Bike!

I recently bought a bike. This was motivated by a few factors:

• My recent trip to Freiburg, which is very much a cycling city
• My commute has gotten crazy - they just built a new tunnel, which reroutes all but one of the regional trains from going through the station nearest to my house, including the two that go to the suburb that my office is in, so it now takes about an hour and three modes of transport, to go on public transport
• I am traveling off and on during the summer, meaning that a monthly transit pass does not pay itself off. Buying daily tickets is annoying (it costs about 7 dollars a day to commute, so I have found myself to working more from home).

This sticker is a play on the Zurich Transport network's logo and motto...
"no ticket for everything" instead of "one ticket for everything")

About every six weeks in the warmer months, there is a Velobörse (bike market) in Zürich, where used bikes can be bought and sold. A seller can drop their bike (or bikes) off in the morning for a fee of 5 francs (10, if it costs more than 400 CHF) with a price set. Then people come to the market and can purchase a bike if they find one that they like. If the bike sells, the organizers get a cut of the sale price. It is organized by the cantonal bicycle advocacy group, who are on hand to check the bikes out, make minor adjustments and sell accessories.

The selling period is from 9AM-3PM and I had training on the morning of the most recent börse. I wouldn't be able to make it there until about 2, when I assumed all the good stuff would be gone. I had decided that it wasn't worth trying, until one of my teammates mentioned that she wanted to go, so I changed my mind. The thing is we both have similar taste in cycles and were both tempted by a beautiful Motobecane mixte, which was just past the upper end of my budget, but almost worth it. I talked myself away from the pretty and pricey bikes (three bikes have been recently stolen from my office or nearby).

For the past several years I have toyed with the idea of buying a Bianchi, partially because they are nice bikes, but mostly because they come in a color that I would call seafoam green, but they call Celeste. Well, my dream sort of came true, when I became the owner of a Bianchi Flash Delta! (Delta Flash?)

The sticker shown in the top left means that it has been in Zürich since at least 2004 (there used to be a mandatory cycle insurance program). I need to cover the other stickers up. Additionally, the bike has rad graphics and sweet purple bell. 

On its first outing to a school playground 300 meters from my house to do a work out.
Fun Fact: the helmet and lock cost almost as much as the bike.

I knew that the bike felt like what I needed (lady's frame, rides smooth, some style - but not pretty enough to steal), but I knew nothing about it,s so I tried to find out more about the bike, but info has been sparse so far.

This Flash Omega is/was for sale in Hungary.

As was this Delta, which describes it as a mountain bike,
 a statement with which I don't totally agree.

I found this blog, where a woman rode a flash delta on a ten day cycling trip in southern Africa, after owning it for over fifteen years (in 2009). Which puts my dating of the bike about right. (Hers has different colors, so it could be a slightly different model year). It also reminded me that I have been wanting to do a big cycle trip for quite some time. Not Africa big - I'm thinking more like Belgium.

An Austrian auction house sold several (or had several for sale) in 2012 as part of their lot of police bikes. They characterize it as a trekking bike, which I think is more accurate.

None of the images that I found have the purple/gray coloring of mine. They all have some purple/teal version, which would have also been cool, because then I could rep the Charlotte Hornets.

I may go to the next börse early to see if I can pick up something a little more stylish, for when I need to be seen about town, but this should do nicely for now.

Time to see if I can steady the front fender and figure out which route to take to work on Monday!

Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Two weekends ago I traveled with some German co-workers to Freiburg, a university town about two hours from Zürich, in order to be in Germany while the national team played the final and hopefully get to revel with other fans. I tried this last world cup, taking a spur of the moment trip to Amsterdam, which was a blast, but did not work out so well for the Dutch.

I had spoken with my friends about where in Züri to watch the game, but they decided that in the event that Germany won, the experience of celebrating in Switzerland would be sub-standard. So on Sunday morning I got an SMS saying to meet at the train station at 3 dressed in black, red and gold. This was slightly problematic because out of loyalty to the US team, I left my German jersey in the US and the only other yellow I own is ultimate clothes. I settled on a black tank top, red cardigan and gold necklace. I'm really glad I kept it toned down, because no one else really dressed up either (one guy did bring a flag and we asked strangers to borrow their face-paint).

Last time I was in Freiburg was about two years ago and the city hasn't changed much, although it seems like they are building a new tram line. We happened upon an outdoor electronic dance party, complete with a vegan kebab stand, and danced for a bit until heading to a bar to watch the match. There were some groups chanting cheers along the way. We tried to make "Tüütsch!" (too-ch), the Swiss-German pronunciation of the beginning of "Deutschland", into a cheer, by one person yelling this and the others echoing and also telling French people we met that it was a common German cheer. This was a little bit a response to thee trend of people cheering for " 'schland". Mostly this just garnered confused (and annoyed?) looks.

After watching the post-game awards, we took to the streets with the masses. There was cheering and chanting and shaking of cars. For the most common cheer, Humba Täterä, based off of a popular Karneval song, the leader tells everyone to sit down several times, essentially blocking traffic or the walking path, then asks them to (translated from the German) "Give me an H", "H!", "Give me a U", "U!", ... "Give me an A", "A!", "Give me an exclamation point", "Exclamation Point!", then everyone jumps up, dancing and singing, "We sing humba, humba, täterä, täterä, täterä..." (I have no idea what it means) followed by people picking up all of the wallets that fell out of pockets during the siting portion and returning them to their owners.

A ground cheerleader

The bus cheerleader

One guy even climbed on to of a bus that was stuck in traffic to lead the whole street in the cheer. He hopped off, like it was no big deal. Then a few other guys got on the bus and were pulled down by the cops. People were having a good time, but there was slight sense of unease due to displays of national pride and the chanting. (or maybe people just felt like there should have been)

The cheer in another city:


We then split into two groups, people who had to work in the morning and those who didn't. The ones who didn't went to an after-party and I haven't seen them sense (mostly because I worked funny hours last week). Those of us who did have to get back to Switzerland and the office couldn't do so until the first train back at 5 AM, so we found a bunch of people dancing around a rolling speaker (at the same square where the electro party was earlier - I wonder if there is always dancing there). We danced, marveled at a world cup replica a guy had made out of fruit: bananas for the base and a cantaloupe with a globe etched into it as the top part, laughed at malfunctioning signs, went and got kebabs in a line which must have included half the population of Freiburg, then went to the train station where some people napped and I prepped for my meeting at 10.

The fruit cup. Photo from Anca.

I slept on the train and in the napping room at the office, then went to my meeting which went great! Someone who used to work for us had already built a model that I thought I needed to build, but really didn't want to!

Hehe! City theater of Freiburg. Should say "Heart of the City" 

June was crazy: Switzerland, France, Germany, Estonia, the Netherlands, + Greece (via Sweden, Germany + Serbia)

I wrote bits of posts during the travel, but never uploaded anything because a detailed description of my 15 hour journey to France, which should have taken less than 9, didn't seem too read-worthy in the end. I also spent some time working on a series of post about croissants, which I have shelved due to a change in my commuting route, but it will probably surface again at some point.

This massive post will catch you up to July 4th weekend with just the highlights from each stop! Google tells me the whole ordeal was about 10,000 kilometers!


France
Transport drama will always be associated with France for me. The above delay was due to in part to it being a holiday weekend, typical French train/rail problems, and other conference goers unknowingly swiping my reserved taxi. I eventually gave up on trying to find the taxi and found a bus, which took me to my first academic conference.

The door kept opening and closing while the bus
was moving for the whole hour-long ride

The conference topic was Service Management and the venue (or at least their restaurant) could have taken some notes (or invested in a better dishwasher and an exterminator). After the conference, I took a train (first class! for only an extra 10 euros) to Paris and then another to

Köln, Germany

This veggie loaf was actually disgusitng, but the first course
of cherries was delicious

On the Paris-Köln train they fed me and there was wifi, so I think the extra 10 bucks was worth it.

In between all the work conferences I've been going to, I've managed to fit in a little bit of ultimate as well. Aside from the twice weekly trainings, agility and strengthening workouts and extra throwing, my team has gone to (and performed quite well at) three tournaments, Disc Days Cologne,Windmill Windup in Amsterdam, and Skyline Cup in Amsterdam.

We won DDC, or at least the women's ultimate portion of it- the tournament also had Double Diisc Court and GUTS competitions as well as a frisbee dog showcase during halftime of the open final (so much for getting away from being "that sport with the dogs"). This was our first tournament with the out of town players, so we were able to work out some kinks and get in some good team bonding, we all have plaid warm-up shirts now, embroidered with a lime green "Z" for Zürich! If you want to read the German Frisbee Association's account of the weekend, it can be found here (in German).

So much style!

Parnü, Estonia

Time for Estonia, my second academic conference, and first conference presentation! On the way, I changed planes in Stockholm, so I could have my breakfast of champions: a Wienerbröd and Pressbyrån Coffee.

This conference was on the Baltic Sea and was also about Service Thinking. There were some useful sessions on paper writing and publishing. My presentation was the very last one of the conference and I think it went okay, or at least people told me they liked it; however, sanitation and water issues are not what these people are about, they were more into transportation, tourism or technology. The gala diner was at an old time farm and consisted of hearty food and homemade beer followed by traditional dancing, which the attendees had to participate in - this is consistent with one of the main tenets of Service Management: Co-creating value with the customer.

One of my advisers dancing! 

Parnü is a cute seaside town. Order the burrito at the Italian restaurant, if you are looking for adventure.

Awesome doors aren't just a Tallinn thing!

Rice, cheese, chicken and pineapple.
The salad and fruit on the side were excellent!

I took a bus to Riga, then a flight to

Amsterdam, The Netherlands
for a short stop at Windmill Windup, a massive tournament that I have been to three times before. Windmill was my first encounter with European Ultimate and it has been cool to see it evolve.

Good ol' Windmill!

I was in Amsterdam for about 24 hours. I was initially going to skip this tournament, but realized that I needed to play with my team against good competition before we go to Worlds. The three games that I was there for were really great preparation and I am glad I was able to be there. Aside from playing, I got to (ever so briefly) catch up with friends from other teams and countries. I also found out that someone other than my grandmother and other bloggers reads my blog (Hi, Herm!)

I also ate some stroopwafels!

The tournament organized an online contest to see who could most accurately predict the final rankings of all the divisions before the tournament started. My march madness brackets have been slipping, since I can no longer follow college basketball as easily as I could from the US, so I saw this as a chance at redemption. I got the second best score out of over two hundred entries! This is largely due to my team being seeded considerably lower than where I thought we would finish, which was second! I was frantically checking my phone for live tweets of the final during a session at the next conference that I went to in

Thessaloniki, Greece
I was sort of conferenced-out by the time I got to Greece. I could start to tell in Amsterdam that I needed to not be around masses of strangers for awhile, but I still enjoyed the food and the presentations. There was a special session on Base of the Pyramid research, where I presented my master thesis work and got to see what other service researchers are up to in this area.

Plus! All the signs are in Greek. I didn't know that things (other than formulas) were still commonly written in the Greek alphabet.

I don't know what this is, but it seems old and important.

Public viewing for the Greece-Columbia match. The local beer could not Fix the team's performance.

A store that only sells Feta (and Feta accoutrements, I assume)

(Air) Serbia
I traveled to and from Greece on Air Serbia, since they had the latest connection leaving Amsterdam that would get to the conference on time. And by that I mean it was scheduled to land at 2:35 AM and I needed to be at a session at 10. Of course the flight left Belgrade 90 minutes late, so I got to my hotel at about 4:30 and skipped the first session, which was fine. Air Serbia is in the midst of re-banding. Instead of just going down the isle asking, "Beef or Chicken?" there were menus distributed, which informed me what my choices were. I had found a menu from a previous flight in the seat pocket and both of the entrees were beef-chicken combos, so I was a little disappointed to have to choose between "air dried beef" and chicken.

Clockwise from bottom: My air-dried beef (cheese was a little tasteless), great ice cream from the Belgrade Airport, the menu from the previous flight (Maybe the plane was so late because they were making such complicated platings).

Luzern, Switzerland
The final round of the Swiss National Championships was in Luzern. We had to beat the other team from Zürich in order to make it to the finals, but that didn't happen (we let ourselves get down something like 6-11, tied it at 12s, and lost on universe), so we ended up getting third place. It was gross and rainy and a little disappointing.

Between the two days of play, we stayed at a teammate's house with a nice cherry tree and an awesome view of Mt. Pilatus, which I visited with my mom a few years ago (also visible from the fields).

Frankfurt, Germany
The last of the preparation tournaments was the Skyline Cup. This tournament had big ambitions, but it was its first year and scheduled at the same time as a big mixed tournament in Dublin and the some German national tournament, so the level and number of teams was not what anyone was really hoping for, at least in the women's division. The games were good for practicing staying onside during the pull, and refining a few plays and defenses, but we were never really tested.

After the tournament, I stayed in Frankfurt an extra day to meet with some German players in the sanitation game. I will hopefully be able to track some of their projects for case studies, as well as working together on some publications and putting together panels. It was really interesting to see how their offices work, since I could conceivably want to work for one of the organizations someday.

So, that is all for June and the first bit of July. I will probably have something up soon about what I do when I am not on the road, my recent trip to Germany to watch the World Cup Final, and my upcoming work trip to Kenya. Bis Bald!

taste of home

Last week was great, but a little stressful. At work, we organized a one day course on Thursday concerning how water and sanitation businesses are evolving. Initially signups were a little low, then all of the sudden it jumped up to fifty people. The course went really well (connections and progress were made + people want more, but with more specific topics), but by Friday I was exhausted and a little down (I had not been sleeping well and had to deal with trying office politics). I was looking forward to an evening in front of the TV with a good snack. On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store and while looking for filo happened upon pre-made cookie dough! One of the quintessential drown your sorrows foods! I am all for baking your own chocolate chip cookies, but it involves so much extra effort here (conversions, calibrations, substitutions, making your own chocolate chip sized bits of chocolate, dealing different types of flour and baking soda...), which ordinarily I enjoy: The experimentation! The Challenge! The (occasional) triumph! I just didn't have it in me on Friday.

The dough was great. The chocolate:other stuff ratio was great. The finished cookies were great. The third season of Suburgatory was good.

It is made by a nestle subsidiary, so I'm guessing it was pretty close to the tollhouse recipe.

Also on the americanish food front I found, but did not buy these:

also coors light...

Secure in Switzerland

Just over five years ago, I visited Switzerland for the first time on a trip with my cousin, Timo. One evening as we were setting up camp near the glacier we had just mountaineered on (read: walked around with crampons on, then Tim hauling my no-upper-body-strength-having-self out of a crevasse that I climbed into), we made some jokes about how the doors on the side of a nearby mountain might be the entrance to a secret military bunker/ research facility. It turns out that we might not have been that far off.

ASIDE: I never blogged about that trip. I came back to Raleigh from my semester in Ghana for summer school and just really wanted to get back out in the world again - some combination of wanderlust or just the daydreaming that Mechanics of Solids will drive you to or the excitement of watching Euro 2008 on the television, which had taken place partially in Switzerland, led me to crash the end of a much larger climbing trip Tim was on with one of his buddies. I was pretty sick the whole time (leftover parasites), but still had a fantastic time. Here are some photos:

Clockwise from top left: Swiss cheese bike, my first (maybe) bunker sighting, the wundercousin,
and hanging out on the mountain.

BACK TO THE POST TOPIC: My team was in Basel this past weekend for the first round of the Swiss national ultimate championships and the accommodation that was offered was in bunkers. When I first heard this, I was quite confused. We will sleep in a Bunker? Like during an air raid? Several of my teammates opted to get a hotel because they had previously had bad bunker sleeping experiences, with offensive smells, humidity and noise.

I did not have any issues with the bunker-experience. It was very similar to a youth hostel. Or at least a youth hostel that is underground and has a doctor's office, pharmacy, and x-ray room (maybe more - there was a dark hallway that I did not dare to venture down). This bunker had four to five rooms with sleeping places for maybe 40 people in each (the one I was in had 20 bunk-beds).

The heavy outer door, x-ray room, beds, and some provisions.

Switzerland has space for its entire population (and then some) in underground pretty-nuclear-proof bunkers, split between private and public bunkers. If you build a dwelling with a certain capacity and you do not include a bunker, you have to pay a fine to the municipality. This money is then used for the construction and maintenance of the public bunkers. Since these bunkers are generally not needed for their intended purpose, they can sometimes be rented out to house people for events, like ultimate tournaments and field trips (I am not sure of the exact conditions).

The bunkers in the mountains look much more epic (my entrance pretty much looked like an underground parking garage, but with out any streets nearby):

(Source: Polar Inertia)

I suppose I should find where my bunker in Züri is... assuming they let foreigners in :)

Switzerland - Month Four

I spent most of the first half of April preparing for, thinking about, and traveling to Spain. At work I was mostly focusing on preparing for a workshop we are offering in May to practitioners in the water and sanitation sectors. We initially thought that we would have about 20 participants, but now we have almost 50 signed up and had to ask for new rooms!

It hasn't all been vacation and work! In Zürich, the third Monday in March is Sechseläuten.  This was very confusing to me when I first heard co-worker talking about it because it is pronounced "sexy-loy-ten" and "loy-ten" sounds a bit like Leute, which means people. So it sounded to me like they were asking, "Are you going to look at the sexy people after work today?" ( It really means something about ringing the bells at six.) Also called "Böögg" (no idea how to pronounce that- I live in Höngg, which sounds kind of like "h -the u sound from murder- rnk", if that helps), this holiday involves a half day off from work and burning a snowman figure (the Böögg) on top of a huge bonfire. The amount time it takes from when the fire is lit until the head of the Böögg explodes, is supposed to somehow predict the duration (and perhaps quality) of the summer. So it is kind of like groundhog day, except with fireworks, costumes and class tension. Did I mention that the snowman is full of fireworks? Or that before the fire, there is parade of the guilds with men dressed in traditional garb? Or that the whole thing happens on what is essentially the Zürich town square, but is fenced off and (from my understanding) you have to invited to attend?

I took some shaky photos and videos of the event with my phone and google stitched them together and added music and a title, without me even asking. So, I present Sechseläuten from outside the fence (and behind some umbrellas) (there are actually a few decent shots in there, you can see the whole base of the first for a few seconds + some explosions, but it is really just for the creepiness/coolness(?) factor of google doing this all on its own):

I really like the premise that tradespeople are celebrating the beginning of the time of year when there is still light out when they are done working and of course the bit about burning a snowman with accelerants and fireworks, but the exclusivity gets to me (especially when quite a few of the people wearing old-timey clothes were speaking English with American or British accents). Apparently, after a certain amount of time the common folk are allowed to roast sausages over the coals of the fire.

The women's team that I am playing with won Sky Bowl, a tournament in Winterthur, just outside of Zürich. This is the first of five tournaments we are attending to prepare for the World Championships this summer. We lost a pool play game to MICZ, our cross-town rivals and the team for which most of the women on Headless play, but we beat them on day two in the elite pool and because of how that pool shook out, we played FABulous, of Bern, in the finals.

A teammate tasting gold!

The chocolate trophy, mid-demolishment

We will meet many of the teams from this tournament during the Swiss Meisterschaft, which begins this weekend in France (the fields are literally just over the border). This eight team tournament (on the women's side) gets stretched out over two weekends! 

Spain

At the beginning of April, I went to Spain two weekends in a row. The original idea was to stay for the week in between, but I had to be at the office for a few meetings (You can check out what I was up to in Switzerlnd here). The first tournament was La Abuela in Madrid, which was hosted by Quijotes, the team that I trained with duringthe first semester of my masters program.  It was a mixed tournament and played with Headless, one of the clubs here in Zürich. I didn't know it until afterwards, but it was part of the tryout process for the A Squad that they will take to the mixed Swiss nationals. There were mainly Spanish teams and we lost to the hosts twice, but did really well in all of our other games, so we finished second. I arrived in Madrid midday on Friday and  I had intended to finally visit the Reina Sofia, but touristed it up with some teammates visiting the Templo de debod and eating shrimps near Sol, instead. It was a great weekend: getting to know the Headless people better, (re)exploring Madrid (I tried and failed to find the bar where some friends and I were served a bowl of spaghetti with 3 forks as a tapa!), and seeing old friends again. So many memories of the good ole days!

Second place feels pretty good! (photo stolen from Q+D's facebook page)

The next weekend, I was back in Spain --this time flying in and out of Barcelona-- for the Costa Brava Tourney on the beach of Lloret del Mar. Lloret is kind of Spanish equivalent of Myrtle Beach, but for very distinct demographic groups: 16-19 year olds who are there to party and the 75+ crowd who is there to do the same. I played with Red, a team from Leicester, England. I had played at a few other beach tournaments, including Burla, with the team's organizer. The team didn't have many girls, so I think he asked all of the women he has ever played ultimate with to join. A weekend of ultimate on a sunny Spanish beach with a mini-castle in the distance? Sign me up!  There were three other pickups, one off whom came to Zürich and trained with my team the next week! The team was so much fun and very welcoming (sometimes it can be really awkward to be a pick-up).

The idea was to land in Barcelona in the morning, do something cultural (probably something Gaudí-related) and then head to the beach, but I just skipped the culture (again) ... I hope Barcelona will still be there for me to visit properly later. Usually, beach ultimate is played on sand, this beach was comprised mostly of  rocks like you would find in an aquarium - quite painful! We only won one game, but had a blast losing (and won the party... but I didn't really pull my weight in that aspect)! Swimming in the frigid sea is just what my body needed. My knee had been feeling strange for a few months and floating around let it realign or whatever needed to happen for it to get back to me not noticing it. However, trying to touch the bottom of the sea on the first day was just what my sinuses didn't need and I randomly had salt water coming out of my nose at inopportune times throughout the afternoon and evening.

The first party theme was "Happy Birthday." Here are several of the teams in costume. The winning team all dressed up like Marilyn Monroe in matching white dresses.
(all of the photos from this tournament were stolen from Simbie, a teammate)

!

 As it was the 10th anniversary of the tournament, we spelled out HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY in tin-foil and then danced until about 4 am!

Then played ultimate the next day, luckily the first game was at 11, so there was time for some rest.

The beauty rest was important for the "Black-tie" event that evening (It is a little difficult to look formal with only   and a day's notice of the theme, but we look pretty good- improvised ties and all!), which was followed by more dancing.

All and all, there is a lot that I don't miss about Spain: (most of) the food, not being comfortable with the language (I have started trying to learn again for professional reasons: I now know 242 words according to duolingo), it taking forever to get anything done, and the confusing university procedures, but in small doses of leisure it was perfect!