Off to Madrid

Tomorrow we are traveling to Madrid, Spain for the weekend. I'm very excited and looking forward to it. Rest assured we'll take lots of photos. We are going to visit the Prado museum and try to take in some local sights and flavors with some friends who live there. Hopefully I won't run into any Real Madrid fans or it will be clobbering time!

Be Champions! Ciao

Carnivale in Venice

We went to Venice on Feb 20 for the Carnivale. The Carnivale is a fantastic celebration before the Lentin Season. People dress up in old costumes and wonderful Venitian masks attending balls, listening to music, and having fun. On Friday we took the morning train from Geneva to Venice. The trip there was spectactular. The train made its way through towns and valleys surrounded by the Alps. Snow was everywhere in Switzerland, but as we got closer to Italy the snow had disappeared. We arrived in Venice around 3pm.

Instead of going to the hotel straight away, we ventured out into Venice. If you haven't been to Venice before let me paint a picture for you. It is is a small city with 3 to 4 story buildings sandwiched together with small sidewalk sized pathways. (no cars) It is a labyrinth. It is quite easy to get lost, but that is part of the fun. We headed to the Plaza of St. Mark where much of the activities were happening. It took us about 40 minutes to get there. Once at the square we started to see a lot of fantastic and creative costumes. There were a lot of activites there. One lady was doing acrobatics mid-air while teathered to a large baloon. On another section of the plaza were actors singing and performing. We stayed in the plaza until about 10PM and returned to our hotel via water taxi.

We stayed until Sunday when we returned back to Geneva. Rather than bore you with some long narrative, you should check out the photos in the album.

Be fantastic. Ciao.

Trip to Zurich

Last weekend, we went to Zurich to visit our friends Mark and Dana. We had a great time. On Friday we met Dana at the Zurich station. Then we met up with Mark and his co-workers from Google at Desperado's, a Mexican restaurant, for dinner. There were twelve of us eating in the very back of the cozy restaurant. Ann and I talked with this guy from Spain, and several other of Mark's co-workers. It was great fun.

I was suspicious about Swiss Mexican food, and rightly so. I ordered beef tacos, and what I got was similar to tacos but not quite. My plate arrived and on it were two tacos on a bed of rice. It looked OK... but what is this? They put the beef on the outside of the taco. Lumped right on the side of the shell. So instead of putting the meat in the taco, they put bean salad in the shell. My guess is that they got some discounted cookbook with a bad translation on what a taco is. Regardless of its appearance I ate it. It was alright. Not the best, but not the worst I've had. The beer helped, too. And to add to the strangeness, in the middle of our meal, the lights in the restaurant were shut off. Then some hideous birthday music blasted ... "Happy Happy Birthday ...Happy Happy Birthday ...Happy Happy Birthday ..." then out came some of the staff with a cupcake that had a sparkler planted in the middle of it. It was brought to the next table to some guy with his family who was really digging the whole experience. When the birthday guy received his cupcake, the waiter lit a firecracker. Then the lights went turned on and it was back to business as usual. It was an interesting meal to say the least. After dinner, we went to a nearby bar and had beer before taking the train back to Mark and Dana's place.

The next day, we mainly stayed indoors at the shopping mall. We had fun being mall rats and hanging out. We didn't do much of the touristy things since it was freezing outside.

Before going to dinner, we visited Mark's office at Google. He gave us the grand tour that included their various break rooms, video game rooms, library, chill out room, massage room, and many fireman's poles scattered throughout the building for quick travel between floors. The place is totally pimped out!!! Google went to great effort to make it a very very comfortable work environment. It sort of reminded me of a college atmosphere - very light hearted and fun. If I were a programmer, I would seriously consider working there. It was a really neat experience. Next time I'll take some photos.

After visiting Google, we had a fantastic dinner of fondue and wine at a small restaurant in the Hotel Villette. The owner of the restaurant, Carlos, was very entertaining. He made all sorts of jokes and was very amusing. I did most of the communicating since Carlos loved to speak Spanish. I enjoyed his jokes especially about why it was important to drink beer to promote healthy bladder function.

We didn't see much of Zurich since it was so cold out, and we didn't want to brave the weather. What we did see of Zurich was really nice. It is a much larger city than Geneva, and has a nicer atmosphere. I think this is probably because more people live AND work in Zurich as opposed to Geneva where most people are either merely visiting, on temporary assignment, or live in France and commute to work. I really enjoyed Zurich and would love to check it out more. By the way, while the majority of people speak French in Geneva, the folks in Zurich speak Swiss German and High German.

medieval times

This weekend we had great fun with some of our friends from the USA. They have been living in Zurich, Switzerland for almost a year. So when I got this post here in Geneva, we were excited because we had friends near by. Today we ventured out of town and saw the Chillon Castle with them. (We already have posted the photos so you should check them out. ) It was a very unusually bright and sunny day - normally you can't find the sun. On the train while watching the countryside, the sun's rays blinded us at times. But it didn't distract us too much from taking it all in. The views of Lake Geneva with the snow capped Alps in the background were fantastic. On the way there we joked around over a few beers. We picked up a couple of cans of Budweiser at the Geneva train station. Oh, and this isn't the same Bud beer as the USA, this is the original Budweiser from the Czech Republic. It's so nice to be able to enjoy a beer on the train, or while walking around in public. The country side was full of dormant vineyards next to beautiful chalets. The terrain gradually slopes down (like stadium seating) towards the lake so that most of the buildings built there have a nice view. After a half hour, we switched trains in Lausanne, home of the International Olympic Committee, and UEFA. From there, we took another thirty minute train which dropped us off next to the castle. We were quite anxious to make it to the castle as we needed to get rid of that beer we drank. Once we had our biobreak, we started our tour of the castle.

The castle had been built over a period of hundreds of years with various improvements and additions. We started out by visiting the underbelly where the cellars once were. While there, we found out that the castle has its own label of locally produced wine. We weren't interested in the wine as we've already tasted Swiss wine and weren't too impressed by it. Continuing on through the cellar, we toured the dungeon where prisoners were kept. I kept on trying to imagine how it was hundreds of years ago - some poor souls kept there in the dark cold stone cage, cut off from the world, slowly going mad listening to the waves from the lake. The castle is mainly famous due to the poem "The Prisoner of Chillon" written by Lord Byron in 1816. We even saw on one of the pillars his name carved into the stone. After the dungeon we toured the rest of the castle. It really was a miniature town. I was impressed with the quantity of rooms, and number of different passages everywhere. My favorite part was visiting the main hall. One of the exhibits described a feast of 6000 eggs, 200 pigs, 400 calves, 200 piglets, and a bunch of other meats. I was impressed with this amount of food. But it left me to wonder how many people did they have at these banquets? The tour of the place was fantastic and very interesting. Once we were finished, we headed back to Geneva.

Back in Geneva, we had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant. Personally. I had always wanted to eat Ethiopian food. It was a great experience. The food came out on a large plate two feet in diameter. There was an assortment of lamb, beef, chicken, lentils, cabbage, potatoes, and salad all on top of a spongy bread. One of the best things about the meal was that you used your hands. Basically what you did was take some bread, scoop up some food and eat it. It was fantastic! We really liked the whole communal aspect of eating from the same plate and sharing a new experience. The dinner was a great ending to a truly wonderful day.

Photos ... coming to the blog soon...

In case you haven't seen our photos yet, we have them up here.

I'm planning on using Picasa to incorporate photos here.. stay tuned...

Internet at last

I guess I forgot how life was fifteen years ago when having a connection to the Internet wasn't the norm. Let's face it now a days most people rely on the Internet for regular communications. For us it is even more so as we are so far from home. Now we'll be able to communicate via email, Skype, and instant messages whenever we want. The Internet really does make the world a much smaller place. Quite amazing.

Ouch I'm bleeding money

OK I was told before I came out here that things are expensive. I took the advice with a grain of salt. I mean how bad can it be? Well they were right... Geneva is hands down the most expensive place I've ever been to in my life. The reason why Europeans are skinny? It's because food is expensive! just kidding!!! But seriously things here are very expensive ... to illustrate my point look at the following crude formulas


1 Meal at Restaurant in Geneva = 3 to 4 Meals in USA
1 12oz steak at grocery store in Geneva = 1 dry aged, prime ribeye steak cooked at Ruth Chris
1 lbs apples from grocery store in Geneva = 5 lbs of apples from USA grocery store
1 haircut in geneva = 4 haircuts in USA

I could go on and on... perhaps I'll scan some of my receipts and share them here. So you can feel the pain. I always wondered why Europeans act if they are on a lottery shopping spree when visiting the US .. now I know why. Just in these few short days I have a much greater appreciation for some of the benefits of living in the USA. I'm not saying I don't like it here... that is the furthest thing from the truth. I love it here even if it is expensive.