Gruyere

As long as I have been living in Switzerland I hate to admit I had not yet seen any cheese being made. I had never really thought of this until my Parents-in-law had suggested we take a day trip to see Gruyere and the La Masion du Gruyere in the French region of Switzerland.

There was a very small set of exhibits at the museum. The highlight was watching the cheese experts making their cheese. I have to admit it wasn't exactly a high action moment, but it was interesting and I thought that watching the production of the cheese from the glass enclosed gallery was interesting and enjoyable.

The cheese production starts about 12:00 with the cheese man heating 4800 liters of milk with will eventually produced 48 35Kg rounds of cheese. We arrived right at 12:00 and nothing much was going on except a big machine stirring a lot of milk.

If I had to do it again I might suggest arriving at 1:30 or 2:00 pm when they are just preparing to fill the cheese presses.

In another part of the building there is also a glass window that lets you peer into the cheese cellar where the cheese is aged. Included with your 5 CHF entrance fee you also get a sample pack of 3 slices of Gruyere cheese aged to 6 months, 8 months and 10 months. It was nice to taste the samples side-by-side. You could easily tell the differences in the texture and flavor between the samples.

While viewing the cheese cellars there was also a show of sorts going on. A was the robot that goes up and down the aisles turning the cheese over from one side to the other. It was cool to see the machine pull the huge rolls of cheese off the shelves, flipping them over, and then put them back. Considering that this nation is so bent on hand-crafted, and homemade things, it was a little odd to see this robot doing some of the dirty work.

I thought the experience was good, and would recommende it to someone that was in the area. It is a little out of the way for us (2.5 hours by public transportation) but if you couple the visit with an afternoon in the town of Gruyere it was a nice excursion.

Untertitel

I watchted a movie the other daz. Sieben. (Seven, with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman). But this time it was the region 2 german version. I decided to watch the film in German with the German subtitles turned on. I was actuall surprised how much of the movie I understood with the subtitles on in addition to the speach.

I found myself following the subtitles more than the speach as the speach as the subtitles were short easy sentences that didn't always match the exact spoke words but for learning it was perfect.

Red Planet

Red Beach, Santorini Greece

There is this incredible beach on the island of Santorini that is like nothing I have ever seen before. It is known as the red beach. I could not believe the color of the sand when I first saw it. It was amazing. Really something to see.

The sand is red as a result of the layer of red volcanic rock, pumice, that makes up a large portion of the beach and surrounding cliffs. The sand has larger grains that I have seen elsewhere. In some spots I would consider it more a collection of small pebbles than sand.

What was nice about this beach it that it really isn't accessible by car, you have to park and walk a couple of hundred meters to get to it.

I have seen other pictures of the beach during high season and it was completely crowded. I have a feeling this picture I got with the beach all but empty is probably a rare sight.

3 Hour Tour

Sit right back and you'll hear a tale, and tale of a faithful trip.

4 passengers set a course today in a silver VW golf for a 3 hour hiking tour of the alps. We drove with some friends about an hour south this morning to do a leisurely 3 hour tour of the alps. We had a route selected from one of many in a hiking guidebook, and our friends insisted this was one of the easier routes.

3 hours, 800 vertical meters, a break at the top for lunch. Then we would head down for the ride home.

I should have known we were in trouble when it took 3 hours to reach the summit. We'll another 3 hours later after lunch and a much more suitable route home we made it back to the parking lot. We had been out hiking for about a total of 6 hours. Every part of me is sore already. I can't wait to see what I feel like tomorrow.

The image above was taken close to the top. We started the hike from the lake you see in the valley.

Here is a link to the area we hiked on google maps. We hiked up to the ridge that is just Northwest of the lake, there is a line of shadows indicating a drop off of a couple of hundred meters. It is amazing how deceiving this image is, because what looks very flat on google maps is not flat at all in real life.

Return to Prague

I was going through my images today and I took a trip back to Prague for a few moments. I had taken this picture of the tree and the path on a hike up to a look-out point. When I took the image I imagined it in black and white. I had some time yesterday to work with the image a little. I may still make a few changes but I'll share my work in progress.

Through The Eyes Of a 12 Year Old

We had dinner with a nice couple in the next town last evening. He used to work at the same office in Richmond. My wife got to know his wife through a book club. They have 2 children I believe 12 and 8.

It was a very nice dinner, lasagna and salad. One of the most interesting things of the evening was the conversations I had with the 12 year old son. We was very talkative and surely was enjoying the opportunity to speak in English. His best quote of the evening:

"I prefer Paris over Nags Head"

We'll, I do too. I had to laugh when he said that.

It was very interesting to hear about his school experience. In 5th grade for example he has to decide where he is going to go to college. That seems a little early, how do 5th graders decide on higher education and careers at such a young age.

He was also talking about his classes, which are all in German. I was asking him how his biology classes were going. He said it was strange, because he was learning all these things, like animal brain part names for example, and he only knows the terms in German. Hmmmm.... Talk about confusing.

As the Husband is actually Swiss (Although he lived in the US for 17 years). I was asking him some things about Swiss live and culture. I asked him what the Swiss called a 'Swiss Army Knife'. It is called a 'Tasche Messer' , bag knife. It actually isn't red like all of the Swiss army knives we've come to know in the US. The real knife is silver, stainless steel. It only has 4 tools instead of the 10 or more on the tourist versions.

Scrabble

The other night we tried playing scrabble in German. I was actually surprised how well we did. There were quite a few words on the board with 5 letters. We filled the board about halfway. There were probably about 20 tiles left when we stopped from mental exhaustion but it was still an accomplishment.

We modified the rules a bit to make it easier for the language challenged.

• 9 tiles for each player instead of 7 for more combinations
• All vowels could be 'umluated' or not depending on usage
• Dictionaries were allowed to assist in looking up words

The challenge tended to be the same ones faced in playing in English, not enough vowels when you need them.

I'm wondering if there is a 'German' language version that has a better distribution of letters suitable for German. I'll have to check the store after work today.

Santorini

Santorini

Some photographs are cliched. This is one. But, it is THE shot if you visit Santorini and I too had to try my hand at a classic. If you'd like to see some other interpretations of the classic photo a quick search on Goggle reveals a treasure trove. I tried searching 'Santorini, Dome, Church' and got good results.

Despite the fact that everyone takes this photo I'm still happy to have it in my own collection. if nothing else I can say I was there.

When we returned from our trip I was happy to see a new issue of Popular
Photography in the mailbox. I opened it up and found 3 images in the issue of Santorini's blue domed churches all it adds for camera gear, camera reviews, or photography exursions. If you check out this add for an excursion you should see to images that look quite familiar from this post and an earlier post of my about Mykonos. Not mine, but just shows that you can't pass up post card photos when you see them.

Lomo Technique

If you have been a reader of my blog for any length of time you are well aware that one of my hobbies if photography. I am always experimenting with my digital camera and the latest digital imaging processing software and techniques.

I find that even 2 minutes in a photo processing program creates results that can take a decent photo and make it great. Today I was reading an article on reproducing a 'lomo' camera effect with digital images. This is a way to take a digital image and throw it back in time. Making in look like something that was shot on a not so good Lomo Camera of the mid 80's. I had a picture that from a compositional perspective looked good. When I took the picture. The colors weren't vivid and bright. But when I got home It just didn't have any snap to it.

Original Image

I decided that this might be a good candidate to attempt a 'lomo' effect on to see if I could over saturate and get something out of nothing. I had read a nice tutorial about creating this effect and in Photoshop elements 4 I was able to produce the following results in under 10 minutes.

Edited Lomo Image

I still have to think about this a little to decide what I think about the results. But, it was a fun experiment. I'd be happy to receive comments.

The Off Season

Beach, Mykonos Island

This is why I have recently come to really enjoying traveling in the 'off season.' The beaches are empty, the best tables at the restaurants are free. Yes, it is not always as warm, and you can't do everything, but in one sense you see and do more. You don't waste time in lines or fight for parking. You instead can take your time, enjoy your surrounds and be in the moment.

First Cubs Game Of the Season

I finally got to watch my first Cubs game of the season today. It was a 1:20pm start at Wrigley and I remembered to check the schedule and fire up the slingbox at about 9:00pm local time in Switzerland. Just in time to catch the end of the 2nd inning.

Seeing the score now in the end of the 7th I don't have much hope. I know it's still early in the season, the cubs are actually right around .500 so they surely aren't in a bad spot but I would like to see them pick it up a little.

Now, if I could only get a Chicago style hotdog.

Who's Wearing the Pants

A departure from travel today, and back to the reality of Swiss living.

I have only bought one pair of pants since I have moved to Switzerland. Those pants were a pair of loose fitting hiking pants so I wasn't too worried about the fit. Unfortunately the time has come for me to invest in one or two additional pairs of summer weight dress pants for work.

I have been avoiding buying pants in Europe because I can't figure out the sizes. It is crazy here, and I just couldn't understand it the first time I tried to find a pair months ago so I have procrastinated.

We'll today I saw something that made me decide I had to take the plunge and figure the pants thing out. The local department store was having a great sale, the pants where half off (I'll avoid any reference to a bad Michael Jackson joke).

Okay, so I tried to read the sizing chart but I couldn't really figure it out because it had three sets of bizarre number combinations for example 25, 45, 79.

Coming from the US I like two numbers, 32,30. That is all I need and I know my size. What is 25, 45, 79? Or how about 48,54,82 That looks reasonable I guess. I figured it had something to do with the metric system but I couldn't quite figure it out.

At first I thought maybe the last number might be waist size in centimeters so I started doing conversions in my head and figured something in the lower to mid 80's should work.

About 6 pairs of pants and 10 minutes of staring at the sizing chart later I figured it out. So lets dissect if for you.

As an example 25,45,79.

25 is the size. Don't ask why, it just is.

45 if half of the waist curcumference in centimeters.

79 is the inseam in centimeters.

After 45 minutes of trying on pants I had figured it out. I even found a pair of pants that fit. Unfortuantely I was too drained to even think about picking out a pair of pants after I figured out I need a size 25. So, I'll go back this weekend when I have more energy.

Mykonos

'Little Venice' Mykonos

The island of Mykonos feels like a tourist spot. It is packed with shops, restaurants, beaches, scooters, and hotels. Even though it seems to have have a trendy and hip feel to it, there are spots on the island where we were able to escape the tourist hotspots.



I enjoy the energetic side of the island, but I also liked the fact that we were able to escape to some remote beaches that were essentially empty. We visited the island about a month before the real tourist season begins. The water was too cold to swim in but the sun was still out and we were still able to enjoy the beaches as long was we were content just laying on the sand.

I was please we went at low season. At every restaurant we had our choice to tables, and prime views of the sunset. At every beach were were essentially alone. And in the narrow streets we were easily able to navigate our way without a feeling of claustrophobia.

I mention claustrophobia because in the picture perfect town of Mykonos or Chora, there is one area where all the streets and walk ways are no wider than about 6 feet. This combined with the fact that everything is painted white except the doors and windows makes for a surreal stroll through a very strange world. I can't image what it would be like to try to enjoy these tiny streets during high season. I overheard some other visitors mentioning that when they had visited the island before during high season it was wall-to-wall people and almost impossible to move at times.

I found the architecture and landscapes of the island to be compelling. There was never a time when I didn't feel like I couldn't just raise my camera to my eye and take a great photograph. I've only done a quick review of my pictures from the island. I can't wait to go through them in more detail and see what kind of great images I captured during our stay.

Athens

Temple at the Agora

Our first full day in Athens was packed with sightseeing. We had a half day guided tour in the morning followed by a free afternoon to visit all of the sights that were not part of the grand tour. Most of the day was spent looking and this pile of rocks, and that pile of rocks.

Having taken a classic civilization course in college is was actually nice to see the things I had read about in the history books. I think reading about different cultures is one thing, but visiting the sites and seeing the ruins truly gives you a new perspective. Most impressive to me were the shear size and craftsmanship of some of the ruins. Despite the fact that these buildings were thousands of years old in some cases it was just inspiring to think of what great architecture these civilizations were capable of producing. I don't think that appreciation can come from just looking at a picture. You need to see the buildings up close and personal. I mean come on, if Yanni can still play a venue after it has been around for 2000 years you know it must have been well built.


The Parthenon was an interesting sight. It too was enormous and impressive. The building itself was impressive but even more impressive, and visually displeasing, was the excessive scaffolding, cranes, and general construction material around the Parthenon. Blocks of marble, numbered and in neat rows litter the top of the hill. Cranes and scaffolding litter the walls of every ruin. It seems as if this has been a constant restoration project that will continue for years and years to come because of costs and the amount of care required for restoration. All of this construction junk is definitely not something you see in the pictures in your history books.

Vacation Blues

Sunset view from Mykonos

I hate the end of good vacations. There is always a sense of depression for me when I really have enjoyed myself on a good trip. I guess part of the depression is going back to the grind of work.

I guess the sun is setting on another great holiday and tomorrow I go back to work. Uggghhhhhhhh!!!

Grecian Formula

I have been disconnected for the last week. I could apologize for not blogging but I won't. No phone, no computer, no e-mail. What a great idea, a vacation!

This was the first relaxing trip we have taken in Europe. We had a full 10 days to explore 3 areas of Greece. We visited Athens and the islands of Mykonos, and Santorini.

Yes it was fasted paced and we did see a lot, but it was nice to have a little more than a long weekend to explore.

I think my favorite spot was probably the island of Santorini. I can't wait to get some pictures posted, but first I have to sort through them all (I've posted one snapshot of the temple of Zeus in Athens above). I think it will take me a bit of time to get through my more than 900 images, so be patient and check back. I'll have more stories and images up soon.