August Pictures: (1) Deb and Nicole, (2) the main stage at the Zurich streetparade, (3) a very rare sight in Zurich, (4) the front of our rental house in the U.S.

Episode 16: August 2006

After some constructive feedback from our faithful blog readers, we have decided to begin each month’s entry with some bullet-point highlights…an executive summary, if you will.

August Highlights
• Street Parade: techno music-infused debauchery in Zurich
• Nicole’s trip to Switzerland: a visit from one of Deb’s Australian friends
• Househunting in Michigan: finding a place to live in our soon-to-be locale

After enjoying wonderful weather in July, we were rewarded with a rather nasty August. It rained for most of the month! However, the lousy weather gave us an excuse to do some indoor chores. For example, August was an active month for getting things ready for the move to the U.S. We spent much of the month sorting through different rooms of the house and preparing to throw away a lot of stuff that we did not think deserved to be shipped to a new continent. We also tried to cram in as much quality time with friends, hosting some dinners and catching up at previously unexplored restaurants. One restaurant worth mentioning was a fantastic Vietnamese restaurant around the corner from our place in Enge called (very creatively) Restaurant Vietnam. We went there with our friends, Eveline and Peter Paul, and enjoyed the great company and fabulous, authentic Vietnamese food.

In mid-August, we welcomed Deb’s friend from Australia, Nicole, who visited us for 11 days. Unfortunately, the weather was generally lousy during her entire trip which made it difficult to enjoy the beauty of Switzerland, but she (and we) had a great time nonetheless. We welcomed Nicole to Switzerland with a dinner at a typical beer hall in town called the Zeughauskeller and invited some of our friends to join. The next day, we took Nicole to the beautiful city of Rapperswil, located at the other end of Lake Zurich, to show her the old town and monastery. We ended the weekend with a day trip to the town of Thun (in the middle of the country, close to Interlaken) where we met Dad and Julie to have lunch and take a look around…mostly in the pouring rain. Thun was a beautiful town, and the highlight of our trip there was a 16th century castle which now doubles as a museum of Swiss artifacts (thankfully, all indoors).

Nicole amused herself through the week with trips to Pilates, Lugano, and St Moritz. Meanwhile, we worked (boring!). One evening, I hosted an impromptu dinner with two of my girlfriends, Jen and Daphne, which ended up being a hoot. And, of course, we even managed to fit in a cheese fondue during Nicole’s visit, to make things really authentic!

One of the semi-nice weather days during Nicole’s visit fell on the day of Street Parade. Street Parade is somewhat like the U.S.’s Mardi Gras. In Zurich, it is the one Saturday of each year where anything goes, which makes it highly entertaining to watch. Scantily clad, drunk (among other things), noisy people grace the streets of Zurich following around decorated floats. The floats are not really that creative. They consist of a truck pulling a flat bed that is loaded up with as many speakers that can possibly fit and a DJ mixing up the techno tunes (which, by the way, are awful). There is a lot of dancing and general frolicking in the streets. Zurich’s parade has gotten quite large over the years and supposedly now attracts about 1 million followers each year. (For those wondering, I believe that the largest such parade is Berlin’s Love Parade.) Not even the lousy weather could keep people away. The streets were packed with people of all ages, turning Zurich inside-out -- we even witnessed a number of men urinating in the streets…very “un-Zurich”!

At the tail-end of Nicole’s trip, we had to excuse ourselves and take a trip to Midland to find a house. To our surprise, the househunting expedition went smoother than expected, and on our first day out, we found a house to rent on the outskirts of town in a lovely neighborhood. The landlords are fantastic and even offered to keep the house partially furnished, including a home cinema in the basement, for the duration of our stay in their house. We took care of all the necessary paperwork for the house as well as some other administrative items (bank accounts, etc.) and spent a fair amount of the trip working as well. Neal headed back to Switzerland a week before I did to take care of some work things on his end, and I hung around to spend more time with my new work team.

And believe it or not, that was our month! All in all, August was a productive month and relatively calm. The move is getting closer and closer, and with a busy September ahead, the time will surely fly by.

Until the next edition, take care!