one year

It is so unbelievable that one year ago on May 30th I arrived in this little country in the middle of Europe called Switzerland. This year has been so amazing in so many ways. On the one hand, it seems like just a month ago that my family was dropping me off at the airport and that I arrived here and showered at my temporary apartment without soap or shampoo and put on my same dirty clothes I'd already been wearing for a day since they lost my luggage. On the other hand, that seems so long ago! I have been so lucky to be able to experience so many things, travel all around, and meet some truly awesome people. After one year, I can say that I feel comfortable here, I'm protective of Switzerland, I'm definitely not ready to leave, I've made some lifelong friends, and Zurich will always be my second home.

And now, to update my "countries I've visited" tally:
First 6 months:
1. Switzerland
2. U.S. (2 trips home and Minneapolis for work)
3. Germany (Konstanz and 2 trips to Munich)
4. Liechtenstein
5. Holland (Amsterdam)
6. Ireland
7. UK (Belfast)
8. Czech Republic (Prague)
9. Spain (Barcelona)

Second 6 months:
10. Jersey
11. France (St. Malo and Rennes)
12. U.S. (Home, NY, NJ, PA, OH, CO, TX)
13. Austria (Vienna)
14. Italy (Milan)
15. Germany (Berlin)

memorial day

For Memorial Day weekend I decided to have a roof party and grill out for some of my Swiss friends at work since they'd never celebrated this holiday before and never eaten some of our American food. Well, the weather did not cooperate with my roof party/grilling plans, so I decided to make pulled pork bbq and move the party indoors. Everyone was impressed with the food I made (it was definitely things they'd never had before) and we had a great time!

Jelena, Daniela & Jenna being silly:

A couple of the girls fell asleep on the couch. Everyone finally left at 6am with the first tram.

Late in the evening I taught them beer ball to practice for our upcoming beer pong tournament team event. It turns out my little Ikea dining table and little kitchen is perfectly sized for this activity:

I made an American flag cake and everyone was SUPER impressed. I was kind of impressed with myself :)



salsa lessons

This will probably come as a shock to most people reading it, because it was sure shocking to me that I agreed to take salsa dance lessons with the girls from our group at work. One of the girls (Claudia - on the far right in the picture below) is actually one of the teachers at Salsarica and convinced us all to take a beginner class. The classes have been going for the past 6 weeks every Thursday night from 9pm-11pm (perfect class time for a bunch of auditors). Most weeks we even managed to meet to grab a quick bite to eat and a drink before class. We had a great time in class despite our lack of dance skills and our teacher that hated us for laughing and talking all the time!

Maria, Katrin, Marija, Aline, Jenna & Claudia (Christine & Daniela were missing)

And no, my career as a salsa dancer will not be continuing!

tracey & katie

As I think back about the past week and Tracey & Katie's visit to Zurich, I just smile. There is nothing like spending time with best friends that you've had for so many years that you all know each other so well. We never miss a beat. We always have fun. I lost count of how many times in the past week that I laughed so hard I cried.

Katie arrived a day and a half before Tracey. So, Friday after work, Katie and I walked down by the lake.

What had been a mostly rainy/cloudy day turned out to be actually quite nice by the early evening, so we decided to grab some beers and take the train up to Uetliberg for the sunset.

Friday night we went out with a couple of my friends to Niederdorf. After some beers and a couple of caipirinhas, we called it a night so I could pick Tracey up from the airport at 8am. We spent the weekend in Berlin and then I had to go back to work on Tuesday. Tracey and Katie did their own exploring of Switzerland/Germany while I was working and then we hung out in the evenings.

Prosecco on my roof at sunset: 

Friday night we made raclette. I'm really getting good at this - YUM: 

Daniela came over and then we got ready to go out. We met up with Claudia and one of her friends at Nelsons.

Me & Katie: 

The three of us: 

@Nelsons, this is trouble:

The next day we drove to Mt. Pilatus outside of Lucerne for some hiking and a summer tobogganing adventure.

Here is the summer toboggan "trail". There was one spot which took your speed: Jenna = 28km/hr, Katie = 14km/hr, Tracey = 7km/hr (because she had to come to a complete stop to avoid ramming Katie). We laughed about this for the rest of the day.

Jenna & Katie at Mt. Pilatus: 

Katie and Tracey on our hike:

Had to get a picture of the visitors with some Swiss cows!

When we got back to Zurich, we took a bottle of wine to the lake and watched the sunset (one of my favorite Zurich activities). 

We walked around the city a bit. Although this picture is a little dark, it is Katie with SEVEN Swiss flags in one picture. 

I love these girls and this was so much fun. Thanks for visiting!

berlin

Two of my best friends, Tracey & Katie, came to visit me. We planned to go to Berlin for the weekend since none of us had been there before. We arrived Saturday evening. The owner of our hotel, Alain, hooked us up with everything we needed to know about the city along with a detailed map of where we should go for Saturday night and for the following two days. Saturday night's plan was essentially a bar crawl through the city, which we were obviously up for. However, the first bar we were unable to find, so we settled for another bar we walked by which had live music. This was an awesome decision. The bar was an experience that's for sure. I think it was a lesbian bar and the band playing was just something you would NEVER see in the States. The 4 band members, all men, were wearing costumes which I can only describe as superhero/astronaut/tights/???. Hilarious. We drank some Berliner beers and sadly decided to move on so that we could hit up the rest of the bars Alain suggested.

Me & Tracey

Around midnight, we were at the Burgermeister. We ordered burgers, fries and beers from this little stand under an overpass. We sat on plastic cartons and had a plastic carton table. Best burger I've had in Europe hands down. Amazing.

The final stop on our bar tour was a club with some techno music. We don't like techno music, but it was still fun to experience.

On Sunday we did a lot of walking, but we saw almost the whole city. First stop was Postdamer Platz, which had the first traffic light in Europe.

Berlin Holocaust Memorial:

Brandenburg Gate: 

Reichstag: 

Checkpoint Charlie:

For dinner, we went to a brewery and had traditional german food and beers. The beer sampler was great.

Tracey drank it all.... 

Sony Center:

Monday morning after breakfast, a little shopping, manicures, and checking out of the hotel, we headed to the Eastside Gallery, which is a portion of the Berlin Wall which still stands and was turned into artwork.

Next stop was a tour of the Berlin Cathedral: 

The tour of the cathedral took us all the way to the Dome at the top and we could walk around outside. 

Finally, we got a currywurst, ate it sitting in the park and then (sadly) had to go to the airport.