The Boss

Enjoying the Bruce Springsteen concert.

From my balcony. One km away.

This just in ...

The US and Switzerland have gone to war ... over taxes. I guess that soldier I saw yesterday at the tram stop was actually being used for combat?!?

As of last week, US citizens are not allowed to open up any sort of bank account in Switzerland. Period. Sorry for the inconvenience, thank you, good day.

Those who already have them, are lucky they are allowed to keep them. For now.

This Thursday we are going to an Independence Day BBQ hosted by the US Embassy and the Marines. I'm going to complain. Should be fixed by Friday morning.

Le Tour

It's a 2 hour train ride to the stage 15 feed stop near Gruyères ... oui oui!!

No man left behind

In Switzerland every male age 19-34 is obliged to serve in the military. 18-21 weeks one time, then 3 weeks each year. From time to time, co-workers will be on military leave for a week or so to go march around, learn something fancy or kill some cows. Our apartment is actually just a few blocks from the Bern army base. So we see soldiers around the neighborhood all the time. They're in uniform, but unarmed.

And it turns out, Mondays are "pack up yer gun and head off to the army base days." Fridays are the opposite. You are not allowed to take your gun with you except to/from the base and home. Guns are NOT allowed in restaurants. Leave them in the car, was one suggestion. Duh.

But anyway.

So this morning, an entire battalion/squad/section/group/whatever (40 dudes or so) needed to "get to work" as it were. From the Bahnhof to the base. You take the 9 to get there.

So they're all waiting at the Bahnhof for the 9. Backpacks, luggage, berets etc. They're all packin' heat. Extreme heat. Fancy euro-style foldable weapons of extreme death and destruction. Swiss Army knives - the ones with the toothpick and nail file - very dangerous. The works.

The 9 arrives. They take an extra long time loading themselves into the tram, because, well, it's hard to load that many soldiers onto a tram with all their stuff. Plus civilians.

They fit everyone on ... except for one guy. They pushed and squeezed, and one guy wouldn't fit in. Tram leaves. Single soldier standing there. Alone. Left behind. Pulls out his cell phone, calls his section leader "Sarge! I've been separated from my squad! Help!!!"

He took the next tram.

Typical Swiss Sunday

In Switzerland, Sundays are for meant for family time. I've read blogs where people get yelled at if they do "work" on a Sunday - laundry or cleaning or some such thing. I have never experienced this. You can pretty much do whatever you wish, be it laundry or activities with one's family.

But in general, the Swiss usually end up jumping on a train and heading out somewhere each Sunday to go hiking or swimming or just to simply spend the day seeing their country. And today we did just that - we jumped on a train and headed down to Thun. Thun is a small medieval town on (where else) Lake Thun about a 20 minute ride from Bern. In Thun we ate sandwiches and ice cream along the river Aare while we waited for the next ship leaving Thun. It didn't really matter where we were going - we had promised little N. we were going on a "boat ride".



From Thun you can catch a ship to any number of towns along the lake shore for about CHF 15. The entire round trip would have gotten us back at 7pm so we decided to just jump on a boat (ship) and get off at Spiez, spend a few hours and then come back.





Spiez was a cute little town. Mostly filled with resorts and boating clubs. I could see taking the train here and spending more time at some point. Especially because from the lake, it's all up hill. Need to bring back the bike I think. And there was a nice playground. Which N. never saw because he was fast asleep by the time we got there. Switzerland tires him out I think. It's either the extra stimulation or the fact that he wakes up so early now again.

Wow - what a spectacular view along the way. A camera can't even do it justice. It was a tad hazy, but at times you could see all the way from the lake up to the snow capped mountain top. I couldn't shut up about it. I'm sure I drove Alison nuts.

Balcony

ANOTHER trip to Ikea. Couch, kitchen table and balcony thingers.

A Little Monday N.

On Saturday we walked all over town. Here we are stopping for a quick game of chess wherein I attempted to make patterns out of the pieces and N. simply undid everything.



Not the best picture; hanging out at the park with his friend Alma.

"Things we just couldn't live without" # 1

Tour de Suisse (brought to you by ... cheese)

And today marks a fabulous Father's Day. You see, Father's Day in Switzerland was ... the 7th of June. I think we went out for brunch as it was the first weekend that Alison and N. were here. It wasn't a Father's day brunch. Just brunch. But today! Wow. We finally got to see a bike race up close and personal. We've been to the Tour de France and could barely see anything it was so crowded. We've been to the Nature Valley tour in Minnesota, a smallish US pro race.

But today, we were a part of the Tour de Suisse. And because it's Bern, and Switzerland, and not Paris and France we could get right up close to everything that was going on. In the morning we walked around the area and saw some of the set up going on in order to get a feel for where to go. We then all came back in the afternoon. We actually didn't even spend all that much time watching the race. Because, well, how long can you stand there and watch the riders finish individually? Since it was a time trial day, not so exciting to watch the race. But the behind the scenes action was great.

Fabian, or Fabo as he's called here now-a-days, is everywhere in the news. He's on every billboard in town. His was the only team bus that was difficult to get near. Everything else was accessible. Kind of funny stuff. Hey wait, was that Oscar Freire walking by?

Another odd story, I listened in to a cell phone conversation in Swiss German: "Hey Fabian, so and so wants to know when you will be exiting the team bus to begin your warm up ..." Given that information, that's when I showed up at the Saxo Bank bus.

And I'm kind of bummed. I was looking for the Garmin bus but didn't see it. We walked down to the end of the street where all the teams were camped out, but missed their bus. Turns out, it was BEHIND another team's bus. So we didn't see it. By the time I heard where they were, they had already packed up - time trial, you see. When the last rider on the team is done, they just pack everything up.







And finally, #'s 1, 2 and 3:

Murten

This Sunday we took the train to Murten. 45 minutes I think. Everything we read says to ... as a tourist ... spend about 2 days in Bern. Then go to Murten. So we did. Turns out, they speak French there! Alison loved it. She finally felt like she understood the world around her again. Very pretty town. N. was a tad cranky but we survived.


The town itself is kind of small. So it takes only about 10 minutes to walk from the Bahnhof to the Castle and down to the lake. We really didn't even see too much of the town ... just the lake area. The architecture was close, but different enough to make us feel like we were in a different country. Which we were sort of as it is the French part of CH.



Mr. Cranky Pants slept the entire way home.

And another weird thing ...

Two times today, while hanging out with Noah at the park, someone asked me what language we were speaking. They haven't heard English? Odd.

Other Swiss neighbor I met this evening says I have a Dutch accent.

No pictures for this post ...

In Switzerland, it's no big deal to see a dude taking a piss. I can remember being in Paris and first bring introduced to the concept of the public pee. You see, there are very few public bathrooms in Paris. So if you gotta go, well, behind a parked car will do just fine.

But Switzerland is clean. Clean, clean clean. Clean as in no dirt. No trash. No public non-niceties. If you do see trash somewhere, it's gone by morning. The little nighttime trash elves take care of it or something.

But seeing a dude taking a piss must be ok. Here's how I know - every bathroom I've been in has done nothing to hide the urinal from an open door. In the US you've got double doors, or corners, or walls that block the view. In Switzerland, open the door, there's a bunch of dudes doing their deed. No big deal. I guess. It's ok to see.

Case in point ... bathrooms at work. It's a shared bathroom. Both men and woman. Common sink area with two separate rooms. One for women, the other for men. The men's room door IS NEVER SHUT. If you shut it, some other guy walks in after you and leaves it ajar. It's like closing it is hard or something. So everyone can see you doing your thing. As it were.

Example #2: the bathroom at Ikea. Opens up to full view of ALL the urinals.

Example #3: there are small nooks around the olde part of Bern for guys to pee. Not a toilet, just a corner with a "sort of" half wall.

So there you go.

Robinson Caruso

One of the things we've missed since arriving in CH as a family is big climbing things at parks. In the States, the newest fad is the huge climbing thing with multiple slides and swings poles and such, and everything is coated with a squishy plastic like substance so as to not be too hard.

In CH, there is no such thing.

The average CH playground has an old iron swing, and if you're lucky, a slide.

Pathetic, really. Why bother. No wonder why the kids start smoking at like 12.

They do however have these crazy adventure playgrounds. I walked by one about a month ago down by the river. It looks like a crazy old man assembled it as an art project and kids just happen to then play there. There are old tires on roller-wheels, a huge random sandbox with a plastic boat buried in it, a hollowed out airplane fuselage, multi-level tree houses with ladders and fireman poles, winding slides down the side of a hill, huge rope nets just hanging from trees to be climbed. It's all very earthy. In the US a kid would get hurt there and it would be shut down in an instant. Here, the moms stand off to the side and chatter while the 1 year old crawls away on its own and the 3 year olds jump off huge rocks onto big poofy mats. There are actual employees that work there during the day and will provide food and beverages for a small fee. Kind of like minimalist childcare.

Turns out, there's one just down the street from our apartment. Alison thinks it looks like Robinson Caruso built it or something. We've been there twice now. Noah loves it. Here he is jumping off the rocks for the 4000th time with his new friend Alma from Spain. Alma's mom kept yelling "Bravo Alma! Bravo Noah!" It was great. Noah and Alma then drank some agua and worked in one of the wooden casas together making sand pizzas or something. They also rode their little bikes around in circles for about 30 minutes.

The older kids blow through every now and again. Kind of like they are coming back to a place they grew up in. They jump off once or twice, giggle a bit then move on. It's definitely a place for the small kids.

We bumped into our downstairs neighbor there yesterday as well. They are very nice, and have offered to help us out a bunch. The wife even stopped by this afternoon and chatted with Alison about schools and pools and all that stuff. She said they went through the exact same thing themselves when they moved to the Netherlands many years ago so they understand our situation. Very nice that they are so friendly.

Mom & Tots

Noah and I had out first Mom and Tots get-together for English speakers at the Rosengarten. A beautiful rose garden with a kids play area and cafe that overlooks Bern. We met a handful of moms and kids and I got to relax for a while hearing the mother tongue. They meet every other week for a couple of hours in the morning. And I did get some information about a possible school option for Noah 1-2 mornings a week. We shall see what our options are.

Ikea vs. the Gurten

During the past week, I've driven a HUGE moving van, a Mercedes Vaneo and an Audi Q5. The Audi was by far the best thing I've ever driven. I had reserved a Passat wagon, but due to fancyness with my campany's relationship with EuropCar, and mostly the fact that I've come to know the lady at EuropCar, she upgraded me for free. It's amazing what we were able to fit into the Audi. I didn't want to give it up at the end of the day.

Everything thus far has been a diesel.

Driving in Switzerland ... is insane. The density of signage is incredible. My only obvious indiscretion (that I'm aware of at least) was following a tram right through the middle of a round-about. Oops! Thank goodness it wasn't a tram stop or I would have been screwed.

I also crammed in some shopping yesterday and managed to pick up a Bodum coffee press. Because A. doesn't drink coffee anymore, it doesn't make much sense to get a fancy espresso maker right now. But believe me, eventually, I will.




And this, is part of the fruits of our labor from yesterday. Ikea trip #2 done. N's room, now has storage for toys and a nice little rug to play on. It is starting to look like a home.





The other thing we did this weekend was head up the Gurten. They have a restaurant up there and a huge play park for the kids with a train, climbing thing, and electric cars. We did the train twice. Woo hoo!

From the top you can see all of Bern, and you can kind of see our neighborhood on the far side. The place was amazing. At least N. thought it was. A. was kind of bored, but she doesn't have to chase him around the whole time. But it's the first place we've found that is big enough to entertain him for a few hours. All the other parks have been too small to really exhaust him.

Travel, Arrival, and Always Lovely Jetlag

Three planes, four airports, and 18 hours in our journey brought three over-tired, cranky travelers to greet C. After shoving all eight pieces of luggage into the rented minvan, and took the "scenic" route home. N. was actually great on all flights, but not so great at the airports. It's hard to be patient everywhere all the time--for all of us.

We arrived to to the awesome apartment and proceeded to dump the contents of all suitcases out. The apartment went from empty and quiet to chaotic and loud. After Ikea tomorrow, I'll feel better with some rugs to halt the noise of racing cars and some furniture to store the cars and books and stuffed animals. Creating a home from scratch is exciting and time-consuming, but hopefully will go a long way to making us feel comfortable, relaxed, and less all over the place.

Rollrad

Here's a picture of N. riding his new "Rollrad" on the Bärenplatz this evening. It's a bike, but without the pedals so they learn how to coast and steer and stuff. He LOVES it. All the kids have them. They go from these to the Razor scooters. You pretty much have to dodge 100's of these these things while walking through town.

Incidentally, family is here. N. isn't sleeping too well, but that's expected I guess. Frau G. gave us a kitchen table and some chairs so now we have places to sit until IKEA trip #2 which is this weekend. Which means, driving experience #3. I hate driving here.

One of my favorite experiences thus far, was yesterday evening. N. and I went into town on the tram. he asked me where we were going to get off and I told him at the Bahnhof. He practiced the word again and again until he got it right. Then, when they announced the stop, he recognized the word and was all excited at what he had done. I love it.

internetz

Just plugged in the DSL router. Quite easy to install everything and configure. Came pre-configured with WLAN SSID and all usernames and passwords ready to go. Well, actually when you plug it in it must download its settings from the mothership. So it just appears as though it's all pre-configrued. So as far as I'm concerned, effortless. Currently getting 650kb/sec. download via wireless. Wow.

The funny bit of it all was that the service was turned on on Tuesday, but we received the DSL router today.

So now I no longer need to tether the cell phone to get the internetzwerk.

Incidentally, tethering the cell phone goes like this:
1) choose USB Modem mode on cell phone
2) plug cell phone into USB
3) use internet

As a further aside, it appears as though I get 60 minutes/month usage of the public WIFI network. Which Asish tells me exists, but I've never actually seen it anywhere.