Zurich Trip Report, Dec '07

Alright, this is a bit tardy, but I wanted to give a quick blurb on our trip to Zurich. We took the train from Luxembourg to Zurich on Friday afternoon for a 5.5 hour trip. Thankfully, we had reserved seats, as the train to Zurich was packed! The people sitting in our seats weren't very happy when we showed up and James & I could not believe how long it took them to vacate them. FYI-- you don't have to reserve seats, as it costs a couple extra euro per seat, but during busy commute times, it's very worth it!

Once we arrived in Zurich, we were greeted by the city's indoor Christmas Market in the Rail Station. The highlight was the HUGE Christmas tree covered in over 5,000 Swarovski Crystal Ornaments. There were no lights strung on the tree, but the brilliance of the ornaments made it shine so bright! I think it maybe the most beautiful tree I've ever seen.

Saturday and Sunday we spent roaming the cobblestone streets, seeing the largest clock face in Europe, climbing bell-towers (James carried Anna up... not me :), oogling expensive jewelery, enjoying Christmas decorations and enjoying the panorama of the Lake and Alps behind it.

We had Mexican food with James' friend from Deloitte in LA who's working in Zurich now and had Cheese fondue that was to die for! On our last European vacation, we had considered having fondue in Switzerland, but ruled it out as too pricey (we were on the back-packing hostel type budget). I personally have regretted that decision for years, so this was the fondue to make up for our past mistake. When you're on vacation, sometimes it doesn't matter what it costs, since you're already there you should just splurge!

Oh and we also had at least 2 bretzels each day. Bretzels are a little bit like the soft doughy pretzels sold at baseball games in the states... except these are about 1 million times better. WOW are they good. If you've had one, you know what I mean. They don't have these in Luxembourg, so we made pigs of ourselves over them. We almost bought one that was bigger than our heads, but thought that might be too much!

All in all, it was a good trip, minus Anna waking up 6-7 times each night, leading to serious sleep deprivation. The rating we gave was, "Glad we came, but doesn't deserve a repeat."

St Nicholas Party

Yesterday was the St Nicholas Party for James' work. (Not to be confused with a Christmas celebration, St Nicholas is different from Santa apparently.) Anna was thoroughly scared for the first half hour of the party. First the visit with St Nicholas did not go well. After sitting on his lap for 3 seconds, she wanted no part of the present he offered, instead said "no, no, no."

After this initial trauma, we had a clown make a balloon animal for Anna... hmmm, not a good parenting move. 1) Clowns are scary & 2) balloons pop. So, of course the balloon popped as the clown was blowing it up and Anna lost it.

The good news is that Anna recovered after some cotton candy (thank you Daddy) and watching the big kids bounce in the bounce house.

Why have a Luxemblog?

For those of you who were wondering, there are many reasons I decided to do this blog. The most important is that I really don't like SPAM emails, so instead of spaming all my friends and family a couple times a month, you all can just look us up whenever you want!

I will post our travel plans & adventures as well as interesting, or perhaps boring, anecdotes of our ex-pat life here in Luxembourg.

Here's a boring one for you: What do you do if your laundry detergent has no scoop inside??? Well, I dug around in that box for 2-3 minutes and still could not find one. FYI, detergent does not feel good under your fingernails. And with no clear directions on the side of the box (I'm sure if I read perfect German or French I could understand--- what I need are pictures!); well, I'm still guessing on the amount and am hoping not to flood the laundry room by adding too much!

We made it.

First off, I need to credit my cousin Erik for coming up with the title for this blog at a family party this summer. And, if this blog comes up with nothing noteworthy, then it's all Erik's fault as well.

Well for those of you who were worried... we did actually make it here. The move from LA to Luxembourg had it's bumps, but we're now installed in an apartment (3 bedrooms) on the edge of Luxembourg city.

Whenever we say where we've moved from, people always comment on how the weather here is not so good compared to California. This is true, as it's sooo COLD here. A good day's high is about~ 8 Degrees C or ~45 Degrees F. Also, we've noted that partly cloudy here has a different meaning. In California, partly cloudy meant that there would probably be a couple clouds in the sky. Here in Luxembourg, it means that there will be at least one 2-5 minute window where you will find a break in the cloud-cover.

Here is a view from our place:

Here's our cleaning woman: