The Unicycle

Isabella's class gave a short circus performance on Friday night including some simple gymnastics, juggling and unicycling. Many of the students in our school have unicycles, riding them in front of the school or down the halls and in the lobby before school begins. Isabella has been adding allowance money to her small stash since we got here and finally was able to purchase a unicycle for herself.

Izzi and Xavier put on a short "bike show" to show off her unicycle:


Izzi in training


Missed the shot of Xavier coming down the stairs

Remembering the View

So we are definitely into a routine here and life seems somewhat ordinary...full of the same domestic chores as anywhere else in the world. I have to remind myself to "look up" sometimes, remember where we are, and appreciate it for the relatively short time we'll be here.

The view from the front door of our apartment building and Xavier's bedroom window:

Dem Balkon

It is raining today, but the rest of this week was sunny and in the 60's. Early in the week, the kids decided it was the day to clean our balcony.

Now the outside of our building is UGLY - putting it mildly. It looks just like the Soviet-built apartment buildings that Todd and I lived in when we were in Mongolia. So, the balcony is nothing I should be writing home about, but it provides a quick path to the outdoors for the kids.

Isabella and Xavier scrubbed until it was as clean as it could possibly be...

Must and Forbidden

Last Tuesday morning, I visited a high German course created and offered by the city of Ittigen. The class was near the end of it's 12 week session, but the teacher asked me to stay to try the course so I'd know if I wanted to join the session starting at the end of April. There were about 12 women in the room - no other citizens of the USA but women from Bosnia, Egypt, Dominican Republic, Thailand, Trinidad and Turkey.

The lesson for the day was about the verbs "must" and "forbid". We read and discussed things that you must do in your daily life and things that are forbidden. A few examples include:
1. You must not bathe after 21:00.
2. Children must be inside and quiet from noon to 3:00.
3. No using the lift after 22:00.
4. It is forbidden to smoke in the home.
5. It is forbidden to do laundy on Sunday.

I asked the teacher if these were true...if they were followed in Switzerland. She said, "Yes! Not in America?". I just laughed and said, "No. In America there is no order."

I have not yet spotted a single family home in Ittigen. There are townhomes, where two families share just the inner wall, but most buildings have at least 4 tenants in them. I'm guessing that the close quarters here have contributed to the regulated society - just my theory.

It's quite easy for us to follow most of the rules of the house, but the quiet from noon to 3 is a bit hard. Yesterday, Isabella and Xavier had lunch and laid low until 2:00. It was sunny and warm so they went out on the swings. Izzi was yelling joyfully about something, and I noticed the woman from the 3rd floor in the building next to us come out on her balcony to eye us down in the play yard. Maybe my imagination, but I think we'll ruffle a few feathers while we are here.

Farm Days

On Mondays each week, Isabella visits a farm with her class. Most of their time at the farm is spent harvesting wheat by hand. Isabella joined in time for threshing. Each child had made their own thresher - a large, thick stick with leather strapping at the end. The first few trips to the farm, the children stood in circles and took turns whacking it with their threshing sticks. The class has now moved on to cleaning and sorting the wheat, and is about to begin grinding. Once the flour is made, they will bake bread for the school.

This last week, Isabella's homework for Monday was to sort a bag of wheat. She was able to enlist the help of Xavier as well.

Walk to Ittigen Center

Mondays have been my laundry / grocery shopping day. I end up picking up a few items a couple other days a week as well, but Monday is when I fill our pull cart until it's overflowing. Here a couple of photos of the walk from our apartment to Ittigen center.


Walking path starts across the street from our building





Continuing down another section of walking path





Approaching center...Migros grocery store across this street






Migros grocery store






Entrance to shopping area - Ittigen Center






Up the ramp, over the street to train

Three Grandmas

On Saturday, Todd was on the phone with his dad. Xavier said to me, "Mom, we're lucky enough to have 3 grandmas, right?" I said, "That's right: Grandma Dalsing, Grandma Kuznia and Grandma Max". Xavier replied "Grandma Max is the one that has a hotel too, right?" And I said yes with a smile.

So Grandma Max, I hope you are enjoying "hotel living" as much as we are. We send our love.

Bikes - Books - Legos

It has been a great past week at the Kuznia/Dalsing household.

We ordered a bunch of books from Amazon. The final shipment arrived on Monday. We have all been reading a lot since we came. There is an English book store here with a fairly good selection, but it is still cheaper to order from Amazon and have them shipped. Izzi has picked up her reading pace from Minneapolis if that is possible and Kim and I usually read for about a hour every night. I enjoy not having a television. I spent way too much time sitting in front of that thing.

On Tuesday our shipment finally arrived. We shipped some kitchen stuff as well as bikes and toys. A disproportionate amount of the shipment was Legos. Xavier is a Lego machine. In fact, he is borderline obsessive. A couple times this week he woke up early, came out to the living room, grabbed a kit and started assembling. I would guess that he easily has 20 hours of building time since the shipment arrived.

The bikes arrived as well. We have a very sweet neighbor in the building who has kind of taken us under her wing. She stopped down on Saturday morning to see if the kids wanted to go up to the school and ride bikes. I hadn't put them together yet, so I quickly slapped them together and off the kids went. Later that afternoon the kids and I went for a ride. There was no plan to go up the mountain, but one thing led to another and we found ourselves riding some trails. Things were going pretty well until Izzi said, "Hey dad, think we can go down here?" I decided to go first to make sure it was ok, about a third of the way down it got iffy. Long story short I went over the handle bars into a sticker bush. I advised the kids not to ride it. We headed back towards home and had one small patch yet to ride. Izzi's breaks are a little iffy, so another long story short she took a spill as well when her back tire slid out from under her (it is my fault, I just can't get her rear brake set right). Below is a pic after our first successful ride.

And here is the result of the ride.

Mud

Finally, today was a wonderful day. Xavier was up at 6:30 to work on Legos. Later Kim, Izzi and Xavier worked on needle felting some animals while I put Kim's new ride together. After that was completed we headed up to the mountain and rode around some more. Took a break to go look at an old quarry. We all managed to stay upright today and Kim got to try out the beautiful new bike Andy put together for her.

Kim and X walking up to the quarry

Getting the Mail

When we first arrived, I never thought to check our mailbox. It just seemed strange that we would receive any mail here. But of course, we get bills here too. And Izzi and Xavier have several pen pals who've been writing quite frequently.

Ittigen's mail delivery vehicle...

Reasons to Love Switzerland (from Xavier)

1. Lego selection is better.
2. It's warmer here.
3. (and he continues to say...) I really like our hotel.

New Apartment...New Games

One of the kids favorite games right now is Gorilla Chase in which I chase through our home in a circular pattern. When I catch them, I make them into a banana shake - I'm the gorilla. Each of our windows also has an external shutter, something that is standard here, so we can also play this game in the dark even though it's midday.

The other game is Jump Over Dad. Todd lies in the middle of the living room rug and the kids take turns jumping over him. Todd has a way of creating games in which he just lies around:)

And finally, Todd and the kids have been presenting frequent circus performances for their audience of 1 (me). The circus is primarily made up of acrobatic stunts, and sometimes includes a bit of yo-yoing from Isabella and Xavier. Below is their ending pose.

Noticeable Differences

1) On Sunday, stores are closed. There is a gas station in Ittigen that is open and many of the shops in the Bern trains station stay open but that is it. Stores also close at 7pm on weekdays and at 5pm on Saturday.

2) No washing of clothes is done on Sunday, and not allowed in rental buildings. Sunday is family day and taken seriously from what I gather.

3) Certain food items that we are used to in the U.S. are not available or difficult to find and expensive here. Some include brown sugar, molasses, real vanilla extract, decaf tea. Although you can find a version of sliced, packaged bread here, it isn't commonly used and not real attractive. There is a wonderful variety of fresh bread available daily at all markets though.

4) Everyone bags their own grocery...everyone. Most bring their own bag, or own a wheeled cart (almost looks like a rolling suitcase) that they pack their groceries into after paying. We own one of these and I view it as a necessity. You can purchase reusable or paper bags at the counter if needed.
5) Everyone owns a Nespresso machine. This is an automatic espresso machine into which small capsules are inserted for each use to perfectly brew a single cup of coffee. You can buy capsules of different varieties.

6) People are reserved. Trains, trams, buses, streets and grocery stores are quiet. People don't talk much in these situations. When we ride the train, the children's voices echo through the cars. There is no doubt that foreigners are on board.

7) Everyone is active and fit. You see 60+ year-olds riding scooters down the hill to town center and lugging their skis on the train.

Burger Time

I have been remiss in my posts. Two very important burger episodes have taken place over the past couple of weeks and I have failed in my duties to keep you informed.

Two weekends ago (Saturday Feb 20) Kim and Izzi made yet another pilgrimage to Ikea. Xavier and I headed downtown Bern to meet Colin and Noah and watch the Fasnacht parade. The parade was ok, nothing too exciting but it was night to hang out the the boy and not be at Ikea yet again.

After the parade, we headed back to the train station. Xavier needed a snack and had his heart set on the french fry store. We get up to the counter and the advertised special is a burger with fries. Obviously we had no choice left in the decision. We placed our order and when it arrived we were a bit suprised to find two smallish beef patties on the plate sans bun. Suprisingly, the burger was quite tasty, in fact in was good enough that the next day after skiing at the Gurten, Xavier ordered the same thing.

The next burger was more traditional. The Marines from the embassy occasionally have parties where they will invite the expat community to join. They have a big american style spread with US beer and beverages for sale. They do this to raise money to help sponser their annual Marine Ball.

After wandering around the city a bit, we navigated to the Marine house with the help of Kim's swanky phone. Her phone has google maps and does location triangulation so we typed in the address, found a near by train and wandered about. Kind of felt like geocaching. the spread was pretty impressive, US ketchup, Wonder Bread buns and Kraft cheese slices and various other US goodies across the table. I fixed up plates for the kids as they sat in front of the TV and watched Aliens in the Attic. So the current ranking is:
3) Chocolate Burger
2) Burger sans bun from french fry store
1) Marine Burger

Our Little Mountain

posted by Kim

It has been in the high 40s/low50s this last week or so. After school on Thursday, I met the kids and we walked into the woods on our little mountain and had a picnic. A couple photos...

Socializing in Switzerland

posted by Kim
We are fortunate to know a family from Minnesota living in Bern: Colin, Alison, Noah and Daniel. Todd and I both worked with Colin at Wells Fargo, and Colin is the person who gave Todd the lead on his job here - they both work for Swisscom but on different projects.

Anyway...Alison has taken me under her wing since the kids and I arrived. She has passed on useful information regarding events and where to get stuff, and included me in several social gatherings. Last week I joined Alison and some of her friends here for dinner. It was a group of expats including women from South Africa, Ireland, India, California and us two Minnesotans.

Order...QUICK!
We met at a cafe in the center of Bern for drinks. The waiter came over when gestured to and several of the women rattled off their request; one grabbed for the drink menu to verify the wine she wanted. As soon as the waiter noted the lapse, he was off. No time for hesitating here. He was called back a few minutes later and the wine order was placed...he seemed annoyed.

Swiss Birthday Party
Isabella was invited to her first birthday party here for a female classmate. I phoned to rsvp and quickly realized that the birthday girl's mother spoke just about as much English as I speak German. I dug out bits from my community ed course in Minneapolis, to say that I was Isabella's mother, that she was in class with Fabienne and that "yes, come".

On Saturday we trained a couple villages away, got off and caught another train heading back in the direction from whence we came but a little bit west to the village of Moosseedorf. We wandered just a bit until we saw signs pointing us to the street we were looking for and quickly located the physical therapy building where the party was being held. It brought back memories of the class parties Izzi had back in Minneapolis in the studio of her friend's (Reuben) father.

As I left Izzi there with 6 other non-English speaking girls for the 5-hour party of free play, magician and lots of eating; it struck me how brave children can be.