Alright, I need to get better at regularly blogging! I've highlighted a few of my travels and fun events from this past month within this post. On top of the list below, I also traveled to Bern for two days for two weeks and for one day in December for the Swiss CPA exam (three trips), which was very difficult so we'll see how that went. I have much more respect for anyone I know that has studied while working at the same Bern is a great city and I would love to go back; the old town area is massive and we went to a really fun restaurant that felt like we were in a bomb shelter in a basement off of one of the main streets in old town. On this trip, I also learned that I was not the only person that confused Pfaffikon locations at my training last month (see earlier blog post in October); Andreas did the same thing except he was lucky enough to not be on the last train of the night and was able to backtrack.
Pub Soccer - Nov. 7
First weekend of November was spent in Geneve for a friend's going away party that was a soccer themed bar crawl. Team's were paired and rules were made to correspond to soccer (yellow cards for breaking standard drinking rules, red cards that left you 'ejected', sips equal goals, etc.) and then I brought soccer jerseys with me that everyone wore so it was quite a blast! In my 3 months in Geneve, I have been to 3 welcome parties and 3 going away parties; this city and how much it changes due to the amount of international people working on rotations is amazing.
First trip in November was spent in Hamburg, Germany as I was taking advantage of a work trip. Hamburg is an interesting place that is very different from Bavaria that I have traveled to a few times already; it felt like I was quite far North and a city on the sea given there was a lot of seafood within the city. Weather was very cold and rainy, so my run around the city and the lake in the center was 'fun,' but running through the central square to see the Christmas market and around the lake in the center of the city was very pretty. I tried Labskaus, which is a traditional dish of hamburg; basically, it was a pink stew (potatoes, beets, other veggies) served with a fried egg, beets, and pickles on the side and I also had an appetizer that was a rolled herring fillet with a pickle in the middle. It did not look that appetizing, but the food was pretty good. Beyond running around the city to tour the city, I also went to the miniature wonderland, which was museum/miniature train expo of countries/regions of the world that was pretty neat to see.
The weekend was definitely different than how I've spent birthdays in Royal Oak or Chicago in the past, but it was really great to be in Zermatt with a group of fun people. I had great aspirations of waking up early (5am) to catch the 4th quarter of the MSU-Iowa big ten championship, but I was asleep and not waking up. In true fashion, MSU won and will be going to the playoffs; they seem to pull of big games frequently when it's difficult for me to attend (only MSU final four while I was in college was when I was in Australia).
CAT Europe Trip - Week of Nov. 15
Hamburg was the beginning of the CAT Europe Trip when the engagement leader was in Europe and I wanted to highlight that this trip was intense to say the least!
See below for the travel plan:
Sunday - 2 hour train ride from Hamburg to Kiel
Monday - Work, 1.5 hour taxi from from Kiel to Hamburg, 1 hour flight to London, 2 hour taxi ride to Leicester, arrive at 10PM
Tuesday - 20 min. taxi to Leicester, work until noon, 1 hour car ride to Peterborough, work, 1.5 hour car ride to Birmingham for a non-direct flight arriving in Geneve at 12:30AM
Wednesday - 2 hour drive to Grenoble France for the day - Note that the Paris bombing occurred 2 days prior, surprisingly there was not much security at all to drive into the country.
Thursday - Geneve - Yay!
This trip really made me thankful that I do not own a car in Geneve between parking and the traffic to cross to/from the left and right banks.
On Friday, I went to a coworkers (Amanda) in France for a crepe party. This was a first for me and is a tradition in France; there were about 20 of us and we made both sweet (sugar, maple syrup, nutella, chocolate, etc.) and savory crepes (mushrooms, cheese, artichoke, ham, lachs, etc.) where they provided the ingredients and had a crepe griddle that cooked multiple crepes for the group. I feel like I had 10+ crepes!
Thanksgiving in Geneve - Nov. 26
For my first Thanksgiving in Geneve, I hosted a dinner for the Americans that I work with (and a Canadian) and their significant others; we had a total of 15! Dinner was a blast where everyone brought something and I made my first turkey while the Clems also made 2 additional turkeys given the size of the ovens are quite small in Europe. Cooking was interesting to say the least, I searched the Internet and also spoke to Melissa and Noah to get several tips and had to bus the weekend before to the Carrefour in France to shop (as all stores in Switzerland close early) for a pan, meat thermometer, and ingredients. In addition to my first time cooking a turkey and the difficulties of not having a car and dealing with store hours; an additional challenge is that many ingredients that I'm used to having available in the US are not here. For example, I tried to make Mom's herb bread appetizer and a key ingredient is beaumond so I had to improvise and it worked, but not the same or nearly as successful. All in all the dinner turned out great and we had sooo much leftovers, which isn't a major problem other than European freezers and fridges are so tiny! I ate Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and still froze quite a bit of turkey; we easily could have made only 1 rather than 3 turkeys. The Clem's also took a lot of left overs with them and they had similar issues. Other than the scramble to go shopping early and prepare for Thanksgiving the other major difference was Europeans work on Thursday and Friday and didn't get the memo that we don't:p Check out the gravy pitcher in the picture!
CAT Dinner - December 1
Five days after the Thanksgiving Dinner, I hosted the CAT team's cooking contest at my house (Tuesday) so this was quite a busy week for me of hosting people at my apartment, cleaning, and cooking. For the cooking contest, each team member was requested to make a dish from their home country and also bring a beverage to share from their home country and everything had to be made and not purchased; see the list below:
Me - Pulled pork, coleslaw, NC BBQ sauce
Dave (UK) - Tikki Masala and Eton Mess
Romain (France) - Sweet Onion Pastry Appetizer
Mary (US) - 7 Layer Dip and Spinach Artichoke Dip
Freddy (Sweden) - Swedish Meatballs
Steve (US) - Apple Pie Cheese Cake
Amanda (Canada) - Pudding Chomeur
Manu (Italy) - 7 Cheese Pasta Bake
Everything was quite good and dinner was a lot of fun; Steve won the contest with Amanda following a close 2nd; I feel not cooking a dessert put me at a disadvantage. Everyone on the team cast one vote in a bowl and then we eliminated all items with no votes to do a successive round of voting.
Zermatt - Dec. 5
For my birthday weekend, I went with the Geneve ski club to Zermatt with Mary, Becca, Lianne, and Jill and also met a few new friends as well. The trip was all weekend where we took a bus from Geneve 2.5 hours to Zermatt (if no traffic, but we were not that lucky). The bus trip was pretty casual with people snacking and the group leaders provide wine; this is an extreme contrast to the MSU ski club trips that I have been on....
Saturday, we went skiing and this place is really quite amazing; skiing in the shadow of the Matterhorn and being so close is really quite breathtaking. The actual skiing was alright as it was so early in the season, but conditions were much better than I expected. Following skiing, the organizers made everyone do a shotski; I was lucky enough to do 4 as I was one of the younger individuals, it was my first trip and a new member, and on top of that my birthday was the following day. Following the shotski and dinner, the entire group (all ages) went out and a few of us stayed out later to bridge the gap into my birthday.
The weekend was definitely different than how I've spent birthdays in Royal Oak or Chicago in the past, but it was really great to be in Zermatt with a group of fun people. I had great aspirations of waking up early (5am) to catch the 4th quarter of the MSU-Iowa big ten championship, but I was asleep and not waking up. In true fashion, MSU won and will be going to the playoffs; they seem to pull of big games frequently when it's difficult for me to attend (only MSU final four while I was in college was when I was in Australia).
Next day, we skied and weather was gorgeous and sunny again. I first hand experienced lift lines in Italy when we skied the to the Cervinia side of the Matterhorn; I've heard rumors that the lines are crazy with cutting, but had no idea and hot not experienced first hand. We were in a line that forced you to turn about 300 degrees to the right after already queued so half of us took our gear off to make this turn; on top of this everyone was cutting and it was not a high speed lift so that was a 30 min. line. I was really entertained and found this more funny than frustrating! At lunch time, the ski group gave me a slice of chocolate cake with a candle for my birthday so that was quite nice and I'm currently on the bus ride back.
