Samichlaus Umzug

The Christmas season is fully underway now.  Sunday evening was the Samichlaus Umzug (or St. Nicholas parade) along the Bahnhofstrasse.  A special red Märlitram starts the procession with the official Samichlaus and his angels.  This is followed by Schmutzli, St Nick's helper, and many more dressed up Samichlauses, elves, and Schmutzlis handing out Lebkuchen to all the children.  There was a band and a drum corps to provide some holiday music, and several horse drawn wagons.

Following the parade, we walked past a tree of singing children from the Züricher Musikschule where we stopped to listen and have some hot orange punch (I personally find this a horrible drink) and glühwein.

Warmed from the punch we finished up with a viewing of the famous Swarovski crystal Christmas tree in the Hauptbahnhof.  (Sorry no photo of this, our camera battery gave its last gasp on the above photo).

Our friends Krista and Matt joined us and you can see their photos if you click on her blog here:
www.redandblondeabroad.com.

Samichlaus Umzug

Thanksgiving day

Thanksgiving day was a normal work and school day in Switzerland.  In the morning, Elisabet and I shared photos of America with the children in her class.  They especially loved the pictures of our backyard (with the swingset) and the red maple trees in the fall.  When Travis got home from work in the evening, we had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, rolls, and beans for dinner.  I couldn't find a whole turkey so I made turkey "schnitzels" instead- surprisingly tasty and much quicker to cook.  The stuffing was made from local chestnuts and apples.  Travis mashed the potatoes with a wine bottle because we didn't have a masher or a mixer.  I used the same wine bottle to roll out the dough for the pie crust.  The chocolate meringue pie that I had to make in a springform pan since we don't have a pie plate.  We skipped pumpkin pie because canned puree is difficult to find.  I found a can of it (Libby brand) a few weeks ago in a specialty store and it had been shipped all the way from the US and cost 5.50 chf.   It is definitely a challenge to cook in our small kitchen with few kitchen tools and equipment.  I found myself washing my large bowl 3 times that day.  But the result was just as delicious and we had enough leftovers to eat it all again last night.  

Thanksgiving day

Around town

It's hard to believe we leave Switzerland in one month.  I've been carrying the camera with me to capture more images of the city and the places we frequent.  The first photos are of an area in Zürich called Stauffacherplatz.  We are there regularly to go to the American Women's Club of Zürich for dance classes and for library books.  It takes about 30-40 minutes on the tram to get there, depending on which connections we make.  Wednesday and today have been spectacularly sunny.  We haven't seen skies this clear for months.  The mountains are now covered with snow and make for an impressive skyline from downtown and from the top of Stettbach near our apartment.  Today we took a walk and played at the park.  A little girl from Elisabet's class was at the park and it was fun to here them all speaking German with her.  We hiked up the hill that the Kindergardeners take for the Waldtag hikes and then back down past the farm fields. Elisabet wore her crown for our excursion.  They had a birthday celebration at her school on Friday for all children with winter birthdays.  With 42 children in the school, they decided that was a better way to do it than have a birthday celebration nearly each week!

In and around Zürich

Bike route from Stettbach around the Greifensee

Today the weather cooperated with me for taking pictures along my favorite bike route.  For the autumn months it has either been thick fog (which eventually burns off in the afternoon) or rainy and cloudy.  This morning we had sunshine- what a treat.  I grabbed my camera and headed out for a bike ride, snapping photos of some of my favorite views.  The mountains were a little difficult to capture because the sun was so low and towards the south, but you get the idea.  It's quite breath-taking to be able to see the snow-covered Alps while taking in the farms, fields, and pristine lake.  

Candle making - again

We made a return trip to the Kerzenziehen at Bürkliplatz on Saturday to show Travis how it is done.  It was very crowded but fun to see all the families working together on their candles.  Some girls near us were working on a variety of different shaped candles; twisted, wrapped, and dotted.  A few of them even weighed over 1 kg!  We made 10 "small" taper candles and it took us over an hour.  It was hot in our section so the candles were taking longer to cool between dips.  As they got thicker, Hanna and Leif started taking theirs outside to cool and that seemed to produce the best result.  Elisabet was a overwhelmed by all the people and spent most of the time playing outside with Travis.

The candles finished, we headed up along the Bahnhofstrasse to take in the Christmas lights and decorations.  Each street is decorated a little differently, the Bahnhofstrasse with large hanging LED tube lights, the smaller side streets with hanging stars or bulbs.  The holiday season is definitely in full swing here!

Schweinegrippe

H1N1 is moving swiftly through Switzerland now.  Leif started getting sick on Saturday and we first suspected pneumonia.  After a long night of coughing and high fever we called our health center on Sunday and they sent a doctor to our apartment.  How nice it was to have someone come to us rather than having to drag a sick kid on the tram or bus to a hospital ER!  The test results came back positive yesterday afternoon, although by this point I was pretty sure that's what he had when Elisabet came home from school with a fever.  By the time I spoke with Leif's teacher in the afternoon, 15 (out of 21) children in his class were sick!  Now we just have to wait for it to make it's way through the family.....

Handmade candles

This week we used our no school Wednesday afternoon to make hand-dipped beeswax candles at Bürkliplatz in downtown Zürich.  It is common in Switzerland for communities to have a candle making tent set up during the holiday months.  We met up with Elisabet's friend Emma and her mom on the tram and were some of the first visitors of the day to the tent.  They set up large vats of beeswax and have pre-measured wicks ready for various sizes and widths of candles.  It took about one hour of dipping to make the taper candles that Leif and Hanna are holding.  Elisabet and Hanna also added a design to their candles by dipping it and then sticking drip dots on the candle and re-dipping it to secure them.  They have a polka dot look to them.  It was quite fun and we are thinking about returning another day to try some of the fancier designs of candles with a twist or a braid.  It is also possible to store your candle there and return to finish it later- for those who want to make one up to 10 cm thick!

Räbeliechtli

This holiday is celebrated on (or near) the second Saturday in November and has similar Celtic origins to Halloween.  A Räbe (the Swiss word for rutabaga or a swede) is carved out, lit with a candle, and strung for carrying it through the dark streets in a procession.  In some communities they even turn out the street lights on a specific night.

I went to Elisabet's school this morning to help her carve out two Räbe.  We cut off the top and scooped out the flesh with a melon baller.  Then we used little cookie cutters to make shapes on the outside and carefully scraped the skin so the light could shine through.  The final step was to put 3 strings through it (and the top) so it can be carried tomorrow night through the neighborhood.  It was similar to carving a pumpkin, although the skin was definitely easier to cut through.  And apparently they did not have a 'zero tolerance' rule for sharp objects in the school as it was necessary to use a large knife for cutting the top and paring or pocket knives for scooping.  Even the tools we used to poke the holes for the string would not have been allowed in most American schools!  We had lots of fun and Elisabet was quite pleased with the finished product.  I'm not sure that was as important as that I was sitting next to her in school AND she got to leave a little early.

The song we will sing tomorrow night goes like this:

Ich gaa mit myner Laterne

und myni Laterne mit mir.

Am Himmel lüüchted d Stärne,

da unde lüüchted mir.

De Güggel chräät und d Chatz miaut.

Eh, eh, eh, la pimmel, la pimmel, la pumm.

I'm walking with my lantern,

and my lantern is walking with me.

The stars are shining high above

 and we're what's shining down here.

The rooster crows, the cat meows,

Eh, eh, eh, la pimmel, la pimmel, la pumm.

For those of you who know "hoch Deutsch" you can see the similarities and differences in the Schwytzertüütsch dialect in this song.  Since it's a dialect and varies so much even within the German speaking parts, there is also not a standard way of writing it.  Hanna has already memorized the song from her CD of Swiss songs.  We were looking at a book about the festival and she immediately recognized it as one she knew.

The parade or procession turned out to be quite an event.  We met at Elisabet's school and there was a band and a huge group of parents and children, all carrying their lit lanterns.  There were even firemen to help out with the street crossings.  The band marched in front playing a variety of marching tunes, traditional Swiss songs, and popular songs like "just beat it".  We walked for over an hour going up and down all the little streets in our neighborhood.  Lots of people came out of their apartments to watch us.  When we finished up back at the Kindergarten, the band passed out chocolate bars for the children and there was hot punch and Glühwein for adults (red wine heated with spices).  Around 8pm we headed back to our apartment and Elisabet commented "this is the latest I have ever stayed up".   It must have felt so late after walking outside in the cold and dark for 2 hours.

Räbeliechtli

Halloween

Hanna organized a Halloween party this year and invited a friend from school.  Rather than trick-or-treating, we carved pumpkins, bobbed for apples and drank fresh apple cider from a nearby farm.  Travis took the kids on their bikes to the farm to pick out their pumpkins and they also stopped at the farm stand for milk and apple cider.  Our apartment was decorated with a colorful skeleton streamer from Gloria and handmade pumpkins, bats and owls taped to the windows.  Hanna's friend Eriona had never carved a pumpkin or celebrated Halloween (her family is from Yugoslavia).  It was fun to see Hanna speaking German with her friend, and it was clear that Eriona was pretty excited about the pumpkins and the bobbing for apples game.

The kids had talked about Halloween in their English classes at school and Hanna reported to us that they were starting to celebrate the trick-or-treating part in Switzerland.  Sure enough, after dark we heard our doorbell ring and we opened it to see a group of kids all dressed up and saying "süsses oder saures".  Hanna and Leif were so excited they happily passed out the candy they had received in the mail from Grandma.  Our neighbor downstairs told us that if you do not have something süsses (sweet) to give them, they will play a trick on your by doing something to your door.  The kids put their carved pumpkins on the stairwell to entice other trick-or-treaters and it worked like a charm so we had about 20 kids total.  And in the typical Swiss fashion of friendliness when they heard our kids speaking English to each other the trick-or-treaters would say "thank you, thank you" rather than danke vilmal.

One of the great things about kids is when they remind you that things do not have to be super fancy or perfect to make it fun... Hanna told us it was the best Halloween ever and Leif and Elisabet quickly agreed.

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Halloween