October Update

I haven't updated the blog in sometime and will hopefully begin to get a better routine to visit more often.  After hitting the ground running to travel in September, the month of October was a bit more relaxed.  I've also learned a few "fun" lessons since first moving to Switzerland; for example, after going shopping for coffee mid October, I realized that I had been drinking decaf coffee for the entire first month I was here and expecting it to be full strength.  See below for highlights from the month:

Oct. 3rd - St. Cergue

I stayed in town this weekend to mainly relax after traveling most of September.  I went to St. Cergue with a few of the other PwC expats (Johnsons, Maichi, Becca) to see a traditional Swiss festival to celebrate the cows coming down the mountain from grazing all spring/summer.

Oct. 10th - White Truffle Festival/Piemont, Italy

I learned a "fun" lesson at work this week while going to a training in Pfaffikin near Zurich and that is to always check the spelling of a train station.  I took the last train for the night to Pfaffikon HB rather than Pfaffikon SZ and the result was I was on the wrong side of Lake Pfaffikon and needed to take a 40min taxi to get to my hotel at 1am.  Not a big deal; I just found this quite humorous.

For the weekend, I road tripped to the Alba White Truffle festival with the Baleskys.  Drive went smoothly other than a minor hour detour after a wrong turn in Torino where traffic is quite busy and we were quite happy to make it out of here alive!  Piemont was a fun area with great red wine (Barolo), Piemont beef (those of you that frequent Red Coat should recognize this) and then the truffle festival was interesting.  Having known very little about a white truffle the price for a truffle was quite surprising.

Oct. 17th - Moving Weekend

I moved into my apartment on the 15th and spent most of the weekend settling in and making runs to IKEA and other stores.  Interesting fact of Switzerland would be all tenants take their light fixtures with them so at move in there will be a few hanging wires where lights used to be and I had no bedroom lighting besides my cell phone for the first week; I did manage to buy and install a few lights the following week by leveraging some previous life experience doing electrical work.  I attached a few pictures of the main room; I'm sure no one is surprised that there is no lack of MSU gear in my glorified dorm room.

My shipment from the US of all of the items that I moved finally  arrived from the US so it was great to go for a long bike ride through the vineyards in Sunday.  

On Saturday night, I organized a group of 12 or so people to watch the MSUvUM game at a local venue.  After calling the bar on a daily basis (Mon-Thurs) to ask if they would show the game, asking if they would show the game the night before while at the same bar for a friend's improv event, and then having the bar physically show me that they would be able to show the game earlier that day while stopping by on a run, I was able to make myself reasonably comfortable we would be able to watch the game and earned the nickname 'the annoying Michigan kid' by the Manager.  We had a few tvs showing the game and had a table in the middle of the bar; this is surprising and I'm highlighting as this was also the night of the quarterfinals of the rugby World Cup and the entire venue was watching that game other than us who were the lone american football fans.  Great game and fun times with friends; MSU won on a muffed punt snap in one of the crazier last minute finishes in CFB.  Definitely a different experience from following sports in the US as there were a few times I would clap for a good play and find myself as the only one in the bar clapping.

Oct. 24th - Lausanne Half Marathon
I relaxed this weekend and did Dinner with friends on Friday and then played a game of Settlers and another game; I tried to keep a low profile that "Yes" I do like to play games and "Yes" I also like to win at them, but word spreads quickly.

Sunday, I ran the Lausanne half marathon, which was a blast and one of the prettier races that I've ran as it was sunny and the course follows the cost of Lake Geneva with the Swiss Alps in the background.  Race went well; not my greatest time, but always fun to run a race and meet others along the way.  PwC sponsored a group of runners and then the group of 10 of us met afterwards for dinner and to watch the Rugby world cup quarter finals.

Oct. 31 - London

Went to London for the Lions-Chiefs NFL game with several people from Geneva (Clems, Mary, and Becca); to say that the Lions did not do well would be an understatement, but we did have great tickets so that was fun.  I also was able to run into a few Detroit PwC friends also on secondment while on this trip (the Steins and Kate).  

Halloween is not quite the same in US compared to Europe; there were quite a few less people dressed up in London and the theme of the costumes also differed.  In Europe most costumes were meant to be dark and scary; whereas a college costume in the US would be....quite a bit different....