Warm Adventures: March 2012

Shorts weather for Erik (not me)

I can't believe we have been here five months already. In some ways it seems longer and in some ways it seems like we arrived just last week. Strange how that happens. As I've previously posted, we have been busy since our return and the weather continues to be incredibly beautiful. We've had days upon days of bright sunshine and warm 60+ degree weather. We met another nice family last Sunday at the playground who invited us over for a Wednesday afternoon playgroup/exchange market in their apartment complex. Alison really enjoyed that as they have a great playground as their meeting area. They also invited us over for an easter egg hunt.

Alison and Oliver car shopping

On Friday and Saturday we went car shopping. We initially thought we would be fine without a car as the train and bus system is great but it is challenging to be dependent on the train or bus to get you where you need to be. If you miss the train, there might not be another one to that location for an hour. And with another little one on the way, we just figured it would be easier to travel on our schedule and not be rushed to make the train with two little ones who have no concept of time. We went through this exercise early last year in the States when we were in the market for a new "family" car after Alison was born. We narrowed down our search as we wanted something that fit a car seat comfortably but also had good gas mileage. After driving the Jetta for so long and getting 30mpg I refused to go backwards in our mileage and that little detail made it difficult for us to buy a car last year in the States. I do wish we had pulled the plug and bought one however as they are quite pricey over here. The good news is that we can get a good "family" car that gets really good gas mileage (it is Europe and diesels abound), we just are going to pay out the wazoo for it. My friend Rachel's husband, offered to go car shopping with Erik on Saturday morning as he is a mechanic and also speaks the language. That was really nice of him.

Ali and Oliver driving a car

On Saturday we also went out to dinner in our little town. This is a rare event for us as again see previous comments (everything is expensive). But I was tired from running around all day and pulled the pregnancy card - I needed to be wined and dined, or in my case just dined. We weren't sure where to go exactly as we hadn't been to too many places around here, except for the Irish pub and although relatively inexpensive the food there is not that great. So we ended up at this lovely Italian restaurant that I had eaten lunch at before with Erik's friends Jeff and Samantha when they were in town. I was nervous about dinner there as it is sort of fancy and we did have Alison with us. Turns out it was wonderful and Alison did great. Our little one ate gnocchi, tortellini, spaghetti and more. And entertained the guests around us without too much fuss. It was a really lovely evening.

On Sunday, again awesome weather day - we took a family bike ride to Schloss Wildegg, the castle in an adjacent town that has a playground as well as a farm full of cows, pigs, horses and sheep for Alison to "ooohhhh" and "aaaahhhh" over. It was a wonderful day and there were so many people out and about. Next weekend all the castles reopen including the one in our town which we have yet to visit on the inside. So that is what we will be doing next Sunday. That is if we aren't too exhausted from our trip to the Zurich Zoo on Saturday. We've been invited to celebrate Oliver's 2nd birthday and are looking forward to it.

Easter Chocolates at grocery store

Some have asked about Easter and how they celebrate here. Well it is Switzerland so there is a plethora of chocolate at the store - bunnies in all shapes and sizes. They are serious about their chocolate. I will let the pictures do the talking on this one. Also they do dye eggs, in fact our playgroup will be dying them next Monday and hiding them on Wednesday. The funny thing here is that you can get hard boiled colored eggs at the grocery store anytime of the year.