halloween

Halloween is not a big deal in Switzerland, but it is gaining popularity. My friend Jelena's neighbor who is American always has a big Halloween party, so we went on Saturday night. I bought/made my costume Saturday night after work (nothing like waiting until the last minute!). I got ready at Daniela and Mariana's and we first made these treats for the party that I had seen on pinterest. They are "eyeballs" if you couldn't tell, but basically buckeyes dipped in white chocolate instead of milk. They were really good!

Here is my costume. There wasn't much of a selection at the store, and then I made the red "fire"/tutu.

 Jelena was definitely the craftiest of all. She made her owl costume completely from scratch:

 A witch and a cat rounded out our crew. As you can imagine, we got plenty of stares and people talking about us on the tram. As I said earlier, Halloween is not a big deal here. Here's a picture next to the scary decorations:

And more pictures from the party: 

It was a really fun night! 

Saturday was also the first snowfall of the year, so I woke up to this:

We got about 4 inches of snow Saturday/Sunday, but it's still too warm to stick to the ground.

Happy Halloween!

fondue at olma

While working out of town this week, we were only 15 minutes away from the city of St. Gallen. The audit was timed perfectly because Olma, a huge (by Swiss standards of course) two week festival in St. Gallen, started at the end of last week. We managed to sneak away one evening and drove to St. Gallen to check out Olma. The highlight of the evening way my first Swiss fondue. My Swiss friends had informed me that I was not allowed to eat fondue until fall/winter because only tourists would eat fondue when its not cold out. I've come to find out that this is one of many rules to eating Swiss fondue. One of the rules they are most particular about (besides the timing of eating fondue) is about what you can drink with the fondue - tea or white wine is recommended and kirsche (cherry brandy), NOT coke or beer.

This is the fondue restauraunt/"tent". It was packed:

Yes, that is a BIG pot of cheese. It was for five people, but I didn't think we'd be able to eat it all and we managed.

 Once I got past the overwhelming smell of the restaurant, the fondue was actually quite delicious! After fondue, we went for a beer at one of the other tents that had a live band. Nice little Swiss Tuesday.

lauterbrunnen hike

I went on a great hike Saturday. It was my first experience hiking by myself and it was great. It took almost 3 hours to get to Lauterbrunnen (near Interloken) by train and the hike itself took a little over 4 hours. The Lauterbrunnental is the world's largest glacial valley. I took the cablecar from Lauterbrunnen to Grütshchalp and started hiking from there. Throughout the hike I had great views of the famous mountains: the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau (pictured below).

Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau again (without the glaring sun):

I went through the tiny little "town" of Allmendhubel which consisted of one restauraunt, and then continued on to the cute little town of Mürren.

From Mürren I continued on to Gimmelwald and then to Stechelberg. This was the first time I'd ever seen these avalance prevention things which were built into the steep hillsides with small trees planted at the point.

Also, not all the cows have descended from the mountains. I ate lunch next to this friendly gal:

There were a lot of beautiful waterfalls along the hike.

Self portrait: Let's go Reds!! (I'm watching the game now since I couldn't stay up until 4am to watch it last night :) )

There were a couple of signs warning to beware of falling rocks - kind of scary!

I considered stopping in Interloken on my way back to Zürich but I was just too exhausted, so I'll have to make another trip there sometime. I fell asleep on the train on the way back and was in bed around 9pm!

oktoberfest

A few weeks ago, I got a message from Shaun McDonough, a friend from back home, that he was going to be in Germany for Oktoberfest the weekend of September 29th. Some friends of mine in Zurich had talked about making the trip to Munich for Oktoberfest, but hadn't made a decision or done anything about it, so a group of us discussed it in Ireland and we booked an apartment in Munich for the weekend.

The group going consisted of: me, Alayna, Ianne, and Piotr from Zurich and Stephany and Anna would take the train from Amsterdam and meet us in Munich. Unfortunately at the last minute Anna was unable to make it.

We grabbed beer and snacks when we left work and headed to the train station Friday evening. The beer made the 4 hour train ride go quickly. We made friends with the German guy that sat next to us on the train and he confirmed that we really should "dress up" in dirndls and lederhosen. We arrived at the apartment around 11:30pm. The apartment was really nice and was just outside of the city center so it was quiet, but easily accessible - 5 minute walk to the train station and 5 stops to the main train station.

Saturday morning, Alayna, Piotr, and I woke up early and took the train to the city center for dirndl shopping!!! Since Stephany's birthday was Friday, we left her this surprise at the apartment for when she got in:

It was a successful shopping trip because we both found dirndls we loved and were able to wear them out of the store. We met up with Shaun at his hostel. He had bought lederhosen the previous day.

We then walked to Oktoberfest. It is quite the thing to see - a huge festival with lots of rides, lots of yummy-looking food, and TONS of people. We walked around for awhile trying to find the tent that had the shortest line, which was really non-existent. Most of the lines were for people that had reservations. We did not have reservations :(

We were getting pretty thirsty at this point and decided that if we ever wanted a beer we would have to just leave Oktoberfest and go to a bar nearby. As we walked away we walked past a line for a tent that was not long at all. We managed to shove ourselves to the front and I used 2 of the approximate 10 german words I know and the security guy gave us a promising look. Within 5 minutes, the four of us were inside and we celebrated like we'd won a competition - high fives all around and more importantly, beers all around!

We enjoyed hanging out in the beer garden and Ianne and Stephany showed up shortly after. We managed to get them in (the lines had only grown exponentially since we got in) by sweet talking and tipping our server. We ate pretzels and chicken (both of which were delicious), drank more beer, and made some friends.

After awhile, we decided we'd had enough and walked to a nearby bar/restaurant for more drinks and more food.

Unfortunately it had started raining when we left Oktoberfest, and we were freezing, so we changed back into our "normal" clothes for dinner. The rest of the night continued in the same manner - more drinks, more food, until we'd really had enough, and we headed back to the apartment.

Sunday morning, Stephany had to take an early train back to Amsterdam, and then Alayna and I woke up and went for a long walk around the neighborhood while the others slept in. The neighborhood was really cute, and we stopped in a little cafe for breakfast/tea. We took the special "Oktoberfest" train back to Zurich at 2:30pm. The normal trains were so full that they added an extra train. They must have brought out the oldest train cars around for this additional train. We nicknamed it the "puke train", not because of any unfortunate incidents from our group, but because we assumed they wanted to avoid ruining the nice trains on Oktoberfest-goers returning home.

All in all, a great time at Oktoberfest, but if you ever want to go I recommend the following:
1. go on a weekday, not a weekend
2. have reservations (which you need 6-12 months in advance)
3. get there 30 minutes - 1 hour (or earlier) before the tents open with your reservation in hand, and
4. you MUST dress up!