One Year Later....

And, like a thief in the night, we have returned to Claremont.

We are usually on vacation at the beginning of August, and apparently many of our friends are, too. We have been home for a little over a week and have seen some friends here and there, one or two a day. It's a stealth reentry.

As a note to self for our next sabbatical return: it takes about a week to get the house in order and to get back into the right time zone. Even if the house is perfectly clean (and it was pretty clean this time), we still have to find all our boxes and unpack and then realize that we still should have thrown away many things before we left. The march to Goodwill continues.

For the second year in a row we celebrated our anniversary in Claremont with dinner and a movie. This year we saw Shaun the Sheep and then had dinner at the new Sanamluang Cafe on Indian Hill. While the food was delicious and plentiful, the decor very nice, the experience left much to be desired. The bill came while we were still eating, and when I was still putting food into the takeout box, they tried to remove my plate. The acoustics are bad, so it was very loud inside, even though it was not full. I will try it again for the food, but perhaps I will try to slow down the service.

Glamping in Switzerland

Yes, I have started a blog for our sabbatical year. I can't call it Life in Claremont if I am not living in Claremont, so I thought about it for awhile, and decided to call it Glamping in Switzerland. The first post (there are now five) explains the title.

You can read the blog here.

As I have been cleaning our house this past weekend, month, summer, I keep wondering why I don't do this more often. As L said to me today, "You can pay people to do that, you know." Yeah, I know, but I don't generally think about what lurks behind the couch until I have to.

Last time we came home from sabbatical I thought I would have a plan to thoroughly clean one room each month, and though the house would not be clean all at the same time, at least each room would have some attention paid to it.  Sounds like a good plan....

Life will be simpler in a one-bedroom flat with fewer things around.

Dodger Stadium

We are thinking that the last time we went to Dodger Stadium was before Magic Johnson and his crew took over. Our friends have a season ticket mini plan, and when they can't go to a game, they have given us their seats. The last time they did this, there were so few people in the crowd that we walked to our car and were eating at Phillipe's in about 10 minutes after the game ended.

Last night we enjoyed, once again, tickets from our friends who were camping on the beach. They texted us after Puig's home run and said they were glad we got to see it. 

So, thoughts about the game (besides the fact that the Dodgers swept the Braves and Kershaw pitched his second complete game in a row): 1) even when camping, you can follow a game with the way technology works these days. 2) This is such an American thing, going to a baseball game. I was trying to imagine how un-Swiss this form of entertainment is. First of all, even though the game starts  on time, people arrive at all different times during the game. The joke about Dodger Stadium is that people come in the 3rd inning and leave after the 7th Inning Stretch. I was lucky to sit on an aisle seat, but that also meant that the constant traffic of people going up and down the stairs next to me blocked my view. The people in our row who kept needing to leave their seats and make us stand up to let them pass. 

Oh, well, that was really okay with me. I had fun, and we stayed through the last out.

The To-Do List

Today was a day for checking off some items from our "to do before sabbatical" list. Change addresses with credit cards. Talk with the insurance agent about changing homeowners to rental insurance as well as removing the car insurance when we sell our car. Cancel the newspaper. Change of address with the post office.

Tomorrow I should probably go back to cleaning and storing.....

Gifts for Travel

Daughter L is visiting for the week for a bachelorette party, so she brought my birthday gift with her to keep the celebration going. Both daughters thought to give me something useful to take to Switzerland. C found this adorable purse for me and L brought at moleskine notebook - one that has all kinds of information about Zurich (including maps) as well as places to write. I feel as though I am ready to jump on a tram right now!

Zurich - 1980

During my junior year in college, I spent fall term in Graz, Austria studying German. I kept a diary of my adventure, and a few years ago I transcribed it into a Word doc. Yesterday I thought I would read what I had written about Zurich. Along with 3 other women on the same program, I flew from Chicago to Amsterdam and then we traveled around a bit (London, Brussels, Strasbourg, and Zurich) before chugging into Graz.

I took no pictures in Zurich (why not? I ask myself), but I wrote these two paragraphs about the day and a half we were there.

Thursday Sept. 25 (Strasbourg - Zurich)

     We got up and ate our own breakfast - much better than the hostel stuff.  By 10:00 we check out and caught a bus.  Unfortunately it didn't go to the Bahnhof, so we went to the end of the line and took the same bus back to where we could transfer.  It only took about 1 1/2 hours.  Then I bought a ticket from Basel-Zurich.  Then we left and transfered trains in Basel.  Switzerland is not on Daylight Savings, so we gained an hour.  It was somewhat comforting to see German - not French, but it is a Swiss-German - and it's virtually non-understandable for me.  We found the youth hostel with another couple - from Washington D.C., and then went to buy some food.  We've been talking to people in our room from Ireland, Canada and New Zealand.  My eyes are being opened wider every day.  This hostel is by far the cleanest, but most strict.  For the first time since London, I had a shower.  The water is hot here!

Friday Sept. 26 (Zurich)

     Got up early for breakfast.  First time to have hot chocolate (shockolade).  We left the hostel and got to the train station and checked our luggage.  Then we got my train ticket from Zurich - Graz at a travel agency.  To the Zurich Zoo which was wonderful, and wonderful animals.  Back to station to get food for lunch.  Wandered around.  Window shopped, saw several cathedrals (one closed for renovation).  From the other (with the Chagal stained glass), there was some sort of West Point-like graduation service.  What chaos - what fun!  Then we wandered down to the Zurich See and just relaxed.  Swans, fishing, sailboats, ahhh.  Back to the station for the rest of our good - and collecting our luggage.  We caught an 8:11 train for Graz.  Some 12 hr. ride!  Switzerland is beautiful and classy and expensive.  Want to go back sometime.

I guess I can look forward to hot water, beautiful scenery, being classy and spending lots of money. Apparently I got my wish and I am going back!

Swiss Life

I follow a page on Facebook called NewInZurich. Yesterday the page touted a newly-published book called Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I'd Known by Chantal Panozzo. She moved to Switzerland in 2006 to follow her husband's job. That made her a "trailing spouse."  I will be a trailing spouse in Switzerland in a few months, and I know there are things I will have wished that I had known. 

I bought the Kindle version of the book yesterday (ain't instant gratification great?) and finished reading it today. If you go to the Amazon page and click the "look inside" link, you can read quite a bit of the book to get a feel for what's in store for us this coming year.

I found myself thinking, "That won't really apply to me," and "Hoo boy, I will need to be prepared for THAT!" The main differences between Chantal and me are that we will only be there for a year, I won't be looking for work, and I won't be having any babies. However, I will still need to learn how to run the shared washing machines, push and shove in line, navigate a German that will sound very strange to me, and figure out how to have a conversation that contains no small talk. 

Now if we could find a renter for our house....

Further Adventures in Swiss Housing

The day after we received the two choices for housing, we got three more choices. Two of those choices are next to the other branch of the campus and far away from where we want to be, so we did not even look at them. This one, though, seemed just fine for us. It is a 2-room flat (top floor, so look at those ceilings!) which means a 1-bedroom apartment. It reminds us very much of the place we lived on our first sabbatical in Brookline, Massachusetts - the top floor, small space, in a very nice residential neighborhood. This one, however, comes with a dishwasher, unlike our Brookline apt. 

We told the housing office that we would take this choice.

Housing in Zurich

The morning's email brought us these two photos, complete with descriptions and floor plans as the choices for housing for our upcoming Zurich sabbatical. Many things excited me about this information. First, both of these apartments are easy walking distance to the ETH (the Swiss Federal Technical Institute) and the Hauptbahnhof (main train station). This is very important as we will be car-free for the year and plan to make good use of public transportation. Also, we have learned that most grocery stores and other stores are closed on Sundays, except for the stores in the train station. If you want an idea of the mall at the train station, check out the website here.

Also, this makes sabbatical so much more real to us. I'm getting even more excited!

Swiss Watching

Although I did not actually read this book, H read aloud the most interesting parts of it to me. In preparation for our sabbatical next year, we think it would be wise, not only to brush up our German, but to also have a heads-up on fitting into and trying to understand the culture of Switzerland.

This book was written for Brits who are moving to Switzerland, but the advice would seem to work well for Americans, too. The one chapter that has stuck in our minds is the way in which one attends a social function. First of all, according to this book, Swiss do not go in for small talk, so please refrain from mentioning the weather.

"The moment you walk into the room is moment of truth. It's not about dress codes, because the Swiss rarely have those, or about being late, where a simple apology is enough. It's all about saying hello. At any gathering in Switzerland, every guest's first duty is to go round and greet everyone. Faced with a crowd of people, most of them strangers, you might be temped to lurk in a corner until you spot someone you know, or wait for your host to make the introductions. Bad idea. What you should do before anything else, and that includes getting a drink, is introduce yourself to everyone, regardless of how long it takes. ... This custom is possibly the real reason most Swiss people are punctual. It's much easier to stand around chatting or drinking and make all the newcomers come to you for the introductions."

Of course, leaving the party also has its formalities. Think of the above in reverse, and try to remember everyone's name....

Looking Forward

It's a new year, a time when we like to look ahead to think about what the future may bring. Our future is starting to look quite exciting as we think about our next sabbatical year. Not next fall, but starting in the fall of 2014 we are planning to spend a year in Zurich, Switzerland.

About a month ago we heard back from a friend of ours at the ETH (The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology/Zurich) who answered H's request to be invited to do research for the year.

We have many questions about living in a foreign country, and we have been asking all of our friends who have done such what advice and knowledge they can impart for us. Most importantly, this far in advance, what we need to do is to revive the German that is hidden deep within our memories. Both of us took German in college, and I spent a term (3 months) in Graz, Austria during college studying the language over xxx years ago.

We have a copy of Roald Dahl's The Magic Finger, a short children's book, in German, and we are slowly working our way through it with the English translation at our side, trying to remember the sentence structures, the verb conjugations, some basic vocabulary and noun genders. I am surprised by how much and how little I remember. I don't generally make New Year's resolutions, but this might be a good one: practice German!