zug

All in all, it was a lovely lunch and I really had a good time with them. They were very chatty, friendly and so nice to me.

Later, after they have gone back to Germany, we went to Zug to celebrate National Day.

Zug is a cute little town by the lake (every town in Switzerland seems to have its own lake and their own mountaineous view...how privilledged!) There was a fair and music playing there. It reminded me of the time I went to Jazz festival, near the Parliament, with Pueng. Cool breeze, warm smell of beer, low-key guitar and all that. Though here was smaller, people seemed to enjoy and appreciate the music. There were small group of kids did butt-shaking in front of the stage that later the staff had to come and ask them to stop. Haha.

We were waiting for the firework for quite some time and seemed that the official ones would not happen. So, we decided to leave.

It was a raining, but happy national day evening.

Bern

Bern to me is the city to fall in love...It is full of old buildings and architectures in nice cobbled streets. The city is surrounded by mountains and there is the clear Aare river dividing the city (sounds like Bangkok & Chaopraya river, right? The differences are the size (Chaopraya is bigger!) and the cleanliness (no need to ask)) No wonder UNESCO deemed it as a World Heritage Site.

Zytglogge
It's a Clock Tower. You can see a clock towers in every town, but what special was around 4 mins before every hour, there is a small display of the figures on the clock face - bells ringing, a king moving, cock crowing, etc. You wouldn‘t believe that there were many group tours with their video camera waiting for the display. Unfortunately, it didn‘t turn out as what the guide book described. There were some things going on one by one and we had to wait for some minutes until the next display began. Nothing big, though.

Einstein House
He lived in an apartment no. 49. It was found among the luxurious shops of today. Again, I like the way they displayed the museum. It was actually his room with his personal things and the description along. I have been always amazed by his incredible brain and wondelful works that he had done. But what interests me more was his personal life. Love life, to be exact :-))

„How could I have lived alone before, you are my little treasure. Without you, I lack self-confidence, the desire to work, the joy of life - In short, without you, my life is no life at all.“
A letter to Mileva Marlc (His first wife), 1900

Is this scientist a poet??

Munster
It‘s a Gothic-styled cathedral. I have studied about Gothic novels (Frankenstein and all that). The writers usually portray suspicious atmosphere and strange settings of odd architecture. And this cathedral is it! An example is a sculpture of a devil squeezing the throat of a woman on the roof. I just couldn‘t imagine myself walking around here during the night...it was a dark night with piercingly cold breeze. I am here in front of the wooden door and about to push it open. A heavy hand taps on my shoulder. I turn around and it was...!

Later we went to see the view from the top at Musterplattform. It was an open-air area. Some are sipping coffee at the small cafe, some taking a nap on the grass and some (like us) sitting and watched over the river Aare and wondering if there was any bear in the other side of the woods.

It was quite a long walk today. We took some unusual path that wasn‘t mentioned on the guide book to have a close look at the river. After that, we took a cable car up to the town to get Kebab (S.Fr. 7.50) and sat in the park near the train station. Bern isn‘t so big. We would call it a day and waited for our train in the next 2 hours.

National Day & Meet the Parents

It's the Swiss National Day!

I was expecting everyone to wear red or maybe some cute flag drawing on their cheek, but well, it was not really a phenomenon. There should be a parade around the Zürich's main train station, but it was raining since 10 am, so I guess it was cancelled.

However, meeting the parents definitely happened today. I was so nervous about my cooking. I prepared a huge portion of those raw food without knowing that it could be served to the whole village. (Now Alex & I might have to eat so many meals of noodle..haha) Mario and Isolde arrived a bit ahead of time while I was preparing carrots, radice, shrimps, etc for Fried Noodles and Soup. They were really a happy couple. It was my first time to see Alex with his parents and see how he interacted with them. He's a very lovely son - so caring and so talkative :-))

After one hour of cooking, the food turned out all right and tasty (pheww..!). I'm glad they all like it (Alex asked me to cook noodle again for dinner tonight...hehe..). Isolde really liked the Tempura and asked if I made it by myself..well, no, there was a ready-made powder in Asian Supermarket everywhere. So, I'm planning to send her some packs when I get back to Thailand. :-)