Living on the "Gold Coast"

Well, we've moved into our place. It is great. It's a 3-bedroom flat, about 3 tram stops from the heart of the city. The neighborhood is called Hoettinger. It's in a hillier area of the city close to a train stop called the Dolderbahn, which leads up to a recreational area (with hiking, tennis, swimming). We are located on the side of Lake Zurich called the "Gold Coast"-- not named for the same reason as the "Gold Coast" in Chicago, but rather because the sun sets on this side of the lake, making it "golden" in the evening. But with rental rates being what they are, you could argue the other reason could be true as well. Some highlights about our place: (1) it has an amazing terrace overlooking a courtyard (2) it has an extensive fruit and vegetable market a block away and (3) it's about 15 minutes door-to-door to Kathleen's job.

"Zurich Bears All"

Much like the "Cows on Parade" that was in Chicago a few years back, with various versions of the classic bovine, Zurich is now featuring a "Teddy Summer". (We found out, actually, that Zurich had the "Cows on Parade" before Chicago). Well, the bears are great. Some favorites include a series of bears decorated by Swarovski, a life guard bear and an S&M bear that is stationed right in the middle of a butcher's shop. Interesting. Check out the link above for more information -- you just need to hover over the "Zurich Bears All" to launch it.

"Truckin'...into Tram 15"

So there I was gazing out the large picture window on Zurich's Tram Number 15—taking in the view of the Limmat River, nodding to the tunes on my iPod and drifting into a blissful daydream state, when all of a sudden...screeeeech. Wham. Bam...

Blood goes flying everywhere, a man's head flies into my lap, everyone's screaming and a woman cries out, "Where's my left leg?" Terrorists swarm the tram and open fire with fully-automatic, machine guns. I grab the man's head from my lap and dive under the seat and start "playing dead." As one of the terrorists walks by he gives me a good kick to check if I'm alive, so I roll the head out from under the seat. He stops, laughs and keeps walking. (Oh sorry, I slipped into "24" mode again.)

O.k. back to reality. Here's what I did see. A large delivery truck somehow got attached to the side of the tram I was riding. (He tried to make a left turn and missed seeing the tram before he did so.) There was glass all over the seat a few rows in front of me from a busted window. Fortunately, we were going really slow but fast enough to get the slow-motion feeling you get when you're in an accident. It was very strange. Thankfully, everyone was o.k., albeit a little confused.

Sorry, I didn't have the camera with me. It would have yielded some interesting photos.

Want the big drink but don't want to miss any action? Relax. You're in Switzerland. You can have both.

The day we arrived, Todd and I were so jetlagged. Since it was starting to look like rain that day, we decided to go to a movie that afternoon. We got tickets for "The Interpreter" (pretty good if you haven't seen it). The Swiss have reserved seats in the theaters (which is what they do in the Czech Republic as well), so we were prepared for that. But what we weren't expecting was the intermission. At first, we thought the film had broken since the intermission was right in the middle of this big action sequence. But no one was complaining, so we figured it was normal. Then they showed some ad for ice cream and an "intermission" sign. Pretty funny. I think I would be a fan of that during longer movies (i.e., Lord of the Rings), but wasn't really into it for film that was less than 2 hours.

Up & Running! First entry from Zurich

Sorry for the delay. It's been a little crazy for the past few weeks. After living in a hotel in Chicago, then here in Zurich, we are finally in our apartment. But we still don't have our computer/DSL hooked up yet, so our reporting has been limited :). But we wanted to let everyone know we made it safely. More soon!