Off Site Barbequeing, and other kinda boring stuff

Another Ensligen barbeque. This time I had good 'ole Lukas for company.
We started a fire, he snorted some of that snuff stuff up his nose.
The guests showed up and we ate some nasty swiss hot-dogs. Gross. If I never see another Bratwurst again before I die, it'll be too soon. There's just something about their pale, pasty white appearance and the way you have to gnaw through their skin that turns me off. I don't know. The guests seem to like them okay--but hell, the guests liked the turkey rolls.

Then we came home, and made 6 lasagnas and 3 cakes. Wooh.

This is Andrea, she's the bounciest vollie ever. She likes my music, I think. Or she's an equal-opprotunity bouncer.

Last night, Jena and Jen and I watched one of my favorite movies ever: Drop Dead Gorgeous. We drank a bottle of wine that we found in Stöckli and talked kinda late about things like Scorpions and how we feel about the world. I can't quite remember everything but I felt fine in the morning. Jena says my problem is that I have no self-awareness in the way of strangeness. Or I lack the ability to care.

Paris and Program! wooo!

Laura and I are off to Paris next weekend. I bought the train tickets this morning and have formulated a list of touristy places to visit. It's more than likely, though, that we will spend the better part of our two days in Paris walking around looking for places to drink coffee. I wonder what the price of coffee is in Paris? Is it more or less expensive than coffee in Switzerland? And I guess I'd better pay for that coffee in Euros, huh?

Today I went to a castle in Thun, they let me out of the kitchen to go run around with the program staff for the day. I would have enjoyed myself more had I not become sick-to-the-point-of-praying-for-mercy on the van ride to Thun.

The Chalet has a 15 passenger van that only holds 9 people because they've retro-fitted it to hold more luggage. That means: they've removed the last two rows of benches to accommodate American-sized baggage. To allow for a few more people to ride along on the days they need to transport people in the van, they've cobbled together a sideways-facing bench with a few seatbelts.

The staff sit on the back bench, experienceing the horribly serpentine Swiss roads in a way no human should ever have to: turning green while looking at the cliffs and valleys swoop past. I didn't vomit, but it was close. Also, the van is a big manual diesel monster. The way the program director drives it is criminal. If I had been lucky enough to have a shoulder belt on the do-it-yourself bench back there I certainly would be suffering from a sudden-force-trauma induced pneumothorax injury.

I excused myself from the van ride home by saying I needed to get back early to make dinner. I took the train and had a nice, pleasant, candy filled and vomit free trip home.

Now I have to stir the Jambalaya.

For another perspective

Just found one of the Vollie's blogs. You may perhaps like to check it out to see her unique perspective on some of the very same events I have reported on.

I find it interesting that we both have "Switzerland Blogs" and that we have the same template. Ugh.

Enjoy it anyway: jenainswitzerland.blogspot.com

Volunteer Update

I asked the volunteers why they wern't doing anything useful, like working, or cleaning. The volunteers said "Everyone is in senior-senior staff meeting, why don't you come help us find the fire escape in Spycher". I said "No thank you. By the way, there's a rope ladder in the attic".

IN OTHER NEWS:

Today is Ani's Birthday. Facebook told me so.

Swiss Wildlife

I did my laundry yesterday (sound the royal trumpets! It's an auspicious day!). In the laundry room I found these two things:

The biggest, scariest, Swiss Spider Ever.
And a mummified salamander. I found it by stepping on it. It crunched but is still intact.

Laura says I should post pictures of Fancy Swiss Chocolate. But I won't because it's boring and everyone knows that it exists, right?

In other news: only 29 days until the Ani concert. The volunteers are seriously lacking things to do because right now they're climbing through the oven. I was sitting here, minding my own business, doing really important things like Pre-ordering Ani's new album and filling in my Voter Registration form when I hear them yell from the kitchen "Kat! Is there a trick to getting through the oven?" Maybe I should put them to work....cleaning something? That's all there is to do these days....ho humm...

Sweet Sweet Switzerland

I was gazing at my delicious lump of Swiss Breakfast, in its moat of Swiss milk, when I decided that everyone needs to see what amazing, delightful confections I have access to here. You will all be jealous. Prepare yourself for a journey that will rival or exceed the wonderment of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (ok, no it won't, but there's pictures!)

This is what I eat every morning: Coop brand Chocolate Crunch Muesli.
It's a mix of crunchy granola bites, chocolate filled biscuits and actual chunks of chocolate. It's a totally appropriate breakfast food though because I mix it with Hafer Flockli (which is raw, chopped up oats) yogurt, and usually throw a banana in too. Then I make a mound of it in the middle of the bowl and fill in the space with milk. It's a breakfast castle!

Now on with the show:

These are Fruity Smarties. They are more delicious than you can imagine--especially considering they're melted gummy bears in an M&Ms shell. The box even gives you a detailed idea of how they're made.There are also regular Smarties, which are M&Ms, but not as sweet and they come in better colors: like pink.

This is a Doo Wop. I had been eyeing them in the Delemont Coop for many weeks before I broke down and bought a bag of them. Laura said: "Oh my God, what are you doing?" I couldn't even articulate the sheer joy I was feeling over the much awaited purchase I was about to make: "It's like a chocolate...it's a hotdog. It's a chocolate hotdog!" She was embarassed and took a few steps back, just in case anyone over heard the conversation. Later, I was chowing down on one in Stockli (they Are surprisingly hot-dog-bun-like in texture, not anything like a fluffy Twinkie like I expected, but slippery and airy and delicate) one of the volunteers said "Oh my god, is that a hot dog?" and I said "well, no, it's a chocolate hot dog!" they told me it was gross and asked if it was an American invention. Ha.

This is a Happy Hippo. It's a tiny icecream cone in the shape of a hippo and filled with hazelnut chocolate milky creamy cream. They're absolutely delicious.

This is a Joy Egg. They are my favorite candy Ever in Switzerland. You peel the egg in half to reveal a surprise! and also a confection that I can only describe as a deconstructed hippo. You scoop the candy out of the plastic egg with a specially designed and perfectly sized spoon. You can get every last bit out with that spoon...

This is a Surprise! Egg. They're chocolate eggs filled with small plastic bullet shaped capsules that contain toys--just like the Joy Egg. Sometimes they're surprisingly difficult to put together: I spent nearly 20 minutes on a tiny slot-machine type device and actually had to use instructions last weekend.

This is a snail that I got out of a surprise egg. It lives in my rose bush. Laura said plants grow best when you water them, and you know what? She was right on. But I digress.

This is a Tiki. They're disgusting, and I think they're only around for nostalgic reasons and because 6 year olds don't know better. You drop it into a glass of water, and wait about 15 minutes for it to finally quit fizzing and then you have a weak nasty glass of Swiss Kool-ade. Gross.

And as proof of how hard it is to resist the lure of very cheap and very accessible Swiss candy: my drawer of candy:

In other news: This morning a nice man from the Chalets down the road (there is a small compound of 4 Chalets much like Ours run by a man named Hari, they house lots of scouts there too) gave me a ride to work in a large, slow moving piece of farm equipment. He said something to me in Swiss German and without thinking, I told him I couldn't hear him when I really meant to say "Please give me 20 seconds to process what you just said and I'll get back to you with an appropriate, if infantile, response" But he believed that I couldn't hear him (farm equipment is noisy) and was quiet the rest of the way to my turn off--where I jumped out of his slow moving machine and yelled Danke Schön! At least I didn't have to walk up the hill.

EuroExtravaganza 2008 Contest

It's time for Annual Leave! You know what that means? That's right: Road Trip!!! Woot.

Laura and I are planning to take 2 weeks at the beginning of November to see Every City in Europe. We looked at a wall-map in the kiddy section of a bookstore and developed a list based on the one city listed for each country.

London
Berlin
Coppenhagen
Sweden (Hell, why not, we'll be up in the neighborhood anyway)
Prague
Vienna
Rome
Barcelona
Paris

Then it occured to me that we might as well plan a road trip in the states by planning to visit every state capitol. We narrowed the list down to:

London
Prague
Rome
Barcelona
Paris

and two new destinations:

• Hamburg Germany--because that's where my Great Grandpa was from

• Venice--because the Eat Pray Love lady managed to slip in the sentance "Oh, that's just Satan's hungry maw" when describing Venice. Can't miss it!

So, if you have any reccommendations : castles to visit, tourist attractions Not To Be Missed, please address them to Kat: care of Year Without Baseball. Anyone who sends in a winning suggestion will be rewarded with the ugliest postcard I can find in said place.

You're putting WHAT up your nose?

Winter is Here. Did I mention that? When Jen and I walked out the door this morning around 8, and discovered that we were in a cloud (a cold miserable cloud) she said "I thought it was supposed to be sunny and beautiful today" I laughed, and reminded her that it was barbeque day. It's the last on-site barbeque day of the year. But I still have to muddle through an Ensligen barbeque again (that's right, load up the Subaru we're goin' out!).

It's now the 4th week of Autumn, and also Friends of o u r Chalet week. Or as I lovingly refer to it "FooC week" It's tempting to pronounce that more like "Duck" than "Look", but I'm on best behavior. It's a week where old ladies get to come back to the Chalet and pretend they're 15 again. We only have 5 of the official FooC ladies, and a handful of other old ladies making similar pilgrimidges. There's a group from Scotland who have already managed to piss me off. But I'm practicing compassion this week so I won't even explain why we call one of them Braveheart now (and they haven't even been here 24 hours).

I've been reading a lot. For my birthday, Sonia sent me a trunk full of books. I've finished I know this much is true and now I'm nearly through Eat Pray Love, which I suppose was my destiny to read. Oprah, the Girl Scout moms, Laura's mom and my next door neighbor Jen all conspired to get the book into my hands. If you don't know: it's about a woman who hates everything and runs away to Europe for a year (sounds familiar). She learns Italian, finds God and balance (pretty efficient). You should read it too. Find God on the inside, or use your pretty power.

My point was that I have a hard time writing when I'm reading tons, so that's where I've been. Did you miss me?


Besides the FooC ladies, we have a new volunteer here, HIS name is Lukas and he's a 19 year old Swiss boy. He's only staying for 2 weeks. He thinks he knows everything and was reported to have said yesterday "Well I've never worked with women who are as competent as me before" in response to the question "How do you feel about being bossed around by women all day". Oh boy.

Yesterday, we were having some down time as the curry bubbled away on the stove (in a pan on the stove, not litterally on the stove like last time) and I walked out of my office to see him snorting some brown powder up his nose from the back of his hand. At least he wasn't using a mirror and a $100 bill I suppose. He said it was Snuff, from England, and that everbody in Switzerland does it, wanna try? I made him wash his hands and get out. His eyes got red and watery and he didn't seem to care about much after that. What?! Ok Brits: can you please report on this Snuff stuff? Do you know what it is? Should I alert the local authorities?

PS: I'm sorry I don't have pictures. Maybe next time.

Clowns are Scary

And what a weekend it was! Laura and I spent the day on Saturday fighting over whether or not peppers should go into Eggplant Parmesan. They don't. The casserole turned out nice though, no one complained. I wish I had brought my camera to the kitchen: we bought about every eligible eggplant in Delemont and breaded and broiled it. What a spread.

Sunday we ended up walking down town to check out a street fair that was going on. There's Always something going on. I must say, this one was more exciting than the last street fair I attended in Delemont. There was no American House of Horrors, but there were plenty of street performers and lots of under 12s. Laura and I were walking around with beers--still recovering from the Eggplant Debacle--and I felt a bit out of place next to all the baby carriages. Whateves. Most of the acts involved juggling, and they all seemed to do the same tricks: One person juggles, the other person takes their juggling batons, hats, cigars etc while together they keep the items in the air.

There were tons of people on stilts and also in clown costumes. One clown was cheeky enough to steal my hotdog (they come inserted into baguettes! how could I resist?) and took a bite of it! What!?! I made a face and he placated me with a chumpachump or whatever those suckers are called. I finished my hotdog. I hope clowns don't carry anything fatal.

In other news:
The last of the Summer Vols have returned home, and safely. Thank goodness.

Winter has come to the Chalet. We had a hard frost this morning, and on Monday it snowed here on site. It didn't stick though...maybe next week.

It's The Weekend!

Yes, it's true, I'm finally getting some days off. I've worked the past 7 days in a row. I'm not dead because it's not Summer. Winter Is Coming, and clearly I've had time to do things like: Observe the pellet delivery closely and hike a mountain. Still, I enjoy having some time off.

The plans this weekend include lots of reading (Sonia! Wow! Thanks for all those books, I've started I Know This Much Is True first because it is the longest, so far it's bloody), and lots of watching TV. The weather has been crummy (good weather for a Duck though), and Laura's been quite ill. She's better now, but would have been better much sooner if she'd sleep or rest sometimes.

I am also planning on constructing a few weevil themed cakes for Laura's lunch at work. They have a ridiculious Lunch Competition. Once a month they are expected to prepare a lavish and expensive meal for the rest of the on site staff. For some reason, they feel the need to out do eachother and there is usually loss of sleep and sometimes crying involved. I don't get it. So, Laura will be preparing some food on Sunday. Hopefully I can guide her in a sensible direction.

Laura: Making 100 small fried indian pies 'till three am the night before is NOT a good idea. How about a nice caserole you can make ahead of time and pop in the oven? Someone else back me up. This lunch thing is out of control.

Pellet delivery by Peter, or it's the Slow Season in Switzerland

I was gazing at my Turkey Treasure in the light of another beautiful day in Switzerland when I noticed that there was a large yellow truck outside my window.


It was the Pellet men delivering the pellets for our boiler! Oh boy! And the best part was this guys shorts, seriously where do you buy shorts like that?


The process was very very noisy and took nearly 3 hours to fill the pellet room. The results: besides delivering pellets they nearly destroyed our sign and managed to fill my food cellar with about a quarter inch of fine woody dust that those poor vols had to clean up.

By Request

Banana Bread

Good for special Diets—use rice flour for celiac/wheat/gluten free diets and margarine for dairy free.

Makes 1 loaf pan

200g flour
5 g baking soda
3 g salt
200 g sugar
2 eggs
90 g butter—melted
3 bananas—mashed

Mash up the bananas in the mixer with the flat blade, add the sugar and eggs and mix.
In a separate bowl combine salt, baking soda and flour, add gradually to the egg sugar banana mixture.
Put into a floured and greased pan, bake at 175 for about an hour.

Variations: Frost with white frosting, add some chocolate chips and you’ve got a Banana Cake.

Jeff, no nuzzles

Jeffery, no nuzzles for using Google.

I recieved the Live from Babeville Ani concert DVD in the mail yesterday. Jen and I put it on the big screen in the conference room only to discover that it had been badly scratched during shipping and won't play the first few tracks. We cried for a few minutes before skipping ahead to the tracks that still play. Do you think Ani will replace my DVD and sign a new one for me if I write her a love note to gently complain about this tragedy?

Thanks to Bunny, Peon, Bruiser and Bon-Bon for keeping it real. Bunny, pay attention in Chemistry. It is important.

In other news,

1. I miss school Desperately. I should be in class, on the third floor of the Admin Building with no air conditioning, watching sweat drip down the neck of the smelly guy in front of me.
2. Here's the cake I made for Louise's birthday yesterday:

Woodsey says "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute!"

Barbequing Off Site and Bunderspitz, Redux

For as much complaining and cranky-spoon-throwing as I did, the barbeque at Ensligen went alright. I even got to sit around and enjoy being outdoors. It was a bit stressful to barbeque with an audience though. My sausages were burnt, but I think they taste better that way. For some reason I never can manage to burn them when I'm barbequeing at the Chalet--maybe it's because no one is watching and Judging my technique.

We had the off-site barbeque at Ensligen, at the foot of my favorite mountain, Fitzer.
Jen started a fancy scouty one match fire sans paper (and even more impressive: sans accellerant. I swear by ZippyZippyGoGo juice, and won't light a fire without it because it's more fun).It's very cold down by the waterfall. We had a smore b'que and then we all climbed the nearest rock like little mountain goats to enjoy the sun. Here's the new vols, the program director a few guests and I bundled up for the Swiss Summer weather.So, after our lovely guests and vollies had a nutritious Swiss lunch of sausage and chocolate, they set off to climb the Klettersteig (I think I'm spelling this right) which is what we call a ridiculiously steep hill that people walk up vigorously with caribeaners and helmets and other safetly devices.

Later that night, in the spirit of High Adventure they set off on the overnight hike to Bunderspitz and I joined them.
Bunderspitz (between those two trees--the pointy mountain) as viewed from the Chalet.
I am ready, got my swiss hiking knickers on.
Jena is ready too! She's got her Swiss Hiking Ski Poles (they are useful in summer AND winter!

The overnight hike entails hiking for an hour and a half after dinner to the CheeseMaker's hut--the last house on the way up to Bunderspitz. The CheeseMaker is a cranky old woman who served us hot chocolate and sent us to bed at 8:30. We slept in her hay loft on dirty mattresses with a scratchy blanket. I think there were bugs sleeping with us too. It smelled very strongly of Alpkäse and cows, and so did we by 3:15 in the morning when we rose to finish our hike to the summit.

We climbed the rocky trail by starlight, I pointed out Orion and everyone was cranky about everything because we were climbing a Damn Mountian at 4 am. Who thinks these things up?

We got to the top at 6:30, and it was still dark. It was cold, it was windy. Jen kept telling me it would be worth it. (This is everyone at the top--I left before them, it was starting to rain and I needed to get down the mountain in time to take a nap before I had to start working)

Doing Bunderspitz again was alright, though I think that hiking at 3:30 am is Always Unnecessary. I enjoy the mountains better when I can see them. Being at the top made me feel kind of homesick for Idaho and being in the mountains at camp, or with my family (I said it Mom, you heard it, I Said it!)

I guess it was worth it...I did learn that there is a much shorter way to the CheeseMaker's hut than Laura and I took on our journey to the top. In fact, it takes about 2 hours less when you actually take the correct route.

It's just so easy to get off the path in Switzerland, there are so many choices and lots of the crossroads are not labeled. In fact, I got lost on the way down. I did some unauthourized canyoning. I know I'm a bad scout, getting off the path, but something goes wrong in my head when I'm presented with a choice like this: "Oh, the dirt road I was following just ended. It wasn't a signposted route to begin with. Should I double back and find the correct trail, or should I just skid down this impossibly steep slope to that stream bed, I'm pretty sure the trail is right on the other side of the creek, even though I have absolutely no reason to believe that" So I skid down the hill and follow the creek.


This is Clearly the Right Way.

I'm never terribly worried when something like this happens though, and I never have visions of being the target of a costly and time consuming missing persons search involving helicopters, candle light vigils and communal sobbing (or perhaps I'm just being vain), because I know that the roads are dense in Switzerland. I only had to follow the creek for about 30 minutes before I ran into a road again. I orientated myself to the Gross Lohner and was on my way home. And I got lucky, I only had to cross two live electric fences, walk through 3 cow pastures, crawl under one barbed wire fence and was not accosted by any irate farmers!
This is Adelboden town and Gsür behind Tschenten viewed from Bunderalp.

Linerolle to Geneva

Here's the final installment of the Bike Trip Saga. Total miles: 128. Total hours in the saddle: 13. Number of times I nearly died: 2 times (once when I fell off my bike and once when I was nearly pushed off my bike...read on).

We got up on Monday morning, thankful that the stores would be open (that's the reason we didn't have any food when we stopped at the Lambercey's on Sunday night, we should have thought ahead and NOT planned a bike trip over the weekend--everything is closed on Sunday in Switzerland). So, we were thankful that it was Monday, and that we'd gotten to take baths the night before, and that we still had some bread and cheese for breakfast from the night before. Unfortunately, it was raining. And everybody knows that the Pouring Rain is No Place For a Bicycle Ride. (Name that tune and I"ll give you a Pony Nuzzle).
Instead of riding we went to the cafe in town (I believe I've already made comments about what a classy establishment it was) and had some expensive and not very tasty coffee. We were only two days into our trip and words couldn't even begin to describe how tired and achey I was. Lucky for me the big hill we were supposed to ride over that day was gravel, so we HAD to take a train around it. I was thrilled. We only had to ride 10 kilometers to the train station, and it had stopped raining. It wasn't shaping up to be too bad of a day really, but it got even better.

When we got to the train station, I went to the ticket window to buy our train tickets. We were going to go around the mountain and pick up the route again right after the gravel portion.

I said to the woman at the ticket window "I need to go to Bassin" (Or somewhere like that, the actual name of the town escapes me at the moment) and she said "One moment."

She went back into the office to get someone else, who I assumed spoke English. So woman number two came up and I repeated what I said "I need to go to Bassin". She gave me a blank look and shook her head, so I tried German "Ich muss nach Bassin" and she said "I understand you" what she didn't understand was the name of the town I was trying very hard to pronounce B a s s i n. So I said "Let me write it down, j'ecris, ich schribe!" she gave me a piece of paper and I wrote it down...B a s s i n..., and passed it to her. She looked at it and said 'Ooooh Bassin' and of course she prounounced it exactly the same way I had before. When she printed out the itenerary, the bike trip got even better for me. In order to get to this off the beaten track-middle-of-no-where Swiss town, we had to go to Nyon, which was the terminal city on the route anyway. So, I decided it would be best if we just skipped the last 40 kilometers of the route. We had to get to Geneva at some point so I thought we might as well do it quicker. Laura didn't complain either.

When we got to Nyon, the weather was beautiful and we had a picnic outside the Migros. The rest of the ride to Geneva was flat and fast and beautiful, and we'd finally managed to escape the punishing headwinds that had been tormenting us for the past day and a half.

Geneva is a horrible place and I would not recommend going there. Not on a bike anyway. We had to deal with traffic, dissapearing bike lanes, and lots and lots of people. A cranky old man almost pushed me off my bike. I was riding slowly through the bike lane when he decided he wanted to walk out in front of me. I nearly hit him and then he pushed me from behind and yelled something nasty. We had planned to stay another night in Geneva and explore the city a bit in the morning, but after that horrible experience I decided that going home right away would be the best option. Plus, we already had bike tickets that were good for the whole day. So, we saw the big sites: the water spout and the huge suspended coffin. We drank some coffee and headed home on the train.

This is what 1.50CHF train station coffee machine coffee looks like. See through. I wouldn't recommend it.
When we got to Geneva Laura bought me a birthday cake. I told her my birthday would not be over until I got one, and I even made her sing happy birthday to me. I had a three day birthday, the longest one Ever.
That big thing behind me is the Brunswick Memorial, or Monument. It's a big suspended coffin with lots of carved knights and mythical creatures on it.

This is Mr. Brunswick, who I believe resides in the suspended coffin.
This is the water spout. It was installed in 1891 and shoots water 140 m into the air. The city of Geneva spends 800,000CHF a year just to keep it going. What a good use of money.