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!