Cooking & Speaking German

The only reason I am coming to Switzerland is to see my boyfriend. So, really, nothing really matters than to spend a quality time together with him even though he wants to show me how beautiful Switzerland is. After having been exhausted from some trips of the former days, we actually spent time together in the apartment & Zürich. I was quite excited to see his parents this Tuesday (it's also Switzerland's National holiday). We planned that I would cook for them. Hahha..really?

Talking about cooking, even though Thailand is famous for its spicy & delicious dishes, not every Thai can actually cook - I'm not one of them...I can say I need more time to master it. Eric, his family & Joe (Malaysian) has experienced a new version of Tomyum (which didn't not look exactly like one) and Alex also tried to swollow my strange Tomyum. But this time, I'm cooking for his parents!!

I have prepared (Tomyum paste), unfortunately his parents do not eat lemon grass. So, I changed to Fried Shrimp Noodles, Tempura (vegetable) and Fishball soup. Let see how this person who does not even pass Tomyum test can cook all these?? How it is like would be the summary of tomorrow :-). But that day I did again Tomyum koong (Shrimp) and weird fried Tagliatelle (looks like Fetuccini or somewhat Chinese noodle)...no need to explain how it turned out.

Alex tought me to say some sentences in German to his parents as well:
"Ich habe heute gekockt. Ich hoffe ihr könnt es essen. (Today I have a cook. I hope you can eat.)"
It took me 2 days to say 'gekockt' correctly. It was a real challenge since Thai language does not have /k/ sound (like when you try to cough) and end it with /t/ sound. Difficult eh? Try...'gekockt'.

Today we overslept, so we missed the trip to Bern (again, /rr/ sound like when you want to cough and end it with /n/. Not /Baen/ or /Burn/, but /Bae rr n/). We took a boat on Zürich lake and travelled to end of the lake (that's 2 hours for the speed of 27km/hr.). We reached Rapperswil in St Gallen. Up on the hill by the monastry, we could see Zürich lake surrounded by mountains. It was such spectacular views. The weather was just perfect - cool, but not so windy. The whole area was just romantic.

Indeed a beautiful day... :-))

Winterthur

Today we had a special guide, Urs, Alex's Swiss colleague from UBS. He gave reason for not moving close to his office in Zürich, but chose to stay in his small town in Winterthur because here has EVERYTHING he needs. So, we're here to prove it!

Near the main train station (Hauptbahnhof) there are many sweet, cute buildings, lovely. It looks like houses in a fairy tale. It was early in the morning, only few people striving around in the town. So we could have a undisturbed look on this city. Amazingly, I've found three Thai shops and throughout the day I've seen four Thai women! I believe, Thai immigrants are really living at this place! (with their Swiss husbands ;-))

After visiting the city we took a train to Effretikon and changed there to a bus to Kyburg. It is very countryside. One big difference between bus in Thailand and bus here is that in Thailand buses travel only on the main traffic road, while here buses also go on the small streets and we can check out people's houses ;-)

Kyburg is a castle built in Middle Ages. I knew it is a museum, so I excpeted one like in Thailand, where they put lot of artifacts in glass boxes and descriptions on the wall beside the exhibited items. Kyburg is organised in a very creative way. For example in the kitchen room you hear the sound of people cooking and there is a board where you can smell different herbs and guess which smell belongs to which herb. I am not a cooking person, everything smelled the same for me. While Alex scored 100% - unsurprisingly, because he likes to cook. The castle is extremely big and every room are used for the exhibition in different ways. You can try other things like lifting a heavy stone by using a hoist. Or trying to sleep on a bed stuffed with leaves like they did some hundred years ago. They try to illustrate the daily living of the inhabitants of the castle.

Very impressive was also the torture room - very strange. I am sure that in Thai history there was also torment on people, but I've never seen any torture equipment exhibited in a museum in Thailand. Here they exhibited a coffin-like instrument full of knives. You can put people in there and close it. Luckily it is only fake and such thing was not known in Middle Ages. The owners of the castle in 19th century just pretended to get more attention for their museum. Kyburg was inhabited not only in Middle Ages, but people lived there until beginning of the 20th century. During 18th century also people in Kyburg imitated French furniture and life style. For example, the furniture becomes more delicated and decorated with gold.

At lunch time we picniced by the castle. Of course, Alex prepared it :-) I had never thought before of picnicing when going to a museum. It was quite a new experience for me. Soooo farang...

Kyburg is 50 minutes away from Zurich city, and I've found a lot of differences between these places. There are less cars in the area around Kyburg. There are only low storey buildings. Most of the area is filled with fields, barns and farms, and I saw a man riding on a tractor. From Kyburg, we walked twenty minutes on the way back to enjoy the country side. It was hot, but the sun is not as burning as in Bangkok. When the clouds covered the sky, the wind blowed again and I felt cold. I was very sensitive to the weather changes which occured so fast.

We went back to Winterthur to see a photo exhibtion there - I love photos. The many different concepts of the photos there were quite a new experience. There were a lot of African and Afghan faces. I saw a lot of sadness in their eyes which reflected the political turmoil in their countries. Another theme was showing the photographies of important events, e.g. the hotel where Martin Luther King was shot; the crossroad in L.A. where a black American guy was beaten by the police; the theatre seat where an assassinator was arrested by the police. You don't see people on the photo, but you see the strong, energic vibrancy in these photos and your brain imagines what could have happened at this time. Another artist imitates famous press photos and changes it's meaning in a positive way. For example, an American solider instead of being greet by American people was embraced by a Muslim woman; the picture of a Vietnamese naked girl running away from American soldiers was imitated in such a way that it was only a girl running with a happy face. By mocking the famous pictures, you can actually switch the mood and meaning of the photo very easily.

To finish the day, Alex took me to the mountain "Uetliberg" to oversee Zurich. You can see the bird-eye view of the whole city. It was so beautiful! I could see that the Zurich lake is much vaster than I had expected. Even the city is crowded with buildings, there are many green areas around the city. There were many families coming for a trip to take photos at the peak - like us :-)

Switzerland - here I come!

Finally I can make it to Switzerland!

It's really a destiny that eventually I am here after several attempts on April - after tears and argument with my boyfriend. But really, can you really work against the destiny when you were not meant to go on that month? Now another try and everything went perfectly smooth: I don't need to pass the probation before taking a holiday, a perfect flight with Emirates (only 3hrs transit), getting a nice shiny yellow visa, my boyfriend taking a week holiday with me....no others can be a happy girl like me now!!!

The flight was unexpectedly hectic. I hadn't been sleeping longer than 3 hours for 2 nights because I tried to get my work done and wanna have a worry-free holiday. I thought I would get a good night sleep at 2.30 am on the plane. No, it was not as easy as that. The flight was postponed for 30mins. When I got on board, it was a non-smoking, but a crying baby flight. I was sitting between 2 men that one of them tried to speak to me in Thai. I was impressed, but Mister, I really needed some sleep. You know? life is worse if you expect some sleep and people want to talk with you and flight attendants want to serve you food and turn on the light. I woke up every hour because I didn't want to sleep on either guy's shoulder and drool on him!

Eventually, I arrived in Dubai at 6am. Waiting for transit is not so painful for me if there is a comfortable seat and to know which gate I should go to. But well, today the transit area was very packed. Seats were occupied. Everyone - blond, black, bald slept on the floor. I was lucky to grab one seat and had a short nap. But the flight wasn't actually shown on screen...I was so afraid that I will miss the flight when time was getting close, but I still didn't know which gate I supposed to go to. An important note for all travellers, do ask the information center, do not rely much on screen monitor. I was there for the final call-phewww!!

This flight to Zurich should have been much more fun if I have spoken to the neighbor lady during the 6-hr flight. I spoke to her when the plane landed. Her life was very interesting. She was New Zealander, used to live in Christchurch (the place I have gone out of the country for the first time!) and she was married to an Saudi Arabian and had a 14-yr-old daughter and now she was going to pick her up from a Summer camp in Geneva. What was interesting was her middle-east cultural experiences and how she was bringing up the mixed culture child. Life in Saudi Arabia is conservative and women are not allowed to drive and need to be escorted by father or brother or husband and it is easier for women to stay at home than lead an active life outside of the house. Her daughter was very excited to enjoy all outdoor activities with multinational friends in Switzerland. She planned to support her child every way to gain int'l experiences.

Here I am I'm finally breething in the hot air of Zurich (30 c, do you believe that?), kissing my German boyfriend and about to sleep again...

Auf Wiedersehen!