Week 3: Life in Luzern and Weekend in Zurich

This week had a few adventures. One funny moment was on an application. There’s a space where the Au Pair writes their birthday. It says month:______ Day:______ Year:______ . This Au Pair wrote; month: March day: Saturday year: 1984. I was laughing so hard. There have been some other pretty funny translation things. One Au Pair wrote under special requests: “an accident that leaves me with physical damages” or something like that. Ya, I dono either!
There was a football game (meaning soccer) on Tuesday night which was really fun. It had been pouring all day and it was still coming down when they first started to play but stopped about 15 minutes in. there was still lots of mud which was pretty funny until... two guys on the same team collided and one guy broke his nose in 6 places. I heard it! It was gross.
There’s a girl from the Boston office here for two weeks. They’re doing exchanges so they’re sending people around to different offices to learn from each other. So because we’re the two newbies we did a bit of touring together and will be going to Lozan and Geneva this coming weekend. One afternoon we went up Mt. Pilatus, one of the large and beautiful mountains next to Luzern. Because EF gives so many tours and sends hundreds of people up the mountain they have two cards that they can give to whomever so they can go up for free. So cards in hand we made the short trip to the next town over and took the gondola up the mountain. There are 3 stops all together, one being the top so we got off at the 2nd one and looked around and took some pictures. At that stop they have one of the longest rope courses in Europe. Complete with Zip lines and a little toboggan-sledish thing. We got up to the top and there were lots of clouds but the weather has been so up and down that we were very excited for any views we got. Plus being inside a cloud was pretty cool. We took pictures, walked all over the top, had a yummy lunch and took a train down. The train down Mt. Pilatus is the steepest train in the world! Then we had a little adventure getting home. When you come down the mountain your in a little town very close to Luzern but on the other side of the lake. We got on the train back going the wrong way so we had a nice little 30 min. tour of the next town before going back.














Friday I went right into Zurich after work and met up with my Danish friend. We had dinner at a Chinese/Indian/tai restaurant, it was delicious then took a brief walk around before going back to her place. She rents a furnished flat that is beautiful! It has a balcony and the cool widows that can open in and out as well as tip up and down (so it’s closed at the bottom but the top is open, like a V). The owner loves Latin America and photography so there were many excellent photos of South America. I was most surprised however that next to the bed there was a poster that said MUSIC IN THE CITY, Downtown San Jose. I looked closer and it wasn’t talking about San Jose, Costa Rica but San Jose, CA! I was so excited.

Saturday she showed me around the city which is beautiful. It took a little while for the weather to clear up so I didn’t get to take many pictures. I did however buy some really cool Indian Flats (shoes) from a market that was cradled between the river and a few buildings and had many different stands selling a variety of beautiful things from India. At one point I saw a painted cow statue. This seems to be an international phenomenon. There were sharks in Down town San Jose, bears in Berlin, Lions in Munich… anyway. That evening we went to some stables where one of the girls in the church keeps her families horses because they were having an event. There was food, a live band, a mechanical bull and best of all… Swiss Alpenhorns! It was amazing to hear the men plan these horns. I must also mention that hearing a Swiss guy sing old-school country western songs in English is a once in a lifetime experience! Pretty funny.
To get to this event we had to take a few different trains then get off and take a bus, which we missed so we walked instead. We were rewarded with views of a quaint Swiss town. I don’t know where all the people were but at 18:00 on a Saturday night, the place was deserted. We also walked through some woods before finding the Stables.
After such a long journey we were starved. I went traditional and had Worst and potatoes with bread and salad, yummy. Then we just hung out and talked, danced, laughed until about 11:30. There were about 15-20 people from the church there. Some of whom I’d met, others I had not. The girl I was staying with left early so some other people give me a ride home. It was fun to be in a car and see the Swiss freeways.





Sunday service was great as usual, then lunch with a woman from Estonia I believe. She spent a year in NYC, moved home, married a Swiss guy and now lives in Zurich. There are so many people here from all over the world! Soon after lunch I went back to my Danish friend’s flat to get my things, then took the train home so I could talk to my dad before he went of to church in the morning (his time). We have breakfast every Sunday so it was comforting to talk to him on a Sunday. He even saved his breakfast to eat with me while we talked, and I ate my dinner. It was also special to talk to him because it was Father’s Day in the USA and in fact, the very first official Father’s Day in Switzerland (FYI, in Sweden it’s in November).
Well, that's this week!
As always, you're on my heart.

Love, Wildy