A Personal Recycling Calendar!

Every newcomer has to learn how to recycle the Swiss way. Unfortunately, there are not too many resources available in English. Swissstory offers some great info on the topic, as well as a recycling map.

When I first arrived, I got my recycling sorted (so to speak) by picking up a copy of the Living in Zurich Handbook from AWCZ, the American Women's Club of Zürich. The Handbook offers not only a comprehensive description of recycling, but also covers topics from banking and insurance to education and finding an apartment. (One of my favorite resources is a glossary of food terms that I use all of the time when shopping. )

I just found out today that the Stadt Zürich ERZ offers a handy, online personalized disposal and recycling calendar (Persönlicher Entsorgungs-Kalendar). Just select your street name and house number from the drop-down menus and click on the types of waste removal. Click on Kalendar anzeigen and voilá! Your calendar appears, including holiday pick up dates.

The calendar is, of course, in German. It wasn't too hard to follow using my handy Apple Dashboard translator widget. I selected, Hauskehricht (inflammable trash, in other words, trash minus recyclables), and the results noted that the Züri-Sack-Container (bin or dumpster) must be set out curbside before 7 AM in the pickup day. The pickup is weekly on Fridays. Holiday service dates were also noted.

You can also subscribe to a free SMS reminder service so that you won't forget to set out your carefully bundled paper/cardboard/textile recyclables.

Need to get rid of some old furniture, skis, frying pans? There is a monthly free pick up for these and other specified large items at various train stations around Zürich on the Cargo-Tram.

Now if only I could find some information on the site about trash pick up during road construction...

A Pint of the Black Stuff: Our Dublin Getaway

Last week we decided we couldn't take the noise and dust and heat on Seefeldstrasse. The mess was a perfect excuse to fly to Dublin--on business of course. Dublin is one of the coolest and rainiest corners of Europe, and we like it that way. Not a day has gone by without rain (but some sun as well). The temperatures are soothing 16-19 degrees Celsius and the breezes cool even when the sun manages to stay out for more than a few minutes.

Thanks to an unusual point scheme for business travel, we're staying at a posh hotel on the grounds of the RDS (Dubin Horse Show), observing the international haute bourgeoisie in their natural habitat. Right now the ladies are down for afternoon tea.

I am not having tea, having already partaken of a decadent bread and butter pudding (with loads of cream) after lunch at Farm. The restaurant is one of the first locavore ventures in Dublin, and offers a eclectic mix of veggie and carnivore plates. Most items are organic/free range. I had the chicken breast sandwich, which came on house made focaccia, dressed with a fiery aioli. I chose the salad side, a fresh mix of bell peppers with cucumbers, lettuces, and chick peas. A glass of Picnique white (from the Languedoc), didn't quite stand up to the hot sauce, but was pleasant all the same. The food was good: solid, simple, and satisfying. The bill came to 30 Euros, a bit on the high side. So much for my lunch budget!


There are great restaurant deals to be had, however. In the wake of the Celtic Tiger's demise most restaurants are now offering an "early bird" menu, often coyly referred to as a "Pre-Theatre Menu," which generally offers a two- or three-course meal for 20-30 Euros. These menus are on offer at many of the cities best restaurants, some even available for quite extended pre-theater hours.

Fallon & Byrne, a foodie destination restaurant, offers a pre-theater menu all night Mondays through Thursdays (and until 6:45 on Fridays). The menu offers 3 courses for 30 Euros and 2 for 20. We started with the crab and avocado salad, a modestly portioned shredded crab salad with ripe avocado. Very nice with a glass of Spanish white. For the mains, we went with the the baked pollack, a humble fish but perfectly cooked and nicely complemented by lightly roasted zucchini and perfect potatoes fondant. We splashed out a bit and chose a Trimbach Riesling for 36 Euro, although we could have chosen among some great whites on the under-30-Euro wine menu.

The food was good, the ambiance just right, but the service was a bit brusque, even confused. We had three different servers, whisking away plates and glasses as soon a the last crumb or drop was gone, sometimes sooner. Different servers would ask the same question in succession (more wine? dessert? coffee?), apparently not realizing that they were repeating each other.

If this were unique to Fallon & Byrne, then points might be deducted. But this seems to be the general style of service in Dublin. We've had similar experiences in all of the restaurants, including the lobby cafe in the posh hotel.

Next stop on our gastronomic tour? A pub of course. This was more of a feast for the soul than an actual feast, since we grabbed a quick bite in the hotel bar before heading out. Luckily, a work colleague invited us to the perfect place, The Blue Light, located a few kilometers out of town on a hill overlooking the city and Dublin Bay. No Rivedance, no cutesy Irish chotchkies, no tourists.

The pub itself is an old stone building enclosing a warren of small rooms. A peat fire (yes, a real peat fire) burns in one room, while the front room has windows looking out over the bay. There is a also a tiny barroom, which was populated solely by men when we arrived. We beat a quick retreat to the front room, just in case the ladies weren't invited to sit in the barroom. We ordered our pints of Guinness and settled in. This was my first Guinness in Ireland, and I have to say I finally understand its reputation. I could live on that combination of creamy foam and bitter hop flavor.

The sun went down and the music started. The first song was something very trad and feet were tapping all over the room--mine too. Then a ballad, with a gent in the corner growing misty eyed and everyone joining in the on the chorus. Musicians came and went, songs shifted from traditional Irish, to R&B, to old standards and back to traditional. You really have not lived until you have seen an Irish octogenarian grooving out to a Muddy Waters riff while his 90-year old friend keeps the beat on a bodhrán. Many of the instruments were traditional--the fiddle, the tin whistle, the bohdrán, the Irish bouzouki--but the music was no folk recreation. It was the living product of musicians playing the songs they love and 'trading fours'. It was magic.





Don't Miss...

1. The Parks: Take a book or a picnic basket and find a spot in Merrion Square Park for a relaxing afternoon.

2. The Taxis. Public transport is not up to Swiss standards, but taxis are plentiful. The drivers are charming and freely offer all kinds of advice on the best of Dublin as well as jokes and tall tales.

3. The National Museum of Archaeology and History. A huge collection of Neolithic and Celtic artifacts is on display, including some amazing Bronze Age gold work. And it's free!

4. Trinity College Dublin. Great piles of Georgian architecture and The Book of Kells.

5. The Beer.

Dublin Sights

Dublin Proscriptions

I Love Orell Füssli!

I love Orell Füssli. Without the their English-language bookstore at the corner of Rennweg and Bahnhofstrasse, I would be stuck with reading online (impossible for novels) or re-reading language texts and travel books, which seem to be the only books I thought to bring to Zürich.

I love Orell Füssli to an egregious and horrible extent. By the end of May I had already accumulated 30 book points. Of course I had to go back and use the coupons--maybe I have enough for a free book? And just in time for my trip to Dublin!

Actually, it wasn't quite enough for a free book after all. It more like a 3% discount on the total bill. Among other books, I got Time Out Dublin, at the value price of 32.90 CHF. The book retails in the UK for 12.99 GBP and in the US for 19.95 USD. The price differential is not due simply to exchange rates. Certainly the cost of labor is involved, as well as the possibility that prices are raised to accommodate a lower margin for imported books purchased through a wholesaler/distributor. In any case, as with almost all things in Switzerland, books cost more here than elsewhere.

What about ordering online? I could order from Amazon.com for only 21.55 USD (including standard shipping), but then I would have to wait 18-32 days. I could order from Amazon UK for 12.77 GPB (or 20.86 USD at Oanda's median price, including airmail), but I would still have to wait for 3-7 days. Too long for this spur of the moment trip. Obviously the Kindle version would be perfect, but of course this title isn't on the Kindle. Schade!

In any case, I have to admit that I (almost) don't care about the cost. I love any excuse to go to a good bookstore, and Orell Füssli is a good bookstore. It has 3 floors of English-language books from Krimis and Sci-Fi (as well as DVDs) in the basement to non-fiction on the first floor. You'll find a good selection of books on Switzerland and Zürich on the first floor, including titles from Bergli Books and even some Swiss cookbooks. The heart of the store, however, is the main floor with it's broad selection of literary and commercial fiction. The individual taste and sensibility of a good buyer is evident here, tempered of course by what the market wants (and this apparently includes romance novels). I've spent many lost hours browsing, sometimes settling into the comfy chairs for a bit of a read before checking out. Equally important, the booksellers are friendly, well-informed, and actually like to talk about books.

The best part about shopping in a good bookstore is finding books you didn't know you wanted. We found Fred Vargas (in English translation) on one of the display tables and are now addicted to the moody, evocative stories of the commissaire Adamsberg. I picked up three more from the series when I bought Time Out. (I also got another German grammar book, because you can never have too many of these.)

Arriving in Dublin, I realized that Time Out Dublin might not be the only travel book we would need. We went to Hodges Figgis, a gem of a bookstore on Dawson, and picked the Lonely Planet country guide to Ireland. What can I say? Another wonderful bookstore full of books we must read. We decided we had to have The Dubliners (of course), another Vargas book, Paul Krugman on the Great Depression, and best of all Trinity Tales, a set of essays by alumni about the 60s at Trinity College. The cost? With the exchange rate, only a few francs less than the 5 books from Orell Füssli.


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Working Round the Clock: More Seefeld Construction

Work on Seefeldstrasse continued until midnight last night and started again this morning about 6 a.m. It was just one crew last night working on a very deep hole in front of the Razzia, which is also in front of our bedroom. Here's how things stand today at 11:30 a.m.


















It looks like this whole process will have to be repeated for the second set of tracks, which will definitely take at least until the end of August. The end of August is the planned date for completing work for the next section, the one between Kreuzstrasse and Florastrasse.

On the up side, it is at least cool and rainy today, which keeps the dust down so I can open the windows.

This is a situation where our lack of German really hurt us. We received notice in April right after we moved here, but we really didn't understand it then. Too late to cancel the lease, which had been signed in March, but not too early to plan our escape for the Sommerferien. Lack of planning means we have only managed a partial escape (for the next two weeks).

Five Fun Things to Do in Lausanne

Everyone says Lausanne is beautiful and everyone is right. It's also fun. Here's a short list of fun things we found to do in between shows at Montreux.

Eat a horse. I've been afraid of the Pferd but no more. I had a lovely (but oddly named) Roast Beef de Cheval at Le Grütli in old town Lausanne. The meat was tender and a little gamy (like a more tender buffalo) and weirdly the tartar sauce was the right condiment for the dish. Our dining companion and long-time mushroom fanatic chose the fricassee of wild mushrooms, which he declared excellent. To wash it down—the local white of course.

The Swiss do indeed eat horse. The French do too but much less these days. There's a butcher just down the street from us in Zürich (Pferdemetzgerei Seefeld), which specializes in horse meat. I've been leery of going there, but I think I will check it out now.


Taste the Wine. Lausanne is on one end of the Lavaux, and pride in the local wine is evident. It's on every wine list and prominently displayed in the stores. This is quite the contrast to Zürich, where the only Swiss wine most people will admit to liking is Ticino Merlot. There are good Swiss wines, and some of the best grow in the Lavaux.

The Grand Crus of Dézaley, Clos des Moines and Clos des Abbayes are made from the Chasselas grape, which has its finest expression here and which has been cultivated on these slopes since the Middle Ages. Minerality and structure, flowered top note on the nose. Wow. It's definitely worth the relatively high price to try a bottle. (Save money instead by staying at a good value hotel like Hotel du Port.) For more on Swiss wine, I recommend The Surprising Wines of Switzerland, published by Bergli Books. The title sort of says it all, doesn't it?

Climb a hill. That's actually pretty hard to avoid in Lausanne. The city covers three steep hills, with Old Town at the top. We had fun just climbing about Old Town (especially around the Place de la Palud). However, since we were staying lakeside in Ouchy, I was very glad the new Metro was online, making it a quick five-minute trip from the lake to the top of the town.

The other hill(s) to climb are of course the vineyards. We took the Wine Train from Vevey up to Chexbres with the very good intention of doing a photo-safari climb back down. It was lunchtime, however, so we went to The Deck, which looks out over the vineyards of Rivaz and the wine village of St. Saphorin. After some excellent pan-fried lake fish and a bottle of Dézeley (from a producer around the corner in the village of Chexbres), we set out for our hike. But it started to rain, not a light misty rain but a real drencher. We trained back to Cully and took the boat from there to Ouchy instead.

Go to Market. This was a little bit of serendipity, as we had no idea there was a Sunday market in Ouchy. Oriented to the tourist trade, it was open all afternoon. We gathered up great charcuterie (smoked wild boar!), cheeses, bread, and some fruit, and found a shady place to sit in the lake front park. A picnic like this is actually a great choice on Sunday, since most of the cafés are closed and the only ones that are open are pretty ghastly. There are also farmers' markets during the week on Grancy.

Drink Cocktails in a Chateau. Having recently moved from the West Coast where cocktails are all the rage, we decided to see what was on offer in Ouchy. There are of course the several bars of the Beau Rivage. Dressed a bit too casually for the grand setting, we went for the Chateau d'Ouchy instead. With its turrets and stone walls, the chateau looks a bit like a fairy-tale castle. Although the medieval keep and tower were built in the 12th century by the Bishops of Lausanne, the chateau was (re)built in the neo-gothic style as a luxury hotel in the late 19th century.

In recent years, the Chateau had declined to a middling level hotel, but in 2008 it reopened following renovation. The style in the bar is high modern, but with the stone walls retained and the red plush Louis XIII drapes in reception visible in the corner. A weird effect indeed. The cocktail menu was impressively adventurous, and true to the requirements of the new mixology, fresh herbs and fruits were used in the drinks.

We ordered and the fun began. The bartenders moved at a languid—even reluctant—pace, frequently consulting written instructions and with each other while making drinks. When the drinks finally arrived, they were not quite what we ordered but nothing was too awful. It appears that we had run smack dab into a zone of cultural dissonance. Outside of the palace hotels, cocktails are just not part of the local culture. A Kir, yes. A Sidecar, no. On the other hand, being inside of an anachronism engaged in an imitation was pretty touristically neat.

Go, enjoy, but stick to the wine.

Traffic Limitations on Seefeldstrasse

The understated headline for the notice on the Stadt Zürich site reads"Traffic Limitations on Seefeldstrasse." Here's what our street looked like on Saturday afternoon, as viewed from our window.

Work was scheduled to proceed continuously from 5 AM Saturday to 5 AM Monday. The tram tracks between Kreuzstrasse and Feldeggstrasse (our block) are being replaced, and the first step is to remove the old tracks and concrete. As JK Rowling would say, that drill is really LOUD.

We hid in a hotel off Banhofstrasse for the weekend. (Oh, blessed quiet and air-conditioning.) We're going to tough it out for the rest of the week and then off to Dublin (business) and Paris (not business).

The work is supposed to continue until the end of August. The previous deadline was middle of August. I watched today as workmen checked the level of new tracks and looked concerned. I refuse to let this worry me, at least not until after I get back into town.

Montreux: Wind, Water, Wine, and Music

Last week we went to our first Montreux. The scene was a bit tawdry and the music was fabulous, but the real standout of the trip was La Suisse, a paddle-wheel steamer running between Ouchy and Montreux. The boat was commissioned in 1910 in Winterthur, and it was just relaunched this year following a painstaking restoration by CGN, which returned the boat to its Belle Epoque glory.

We took a round trip to Montreux and back--just to try it out--and we were hooked. We commuted by boat instead of the train on the following two days. Traveling from Ouchy, a panoramic view of the Dentes d'Oches opens up on the starboard side and, on the other, the vineyards of the Lavaux rise up directly from the lake shore. Other than hiking the vineyards, this has got to be the best way to see the vines.

Even better, you can combine the view with the wine. On the first trip, we tried the famous Oeil-de-Perdrix (Eye of the Partridge), a Rosé from Neuchatel. (Okay, that's not the Lavaux, but it's still Swiss.) It was dry and crisp with a floral nose and flinty mineral undertones. Perfect for a hot summer day on the lake.

On our next outing we felt we really should stick with the Vaud, and we tried the Clos des Moines, a gorgeous example of the often humble Chasselas grape--much more backbone than typical for this grape.

We did not sign up for the lunch or dinner cruises. I have a rule about captive dining (dinner cruises on trains and boats being notorious for bad food). However, I noticed later that the catering is managed by the Beau Rivage staff, so this might be the exception to the rule.

More than the wine and the scenery, I just love being out on the water. La Suisse offers plenty of open-air deck space in both classes, and I spent time on the aft and fore decks, as well as the side decks, just watching the water and weather. On our last trip, the weather turned and the wind waves kicked up (3-5 feet). A little excitement, but not at all apparent from the steadiness of the boat. (Not a drop of wine spilled.)

Okay. So the festival was fun too. We spent a mellow pre-show afternoon at Harry's Bar, testing our tolerance for the Michael Jackson memorial play list. I think we cried uncle after the first hour (the tape had already looped) and begged the bartender to change it. It appears that the Swiss and other Europeans just don't see Jackson in quite the negative light we do.

At the show: Steely Dan delivered, Elew gave us drama and fury (too much drama for me but not for my fellow travelers, see their quotes), and SMV (the bass trio Stanley Clarke, Victor Wooten and Marcus Miller) knocked us out--musicianship and funk. (Nice interview with the trio here.)

That was our first Montreux and our first visit to the Lavaux. I'm already researching the best way to combine vineyard hikes with sailing on La Suisse for the next time. Oh, and we'll probably take in a show too.