January Update (2nd Half)

January is a tough month as an accountant during busy season working 80 hour weeks (weekdays alone); I think the Swiss mindset is a little different than what I'm used to in the US.  For example, eating through lunch and dinner at the client site does not exist here nor does mandatory weekends working onsite.  Still late nights working a combination from onsite and home, but I was able to eat dinner at home almost every night and maintain a regular running routine and have free time on the weekends.

Weekend of January 23

My engagement team spent the weekend together in Verbier skiing and stayed at one of our Assistant's family chalets (Thank You Freddy).  Never would I have ever envisioned taking a group vacation for a weekend of busy season ha.  Team had a blast and skiing was spectacular.  Had my first Raclette at a restaurant where there were two seatings for the entire restaurant (7 and 9) and a central Raclette machine where everyone is served from.

Most of the team at the top of Mt. Fort

Why hello there Matterhorn

Raclette

Weekend of January 30
Spent the weekend relaxing, catching up on life, and no skiing as weather wasn't great; officially a fail on skiing goal ha.

Weekend of February 6

Back on the bandwagon and skied with the ski club in La Thuile, Italy.  Fun fact for the region is many of the cities have French names and I was under the impression I was going to ski in La Thuile, France (also a close ski town) until I saw signs for Courmayeur.  Blue bird day and the resort had some great runs that seemed endless; the women's World Cup will be at this resort the end of February and we skied the GS run that was in the process of being gated.  Smooth, tough run that apparently is the steepest GS in Europe.  This was also my first time skiing in Italy and the terrain is similar, but food choices are quite different:

France/Swiss: Tartaflette and Rosti

Italy: Polenta and Pasta

Currently, I'm on my flight back to the US for the Koinis wedding on a short trip (Thursday - Tuesday); I will miss the skiing goal this week, but it's an acceptable excuse.

January Update (1st Half)

So I've started January with a new goal while trying to manage working busy season hours; I'm going to ski at least once each weekend during the ski season provided no conflicting trips planned.  So far I've been doing well on this goal...

Jan 9

I went skiing with the ski club in Flaine, France (Grand Massif) and was soaking wet.  I could wring out my gloves at the end of the day and they were pouring water.

Jan 16

Skied in Interlaken, Grindelwald, and Wengen area.  A small group of us rented a chalet for a friend that was in town from the US to ski.  Saturday was great and we covered much of the resort other than a run in Wengen as the skiing World Cup was being skied this weekend at that site.  

Sunday was the randomest day ever....

Going into the day there were several questions regarding the following day's activities; to ski or to sled, as conditions looked to be bad the day began in flux.  After some confusion, we called the front desk at 9:47 and learned that breakfast needed at 10 so the group instantly dropped what they were doing to run to breakfast at the main lodge from our chalet.

Following breakfast, the group packed and went to check out with a continual debate to ski or to sled.  The weather looked terrible so we planned to sled at first although the ski race was on TV and it was sunny so I made the executive decision we should try to ski.  We then realized we missed the normal city bus to town so the hotel drove us and we brought our gear to the train station to save time.  Once arriving at the train station at 9:40 we began to slowly put our bags into the lockers and quickly realized that that was a train to Klein Scheidegg (top of the ski hill) would be leaving in 5 minutes so this became a scramble....we did make it although we did not realize that the train ticket was $15 and saved almost no time ($30 for those with non half-fare) when compared to taking the city bus to the gondola.

The day did end there, upon reaching the top of the mountain the weather was once again terrible so we were debating even buying lift tickets so we decided to ski down planning to ski all the way to the bottom and then call it a day thus not requiring a lift ticket.  The one run all the way to the bottom was a blast!  Upon reaching to the bottom, we realized that our train tickets were never scanned....so we did this again, and then did it again while stopping for lunch on the mountain, and then took the train to the top again...so yes, we outsmarted the Swiss train/lift ticket system.

So we skied the rest of the day via the train rather than chair lift and then finished the day.  Our last scramble of the day involved us getting to the bottom of the ski hill and taking a train to the main station to arrive at 4:14 and needing to board another train leaving at 4:17.  Keep in mind that our entire group is still in our ski gear, with skis, and still still needing to get our bags from the lockers.  We miraculously made this and were lucky enough to get thrown in a cargo car with no seats for the first train (45 min), which sounds terrible, but was great as it allowed us pack all of our bags and get situated before heading on the 2 hour train ride home to Geneva.

So...first half of January I'm 2 for 2 on skiing!

December Update

No major trips planned the remainder of December before returning home later in the month, but consistent with this time in the US there is always a lot of fun activities that I wanted to highlight.
Weekend of December 12
Stayed in Geneva for PwC Christmas party in Geneva, which is an event that never disappoints.  The structure was a bit different than that in the US as the Swiss party is an employee only happy hour, but nevertheless always a good time.  Following day, we celebrated Brad's birthday in Lausanne going out with friends.

Weekend of December 19
During this weekend, I went to an ugly Christmas sweater party at the Johnsons with a white elephant gift exchange.  An ugly sweater did not quite make the cut of items I shipped over from the US, but I will make sure that I am prepared next year after being home for Christmas.  As part of the white elephant gift exchange, I managed to come home with a PwC laptop bag if anyone needs one.

Saturday, I went to my first Swiss Christmas market!  I took the train to Montreaux to see what the hype was about and it is a very fun experience of small shops, bands, and vin chaud.  I tried my first roasted chestnuts; not too bad.  

After returning from the Christmas market, the remainder of my weekend was packing for the trip home the following Monday, purchasing and filling half of my 2nd suitcase with Chocolate for friends, and watching a Star Wars marathon as I planned to see the new movie with my sister's family and friends when landing; yes, I'm a huge nerd!

December 21 to January 6

Returning home for the first time since moving was quite eventful; I had great aspirations of relaxing and working, but spent most of the time catching up with family and friends...

I spent the first 4 days of my trip in Minneapolis staying with my sister's family.  Highlights of the visit were going to Star Wars immediately when landing with their family, grabbing lunch with Matt Schnackenberg, making Christmas cookies, and admiring the cities' Christmas lights with their family at the city display with all lights synced to music. 

The next week was spent in Hastings and Grand Rapids where I had a great Christmas Eve dinner at the Gergens, Family Christmas at Marcs, hockey party at JKs, and got my fix on board games at Gergens.  I also picked up my new skis from home to bring back to Geneva!

The next two days were spent in Detroit staying at the Koinis residence and rendezvousing with friends over meals/drinks before New Years Eve where coincidentally both of the parties that I wanted to attend were about a 10 minute walk/2 minute drive apart.

NYE reunion of the team of legends that has won every 3v3 soccer tournament that we have entered as a team (plus Chav).

Immediately following NYE was the 3rd Annual Crew Christmas party at the Carpenters where we did Hibachi followed by another White Elephant Gift Exchange.

The last stop on my journey home was Chicago where I stayed with the
Angelettis.  While in Chicago, I had a Hastings reunion with the neighborhood group of friends, grabbed dinner with Noah/Kyle, grabbed lunches with Aimee, Lisa, and Phil, and had a work training.

I think that sums it up.....not sure it could have been more eventful, or action packed, but was definitely a lot of fun and I'm very thankful for all of the great friends and family members in my life.  I'm writing most of this on my return trip to Geneva with Gladiator in the background (this is a big deal for those of you that know me well:p).  After landing in Paris on a connecting flight; it feels comforting to hear some French ironically.

Looking forward to seeing what 2016 brings after a big 2015!

November Update

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.

Hamburg - Nov. 14

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.

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.

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....

Weekends of 9/19 (Oktoberfest) and 9/26 (Vienna)

Weekend of 9/19 - Oktoberfest - I went o Oktoberfest in Munich for a second time (last time in 2011 with Gergen) with friends from the area.  We stayed within a block of the festival grounds with the sacrifice that 5 of us were crammed into a single room with one bed, one couch, and a love seat.  Arrived late Friday and spent all of Saturday at the Hofbrau tent.  Fun time although definitely paid for it in the days after.  While at the tents I managed to run into my duplex-mate from home and randomly ran into an Aussie friend from Weerona (dorms at study abroad) that I was not expecting.  I spent my Sunday shopping for some Lederhosen so I'm ready for next year.

Weekend of 9/26 - After working the later end of the week in Brno, Czech Rep. I spent the remainder of the weekend in Vienna.  It was interesting crossing the border as the police checked every car due to the Syrian refugee crisis even when I was crossing at 12:30 AM!  I was also planning ahead this time and purchased a driving vignette after getting a ticket in July.  Day one in Vienna I spent doing a run, doing a walking tour, seeing Stephen's cathedral and the Halsburg palace.  I also went to the state opera and saw a rendition of Cinderella by getting some last minute stand room only tickets that were great.  Experienced the coffee house culture at lunch and grabbed some goulash for dinner.  If looking through my full set of pictures on Flickr, you'll notice a handful of my pictures are black and white; for the next 5 weeks you'll notice many of my pictures will be black and white as I'll be working on my photography class homework on the weekends.

Vienna Day 2 - I spent the day at the Schonbrunn, which is the Hapburg's summer cottage/hunting lodge.  Massive mansion with great decor and a huge garden that is bigger than the White House.  Very fun city and love that they have free bikes.

Morocco - Sept. 9 - 14

Given there's a Swiss holiday on the 10th, I decided to grab a last minute flight to Morocco; the flight was at 6:30am, I got up at 4:15am to catch the first bus at 5am.

Day 1 in Marrakech Morocco - I spent most of the time wandering the streets of the Medina in search of a desert scarf, which I'm told is a necessity for the camel ride in the desert tour.  This place is a bit like Tijuana with people trying to barter only on a much larger scale.  I was excited to see tourists when I thought I was lost since not much is labelled on google maps.  At Djemaa el-Fna, I saw some snake charmers and had a snake draped on me at one point so that was a bit interesting.  I also visited the Koutoubia Mosque, Marrakech Museum, and areas near Ali Ben Youssef Medersa, Saadian Tombs, and the Palais el-Badi and Palais de la Bahia.  I had dinner with some Geneva friends randomly also in Marrakech at a rooftop restaurant (highlight was Moroccan Date cake with salted caramel sauce) and heard the broadcast of the Muslim call to worship before calling it a night.

Desert Tour - Mostly in a bus, but stopped at a few sites and gorges along the way to do small tours that were probably quite similar to that of Arizona (Ait Benhaddou, which is a set of ruins that had several movies filmed there (Gladiator, Game of Thrones); gorges in Vallee du Dades).  Highlight of tour was going to Merzouga to do a camel ride through a small portion of the Western Sahara and then camping that night in the dunes under the stars.  Riding a camel is a little painful so I was definitely glad this wasn't multiple hours.  Waking up after camping, we had a 10 hour drive back to Marrakech!

Marrakech after Desert Tour - Definitely much more manageable with the correct expectation.  After arriving in the city I grabbed dinner with friends and went to bed early after the big drive.  The last full day I had, I spent relaxing in a Hammam (Moroccan Spa) and doing some light bartering with some luck!  Definitely a much more enjoyable experience the 2nd time around.

Morocco was a fun time and generally really cheap when able to avoid the super touristy areas (small bag of chips was 1 penny).  It is a much larger country than I expected as it was a 10 hour drive to the desert near the Algeria border; cell phones generally worked everywhere except data service was no where.