Halloween Swiss Style

Our Swiss Pumpkins

Halloween was anticlimactic this year. Since nobody seems to really care I almost forgot it was Halloween. I only realized when somebody told me the date around lunch time and of course I wished my team a happy Halloween.

They looked at me like I was crazy.

We managed to get pumpkins this year despite the fact that most orange pumpkins in switzerland seem to be the size fo tennis balls. We carved them on Sunday evening. Usually I make a big to do about designing and carving my pumpkin. This year I didn't feel as inspired. I decided to carve a cat face. I looked at my pictures for last Halloween and realized that I carved a cat last year too. Mental note, next year don't carve a cat.

This evening to celebrate my wife bought a pumpkin tort. Pumpkin torts are usually just like a big sugar cookie with a thin layer of American pie filling. I usually really enjoy them. When I saw this tort though it looked a little strange. It ended up being something like yellow cake with a layer of mashed, unsweetened pumpkin in the middle. Not really what I or my wife were expecting. I have a feeling it will end up in the trash very shortly.

For the rest of the evening I don't have much planned, maybe just to watch some TV or enjoy the pumpkins. I surely won't be bothered by the ring of the doorbell and little kids yelling Trick-OR-Treat. That just ain't Swiss style.

Hot Water as of last Saturday Night

So I woke up last Saturday to no hot water again. However, I was woken up by my doorbell ringing around 8:00. It was a guy from the service company coming to check the system. He told me that they were going to come 3 times a day on both Saturday and Sunday to be sure we had hot water and heating over the weekend.

Finally after this man visited on Saturday we have had uninterrupted hot water and heat for a few days. I am hopeful that the situation is over.

On another note more budgeting at work. I am working on project plans and headcount again for the next fiscal year. It is a lot of work. But this year I know the routine and I have not spent as much time on it as I did last year so that is a good thing. I've also come up with a few 'tools' to help me. MS project and Excel can be very useful when you use them together.

Day 5:Wincasa Property Management Can't Provide hot water or heating

I am getting a little irritated. We have received apology after apology. Yes, we have a firm looking at the problem. Yes, they will look at it today. We will fix it. We replaced the heat pump, everything should be fine.

I have little faith.

After having hot water and heat for a brief period when I got home yesterday I woke this morning to take a shower and the water was warm at best. Wincasa has handled this situation unbelievably. The trickle of water was just enough to get my hair damp, and was just warm enough so I didn't have goose bumps but it was not a hot shower by any means.

The problem seems to be the heat. Every radiator in the apartment is ice cold. The hot water systems here rely on the heating systems in the winter months to make them more efficient. If the heating doesn't work, you don't have hot water.

If Wincasa can ever get their act together I would be suprised. For now I will just continue to post there name all over my blog in hopes that I feel a little better.

Day Four with No Hot Water - Wincasa is Terrible

We have been madly writing e-mails in German to anyone we can within Wincasa to try to get our hot water problem fixed. I am getting really frustrated.

We received a letter yesterday to tell us someone was working on it. I came home to have hot water so I immediately jumped in the shower to enjoy my own hot shower for a change.

Go thing I did because this morning, no hot water.

So I have sent more e-mails this morning and I'm sure I will complain with my neighbor yet again.

This time I sent them an e-mail to let them know that I am going to send them my bill from the thermal bath since I can't take a shower here.

JFP Attempting to Date My Sister-In-Law

My sister-in-law moved to a new city in the US about a year ago. As a part of that move and settling into a new place she has been faced with the amazing challenge of finding an entire new set of friends and trying to build a new social network. I know exactly what that means and how much effort it takes having done it twice myself, once in the US and once abroad.

My wife will talk to her sister and often times relay some of the stories about her social trials and tribulations. I can remember when I was first moving to new places sometimes you become friends with people just because you need to have some people to talk with, othen times only later find out that thez really aren't the type of people you care to know.

My sister-in-laws first fantastic story was about a guy she dated for a bit that apparently had a 'coach' collar for his dog. Yes, I'm talking the 'coach' like Gucci. Crazy stuff. It made me laugh and I wasn't surprised when she broke if off because I don't see her with that type of guy.

It is the follow up that is great. After a phone call my wife tells me that another guy tried to ask her out and she politely declined after explaining she didn't care for his attitude. Apparently the guy made it very clear that he only dated certain types of women and she was 'privileged' enough to fit the bill.

I thought good for her, she rejected an another idiot. Case closed.

But later, she finds out that apparently this guy is notorious and has a history of being a jerk. My wife tells me, hey go and search for this guy on the internet and you won't believe what you find. Well to my surprise, she was absolutely right. The guy is beyond belief. His personal website is unbelievable. He is absolutely full of himself. Let me pull quote from his site....

I started in "the business" years ago modeling for Wright Models during high school. I used my 98th percentile score on the SAT & ACT to acquire a Mensa membership then combined that with my 97th percentile G.P.A. to go on to a five star collegiate program.

This guy is in his mid 30's and he is dwelling on GPA's from 20 years ago. Fantastic! I wish life was that simple. That somebody actually gave a S#@! what I did in high school 20 years ago. Wow, I just can't write any more because I am dumbfounded.

I do not want to put the guys name in the blog, because I don't want to give him the pleasure of seeing his name somewhere else. However, I will post a link to his site here. Go to his site, look around, search him on google, it is amazing.

Sis, good for you, right call on this guy. He seems like a real loser. (Although I do like the T-Shirts he is selling on his website).

Mad and Cranky - Kein heiss Wasser

Not that I am pissed-off or anything but I woke up today got in the shower and we had no hot water,..... again! We had this same issue last weekend. This seems like the 5th time this year.

I wrote a pretty terrible e-mail to the managing company, Wincasa to complain about the service. It was of course in German, probably had terrible grammar, but whatever. They need to know that I am upset so I don't really care if my German is bad.

I probably could have laced the e-mail with some pretty grammatically correct choice phrases since those seem to be the things one is most comfortable with in a foreign language. While that would have made me feel better, both from a anger perspective and a Germanic grammar perspective I don't think it would have advanced my cause.

I'm sure our neighbor will be knocking on our door this morning to tell us she called, and then she too is pissed. I can she her now,

'Das ist nicht so gut!', 'Wincasa ist Schleck' says she.

Oh the joy.

Radiators & Hot Water

Our heating system and hot water system in our building is terrible. Over the course of the last calendar year we must have been without hot water on 6 or so occasions. We'll it happened again this weekend for a bit and our neighbor was of course coming over to complain about it and asking us to call.

The heating is bad too. This is the second season we have been hear. The Swiss heating systems are often dual purpose, they heat the water for the radiators as well as heating the water for use out of the taps. However the heated water out of the tap is no quite hot enough. It is just warm enough for a shower. I say just warm enough because as I am in the shower, I seem to always reach down and try to turn it just a little hotter. Only then realizing that the water is already on full blast hot.

So I guess now I'll have another 4 months of just hot enough, but not exactly hot showers just like last winter. What a disappointment when you get out of the bed, trudge through the cold apartment and into a very warm, but not hot shower.

For the past two weeks or so we have also had a river running though our apartment. All the radiators are filled with air, you can hear a constant trickle of water in just about every room. About every 3 days I diligently walk from room to room with my radiator key and bleed all the radiators. Everything is silent for about 2 days and then is starts again. If only the darn people in the offices below would bleed there radiators as well I might not have this issue.

Alas, I am the only one annoyed by it because we are one of only two apartments in the building. All the other just don't seem to care about their radiator maintenance. How tragic. Then again, they don't have to sleep through the night, waking up every couple of hours thinking someone is peeing in the corner of the bedroom.

Cracow Market Square

Cracow Market Square

I am not feeling very inspired to write today. So I will just post a photo from our recent trip. This is St. Mary's on Crawcow's rather large public square.

Social Experiment in Vandilization

An acquaintance of mine was telling me about a social experiment he was undertaking several months ago to judge the level of law abidingness of the Swiss population. He had recently moved to Switzerland and had procured a second hand bicycle. In some disbelief over the way people lock their bikes, or should I say generally don't lock their bikes he decided to run an experiment.

When the Swiss lock their bikes, 9 times out of 10 they don't lock them to anything. They simply run a small chain, about a foot in length through the back tire. This is apparently supposed to deter anyone from taking the bike. I'm sure with a screw driver and a hammer one could break these toy like locks and walk away with their choice of a fairly nice ride.

My acquaintance decided to forgo the cheap lock. Why bother he said. And, to a point I agree. Leaving his bike unlocked, everywhere he went, and even unlocked outside of his apartment over night his social experiment lasted around 4 months before his bicycle was stolen. I was amazed.

At the same time, you could say I too was running a social experiment with my bicycle. I have it parked right outside my apartment in a busy plaza. Yes, it is parked at a bike rack, but it is not locked to the bike rack. It is only locked, with a small chord through the rear wheel like all the other bikes. As this is the same bike I have had since highschool I am not to concerned about the well being of the bike. It gets me from point A to point B and it looks terrible, so I doubt anyone would be interested in taking it. Perfect for a city bike as far as I am concerned.

Well, my own social experiment came to an end this week. After being outside parked at the rack for most of the time between July 2006 and now my bicycle was finally vandalized. The acts of vandilazation however were petty, an embarrassment to the legions of Swiss teenage hooligans if zou ask me.

Have seen many bike vandilizations on a US college campus I was hoping the swiss could have come up with something like completely bent wheel rims, broken chains, missing seats, or the occasional bikeframe wrapped around a pole. I was sadly disappointed.

The managed to steal the bolt that held my seat post in place, steal a screw and nut from my bike rack, and loosen the rear break. How pathetic. Whoever did this needs to take a trip abroad and see some real vandilization. Anything that can be fixed by spending under 10 bucks at the local hardware store, which I did yesterday, is a petty attempt as far as I am concerned.

Crawcow Mall Rats

Inside of the Cracow Mall in Poland

I had a strange experience when I first arrived in Cracow. I was taking a train in from Warsaw and my wife was flying in from Zurich. I had beat her to the city by a few hours, so I had to find something to do to kill some time. While I was wandering around aimlessly I happened upon something that looked somewhat like an American mall.

Malls, as they are known in the US don't seem to exist very frequently in Switzerland, and I haven't seen many in other European countries either. Small shops on the street, or a large stand-alone department store seem to be the norm in Switzerland. The vast, cavernous, air-conditioned expanses with names like 'Yorktown', ' Stoney Point' or 'Oakbrook' are no where to be found.

Then I happened upon the Krawkowski Galleria in Poland. This place was fantastic. There were thousands of people wandering around, looking for nothing but everything at the same time. People looked relaxed. Men weren't all dressed in a nice crisp, ironed Hugo Boss shirts like you would expect in Paris. The women weren't all rail thin wearing elegant heels, even with a smart looking pair of jeans like you would expect in Italy. No, these were Poles, Sweatshirts, pullovers, and sloppy looking pants and midsections were abundant. I would even goes as far as saying they looked a bit American.

At one point I sat down on a bench, and just listened. I was listening to the drone of white noise that you often here in a mall. The soft syllables of one conversation and the next merging together into a seamless babble of a crowd. As I really listened I came to realize whether the people are speaking English, or Polish, that sound, the sound of a crowd talking, is exactly the same. And at that moment, for about 20 seconds I forgot I was in Poland, and felt like I was at home.

Basketball - Siwss Pickup

Last night I joined a group of guys that plays basketball on Wednesday evenings. It was a mixed group of Swiss and Expats. I heard about half the guys speaking English.

It was a two hour affair with a 30 minute warm up and then an hour and a half of non-stop play. Luckily we had about 12 guys so there was at least 1 sub a side.

Even with subs however I am really sore this morning. I am in no shape to be running up and down a basketball court with guys that seem to be about 10 years younger than I am. So, I will go back next week so I will be in shape.

The building we played in was very strange. A typical Sporthalle, or city gym. Here schools have no sports programs, so they don't have gyms. All sports facilities are run by the city. What was strange about this gym is we had to walk up about 3 or 4 flights of stairs to get to the top floor of the building where there door was. Then once inside we had to descend 3 or 4 flights of stairs to get to the gym floor.

It was a very bizarre, and very Swiss piece of architecture.

Wielizka Salt Mine

Alter Carved from Salt at the Wielizka Salt Mine

One side trip we took while in Krakow was a half day trip to the Wielizka salt mine. This was an active mine until 1996 producing a large quantity of table salt. I personally did not know that salt could be mined until I had heard about the mine and did some reading about it. Although the mine no longer produces any salt it has been turned into a strange and glorious tourist attraction.

To really appreciate the spectacle I think it helps to understand a bit of the Polish culture and their obsessiveness with Christianity. I don't mean that in a bad way, but Poles do incorporate religion, and especially the Virgin Mary into all daily activities.

I diverge slightly, remembering my own grandmother's statue of the Virgin that she kept on top of the refrigerator in her house right next to the ice cream cones. Both of course wrapped in saran wrap, the cones to protect there freshness, and the Virgin.... well, to keep the dust off.

So when one tours the salt mine a Pole would not be surprised by the altar carved in salt, or the life size statue of Jana Pawel II (Pope John Paul the second). Although I would bet to the outsider I could understand how this could appear quite strange.

There were many other things to see as well, a statue of Copernicus to exhibit Polish pride, the 7 dwarfs for the Americans, a few garden gnomes to please the Germans. It was really an all encompassing adventure. There was even a brine sea. The sea used to be open for boat rides, but that is no longer the case. At 14 degrees C I don't think you'd want to swim in it, although we were ensured you would float just the same as in the dead sea. I have a feeling if you got in this sea and got a case of the chills, you'd just end up like one big pickle.

Which by the way would also explain another Polish fascination with pickels. But that is another post.

So finally you may ask why is the 'salt' gray instead of white. Well apparently the mined ore is about 90% pure salt. The remaining 10% is sand, dirt, and dinosaur toenails I suppose. To extract the salt, the ore would actually be boiled and distilled which would yeild the pure white table salt that we are familiar with.

If you are ever in Krawcow, the trip is a nice experience. I would suggest it as something a little different than most European tourist experiences.

Visiting the Cousins Again

I had another business trip last week so just as I got back from Paris I was packing my bags to go to Warsaw. Fortunately I added 2 days of vacation to this trip and made a long weekend in Krawcow. I had been wanting to visit Krawcow for some time as it is the region of Poland that my ancestors had emmigrated from.

It was a nice feeling to be in the 'motherland' so to speak and see a part of the world that former generations of my family had come from. It was also another great chance to catch up on some old favorites, Pierogi, Kielbasa, Golonka, and Ocszepek. Once again the food was great, cheap, filling, falvorful.... everything food isn't in Switzerland.

We visited many churches, and the Wawel castle, we also took a half day trip the Wielizka Salt mines.

I added a few new words to my Polish vocabulary including komputery and laptopy. I did add a few more critical tourist phrases as well like 'check please' and 'Do you speak Enlglish?'. My pronounciation must be getting a little better because there were a few instances when after my short tourist phrase I would get responses in Polish. I am generally not used to that in Paris or Germany for that matter where even if I try to speak the local language I usually get responses immediately in English.

I am actually looking forward to being at home for a few weeks. I was really getting tired of living out of hotel rooms. At one point I was in about 4 different beds in one week. It will be nice to relax a bit and get back to work.

Parisian Sailboats

Children Playing with Sailboats at Jardin Des Tuileries

One of our weekend strolls took us through the Jardin Des Tuileries in Paris. As we wandered through the park we stumbled upon a small fountain that with a floatilla of small sailboats. A lone vendor was renting this small sailboats to children, or should I say their parents, for 2 Euros a half an hour.

The kids were casting the boats off with long bamboo poles and then running to the other side to wait for them to arrive. The children were screaming and yelling and often times hacking each others boats with their long bamboo poles.

The sailboats themselves looked like they were experienced. The tattered sails were worn, but functional. And an ingenious designed allowed the sails to freely catch any gust of wind ensuring that the boats would always make it back to shore.

It was a wonderful photo opportunity and the whole scene felt so French. I half expected to turn around and see a painter capturing the scene in Oils with me frozen in time watching the children play.

Alas, that was another spot and another medium, the pastel artist on the Pont Neuf.

American (and a Hambuger) in Paris

I haven't been blogging for a while because I was traveling on business last week. I had a few things to take care of in Paris so I combined a two day business trip with a nice weekend stay in Paris to make the most of it.

The trip started with an interesting experiment with a co-worker who was also headed to Paris. He was going to take a plane and I was going to take the TGV (high speed train). A race ensued to see which was faster.

Unfortunately I had to catch the TGV in Mulhouse instead of Zurich so the first leg of my Journey was on a regular train. I had a transfer in Basel and about 25 minutes to spare so in between trains I ran over to the local Burger King. First, because I had a huge taste for a Whopper, and second because I have a co-worker in Paris that loves Burger King but can't get a whopper in France. I was going to take him a burger but I figured that it wouldn't keep well. I settled instead for a little sign that said Der Whopper.

Once I made it to Mulhouse I got on the TGV. This train can run at 200 MPH ( 320 kph). I was a excited to get a chance to ride it, but as soon as I saw my backward seat I panicked. I do not travel well on any moving vehicle in a backwards position. True to past experience we started off and I instantly got sick to my stomach. Nothing embarrassing happened, but for 2 hours I felt horrible. The worst part is that it was dark outside, so you couldn't even see anything going by. I couldn't even get a sense of what it was like to be speeding along at 200 MPH.

The trip back on Sunday was better. I had a forward seat, and it was light out so I could see the rolling hills and the farm houses whizzing by. It was pretty neat to be going that fast. And sitting forward I didn't get sick at all.

On the way back we were a little delayed at one point and ended up with an unplanned 1 hour layover in Basel. Another excuse to stop at Burger King for a second chance to bing on an American treat.

We left Paris at 6:00 pm and finally rolled into our apartment just before midnight. And what about that race with my co-worker? Well, he showed up at the Hotel 5 minutes after me but left Baden about an hour and half later than I did. Despite the fact that the TGV will put you right in the heart of Paris it looks like a plane is still faster.