very moist. The Swiss wanted to know how we kept the breast meat so moist. They nearly died when they found out that we cooked the turkey with a can of beer shoved up in it. Also, Shelly about passed out in the kitchen when she opened the turkey and it still had some feathers on it, neck was still attached and the giblets were... not in a bag, rather still part of the bird. Prepping the bird was like a B horror movie, Shelly actually left the apartment while I did the dirty work. I feel like I could survive anything after that. This surprise made us about an hour late on our scheduled mealtime.

Stuffing, from scratch on the stovetop. They don't have that here, so no chance of making it from a box. One of a few recipes that went over pretty well, since it was made of ingredients they are familiar with, but yet completely foreign tasting to them.

Green Bean casserole, same review as stuffing basically. A bit weird for them, but generally good.

Mashed Potatoes, normal for them, well liked.

Corn on Cob. Well liked, but they didn’t cover it in butter or salt. Shelly is going to be really upset when she finally realizes she never set out her corn holders.

Candied Yams/sweet potatoes or whatever: We found Süskartoffeln (sweet potatoes) at the big grocery in Bern, but generally speaking they don’t eat them and don’t know how to prepare them or anything. Marshmallows freak these people out. And it took me forever to find a store that had them, and the ones I did find were rectangular and pink on one side, and when I was buying them I was asked more than once if it is true that we really put them in hot chocolate in the US. I love explaining that we have hot chocolate mix in the states that actually comes with marshmallows, and its called Swiss Miss. Back to the Yams: so we didn't put marshmallows on top. and we didnt tell them there were marshmallows melted in it until much later. One guy liked it a lot, the others not so much, but all ate it.

Desserts:

Pumpkin pie. Yup, I started with a pumpkin, and made a pie. It turned out almost as good as Frisch's. They make other things out of pumpkins here, but not pies. They thought this was super cool, and ate it with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream just like the Indians/Pilgrims did. A big hit. Not as difficult to make as you might think. Finding a pumpkin was interesting. They are everywhere, but there are like 8 different kinds. Our friend Michael dropped one off, he had it leftover from a soup he makes at parties. It was perfect.

Apple Pie. Well liked. I think they eat apple pie generally as a meal, so loading it up with ice cream and having after a big meal was a challenge....

I didn’t have any American football highlight reels, so I just threw some old Motown tunes on the stereo, and all were merry.

Best Holiday wishes to our friends back home,
e/s

Day Three and Four - October 16 & 17, 2008.

Thursday was the rainy day that everyone has when they go on vacation. The gang wanted to head to Luzern but Mike and I were drained and had a few things to do to get ready to leave on Friday. After waiting for the rain to slow down the gang decided to change plans and head to Biel to look around. Biel is about 10 - 15 minutes away by car. The three of them went and came back in time to go to Bern with Mike. He had his language class that night (which he had skipped on Tues) so they decided to walk around with Bern with me while he was in class. After his class we came back and we ended the day with a very nice cheese fondue (another traditional Swiss dish based on melting cheese and drinking). 

Friday we had to get up early and head for the airport. We all crawled onto a plane from Basel and headed for Berlin, Germany. We arrived there about 2 pm ish.  

Will the group be detained in a post DDR apacolyptic no mans land, or will they hang out in bars?Tune in next time for more Eugene and Shelly.

Day two continued...

We stopped by a town called Lausanne (not to be confused with Luzern) on Lake Geneva, which was very beautiful, and a nice place to walk around. Ladies just hope that you don't have to use the public WC (water closet - bathroom).  

Montreux was very beautiful, and 4/5ths of the group had basically come here exclusively to see the Freddie Mercury statue. We walked along the lake and got our pictures in front of Freddie (again we have to wait for Aaron for the pictures). It was a very beautiful day and we could not have asked for better weather. (Thank you google images for picture below, Aaron get on it). 

Day Two - Wednesday October 15, 2008

Today we started out with stopping by Avenches, the Roman reunions, on the way to Montreux. We had a lot of fun playing around and taking fun pictures.  All of these pictures are staged for silliness, except for the one where Mike is getting ready to brain Christian with a rock.  That was for real.  They were fighting about which side of Physical Graphitti was the best.

Day one - Tuesday October 14, 2008

The first full day (Mike's Birthday) started out on a bad note. About 30 minutes into our drive to Interlaken we ALL realized that we forgot our cameras. Yes that's right all 5 people in the car forgot to grab one camera. As we walked around Interlaken Christian bought a deposable camera and as soon as he sends us copies of the photos I will post them. Interlaken was very beautiful and a quiet city in between two lakes (hence the name Interlaken, get it?). As we all were walking around Interlaken we found the Hooters (Not that far away Diane, he he he).

After Interlaken we got back in the car and headed up the Alps to Gimmelwald . We grabbed a gondola (See picture below) from Stechelberg (3025 ft) up to Gimmelwald (4593 ft).

This is a very pretty quite town and if you are interested there is a hostel there. We decided to continue up the mountain some more. Christian, Mike, and I wanted to go all the way up to Schilthorn (9748 ft / site of a 007 film) but there was too much fog so we took one more gondola up to Mürren (5361 ft). Aaron and Erika wanted to have a nice walk so they walked the paved path up to Mürren and met the three of us up there. The views from all levels were unbelievable... if you ever go bring a camera. We all walked around Mürren for a while, which was very empty and very few people there, in a cool way, then decided to grab a beer before heading back down the mountains.  One beer turned into... well Mike didn't make it to German class that evening. We all thought it would be nice to take the paved path that Aaron and Erika walked up to go back down. I was a beautiful walk and the views are too breathtaking to ever try to explain. We were all glad we picked to go to Gimmelwald because it is a less known tourist location and that made for a nice quick adventure. 

(This is a photo from the Gimmelwald website, I will add more of our own pictures as soon I get them from Christian). 

After a long day in the mountains we headed home and had a nice Raclette (traditional Swiss dish).  Its all about melting cheese and drinking.  But not like nachos.  Not at all.

Our first visitors - October 13, 2008

Just in time for Mike's Birthday (October 14) we have are first visitors arrive. Aaron, Erika, and Christian are the first to see Chalet LeRoo in person. With Aaron and Erika in the guitar room (guest room) and Christian on the nice big coach we were out of have a week of fun while they were here. 

Aaron with a bass, even while on vacation. 

Erika looking good as always. 
Christian plotting our adventures. 

Christian getting Mike in on the plotting. 

Almost complete apartment.

So after three days of having to leave the apartment and having all the furniture in the middle of all the rooms, so the painters could come and paint, I was able to start unpacking and putting stuff into the right places. It took some time and there are still a few things that need to be done (hanging the pictures, MIKE!!!) So here is a look at are new furnished apartment.   Oh, and please take your shoes off.

Shelly's finally here - October 2, 2008

After two months apart I finally arrive at the Zurich airport with Roo in hand. It was a long trip (Cincinnati to Detroit to Amsterdam and finally ending in Zurich). Unfortunately Roo had to travel in a compartment under the plane for two of those legs.

I was in my seat and ready for the last leg of the trip (Amsterdam to Zurich) when the stewardess came up to me and asked, "Are you traveling with a dog"? The first thing that came into my head was "OH MY GOD!! What happened to my dog"? She explained that Roo was in her cage at the back of the plane and wanted to see if I wanted to sit by her. Well of course I did, so I traded places with a nice man in the last row of seats and Roo was strapped in next to me.

When the two of us FINALLY arrived at the Zurich airport it took some time to get to the exit but all of a sudden we saw Mike. There was a glass wall dividing us and that was like water torture. I finally went through customs (with not a single person looking at the dog or her paper work) and met with a big hug and kiss, like the movies. Roo went crazy when she caught his scent and wanted out of that cage as fast as she possible could. This task became every interesting because I had secured her cage with a zip tie so she would be safe. Since I was flying I of course did not have scissors to cut her free and it happened to be the first time “Eugene” was without is pocketknife. We finally found a nice lady at the newsstand that let us borrow a pair of scissors. We got Roo out and she was so cute with her excitement to see Mike. Mike told me later that she had seen him through the glass barrier and recognized him even then; he said that it was very heartbreaking. So after two long months we were all back together again.

Chalet LeRoo

Sorry for sucking in the blog department. Please come back and Ill do better.

This video was carefully designed for your viewing pleasure about one and a half months ago. About 15 minutes after making the video the big old truck arrived with all of our crap in it. From that point on it was crazyness... unpacking my underwear, unpacking my moogerfooger, unpacking all the packing material and trying to figure out where to stash it. Everything traveled pretty well.. well Cleo The Goldfish didn’t survive the trip...

So this video begins with a really stupid look on my face. The weather was really nice, but its not like that anymore. So sit back and relax cuz your about to be whisked away to Chalet LeRoo. But Wait! After the film join us for a small Shelly feature to fill in some of the holes since my last post.
Cheers,
e.

Move in Day - September 16, 2008

Guitar Room - Guest Room Living Room with the door to our back patio and large flower box.
View of the living room and "master" bed room.
Kitchen with a great deal of cabient space ; )

View of the front door, door to the guitar room, and hall closets.

Finally move in day. Out of the temporary apartment and into our new apartment. Our new empty apartment.

How I've been improving my German!!

kids books are the best...

worben air!

The events of today were pretty unexpected. A festival/air show was taking place in the grassy airfeild right down the street from me as I woke up, so I grabbed my camera and went on down! After spending a couple of hours watching the nifty planes and playing with my camera I went on a little cruise myself. The f-16 ish thing is a model, rc controlled and jet powered. Pretty sweet eh? Beautiful weather... So the military vehicles. I assemed they were Swiss Army making an appearance, but as they were packing up and leaving I realized that a few of them were marked USA! So, thinking I might practice my English a little, I approached the cammo clad dudes. Well... They were swiss guys, and the vehicles were restored WWII era jeeps etc that had been left behind, and then collected together by these hobbyists... imagine that!

Click on the photo below to get transfered to the 'photobucket' album....

Photobucket Album

nasty milk drink

click here and check this out:

TECHNOLOGY!!!!

Just wanted to drop a quick note about how much easier this has been with my laptop.  With my laptop, I can still check on all things going on at home, I can speak to my wife, friends, and family daily for free, and even with video.  And I can post to this blog to keep even complete strangers up to date.  Overall, this experience has been fantastic, but, as I've described this experience to a few people, 'when its good, its really great, and when its bad, wow it's really bad'.  Fortunately when its bad I can turn it into funny with the folks back home and move on.  I couldn't imagine doing this without any contact, as so many have done before me!

FEUERWERK

I had the great honor of being a guest on a boat for the fireworks celebration of Swiss National Day.  This takes place on Lake Biel, and its an all out show similar to our Labor Day show on the Ohio River.  Here's a few clips.  Thanks Christoph!!!

1st week

Hi everyone!!!

With the exception of missing my lovely bride, I am doing very well.  Although everything is upside down here, and even though French Dressing is white but tastes the same, I've been able to navigate myself through Swiss life just fine for the first week.  I keep myself on the go, so as not to spend much time thinking about the people I miss.  My German is serving me well, and I'm able to communicate the basics with the locals, although they have to 'switch' themselves to German, as it is rather seperate from their native 'Swiss German'.  My senses have been overloaded.  Every one.  My ears hear the Swiss tongue backed by a chorus of cowbelles, my tongue experiments with the chocolates, breads, cheeses of the Swiss, not to mention the local beers and the carbonated water.  My sense of touch has been violated by the large flies that take bites out of me in the night, as I live next to a farm in Worben currently.  But all I have to do to see some neat stuff is look right outside my window:

I was on the phone with my dad when a few of these guys 'dropped in':
I was only here to two days before my first little trip, I drove to Bern, the Swiss capital.  It was about a 30 minute drive from my apt., taking the backroads to catch some scenery.  I took alot of pictures of Bern, the first time using my camera.  Afterwards I discovered accidentally how to format my camera's memory, and lost everything.  Oh well... with it being so close and grand, I'll be making many trips to Bern.  I did capture a few shots at dusk from the hill:

In a nutshell, its the capital, and Einstein did his most important work while employed at the patent office.  Other that that, its just maybe one of the coolest places I'll ever see.  It has a very distinct look and feel to it, especially from the street view.  Google it, its cool.

Friday was Swiss National Day.  August 1st.  Its pretty much like our 4th of July and seems to be celebrated the same way.  Fireworks and grill outs.  I think I'll be making a seperate entry for the festivities and right now just write about Avenches and Murten.  Being as it was the celebration of the beginning of Switzerland, I thought I'd check out a little relevent history.  Avenches (pronounced Avanch I think)  was the Roman capital of Helvetica  yadda yadda, google it.  It was much larger than it is now.  The main part of the town is not featured, as I came to see the Roman ruins that lie in the farmlands behind the town, and neglected to photo any of the city newer than 1000 years old.  It was about a 40 minute drive and they speak French here.  Here is a street view, and if you look carefully in the backround you can see the Roman wall and Gate.  But don't strain your eyes, I have a zoomed in photo below:

The next three photos are of the Coliseum, which according to the tourist signs had a third of the capacity of the one in Rome when it was at its largest.  There are stories of seats missing.  And most of the seats are reworked as there apparently is an opera that performs here:

The tower was a medieval addition, with narrow windows as it served as more of a defense structure:

In the backround you see a glimpse of the 'downtown' area which I neglected to photo.
Heres that gate:
A column, the only one left from a big ol' temple:

And the more exciting of the Ruins:  A big part of this structure was for a theatre.  Like all Roman ruins, It had been quarried for many centuries, leaving very little behind from what it once was:

Here I took some video of me walking around in this old Roman stuff.  Sorry for the lack of clarity, I had to dumb down the video enough so that I could upload it.  I'm sure you'll find the dirty cow footage with no problem....