over engineered.

Shelly encountered this in a restroom in Basel. With no shame, I went into the ladies room myself to confirm this Jetsons-ish phenomenon.

Sannenmöser and Schönried

While everyone else was going skiing, we decided to save ourselves from embarrassment. we began a short hike to the next village, Schönried. There was a set path to hike, through the valley with lots of eye candy (and randomly, a tropical bar of sorts) There, we were told, would be a trail in the mountains more suitable for walking.



And suddenly we were on the beach. or something. We were pretty creeped out by this, but since shelly dropped her glove 50 yards back we had to walk past the place again, and then we were convinced it was time to get warmed up and catch some sun. See the dog? He was missing an eye. While we had our coffee lots of other dogs showed up, and they started getting scrappy. It was überweird.

Heres Shelly as we step into Schönried. We had quite some snow, and I guess here it never got around to melting. Its piled pretty high on the rooftops. We took the gondola up to the top of the mountain they call Rellerli. There was a resteraunt up there (there almost always is at the top of the cable car thingies) and we had gotten a little hungry so we had some Röstli. Its a hashbrown kind of thing but this one was doctored up with cheese, bacon, pears, and an egg, yum!:

We sat outside, yknow, for the view.
from our table:
So now we decided to walk down the mountian, which is quite a big of a workout. Im figuring out the route here. Took about 2.5 hours of walking downhill. My legs are still pretty sore.

These should blow up real nice if you click on em. This one is cool cuz you can see the town below:


CRAP!!!! woops...

BLOG UPDATE?!

Dear diary.

You wouldn’t believe it, but I’m updating the blog! I’m doing this in Microsoft Word during lunch at work, so the spell check functions in German, please disregard errors accordingly!:) I figured I better do this now, I think Jamie must be sharpening the knives.



Normal stuff.

So it has been some time…. I guess I could start by explaining why. Well, nothing too exciting has really been happening. The weather has been kinda crappy. Lots of Snow, rain, clouds, cold etc. We’ve been hanging out in bars with new friends, not taking the camera with us, and talking / planning future adventures casually and looking for winter to just leave. So the blog sleeps.


Phone us. Ask shelly to speak german.

Did you hear about our phone number?! We have a 513 number set up through Skype. Its two – five – two, two – nine – eight – eight. You can call it, Shelly’s computer will ring, and we can talk with no to you or us, except for the 60 bucks a year we pay for the service! Ask Shelly to speak German, she’s doing really good but she’s shy about it. Tell us to keep the blog updated to. Don’t worry too much, were 6 hours ahead of you guys but if were sleeping it wont wake us. Leave a message!

Busy week.

Work has been good. Switzerland is feeling the economic crunch, and so is Feintool. The particular office Im in is slammed with work, so Im on 10 hour days for the month, at least. I think just about everywhere else in the company has cut hours. I do feel very fortunate.

Feintool Skiitag.

Yesterday we had a Feintool ski retreat, in (Saanenmöser for the Google Earthers) I don’t ski, and neither does Shelly, although she has before. Shes just a wimp. Anyways, we still attended the festivites, and spent the day hiking through the mountains. Pics to follow soon, Im at work and the camera is at home. Afterwards we met up with the skiers, and had a super fondue dinner. We are both mega-sore. Feels great!

Fasnacht coming up.

Fasnacht is a big ole holiday that caught us by surprise. Its celebrated in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and basically resembles Mardi Gras (without boobs) and Halloween somehow combined. It’s a pre-Lent holiday, you gotta eat all that lard you’ve been storing over winter and clear out your surplus meats and sugars before the big fast. Don’t forget to dress up ridiculously and drink a bunch. Every village/city/whatever has theirs at different times. Lyss had theirs a few weeks ago and we were caught off guard by the twenty or so marching bands going around the city all night. Last week was Biel and Bern, and we caught a little of each of those, we frequent both of these cities often.

The biggest one is in Basel. For the curious you can Wikipedia search Baslerfasnacht, seems to be a big deal. Im taking off work on Wednesday, we’ll go up Tueseday when I get off work and party all night and take the first train home Weds morning (about 5:30am). Should be a good opp to get some photos, assuming that I remember my camera, and manage to not destroy it somehow.

oregon trail

Shelly met another American in Lyss. See below to the part about how small Lyss is. Anyways, I haven’t met this chick yet but I guess shes like 10 years or more our senior, and Shelly said she was from Oregon. And I was all like ‘Oregon? Has she ever had cholera? Does she suggest trying to load the wagon and float it across? Will she trade some bullets for oxen or maybe a wagon tongue?’ It was then I became aware that my wife HAD NEVER PLAYED OREGON TRAIL. So I found a website were you can play it online and we did. The crazy part is that we won on the first go, so we had to play again so Shelly could see Our Couch, The Roo, Mike, Shelly, and My **** all die of dysentery. What would you like on your tombsone? Pepperoni and cheese!

band. rawk on!

In other news, Im playing in a band in Mürten, about 20 minutes away (but like an hour to get back because of the way the trains line up :[ ) Its called Cannibal Chaos Nightmare. Just Kidding. Its called Swiss Franc-enstein. Ok, still kidding. It’s a cover band, Im the youngest in the group by about 10 years, we play Rolling Stones and Beatles tunes, stuff like that, and some newer stuff I won’t admit to…. You really wanna know? Come and see us!

So Google Maps and I came to the revolutionary idea that Lyss is the same size as the Cincinnati Airport. The Swiss really don’t realize that Cincinnati is much of anything else other than a Feintool plant and maybe a Burger King with a Starbucks in it. The Greater Nasty Nati Area has 2 million or so peeps, and All of Switzerland has 7.5….