We decided it would be cool to do some carolling at the seniors retirment home here and the long term care facilities, but I don't know if that is going to happen now. We have about 12 people (interns) that are interested and we were going to do a practice and then sing next week because alot of the interns are leaving to come back to Canada early and have different office parties on different nights, but on the night we wanted to do it the senior home is going for a Christmas shopping spree in town. So we might not do it now.
I bought a bike because in the winter it gets rainy and I can't skateboard in the rain. My bearings rust and the tires slip and bad things happen. So I bought a bike. On rainy days I was taking the bus and I didn't like having to base my working times around bus times and prefered the freedom of coming and going whenever I wanted on my own schedule. So I was anxious and just bought the first bike I could find. It was for 144chf (same as $) and it is a really sweet racing bike. It has clip-in pedals (the guy's shoes fit me and he gave me them for 6chf) and the gear shifters are on the the bike frame rather than the handle bars and it is sweet and blue. The only negative thing is that it has tiny little racing tires. And the thing is that it also snows in Switzerland. It snowed pretty heavy for a couple days a couple of weeks ago, and has stayed around since then. Apparently this a rarity for this area. I have been told usually it snows, then melts the next day and such. So I have been been carefully navigating my way through snow piles and avoiding ice and have only lost traction a couple times with no falls yet.
I'm looking forward to skiing (snowboarding for me, but it's easier to talk about it as 'skiing'). Since the end of October I have had some of my friends going every weekend. At the start there were only glaciers that were open so the skiing was pretty crappy, but now areas are starting to get good. I have 5 weekend skiing trips scheduled in between January and March. I also bought a helmet, as I figured that my figure is aging (and feeling the effects of Swiss chocolate and German beer) and I won't be able to rely on my looks to get me by in life and so I should protect the head area.
This weekend my was my weekend off, and I enjoy them. I had been traveling for the last five straight and it's nice to just sit. Yesterday I ended up biking and touring a couple of the neighboring villages looking for fenders for my bike (hard to come by because it is a racing bike) and went through Baden's Advent market. It was outside on pedestrian streets around a big church overlooking the river. There were lots of knitted stands(toques and scarves and mittens), wooden toy puzzle things, candles, fancy candle holders and wood work and jams. The food stands were bratwurst, or raclette and glogg. People here love their big meat portions. It comes from the southern Bavarian Germans that just eat big chunks of bratwurst or variations of other big meat portions. I think I had talked about raclett before, but it is just melty cheese on bread. More cheese than bread usually. The stands here had a big pickle you got too. I don't know if they acually called the glogg "glogg" here. It's 'mulled wine' or 'hot wine' or whatever you want to call warm wine with spices that you drink in the winter. I actually haven't had it in Europe yet (will probably try it one of the next two weekends in Germany) but I have tried it in New Zealand a couple years ago and when we were in Copenhagen a couple weeks ago they called it 'Glogg' there.
Last night I went to a church and watched a choir. I had seen a sign on the church during the day that said there was something going on at 20h (8pm) and I guessed it would be something involving Christmas and some kind of singing or performance. It turned out to be a 55 person choir with a drummer, two guitar players (one acoustic & one classical), a xialaphone and a flute and a conductor. It was really cool. It was sister act style with lots of high and lows and choir harmonies and different people coming out and doing solos. And it was all english. For different songs there were special 5 minute guitar solos (they would do like a dueling guitar back and forth and then join together) and some sweet drum solos.
Today was just church and then a relaxed pancake breakfast with some people that came over. All my roommates are gone, so it was just others that were over. I had thought about going for a walk this afternoon along the ridge of a hill overlooking the town and then sledding down, but that switched for crip and hot chocolate and Christmas carols (Abba is playing right now).
So it is slow and relaxed and I feel that this is portrayed in my tone of this post because I don't feel very enthusiastic.
Next weekend I am going to Berlin (pray we don't get bombed on), and the following weekend I am going to Cologne (bother cities are in Germany) to stay with the German girl that lived with me in residence at university in Calgary last year. To get to Cologne I am doing mitfahrgelegenheit. This translates into 'ride sharing', and it is like an organized hitch-hiking. People post what routes they are driving and you get in touch with them if you want a ride for that same route. So I am doing that. It will be a long drive. Cologne is 500km from where I am, and the guy I am traveling with drives this route every weekend and said last week it took him 7 hours. I hope that was just because of snow because I would have thought that with the German Autobahn we would be able to do it in less than 4 hours (last time we took the autobahn we probably averaged 170km/h over the 2.5 hour trip and did 220 for about 5 minutes straight at one point).
I will be in southern Spain for Christmas day, and shortly after taking a ferry across to Morroco where I will spend the rest of the week before returning to Geneve on New Year's Eve.
I'm over half way through my year here. Trips that I did 3 months ago seem like just last weekend, but by Wednesday I usually don't remember where I was the weekend before. It's a different lifestyle of catching a train to an airport every Friday night to fly somewhere and spending the week planning my next hostel and bike rental. There are a lot of things I like about Europe and I think I could live here. More and more, from seeing new places, I am forgetting about missing Canada (places and lifestyle, not people). But at the same time I am starting to get cravings for hockey.
I think the next 6 months will go by slower as I will have more weekends skiing, but I do have three week long trips (Egypt-Israel-Jordan, Greece, Canary Islands). I guess we will see, but it seems like I will be transitioning in my travel style at least and not touring as many cities.
Anyway I'm going to go try to snowboard down this little hill outside our house and see if I can do 180s and 360s on my board for the first time. My introduction to inner city riding.
Take care and enjoy the holidays.
without wax
ben
