Homerun

Another 25 Minutes and I will get the key for our new apartment. Yay! I can't wait to just stand in there, close the door and know: "This is ours". Interestingly, a voice inside my head says: "For a while..." The voice may belong to some doomsday pessimist or to a world traveler. I assume the latter...

Yodeling (for Craig)

Yodeling is a kind of singing that is really abundant in all the countries that border the alps: Austria, Germany, Switzerland. A yodel sounds strange - and strange it is indeed. There are many misconceptions about the act of yodeling and its time to clarify this.

Yodeling is a fusion of two distinct types of human noises that served two different purposes. "Jonen" is a low-pitched sound that has been produced by the "Landsgmeind", the coming together of people from a village or a community to discuss political issues. If somebody has said something that everybody agreed with, people made this noise. The word "jonen" is also related to the word "jo" which means yes in the Basel dialect.

The second part of the yodel ist the model ("m-au-del"). Which is derived from another communal tradition: young men at the age of 18 come together to sing about how their favorite girl should be like. Again, it is connected to the verb "to model": the men hope that their wishes materialize.

But of course, this is long, long ago. About 500 years. The yodel itself has developed into an art form. Initially, however, it was a serious profession. It all started with an accident. Just around that time when yodeling emerged in the communities in the swiss alps, the reformation took place in Europe. People abandoned catholicism and the protestant church was on the rise. Protestant churches emphasized the good side of christianity, its positivity. This created a demand for artists that were able to contribute to the decoration of newly built churches, and coloured glass was very imporant. Windows of all churches were graced with pictures made of coloured glass. Still a widespread feature in many churches. Have you every tried to cut glass? Especially with the low quality glass in those days, it was impossible to get the necessary shapes to construct the biblical scenes in the windows. However, glass that is shattered with ultrasonic soundwaves splits in regular pieces irrespective of its quality. A technique that is still in use today. And this was realized early on. When several people yodel together, the interferences can easily be controlled by experienced singers to reach extremely high frequencies. And so it was the yodlers that helped to create those windows. Not a coincidence therefore, that yodeling is often done during mass (see the picture).

As with many things in Switzerland, the yodelin was perfected. Still nowadays there are contests were people attempt to shatter glass by yodeling according to predefined shapes ("Stücklijodle"). Or they try to focus the sonic waves to burst bottles ("Bierjodle"). Especially among younger people the bierjodle is famous. The loser has to drink all the beerbottles that didn't burst.

There is also a sad story that goes with the emergence of yodeling. It concerns the non-existant Swiss forest. I guess you don't know that Switzerland has basically no native forest left? That we actually import the wood to build cuckoo clocks? Here you go. In order to produce all the glass for the church windows (and even more was produced because it became a big export industry), many trees were cut to melt the glass. In fact all the trees.

This is also the reason why the standard Swiss army knife contains no saw. To protect our forests. And there is also the hypothesis that only after all the trees were cut people began farming and the cows the give the milk for the Swiss milk chocolate might never have existed hadn't there been the yodeling and the glass.

Strangely enough this story is rarely told. Althoug every child in Switzerland learns it. Maybe because there is too much negativity to it. Well, now you know.

Going to work

10 minutes before departure. Enough time to buy lunch? I take the risk and enter the grocery shop. Queues at the checkout are long, but the women work fast. Still four minutes to go. Track 8. I walk along the coach to the door and look inside. Not many people. We leave on time. Two Jewish girls discuss their jobs, the little brother flips through his tanakh but is constantly distracted by the collectors cards of the European championships. The woman next to them orders a little bottle of red wine (at 8 o'clock in the morning). I think about getting up to look at her but decide otherwise. The ticket inspector smiles at me when he sees that I own the general railpass, I am flattered. Country flies past the window. Before Olten is an old industrial zone. I see that an artist has his studio in one of the buildings just between a painter and a panel beater. I wonder whether he eats lunch together with the painters. I listen to the girls. They switch between Swiss dialect and Yiddish. The PA announces Zurich main station and people get up to walk through all the coaches to reach the first one just behind the locomotive. This shortens their walk on the platforom at the terminus. The woman catches the minibar on its way back and helps herself to another bottle. She looks pretty normal. Maybe she has her reasons. Zurich main station is packed. You need to walk briskly and plan your trajectory to avoid collisions. I always leave on the left side, where there is no official exit. There is a street to cross, but traffic is light and the tram blocks your way only rarely. Today it does. The traffic lights at the next intersection are timed, you just need to get the first one right. Up the hill, through a little alley. I can never decide whether I should take one or two steps at a time. I pass the church. Once I passed the priest on the stairs. I start to warm up. It's gonna be a hot day.

Below the Mittagsgüpfi

We went for our first hike! How splendid! Esther's mother grew up in a small mountain valley close to Lucerne, and she was keen on showing us her birthplace. Not that we have never been there, but you know, mothers... And besides, hiking is never a bad idea. So off we went. The hike started in Schwarzenberg, with nice views of the Pilatus, that's the mountain in the back of the picture. Aptly named after a figure from the bible, because the whole place there is very religious. The local cemetery has even little dispensers with holy water in front of every grave!

On the first picture you can also see where we went: Up the valley on the left to the mountains, then a right turn (where we will vanish behind the hill in the front), and finally around the hill back to where we started.

The names of the places you pass are extremely Swiss and contain heaps of Umlaute. Cows galore, typical Swiss farmhouses (Buurehöf) are everywhere, all the stuff. Up there, they really hang bells on all their cows (makes it easier to find them if they go astray). Basically all the farms along the way also offer refreshments. Some of them have no licence to do so, so they just invite you and you donate something. The inofficial highlight of the tour was therefore a visit to the Alpwirtschaft Stafel, where we ordered Moscht (cider) and a Stafelplättli (a platter with a mountain of cold cuts, cured bacon, salami slices and cheese). Yeah!

By coincidence, it was also the yearly cleaning day of the local hiking trails. Honestly! They went up early in the morning, cleared all the tracks from whatever debris landed on them during the winter, removed litter and so on. Quite an effort. Of course this had to be rewarded with a beer and so it happend that we had lots of company in the Alpwirtschaft. Around us where muscular, bearded men that all looked like Alpöhi in the Heidi movies. One of them unpacked his alphorn and played it in front of the house. An alphorn sounds beautiful. The tone is low, the notes long and the echo from the rock faces that rolled back to us made us shiver.

On the way home we passed meadows full of flowers and the biologist in me couldn't resist to take at least one picture. This is the Knabenkraut, an orchid that is really abundant there. Their petals bear beautiful patterns that supposedly act as airstrips for their pollinators.

And what does the title of the blog mean? Well, the Mittagsgüpfi (noon peak) is the name of the mountain that dominates the valley we went up.

Sundays

On the left you see the view that we have where we are living currently. It's out there, it's rural, it's country life at its best. The bells of the village church greet us, the smell of cow dung reminds us that this is, well, as I said, rural. And its a hell of way to the next outpost of civilization (i.e. a city).

And the best day to enjoy the country side is Sunday. Sundays are beautifully lazy. There is nothing to do, because shops are closed and the next larger place, Aarau, is too far away to justify the effort of getting there. And so you enjoy the joy of doing nothing. Except maybe reading the Sunday newspaper and of course having a great breakfast. On the left you see Esthers siblings and their partners doing what I just described. Nothing. On a Sunday, of course.

At one point though the itching starts. How can you sit around for a whole day? I guess in former times they could, but now, after sitting in front of your computer for the whole week, you can't. And so you go for a walk. Which is also very Swiss and very popular. God I hated those walks when I was young! Why can't we just stay inside and play? No, walk. Fresh air, a little bit of exercise and all that s**t. The problem with those walks was the following: they were unofficially classified as "Spaziergang", which translates to walk. And not as "Wanderung", which would be a hike. The difference? On a hike, you would take some food with you, chocolate, bread, an apple. On a walk, you don't. And what happens? The walk is indistinguishable from a hike! Same duration, same distance. You are starving! Maybe, bust just maybe, somebody had sweets in their pocket, that helped. But it was still terrible. In the meantime things have changed. And so we leave the house, walk through fields of wheat and poppies to the next forest or hill.

Walking is a serious business in Switzerland, by the way. They gridded the whole country with a tight network of trails. Every 15 minutes, there is signpost, indicating the next bus or trains stops, villages, mountain peaks and so forth. Impossible to get lost (but ask Esther, hehe).

I think this one of the things I somehow missed. The part of the Swiss country that is not know to tourist: rolling hills and beech forests. They are gorgeous. Because they are Swiss beech forests they are heavily managed. There is a forest floor (empty), trees (beeches, as I said), and that's it. Well, beech forest, what do you expect? No such thing as a fern tree in-between. Funnily enough thought, this renders those forests very elegant. The trunks of the trees are grey and slender, they raise to a green canopy and create a feeling as if you are standing in a large cathedral. In the summertime, the smoke of a wood fire (check my entry on cervelats!) will drift through the forest, sunrays cut through the clouds and you hear the faint sound of laughing children. But not now, I guess the weather is not right.

And so we return to the village, pass tidy houses with tidy gardens (and comment on them) and return home for coffee and cake.

Arsenic time

Looks like I was cheering at just the right moment yesterday. Seconds later hell broke loose...

Years ago I helped organizing some winter camps for little kiddies. The camps were always big fun. They were called "Snow camp" and were intended for those kids that didn't ski but wanted to get out there into the snow. We played games, built huge snowmen and tried to feed them normally healthy food for a week.

Something that was funny and happened in the first two days of every camp was what I call here the "arsenic time". The time during which the ranking among the kids is established. They all get to now their mates, they try to establish boundaries and check where the limits of the camp leaders are. It is a quite stressful time for everybody and once things have settled down, normal camp life begins.

It seems to me the same applies to the beginning of a new job. Finally it seems I can really enjoy the day in the new group. Don't ask me why, but I need to establish this ranking as well. Not that I go armwrestling with the professors, but I need to get into touch with everybody at least once, talk a little bit with them, understand where there strenghts are, learn about their weaknesses. Like that I can calm down, find my place, start to work.

Delay - Swiss style

InterCity train bound to Zürich. Stops a little bit too long in Olten. PA announcement: "Due to the European Soccer Championships there is an increased number of trains operating. This has caused a delay of two minutes. We apologize for that."

...

...

TWO MINUTES! Oh my, if this is the only problem this country has...

Another story: we are now officially um, "angemeldet" (logged in?) in Baden. Took us about 15 minutes at the town's office. As a new resident of Baden, you get some goodies (I actually knew that and was looking forward to it). Vouchers for the thermal bath, vouchers for a day trip with the local buses (how cool is that... I get the shivers when I only think about it: 24 hours on the public bus system. Incredible!), a free waste bag (waste bags are expensive here, because you pay the complete costs of getting rid of the waste with them. When they introduced that concept some years ago, people suddenly stuffed much more into their bags, causing an increase in back injuries in garbage collectors), some leaflets with "what's up in Baden, the hottest city right after New York" (I am exaggerating here) and finally, the real treat: Iodine pills. Iodine pills? Hell yeah! Iodine pills. One pack for me, one for Esther. If one of the nuclear power plants here in the neighborhood starts too leak, or even pops open, then we have to eat the stuff. The iodine will fill up our thyroid gland pronto and will reduce the load of radioactive iodine that we inhale. Phew. I feel much better now. And that's it. Nothing to eat, no restaurant vouchers, nada. Whatever.


By the way: Switzerland - Turkey: 1 : 0 !!! Excellent. Hope it get's even better.

Trying to enjoy soccer

Finally. The European Championships have started. Switzerland was "instructed" by all available media to be extremely excited. This is the event. We will show the word what a terrific host country we are and, geeeeehh!, how are we looking forward to all those fans. They were depicted as well dressed, multi-cultural, good looking, young, non-alcoholic tourists which paint flags on their cheeks, consume whatever beer the main sponsor tells them and besides that boost our economy to a degree that it will pay all the extra army and police forces that will roam our cities. That's the story so far.

And now they arrived. They looked slightly different than in the TV ads, but hey... And so it began. Saturday evening, "Fanzone" it's called. Which is a fenced off part of the city where you only get over-priced food, one brand of beer and large screens to watch the game.

I was really looking forward to having a barbequed sausage, a fresh beer (you always get it on tap) and a nice spot where I will see the whole screen. I am not asking for a lot here...

Beer was no problem. Just outside the fanzone was an outlet of a local microbrewery (called "Unser Bier", which means "Our Beer") and theirs is much better than the official one. The security even allowed us to bring it in into the zone. Proceed to step 2, the sausage. The queue was long. Their were about 15 frantic women behind the counter, trying the get a sausage from the single (!) BBQ they had fired up. It was a disaster. In Switzerland, you ALWAYS eat a sausage on such an occasion. No sandwich, no pizza slice and heaven forbid no such things like muffins or doughnuts (which they tried to sell for about 5 NZD a piece). Those things do not fit. They don't. But it seems that one of the organizers got it wrong and thought that those well-dressed, good-mannered, multi-cultural, we-are-one-happy-family people would ask for them. Well they didn't. For the simple reason that they did not show up. Those that showed up were the normal-looking, sausage-eating soccer fans.

Many of them though that wearing over-sized fleece hats in cheerful colors would enhance the performance of their team which played about 5 kilometers elsewhere. Which required hats with quite paranormal properties. They did not care. And kept them on. In front of us. The one guy that placed himself in front of Esther was, in addition to his tremendous hat, also quite tall, drunk, slightly aggressive and when Esther told him that it would be cool if he could take the hat off, he became quite enraged and insisted that it was not his fault that the hat was that tall and Esther that short. We left it at that. Not only because a peaceful night was threatened but also because he became involed in another argument that included three slick guys with lots of brillantine in their hair.

After 45 minutes we fled. We found a better place. Had the official beer and fries (Beer = 9 bucks, Fries = 7.50) and enjoyed watching part two of the Swiss being dismantled by the Czechs. I love soccer!

Addendum: Tonight we sit at home. I can drink when and what I want. No people with hats and a cosy sofa just for us. But somehow I miss the hats...

Homesick

Yesterday, we watched TV. We saw a docu about a German family returning home after they have lived for three years in New Zealand.

How can you leave that country anyway?

I miss the seagulls that tear plastic bags apart. The lights at the pedestrian crossing that only turn red when you push the button. The silly utes that roam the streets. I miss entering the youth hostel and saying hello to the staff. I miss going to work and being greeted by pukekos. Getting take away coffee. Or butter chicken. A glass of Sav in the evening with friends. The accent of the people in the lab. Coming home to our little flat. Driving over the harbor bridge. Reading signs that say "Takapuna", "Papatoetoe", "Remuera" or "Mangere". Norfolk pines. Too much UV. Shortland Street. Breakfast with Paul and Pippa. 2 liter milk jugs. Braeburn apples. Lots of Asian people on the streets. Milo bars. Pete telling stories. Rutenes visiting us for no reason. Waitakere Ranges. Mynas running off the street. Endless suburbs. But most of all, the friends.

It so funny to observe how the same thing happens again: more than two years ago we arrived in Auckland. We were really frightened. Every move was a big effort. Finding a flat, opening a bank account, getting to know people, exploring Auckland. Tasting the new food, finding our way through foodtown. And slowly, slowly we settled down.

Back home, it seems even stranger. We know the country, but we are not yet at home. It's like visiting the old neighborhood you grew up in ten years later. You still know the secret places, but they lost their magic. You recognize sounds, shapes, smells, but they don't lead you anywhere. And all that tells you "hey, home is just around the corner". But it ain't.

I guess it will take two or three months. That's what it took in New Zealand.

Surprising Esther

Esther had no clue. Nada. Zilch. She thought her two siblings take her out for a siblings-only day. Hiking. How great is that... She arrived in Switzerland just the day before and now hiking. Jetlagged hiking that is. But siblings are siblings, and so she went.

What she did not know: They have invited lots of her friends. The old ones (meaning pre-NZ), and new ones (those that she met in NZ and who happened to be in Switzerland now). They set up tables and benches in the garden, fired up the BBQ, had salads, meat and drinks ready, balloons, smarties on the tables, the whole shebang.

So we were all there. Hiding behind the house, they lured Esther into the garden with some silly excuses... When she saw all the people, she nearly fainted. It took a while for her to recognize the faces. It was funny, she knew them, but then again she couldn't put it together.

All our friends have changed a little bit. Suddenly there were little kiddies with parents where there were couples before, new jobs, new homes, lots of gossip and news that had to be exchanged. It was a wonderful afternoon. We all sat there, enjoyed each others company, talked, laughed and arrived a little bit in Switzerland.