adventures with shepeck

Karla's visit has been both eventful & freezing at the same time. So, where to begin? Upon Karla's arrival, we successfully kept her awake for literally the entire day, all the way until midnight. There were a few times when we could see the glaze in her eyes, but we just made her push on. I am pretty sure we were about as excited to get all the treats Karla brought with from the States as we were to see her ;)jk lady! We went to a party at a friends house on Saturday night, Karla wants us to get their house (basically she told us our house was ugly compared to theirs, which was heartwarming, of course).
Then, Karla & I left for Prague on Sunday, after a quick flight in which we got a sammie (they fed us on a 1 hour flight, living large over here!) We arrived at the b&b, and as you can guess karla was not excited by the look of it (the outside is about as rough looking as the inside pics). Ota (the b&b owner) greeted us in his pj's & robe (why not?) and we settled in. Basically we spent our two days there seeing the sights, drinking warm beverages in a valiant attempt to stay warm & wandering into random shops to steal their heat for a few minutes. The walk back to the b&b felt ridiculously long every night & it was exacerbated by the fact that we (me) literally could not figure out how to unlock the door so we usually had another 3 minutes of struggling to open the front door with numb fingers. We pretty much could have been wearing the exact same outfit every day in Prague, because we hardly removed our coats, let alone our hats.
Upon our arrival into Prague, Karla & I both took out 3000CZK each, about $175USD. This was supposed to last us most of the trip, so imagine my surprise on Sunday night (4 hours after our arrival), Karla only had 1100CZK left. I am fairly certain she was ripped off in a store we bought postcards in when at first she handed them Swiss francs to pay for her postcards. I was at another register, so all I overheard was, "This isn't our money." And Karla responding "oh, it isn't?" So, my guess is the lady fleeced her. Karla's bet is on some of her money falling out, which will seem even more realistic shortly when you all hear about what happened upon our return to Switzerland. So, after this money incident, I started to get a bit more intense & was insisting that we both wear our delightful money belts (*which I must note left a few scratches & bruises from all the digging). Our flight back from Prague to Zurich was delightful again (although we got a cake instead of a sammie, which neither of us were too happy about....) and I was lugging around a few bottles of Becherovka (I gag just thinking about drinking that crap). SO, we arrive in Zurich, have no problems with customs (although they did not stamp our passport which was upseting for ms. shepeck) and we are heading back to the apartment via the tram. We got off at our stop and started walking home when I hear a lady yelling and running behind us "hallo! hallo!" but I just kept walking thinking she must just be some crazy person or something. Finally I hear her catching up so I stop & turn as Karla continues walking. The lady is holding Karla's MONEY BELT and she hands it to me. I was like "Karla, get over here." We both thanked the woman profusely, she just looked at us annoyedly because she was out of breath & she walked away. I looked at Karla & was like what the hell? She had never tucked the money belt back in her jeans after we went through customs, it was just hanging between her coat attached to her belt & the belt came undone (it's just a fabric one that i had let her borrow). 1. This proves our theory about Zuricher's honesty 2. WTF, we made it all the way through Prague where we actually need to worry about pickpocketers & then we get back to Zurich & it just falls off. Wow, please take note all you future visitors, the money belt does not work if you put it in your pocket (joe circa 2002) or if you don't tuck it in (karla circa 2 days ago).
Other adventures include a lot of Catan playing, Karla is addicted to it now. A delicious Thanksgiving dinner courtesy of Karla last night at an Irish pub (good burgers). Turns out our Thanksgiving plans that we thought were on Thanksgiving are actually on Saturday. So, we have about 5 pounds of mashed potatoes in the fridge & a ginormous salad. No clue how both Joe & I read the invite multiple times & never noticed the word Saturday in it, but we did. So, luckily Karla was here because I am fairly certain our first holiday here would have been a bit depressing, but instead it ended up to be a really fun and delicious. Hopefully everyone in the US is enjoying their days off....joe is at work right now :( and that you are comfortably full, or in the case of megan dressed as a boat & probably still a bit tipsy from her nontraditional thanksgiving pubcrawl!

Prague Pics

sawdust, starter jackets, & spiced wines

Sorry for neglecting the old blog for the past week or so. I know some of you rely on this for night school distractions (focus lady!). Life has been a bit boring, yet busy for the past week and a half. My "last" day of German class for a while was today. I really was disliking class for the past two weeks, I was really struggling with the content & basically was just frustrated with German. Yet today I felt oddly sad to be finishing it. The only real steady factor in my life for the past two months, ending....yet, I fear the process of learning German will never actually ever end. It will cycle around & through my life, frustrate & sometimes (when i actually communicate effectively) delight.

So, do you all recall the excessively large table top that joe carried through all modes of Zurich transportation? Well, after the past month of just sitting in our kitchen lamely staring at us, we (joe) decided to tackle the project this past weekend. (our first out of town visitor certainly helped provide some motivation --- arriving tomorrow, yeah Karla!) So, despite some challenges we rented a tool (that was not really meant for cutting a 6 foot board, but it was all we could get..) from a local hardware store & got it home. We had really no choice regarding where to cut the board, Joe voted for cutting it on some random businesses property that is located behind our house, but I (having already been yelled at my by fair share of Swiss was reluctant to use someone else's property for this adventure) so, we went with cutting in The Kitchen. Who doesn't use power saws in the kitchen afterall? I am afraid I will be battling the saw dust remains for a good part of December.....oh well. It's done! And joe realizes how much he misses Home Depot.

Total sidenote, I saw a guy wearing a mighty ducks starter jacket the other day. I almost lost it. Dave, you are still rocking yours, right?
So, it’s definitely holiday time here in Zurich. It's even starting to feel a bit Christmasy in our own house.

 

Last night Joe & I went downtown to admire/oogle/discuss the various holiday decorations that Zurich displays. Three years after their arrival, these holiday lights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPg43Z7-5d8 are still majorly controversial (and, in my opinion, hideous) in Zurich. Despite the main road being decorated with these modern tubes, most all the side streets are still filled with millions of tiny white twinklers, decorative globes, huge real trees & all the other traditional trimmings. We also "enjoyed?" our first glass of Gluhwein, a warm spiced wine that packs a serious punch. It kept me ridiculously warm despite the bitter brrr in the air though, so I guess at least for that it was worth it, although my legs were feeling a bit on the jiggly side after only one glass of it.

So, we are looking forward with much anticipation to our first visitor. Karla & I will be traveling to Prague for a few nights (anyone need some Becherovka, grandpa?, kate? --- talk about warming you up!)

Warm wishes to you all....

Angie's going away party & Besancon (11.07-11.09)

Happy Veterans Day!

We just wanted to take time to acknowledge those who have served in our great military, especially Papa Frank, Grandpa Eckstein and Uncle Steve.

Without them and others who have served and died for our country, we would not be able to enjoy all of the many freedoms we have today - the least of which being the ability to travel almost anywhere in the world with complete ease.

Vielen Dank!

so we can't pull off a french accent

Joe & I sent the weekend in Besancon, France this weekend with Kate's best friends. Perhaps you would look at the name of this town & think, that can't be so hard to pronounce. Well, you would be incorrect, we took a lot of heat, from the man who I purchased our train tickets from, to Joe's coworkers, to Meredith's teammates who only spoke French, yet still found a way to communicate to me I was butchering the name of their town! Oh, the French. Other than the town's name, everything about the weekend was fabulous. We were totally overwhelmed by what great hosts Meredith & Justin were! They totally showed us how to do it for when we have guests (so get ready K!)So, one of the big reason we went to visit them was to see Justin play basketball. I can't say this is something I would usually enjoy in the States (flash to me falling asleep at Billikens games), but I was excited to see him play. Plus, we were in France which is a bit more exciting than the Savvis. And, what a great game it was. His team won by 2 points, Justin had a great game & we had got to do something totally American! We had great weather, tons of delicious food & fantastic company!, can't get much better than that! Au revoir.

"just f*ing workout"

The excessive amount of staring people do here finally got to me in a big bad way. Joe & I went to the gym on Thursday night & he decided to run while I lifted legs. Firstly, I am a woman lifting. Secondly, I am not doing the "pre-sanctioned lifting workout" that every other woman does (the trainers at the gym prescribe the same crappy routine for everyone). So, I was doing squats & dead lifts & I am noticing people are staring at me, but whatever, none of them are too close. So, it is my last set of dead lifts and there is a man standing not even 4 feet away completely staring at me. I mean, I turned over gave him a look, and he continued to stare. Finally I yelled at him in English, "just f*ing workout." He was clearly stunned, but responded "it's just different." So now I am even more fired up, and as I continue with my routine I started to think maybe I should apologize or whatever. So, I go tell Joe what happened & he said go apologize, so I went over and apologized & the guy was just like well no women here do that type of workout with such good form. And, I was just like "I get that, but that doesn't mean you can just stare." His response, "yeah, we tend to do that here." Just like, well, that's the way it is. But good thing I apologized, because turns out he is a trainer at one of the gym's other locations & he teaches Pilates at our gym, so yeah, would be kind of awkward if I happened to walk in his class sometime....
Clearly, the staring has been bothering me for a while here & I just snapped on this guy. It wasn't really fair, but at the same time I have no idea what makes these people think it is okay to just blatantly stare at you. There is nothing pleasant about it, and although they may not mean to be critical, it certainly tends to comes across that way sometimes. So my true fiesty liz colors finally shone through.....I am sure you guys have all been missing her.

Mayday, we are sinking!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRf9ooQ7qq8&feature=related

Check out this great commercial.....our German is about as bad as this guy's English!

some vocab

Thought you all could use some German vocabulary....and for the three of you that read this blog & dually speak German, to show off my clearly limited German language capacity. Hope this gets some of you (dad) off my back about not seeing pics of the apartment. Clearly it is a bit WHITE everywhere, but it is starting to feel somewhat homey. Where Joe is seated in the pics is essentially our desk/where we talk to you all via Skype, so next time we talk to you, you'll have a visual on our locale.

Weekend was great, went to a "hens" party on Friday night while Joe played poker with the boys & then we went to the wine boats on Saturday night (12 boats moored at the dock with wineries from all over the world sampling their wines). We thought about purchasing the "zuri seco," yeah, that's right, instead of proseco, zuri seco. Ha!, maybe if someone asks nicely we'll bring a bottle home & pop it like it's cristal for the holidays!

Hope you all are enjoying your gorgeous weather at home, not sure why I torture myself with the STL & Chicago weather saved to yahoo.....

Fotos von unsere Wohnung