Meglisalp

Since today is a rainy, foggy, winter coat sort of day, I thought I would post something sunny. Last week I went hiking in Wasserauen so I could avoid the fog that envelops my little town by the lake. When I arrived in Wasserauen, the place was packed with cars. I had to pay 3CHF to park in some farmers field. It was a Thursday and I thought to myself, "don't these people work." As if I was the only one who had the right not to be working at the moment.

I have been hiking in Wasserauen before. Once I hiked the easy path to Seealpsee and once I came with my mom there to take the cable car up to Ebenalp. Today I was hiking to Meglisalp. Soon after I started, I passed a group of men in their 50's and they wanted to chat. Of course the first words were is some dialect of German that I didn't understand. I had to explain that they needed to speak High German to me. They laughed and obliged me. They were from Stutgarten, Germany. I hiked with them for about 30 minutes until our paths diverged. Here their are at the "Käse Hut" (cheese mountain house).

I continued up the mountain. In some places may fear of heights kicked in a little. I'm not found of 200 foot drop-offs. Even so, the view is amazing on the way to Meglisalp. Meglisalp is the small town seen in the pictures below. One little footpath runs through the middle of town. They have a church like most little Swiss towns and a restaurant which I had a been and some ice cream at. Having a beer on top of the mountain is the Swiss thing to do.

In the picture below, you will see this cement spring with some orange cases in it. This is the don't-be-lazy, get-your-own-beer refrigerator. The spring water keeps the drinks cool and I guess saves energy. Interesting concept. Of course I had a Quöllfrisch because I was in the Appenzel region and this is their beer.

The way down from Meglisalp to Seealpsee is a bit steep as you can see below. It was rocky, slippery and in many places had a wire rope to hang onto. I wasn't fond of this way, but I wasn't turning around to backtrack. That would just be boring and unadventurous. The two guys you see in this picture are also from Germany. There were so many Germans hiking that day. I thought it was strange so I asked these guys what was going on. They said that today was a holiday - Die Wende. The day the wall fell in Germany. That explains all the people here.

The views of Seealpsee are as always AMAZING. This is one of my favorite places to go hiking. At the end of the lake, the Germans snagged us some free appetizers at the restaurant. Then I started down the easy path to the parking lot. Shorty I ran into the first set of Germans at their Mountain Hut. They were on a 5 day hiking trip and staying in this small house. Not much to it. Mattresses on the floor and a keg of beer.

A total of 6 hours hiking in the glorious Alps. Good memories of that chase away the blues of the cold rainy day we have now.

Grocery Shopping

Today my husband and I decided that we should go grocery shopping in Germany because it is supposed to be cheaper than in Switzerland. For the most part, things are cheaper. However, I was once again hit by culture shock since arriving permanently in Switzerland.

First let me back up a little. I first moved to Switzerland for 1.5 years in 2011. This was a "temporary move" for work. Moving somewhere on a temporary basis is like being on vacation. Everything is new, exciting, and you tend to have a lot more patience because it's just temporary. After this "temporary" time frame I was back in the US for 5 month and then in Switzerland for 3 moths and then back to the US for 4 months. Finally in the middle of August this year, I moved back to Switzerland permanently. This brings about an entirely new perspective because it's not temporary anymore. I will be living this way for the long term.

Back to shopping in Germany. The grocery store was tiny. And when I say tiny, I mean that is was the size of a small Dollar General. However, this is the average size of a grocery store here. There are no gigantic grocery stores with 22 aisles of groceries that have 103 different kinds of salad dressing and an entire aisle reserved for potato chips. I can only wish for this one day in Switzerland. The stores are generally small with only two or three options for an item and many times only one option. While I know this to be true, I still dreamed that when we went grocery shopping in Germany they would have Hellmann's or Best Mayonnaise. I was wrong. I love Hellmann's and never liked Miracle Whip. Here the mayonnaise taste like Miracle Whip and it's called Thomy. It's just terrible. (On a positive note: My sister-in-law just brought me a small jar from England. Although, it's almost empty.)

We were in a total of three stores. Some stores carry more cleaning and personal hygiene items and others have more groceries. The aisles are so small that you cannot pass another shopping cart in them. The workers are also stocking the shelves and have boxes and carts sitting in the aisles. And alas the shoppers have no sense of personal space. As I am trying to find what I need, I have a lady putting her armpit in my face to get something she needs. "Why thank you, yes! I did want to smell your BO!"

These small grocery stores with small aisles and people who invade my personal space makes me miss America. I would love to have some Blue Cheese dressing, DelGrosso's Pizza Sauce, Cinnamon Pop-Tarts, some Middleswarth BBQ chips, and a Yuengling or wonderful American Craft Beer.

Disclaimer: I love living in Switzerland. Don't get me wrong! But there are things that I miss from America.

Adventure 38: The Adventure of Cooking in Switzerland

November 13, 2011

I learned the second month I was here that cooking in Switzerland was different. I tried to make a key lime pie, that turned out to be key lime soup. Once again I tried my hand at baking this weekend.

On Nov 26 I will have some people over for Thanksgiving dinner. Yes I am working on the "real" Thanksgiving, but I still wanted a meal and a turkey. This time, instead of being embarrassed by pumpkin pie soup, I decide to practice. I quickly came to realize as I searched the store shelves that I couldn't find shortening for the pie crust. I search the internet to determine that I could substitute butter for shortening, 1 to 1. I also new from previous experience that the Swiss do not have brown sugar as we know it in the US. A previous internet search had yeilded that I should combine white sugar and molasses. I can also not find pumpkin in a can, so this pie was going to be 100% from scratch since I was cutting my own pumpkin.

After mixing and rolling and mixing, I put the pie in the oven after converting my recipe to degree Celcius. Surprisingly the pumpkin pie turned out much better than the key lime pie. It was not soup! However, after eating it there was this after taste. I'm blaming it on the molasses, so I'm going to back next weeks pie without the molasses and hope for the best. As a backup, I'm also making apple pie. I think it is really hard to screw up an appel pie. Although, ya never know.

I also wanted to make no-bake cookies. Again this was a like a word search puzzle. I couldn't find cocoa powder. After a lengthy discussion with my friend, I bought chocolate powder instead just to end the conversation. He could not understand why I didn't just melt a chocolate bar to put in the cookies. This man can cook with the best of them, but don't ask him to bake. I came home and did another internet search and found that they do have cocoa powder here. Another trip to a different store and I found it. Then it came to the oats. I chose the oats that said "wenig" for cooking time. Wenig means few or little. After making the cookie, I decide that these were the 5 minute oats instead of the 1 minute oats. Never the less, they were delicious even if I did chip a tooth on the semi-hard - semi-soft oats.

An that folks, is a lesson in Swiss cooking. It's just not the same as in America.

Adventure 37: Wanderweg zum Funflanderblick

November 6, 2011

I started in Rheineck. In town there was a festival, so I stopped in to take a look. One vendor was selling US and Canadian licences plate for 30 Swiss Francs a piece. Seems a bit pricey to me. I wonder if they were stolen?

 Only in Switzerland do all the farmers leave

there goods outside with a tin money box.

 This is the views from Funflanderblick ~ Roughly translate: 5 land view

Apparently at one point in time you could see 5 countries from here.

Now there are only 4 countries you can see:

Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Leichtenstein

I don't know what this creature is.

Anyone have a guess?

Adventure 36: Berlin

October 25-30, 2011

The final trip with my mom was to Berlin and we took Spatzl with us.

 The first stop was the Brandenburg Gate and then the Parliment.

 The cross walk lights are quite unique in Berlin. I even bought a shirt with the cross walk lights on it.

 Check Point Charlie, the point of entering or leaving the US segment of Germany. Below a piece of wall, and the guard station at Check Point Charlie with fake Americans. I'm guessing they didn't even speak Englinsh.

 A chocolate ship with chocolate covered buildings from the town of Berlin.

This church was bombed during WWII

 The Berlin Dom. A giganitc church in town. We were able to walk to the top of the dome with an inside and outside walk way. This had a great view. Below is the very creepy krypt.

 The largest section of the wall in Germany. One sight was painted in the early 2000's and the other side is original graffiti. I even tried to climbl the wall. It wasn't happening - my legs are too short.

  A walk around the Reichtag or Parliment Dom at the top of the parliment. The Berlin Bears are everyway, painted in different ways.

 These 'cleaners' were actually cleaning Berlin in some sort of demonstration. It was quite interesting. Then we went to a Berlin fleemarket spontaneously. It is always interesting to look at other peoples junk.

Finally we went to a super cute town south west of Berlin to check out a few castles and have a home brewed German beer.