The Swiss Kitchen Masacre

aka: splattering a whole bottle of blackcurrant diluting juice all
over self and kitchen 8 minutes before the bus was due. Cue India,
running around like a bloody maniac, trying to find some clean clothes.
Made it - just.

It was important to me that I get to Zuerich* before ten, since we
were all meeting at Spruengli*
And since they reputedly sell the best heisse Schoggi** in Zuerich, I
didn't want to be late.

Fortified by what may well be the best hot drink in the whole Kanton, I
was fortified enough to find a bio*** butcher. Take Tram 14 Schaffhauserplatz. Of
course, it was shut for lunch so I had to find a cafe for a coffee while I
was waiting. Not only was this a local butcher like we used to have in
the UK not so many years ago, but the butcher was really patient. He could
speak English but he just waited patiently while I looked in my dictionary
for the right words - if you've never tried to speak a foreign language believe
me when I say it is frustrating when everyone tries to be helpful and
switches automatically to English.

So roast chicken for tea on Saturday (yum). French bread, cheese and olives
for tea tomorrow (cheese and olives in fridge, bread rising and about to go into
oven).

But just before I go - hope y'all are ok in the UK - I just saw on the internet
that there has been some pretty rough weather today with more on the way.

* Just in case you don't know, it is the convention to add an 'e' after
a vowel if there is no umlaut available where there should be one used.

** Hot chocolate to you and me.

***Organic

Medical care Swiss style.

I wish I'd been better prepared. Psychologically at least. Let's just say that an exercise stress test plus ECG wasn't quite what I was expecting this morning. I survived. Just ;0)

My new doctor wants me to be on 'A little medication as possible but enough to do what is needed.' Amen! It has been a goal of mine for some time, to reduce the medication that I am on. Of course it wasn't feasible before, but now that I am 'settled' here...

Last week I went to the doctor and she needed a little time to find out Swiss equivalents. Now, about a year ago I had a conversation with a pharmacist about the 'well known appetite stimulation' that went hand-in-hand with a higher dose of Pizotifen, one of my migraine meds. 'Never heard of it,'said she. The first thing my new doctor said to me today was 'We give this medication to stimulate the appetite.' I rest my case..... Anyway, it seems that magnesium is commonly used to treat migraines in CH, so I am going to give it a go. I am a bit worried about it though. Currently the migraines are very settled and I am very anxious about upsetting the applecart.

So, moving along, today I am going to meet
Sylvie . Not only is she the dispenser of all sorts of useful Swiss information, she also sent me a box of the best truffles I have ever tasted. I have a little gift for her, too - I hope she likes it!

Off to catch the bus but I will leave you with an image of.....Scotland (Camera card can't be put into this PC...).

Mission half-accomplished

In Scotland we are cossetted with our recycling service -well, at least those of us who have kerbside recycling are. But even that isn't enough to motivate many to make use of the service. In Switzerland there is a different approach. Do it, or else. Each community has a recycling area to which one must take the waste to be recycled. It's the usal sort of thing - paper, glass, aluminium foil, cans etc. Anything which cannot be recycled may be thrown into the standard garbage collection, but it must only be in the regulation waste bags, for which a tax is payable. Of course, if one throws away something that should have been recycled a fine is levied.

This morning was, I decided, the morning to do something about the growing mountain of recycling overflowing from beneath the kitchen table. Of course it wasn't such a simple trip for me, due to the cartographical challenges I face. Yep, you got it, I can't read a map. Well, that's not strictly true, it is just a particularly long, drawn out and painful process. So I'm going to draw a veil over the whole issue except to say that I did finally manage to get rid of recycle the card, cans, glass bottles and foil. The plastic? Well, that of course has to be recycled at the local Coop. I, meanwhile, was so excited with my success so far that I got straight on the bus, bringing it back with me. I don't know about 'air miles' but this plastic sure as heck with have a lot of 'foot miles' before the end ;0)

Lazy(ish) Sunday

We didn't have any fixed plans for today - I had changed my mind about going knitting due to a sore wrist which I am trying to be sensible about. As a result we found ourselves walking into the railway and catching a train to.....
Lugano!

Can you believe it? We started out with a bright, but chilly day in Zürich,and two and a half hours later we were in the positively balmy town in, as near as damn-it,Italy :0) :0)

No kidding, I needed thermals at 'home' today yet was sitting in shirtsleeves on the edge of the lake.

You know, this is a hard life, but I guess someone's got to do it.

Intrepid...

Yep, that's me. Not only did I return to the DIY store on my own (it's off my normal beaten track so there was lots of scope for getting lost), I also hunted down matches for candles (a long, boring story in itself). As if this wasn't enough derring do done, I had one final challenge : asking, in German, to have my sandwich toasted*. But you know, every intrepid traveller needs someone to keep them on the right path. Someone else might not have taken pity on the dumb foreigner and gone right ahead and toasted what turned out to be a salad roll....

Guess you can work out where I was ;0)

Slow, slow, quick quick, slow

My life is adapting to some new rhythms. Periods of (enforced)patience as I wait for a bus/tram, more pleasant periods spent drinking coffee, chatting to new friends, interspersed with frantic scrambling around to do 10 things before the return journey home.(There has also been one notable absence from my daily routine - my constant companion, the migraine related face pain, seems to have taken a bit of a holiday:0))

Today has been very pleasant. Meeting up with some Spooglers at 11 for a coffee, finding myself still there at 3....you know how these things go...
leisurely stroll to get the tram, catching the connecting bus home, finding a lovely gift from Sylvie waiting in my mail box. And you know, I think tomorrow is going to be more of the same. Don't you feel sorry for me?

Greuzi

Now, there's an umlaut missing on the title word, but this is how the local Swiss greet each other - friends, passing strangers, shop assistants. And if you can really believe it, even a teenage boy graced me with this salutation this morning :0)

Today has been a series of mini-victories. I went into the local apotheke (that's a pharmacy to you and me) and managed to get generic paracetamol, as opposed to even-pricier branded variety. All with my pidgin German and no English. I also managed to buy 1 stamp for the UK and 5 for Zürich. Again, all with no English - and what it makes this all the more remarkable from my point was that I what I wanted was actually what I asked for, if you see what I mean.

I also managed to get my hot little hands of some fresh yeast. It comes in little
42g cubes (very precise) which sit demurely in one of the fridges. I think breadmaking will come in useful if I happen to have a particularly stressful day....

Off to ...unpack some more boxes - what else? In the meantime here are some cows - if you look really carefully you just might see the bells. Yep, cows with bells on - I look on the bells as an early warning system. Particularly usefule if like me you've been chased more than once.