Last night we began the process of saying our goodbyes to people here. We hosted a farewell party at our home for the members of the hip team from the Inselspital. Despite the rainy weather, people from the clinic gathered, many with their children, and we grilled out Swiss-style and drank local beer. After almost a year of their kindness and hospitality, it was the least we could do to say thank you. I also passed out a few t-shirts from Milwaukee’s own Lakefront Brewery as a small token of thanks and encouraged them all to visit us in America.
They had one last surprise for me, though. While we were all sitting outside on the porch, I started to hear a loud gonging sound. It sounded like a Swiss Cow was walking through our house. When I looked through the window into the house I saw my fellowship mentor walking through our living room with a large swiss bell around his neck, ringing away to announce his arrival.
He brought the bell outside and, much to my surprise, presented me with the very same Swiss Cow Bell that I had seen made just the previous week. They had decided to get it for us as a gift. We were all so touched! It added another fond memory that will undoubtedly come to mind when we look at that bell back in our home in America.
As a unique remembrance of our year in Switzerland, we decided to have a customized traditional Swiss Glocke style cow bell casted for us. We had our bell made by the Gusset family in Uetendorf, Switzerland near Thun. Their factory, the Glockengiesserei Gusset has been making bells in Switzerland for seven generations. Our thanks go out to Hans, Peter, the other Hans, the other Peter, and the Gusset brother whose name we never learned. They were kind enough to let me stand there and videotape the entire casting process. So you can see our bell made from start to finish. Enjoy the video below.
Switzerland is the land of chocolate. Did you know that the average Swiss person consumes over 26 pounds of chocolate every year?! We always have a few bars of wonderful chocolate in the kitchen. I’m on a mission to try every kind of chocolate in the amazing aisle at the grocery store. But this week, we had a chance to go a little deeper into Swiss chocolate culture.
On Wednesday afternoon, when the kids are not in school, I took them to the Kambly factory. Kambly is a Swiss company that is best known for their cookies. At their factory, they have a special program for kids to make a cookie creation. I had registered Emily and James, so when we arrived they received an apron and got to work. I was expecting them to churn out a batch of cookies, but no. They made a work of eatable art, complete with a cookie base, cake ball snowman, chocolate tree, and marzipan decorations. At the end, after over two hours of hard work, they didn’t want to eat it! (You can see their finished creations in our gallery). Fortunately, there were plenty of Kambly cookies laid out to sample, so we all spoiled our supper before returning home.
The next day was my birthday, and I had another treat for my sweet tooth. Recently, I discovered a great blog called “My Kugelhopf” written by an American living in Zurich who loves sweets, chocolate and traveling. It’s perfect for me! She gives a tour called “Sweet Zurich,” so I signed up. Joe’s gift to me was staying home with the kids for the day (he worked late a couple of nights to make up for it). So, I grabbed my book and my camera and hopped on the train.
This tour was deliciously sophisticated, like a chocolate appreciation class. We walked around the beautiful old town neighborhoods of Zurich visiting small, boutique chocolate and pastry shops. We learned about the different tropical regions the cocoa beans come from, the ingredients and process involved with making chocolate, and how different decisions affect the taste and quality of the final product. I tasted a dark chocolate with ginger and orange, a white chocolate with lime, an unconched chocolate with raisins (and learned what “conching” is!), among many other things. At a specialty cupcake shop, they even had a candle in a cupcake for my birthday.
Before I knew it, I was back on the train, but there was one more sweet treat on my list. After reading the blog and meeting the author, I wanted to try a Kugelhopf. I stopped at the store on the way home and picked one out. I opted for the less traditional chocolate kugelhopf (or gougelhof in this area.) At home we had a little celebration with the cake and a few cards and presents. I feel very blessed, and very full. I think I need to eat salads for the next week!
James has been having a bit of a difficult Christmas. He’s admitted to being pretty homesick, and I think that the holidays coming on were making him think more of home. More than that, though, James became convinced this year that Santa wasn’t real. And this wasn’t just a fleeting thought. He would argue about it. He would yell at his sister about it. He would get upset when anyone suggested otherwise.
So Sarah and I talked to him. We pulled him aside and said we thought it was fine if he didn’t want to believe in Santa Claus. He told us that he thought we were the ones who brought presents on Christmas. We told him that was true. But we also told him that it was important to his younger brother and older sister that Santa really existed. So we said that, for now, we would not discuss whether Santa existed in front of Emily and Henry, unless they wanted to talk about it too. He was OK with that.
Then we went on our Christmas Vacation in the Alps and a few small things happened. First, while enjoying our presents on Christmas Eve, a small bell rang from the next room, when the kids went in they found a few more presents and evidence that the Christkind had been there.
Santa's note on our tree
That night, at dinner, the Weihnachtsmann visited. The kids were suspicious of this man, but he pulled me aside, and asked me if I knew an Emily and James. I told him I did. He handed me two packages and told me that they contained a very special Swiss treat only for boys and girls who were ready to accept them. The Weihnachtsmann had singled out Emily and James.
Finally, when we arrived home in Münsingen, we found our fireplace open. There were bootprints and ashes around our tree. James detected hoof prints in the backyard. Most importantly, there were presents under our well-cared for and watered Christmas tree. There was also a note on the tree that read:
Dear Emily, James, and Henry,
I hope you had a great Christmas in the mountains. I told my friend Christkind to visit you there. But I couldn’t leave out any of my American children around the world, so I brought a few things to your home in Switzerland.
See you next year back in Milwaukee!
Love,
Santa
P.S. I hope you don’t mind – the reindeer were very thirsty from the long trip, so they took a drink from your pond.
The Kids can't believe that Santa came!
James, Emily, and Henry all jumped around the room yelling that they couldn’t believe it! Santa had come to visit them in Switzerland. James told Sarah and I that he couldn’t believe that he was wrong about Santa. Then he told us he couldn’t believe that we were wrong about Santa, too.
Christmas can be a real pain in the neck. Kids can be a real pain in the neck. Traveling during the holidays can be a real pain in the neck. Buying over-the-counter medications in Europe can be a real pain in the neck. Which is why, on Christmas Day, in Kandersteg Switzerland, I found myself in a doctors office explaining that I needed some anti-inflammatory medication because I had a real bad pain in my neck.
I’m not trying to complain here, but Christmas morning I woke up and was virtually unable to turn my head. I could look down okay, but looking up or to the sides was impossible. I knew what was going on, and I knew I just needed some Aleve to help it… but we didn’t have any. So I had to walk a couple blocks on Christmas morning to the local doctor so he could examine me and recommend some anti-inflammatory medication.
“You live in Switzerland?” he asked when I showed my Swiss health insurance card. “Yes. I live near Bern.” “Where do you work?” he asked me. “At the Inselspital,” I answered. “You’re a doctor?” he asked chuckling slightly. “Yep.” “What kind?” “Orthopaedics.” He now moved to a full on laugh. “I know,” I said, “this is all very silly.”
But I was thankful to have him there, and have learned more about the Swiss Health Care System in the meantime. Either way, by the end of the night I was beginning to feel better, and by the day after Christmas I could almost move normally again.
It turns out that Christmas in Switzerland has a contingency plan for this sort of thing. The Swiss have a tradition called the Pelzmartiga that is intended to ward off poor health, poverty, war, and danger. And they do this by trying to scare them away. So as we sat at Christmas dinner, an elegant 5-course meal with our children, we suddenly heard banging as though someone was dropping lots of pots and pans in the kitchen.
Instead, it turned out to be a group of citizens from the village, dressed up in traditional Pelzmartiga costumes, banging cowbells with old iron hooks. The walked into the hotel restaurant, mingled among the patrons alternatively scaring and consoling the children, and created the greatest ruckus I have ever heard at a Christmas dinner. To quote Henry: “They are very, very, loud.” Within ten minutes they were gone, and the children were beginning to calm down. But the impression will last a lifetime. Nothing caps off Christmas like a good scare!
Reading more about it, and speaking to locals, the Pelzmartiga are made up of the following characters:
The Chindlifrässer (Child Eater) wears a mask with a gaping mouth and menacing teeth. He carries a backpack with legs dangling out of it. The legs belong to a child that has fallen victim to him. The Chindlfrässer scares away famine and disease which, until the last century, caused the deaths of many young children.
The Chriismarti is dressed in evergreen branches and symbolizes the many dangers presented to men by winter in the woods.
The Blätzlibueb wears a gown of sheer fabric scraps to scare away poverty.
The Huttefroueli looks like an old woman carrying a war-torn soldier in a basket on her back. She scares away the threat of war.
The Spielkartenmann, covered all over with playing cards scares away desires to gamble and imprudent spending.
The Burli, a simple villager with pipe and nightcap. That’s all I could find out about that guy.
The Lyrimaa plays a hurdy-gurdy. You can throw money into its money slot to buy your freedom from evil powers.
The Heri, a gentleman in a tuxedo, hat, and white gloves holds a whip which he uses to keep the wild gang together and disciplines them if they become to violent.
Sarah recently wrote about our town and the approaching holidays, including an interaction between our children and Switzerland’s beloved Samichlaus. If you are anything like me, though, you may have eyed the darkly-clad mysterious figure next to Samichlaus and thought to yourself, “Who in the name of Yukon Cornelius is this baffling Christmas character?” It turns out that while America has imported and adapted the figure of Santa Claus for our Christmas season, we have largely abandoned the concept of his “Companions” that is so prevalent throughout Europe.
Schmutzli
The mysterious dark figure that accompanies Samichlaus is none other than Schmutzli (or Père Fouettard in the French speaking regions), and he is Father Christmas’ answer to Corporal Punishment. Or at least, he used to be. While it was Samichlaus who loved children and brought them gifts of candy, nuts, and mandarins, Schmutzli was known to punish the naughty children by whipping them with a switch from his broom. His relationship to Samichlaus is not really well understood, but now he has become a more benevolent helper, passing out candy, nuts, and mandarins to children who recite poems or sing songs.
While Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, Samichlaus and Schmutzli live together in a hut (with a presumably Platonic relationship) in Germany’s Black Forest. One story I have heard is that Schmutzli was a poor woodcutter who “saved Christmas” one year. Samichlaus’ bag of treats had ripped open, and Schmutzli walked around with his own sack gathering up the fallen treats. Samichlaus was so grateful when Schmutzli brought him back all of the treats that he invited Schmutzli to accompany him on his journey to children’s houses. How, or when, it was decided that Schmutzli would get to beat the bad children (or stuff them in his sack), is less clear.
While the name Schmutzli uniquely belongs to Switzerland, European versions of St. Nick have traveled with other, similar Companions for centuries. He goes by many names and faces: Knecht Ruprecht (Rupert the Farmhand), Zwarte Piet (Black Peter), Krampus, Belsnickel, Bellzebub, and more. They all seem to have the same philosophy in common: they bring fear and retribution along with the kindness of St. Nick. They are the negative reinforcement to Santa’s positive reinforcement. (NPR recently did a story about the Krampus from the European Alpine folklore, if you are interested.)
SBB (The Swiss Rail System) use Samichlaus and Schmutzli to show you how to use paper and e-tickets.
Samichlaus and Schmutzli have their big night on December 6th, when they make the rounds visiting houses and leaving treats. On December 25th, however, presents are left for children by the Christkind or Christ child. Similar to our Santa Claus, the Christkind won’t leave presents while children are still awake (or at least not while they are in the room). Kids are sent to bed, or to hide in the basement while the Christkind leaves presents, and then the children are summoned back to the main room in hopes that they will get a glimpse of the Christkind before he flies out the door. Alas, he is still rarely seen.
David Sedaris summed up his reaction to the Dutch Christmas story, and how it contrasted with our American story, nicely (for full text, read the entire piece in Esquirehere, or hear David Sedaris read it here – it is well worth the 15 minutes):
While eight flying reindeer are a hard pill to swallow, our Christmas story remains relatively simple. Santa lives with his wife in a remote polar village and spends one night a year traveling around the world. If you’re bad, he leaves you coal. If you’re good and live in America, he’ll give you just about anything you want. We tell our children to be good and send them off to bed, where they lie awake, anticipating their great bounty. A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his children, “Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before you go to bed. The former bishop from Turkey will be coming along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you in a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don’t know for sure, but we want you to be prepared.”
The Bern Onion Market or Zwiebelmarkt is infamous, at least in this area of Switzerland. Of course, we had never heard of it, but we had been told we had to check it out. I wasn’t exactly sure what could be so great about an onion market that takes place on a Monday from 6am – 6pm. But, I packed up the boys, picked Emily up at school and headed to the train station.
As the kids and I got off the train in Bern, we noticed confetti all over the floor of the platform, and throughout the train station. When we stepped off the escalator into the streets of Bern, they were covered with confetti as far as I could see. I was still taking it in and trying to figure out which way to go when a total stranger came up and threw confetti all over us. Once we were covered, we started to join in the fun, scooping confetti off the street and throwing it at each other, and anyone else who seemed willing. (Though we later learned that using street confetti is frowned upon, and we bought a bag of fresh confetti).
The market itself consists of thousands of stands throughout the streets of Bern’s old town. The majority of them sell — you guessed it — onions. But not just any old onions. Perfectly proportioned yellow and red onions that have been tied together with dried flowers into hanging decorations. They come in any size you could want, from tiny ones made with the smallest bulbs to huge ones hanging over 5 feet tall. Some were made into wreaths. The kids even got little onion pins.
Besides onions, you could also buy necklaces made out of breath mints wrapped in colorful plastic wrap, festival items like confetti and squeaky hammers, seasonal baked goods like magenbrot, and food stands selling onion cakes and glühwein (Swiss mulled wine), among many other things. Emily opted for a blue mint necklace, while James chose a confetti gun, and of course I had to buy a small bunch of onions.
The streets were crammed with people, and we walked around getting bonked with toy hammers and covered in confetti. It is said that this is the one day when Bern, a city that is thought of as reserved and a little uptight, lets off some steam and goes a little crazy. I realized it would be too difficult to try to eat downtown with all the crowds and three young kids, so we made our way back to the train station and headed home for dinner.
When it was time for bed, and I was getting Henry into his pajamas, I took off his diaper and it was filled with confetti! We did our best to shake off as much as we could, but it keeps turning up in pockets, purses, hoods. We can now say that we have experienced the phenomenon that is the Berner Zwiebelmarkt.
Just the word conjures up visions of giant soft, chewy pretzels, liter steins of beer, and throngs of Germans clad in lederhosen and dirndls.
Well, it’s all true.
Sarah and I took the kids to Munich to experience Oktoberfest, since we had held an Oktoberfest celebration at our house every year for the past three years. Sarah wrote about how we took the kids for a day of carnival rides and cookies, but the next night, Sarah and I got a babysitter (a saint from Canada named Chantal who had just moved to Munich), dressed up in our best trachten and grabbed the U-Bahn to the Theresienwiese to experience Oktoberfest first hand. And let me tell you, the U-Bahn stop at Theresienwiese during Oktoberfest is wall-to-wall Kraut. You must lose all sense of personal space to brave this crowd.
Like most things, Oktoberfest is now a mutated, bloated, exorbitant continuation of what once was intended as a commemorative celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig (soon King Ludwig I) to his bride, Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. The marriage took place on October 12, 1810 and the people of Munich were invited to participate in the festivities including horse races. As the horse race was repeated annually, the tradition of Oktoberfest was born.
Oktoberfest features only beer brewed by the six major brewers to brew within the city of Munich (known as the Big Six by me, if no one else): Hofbrau, Spaten, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Löwenbräu, and Augustiner. You can usually get Weizenbeir, Helles, and of course, the special Oktoberfest beers at the festival. Liter mugs (ein Maß in German) are mandatory and rarely is anything else sold (or tolerated).
Sarah and I found our way to several tents that all claimed to have reserved seating (though I argued that present paying customers were much better than customers yet to come). You see, at Oktoberfest they will not serve you unless you are seated. So it is not uncommon, if you have a table, for a waiter to escort a pretty young fräulein to your table, sit her down momentarily, exchange beer for money, and then she will get up and walk away. This works with one or two people, but larger groups must find a table to sit at.
Eventually we found our seats in the outdoor biergarten of the Schottenhamel tent, a Spaten establishment (one of Sarah and my favorites, and widely available in the U.S. in case you would like to try). We were seated with a group of biology researchers from Munich, across from some Italians from Rome, and a table from some highly inebriated Scots.
We ate, drank, and sang to our hearts delight. Eventually, two nice older couples from Rome were seated next to us. They spoke no German, but understood some of my Spanish. I almost had a seizure trying to translate their Italian into English, and back into German in order to help them order food for the night. They were very appreciative of our efforts, anyway.
After we drank a few liters we went on to the notorious Hofbrauhaus tent. It is known as the place where loud, obnoxious foreigners (i.e. Australians) go to party. I don’t know where these people were from, but as soon as Sarah and I hit the dance floor everyone seemed to want to take pictures with us. We felt like celebrities (but knew we weren’t).
We finally made it back to the U-Bahn and headed back home. We knew we had gotten the full Oktoberfest experience. If only King Ludwig himself could see the party he’s started.
Swiss schools have a three week Fall break that started last weekend. Not only do the kids have off of school, all adult groups also take three weeks off, and even some family run shops are closed while the whole country goes on vacation. So, like all the other Swiss families, we took off for a trip in southern Bavaria. First stop: Munich, Germany.
It is Oktoberfest season in Munich, and we were told it would be crowded and touristy. But, as we have thrown a home-town Oktoberfest party for the past several years, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to the real thing! Amazingly, we found a cute, affordable apartment in the city for the family. We packed up our liederhosen and dirndls and we were ready.
Our apartment was right by a bus stop, so once we were settled in, we hopped on a bus to explore the city. We all got pretty good at navigating the Munich public transportation system, to the point that the kids knew which U-Bahn (subway) stops we got off at to make our transfers and when to push the button on the bus to let the driver know we wanted to get off. The first night we went to the Odeonsplatz, a pretty and posh area of the old city. We ate dinner in an outdoor café and reacquainted ourselves with wonderful German food. Then we walked down Theatinerstrasse to the Marienplatz, Munich’s famous central square, to show the kids the major landmarks of the city.
In the mornings, we took the kids to some less crowded, more peaceful areas of Munich. We walked through a small part of the huge Englischer Garten where we watched surfers on the Eisbach river, talked to the ducks by the Japanese Tea House, and ate lunch at the beer garden by the Chinese Tower. The next morning, we went to Max Weber Platz, which is another nice park by the Isar river, where we found a spielplatz and just played with other local families. After working up an appetite, we went to the Augustiner Keller for lunch. It is Joe’s favorite place on the planet. This was his third visit, but his first time eating outside in the beer garden, and he said being there “made his soul feel good.”
Tuesday afternoon we took the family to Oktoberfest. We got all dressed up and headed over to the festival grounds on a very crowded train full of people wearing trachten. In fact, this is probably the one place you actually look out of place if you aren’t wearing liederhosen or a dirndl. At the festival, we bought the kids the traditional heart-shaped gingerbread cookie necklaces to wear, which they promptly ate. We rode on many rides,including the large ferris wheel, the haunted roller coaster, the little train (for Henry), and the grand finale –
– the swings that spun and rose up several stories in the air. Everyone had a good time, though for being a beer festival, we didn’t have a single beer. But not to worry, we fixed that later.
We got a lot of great pictures in Munich. Check out the gallery here.
So, as I noted before, September 1st, 2011 was our tenth wedding anniversary. Sarah and I decided to get a babysitter this weekend (no small feat in Switzerland), and go out for the evening. Sarah had been looking forward to this weekend for quite some time, as she had already decided where we were going for our anniversary.
We took the train down to Thun, a lovely city just 10 minutes south of us by train, that also lies next to the Thunersee (Lake Thun) right where the Aare river exits. In fact, a portion of the old city is essentially an island in the middle of the Aare river, connected to the rest of the city by pedestrian and motor vehicle bridges. On one side of the old city is the bahnhof, and on the other lies Schloss Thun.
Sarah and I walked around the old city, visited Schloss Thun, and had drinks at several outdoor cafes while strolling through the town. We also saw preparations for a festival in the middle of the old town called the Langer Tisch, a festival that involves one long eating table that meanders through the old town.
While this was all lovely, it was by no means the highlight of the day. Sarah had a special plan in mind. There are a number of boats that sail on the Thunersee, “cruises” if you will, that have any number of themes associated with them. There are simple tourist boats, lunch boats, fondue boats, fish boats, wine boats, almost any kind of boat you could imagine. And Sarah had her eye on one particular boat for some time: the Dinner-und-Tanzschiff (Dinner and Dance Boat). She had made reservations for us on this boat, which only rides about once every two weeks or so, when she noticed that one set sail on our anniversary weekend.
The boat itself was beautiful. The M.S. Berner Oberland is one of the largest tourist ships to sail on the Thunersee. The dinner was delicious; we had apparently been upgraded to a First-Class dining area reservation. The view of the lake shore as daylight faded, and lights lining the lake as darkness crept in was fabulous, and made for a romantic evening.
And what could be more romantic, than two 300-lb guys in plaid shirts, unbuttoned at least half way down, singing German folk music with a pre-programmed Yamaha keyboard? Well, that pretty much describes Duo Barbados, our entertainment for the evening. The beginning of every song sounded like Boney M singing “Rivers of Babylon,” which Sarah got tired of me singing until at one point they actually WERE playing “Rivers of Babylon.” Sarah kept referring to what they were playing as “Muzak,” but to me that seemed like an insult to Muzak.
And if they weren’t entertaining enough (and the video below should clear up any confusion there), most of the other boat patrons (many of whom likely got their tickets as a half-price deal through their local ballroom dance studio) sent the entertainment value soaring into the hilariousphere. Among my personal favorites were: creepy guy who sat alone all night without dancing, The Elizabeth Taylor lookalike (at least from about 1 week after she died) and her “partner” who took turns “dancing” with a man in a boat captain’s uniform, and Mr. Bolo Tie and his lovely companion, who were actually very good dancers and enjoyable to watch.
There are times when sitcoms seem unbelievably contrived, but there are definitely times when you can’t believe that your life has turned into a sitcom. The only thing missing from last night was a laugh track, or a live studio audience. But when you are celebrating 10 years of marriage, you don’t let something like a ridiculously surreal Dinner-und-Tanzschiff ruin your evening. Sarah and I toasted the night away, laughed at ourselves, and, most importantly, hit the dance floor a few times just to say we did it all!
farewell party at our home for the members of the hip team from the Inselspital. Despite the rainy weather, people from the clinic gathered, many with their children, and we grilled out Swiss-style and drank local beer. After almost a year of their kindness and hospitality, it was the least we could do to say thank you. I also passed out a few t-shirts from Milwaukee’s own Lakefront Brewery as a small token of thanks and encouraged them all to visit us in America.
He brought the bell outside and, much to my surprise, presented me with the very same Swiss Cow Bell that I had seen made just the previous week. They had decided to get it for us as a gift. We were all so touched! It added another fond memory that will undoubtedly come to mind when we look at that bell back in our home in America.
– the swings that spun and rose up several stories in the air. Everyone had a good time, though for being a beer festival, we didn’t have a single beer. But not to worry, we fixed that later.
