The Rhein Falls Let down and the highest bar in Europe.

a few weekends ago I decided that in my effort to live in Europe I hadn't done nearly enough exploring of my own country. That Saturday, I ventured out to the largest Falls in Europe. The Rhein Falls. Now it being the largest place in Europe I expected great things. I had seen Niagara Falls, and Victoria Falls and thought that as the largest Falls in Europe it was going to be just as amazing. I then was told by Zuzana (a friend from Czech Republic) that it wasn't as great as Niagara, and that while still beautiful it would pale in comparison to Niagara. Ok. I lowered my expectations a little. Not as big as Niagara, but they still must be pretty big, right? I mean BIGGEST FALLS IN EUROPE. this has to mean something! I got there all excited about what I would see. this is what I saw:

Rhein Falls

WHAT?! Hopes and dreams ruined I stared in disbelief. This was practically the size of the falls behind my house at home! (I kid, I kid. But still pretty small.) Let's compare:

Niagara: 

http://www.congresstour.cl/int/destinos.php?hl=de&id_destino=658&nom_continente=&nom_pais=estados-unidos&nom_destino=-circuito-arco-iris-

I mean there was no comparison. After my shock I decided to take a few more fun pictures. It might be small but there were photo opportunities that needed to happen!

The Sunday we (Michelle, Mackenzie, and I) headed to Mount Titlus to see the mountain, the glacier and some snow. We managed a train, bus, gondola, and lift to get to the top. It was gorgeous and inside the glacier was awesome. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking! (I didn't get a picture of the highest bar in Europe. But I PROMISE we were there!

As you can see we got a little creative with our posing in the glacier.

At the top of the mountain!!

Hiking

the weather in Switzerland recently has been wonderful! One of the things I have been wanting to do for awhile is go hiking in different parts of Switzerland.  After a bit of a hard time getting to where we want to go (note: train conductors are ALWAYS right!) we managed to arrive in Brunnen and hiked around the area.  It was absolutely beautiful weather and a sort of unplanned hike as we chose routes based on what looked more interesting. Always fun! The views were absolutely stunning and I was so glad we were able to get away from the cities!

Check out that view!

taking a break

more views

they were walking backwards I swear!

LOOK OVER THERE!

adorable little house on a cart...well not exactly adorable i guess...

driving the tractor.

That one time when I went skiing!

I recently got a new computer and can now add pictures to my blog posts! I uploaded 200 pictures to my computer and im the process of editing for viewing pleasure!
WAYYYYY back in January my brother hosted a ski weekend with him and 30 of their closest friends. I being the awesome sister that I am got to invite a few friends up with me. One friend who had never skied in her life (michelle), one friend who had been skiing a few times (Nicole) and one friend who was basically professional (Anna), and then me on a snowboard (read: BEGINNER). We were definitely the youngest by about 6 years. We arrived on Friday night by way of train bus and TBAR. Nicole and Michelle and I started up as the last ones on the TBar. I was going to go last as the most experienced of the 3 but after being yelled at in Swiss German to get on the TBar ended up first, a bad idea...., Michelle managed to get up to the top fine without any problems (Amazing for a first time on skis ever!) This left Nicole who managed to get only halfway up the mountain before falling off the TBar and having to ski back down. First lesson. Always sit on the tbar, holding it with your arms will not get you up the mountain and instead leave enormous bruises.
After arriving and a pretty good night of fun, we woke early the next morning (hangovers be damned)  and began our first attempt at Michelle learning to ski. First off, I am in no way a ski instructor. I don't even remember learning how to ski and so to teach someone else was basically disaster. After telling Michelle just to turn and just go, i gave up and let michelle take the reins of teaching herself. She was successful at walking down. I was more just impressed she got down the mountain. I, didn't quite make it. I was over confident in my snowboarding skills and on the last day after not taking the TBar on saturday or sunday (do you know how difficult it is to TBar up a mountain on a snowboard? SO HARD.) I ended up snowboarding part of the way and then sliding down on my butt the rest of the way figuring I could get down quicker on my butt than on my board. Clearly, I am cut out for the professional leagues here.
Overall, we all had a lot of fun talking to real live adults (!!!) and "skiing" we managed to laugh most of our terrible skiing and snowboarding off and really have a great time!
Now for some pictures:

Michelle's first attempt at skiing

Our House for 30+ people

view from the house

skiing makes look super attractive

another view from the house. It was pretty incredible skiing in the Alps!s

Day trip: Liechtenstein

The Saturday before the trip we spent the afternoon down by the lake. It was surprisingly warm for early November but we managed to do some drawing and people watching throughout the afternoon followed by the wine boats at night. The wine boats were very cool. We got free tickets thanks to the ticket person and my SIL/brother. Once inside there are several different boats set up where you can go and taste several different red, white, rose, ice, and sparkling wines. It was a great evening with friends as we tried wines from around the world like Portugal, Argentina, South Africa, France, Italy, Switzerland etc. etc.

trying out some of the wines!l-r Me, Michelle, Whitney, and Shelley (photo: courtesy of Michelle)

Sunday we decided to take a day trip. One of the things I love about Switzerland is that it doesn't take long to get out of the country. One can get to about 5 different countries within a few hours.  We decided to take advantage of it and headed to the 6th smallest country in the world. Liechtenstein.  There isn't much to it. We had to take a bus to get in because there is no train that makes a stop in Liechtenstein.

Nicole, Michelle and Whitney on the bus to Liechtenstein!

Once we got there we decided to head to the post museum. Free is one of our favorite things as au pairs. We had to see what it was about!

 

 

Lots of fake statues like this....

and drawers full of mail like this

After that we headed to the only major attraction in the city in the Liechtenstein. The castle.   Because the Prince still lives there you can't go in it but merely walk around it.  There was a guard at the gates making sure we didn't try any funny business.

walking up to the castle we decided to take some of the harder paths...

The castle!

All 5 of us by the gate of the castle. L-r Zoe, Nicole, Whitney, Me and Michelle

After that we stopped at a cafe for a rest. One thing I have learned in Europe. Coffee in the afternoon is almost a necessity.No matter what we always stop at a cafe to do some people watching.  Probably one of my favorite parts of Europe is everyone's need to SIT DOWN for a cup of coffee. Not a coffee on the go or in the drive-thru but actually sitting down in a cafe to get a cup of coffee and enjoy the scenery around you.

Another Great weekend!


*All pictures (with the exception of the wine boats) courtesy of Zoe!

Do-re-mi!

The weekend of November 6th and 7th (I know I am really behind!) I headed off to Salzburg with two of my friends, Nicole and Crystal. We decided in our excitement that an overnight train would be perfect for our trip in order to cut out a night's stay in Salzburg and still have a full two days. Looking back? probably not one of our brightest ideas. We arrived fresh faced and excited at 4:15am. Did you know? In Salzburg nothing much is open at 4:15 am. Instead we sat in a smelly compartment for 3 hours having a conversation which none of us remember.

Nicole was not happy to be awake this early

at 7:15 we decided to have a look around and managed to find a grocery store open 7:30. Lucky for us! We managed to have a nice breakfast and lots of coffee before heading out to the....wait for it.....SOUND OF MUSIC TOUR!! I know you are all incredibly jealous. This was a 4 hour tour that took us to all the places they filmed including some of the lakes around Salzburg. Probably one of the most fantastic tours I have taken. It was chock full of remaking the movie and singing. pure JOY! We got a lot of background on the real Von Trapp family and the filming lies that took place. (like the fact that running from the hill to the abbey in the beginning would have taken more than 3 minutes....like A LOT more.) Overall probably my favorite part of the trip!

Nicole and I in front of the glass gazebo from the 16 going on 17 scene

In front of the pond where the kids fell out of the canoe. Not the same house though.  Tricky Hollywood!

 

 

Our tour bus. Oh YES. I know you're jealous!

On the bus. Note the people behind me. Mostly we had older couples.

Nicole and Crystal with our tour guide out in the lakes surrounding Salzburg. 

reenacting in Mirabell Gardens. I tried to find a movie picture but couldn't So just imagine it.

Picture with the gnome again from the Sound of Music.

After that we headed to the Mirabell gardens where we reenacted more scenes from the movie (clips to come) and walked about the beautiful gardens. including seeing the gnome garden. After taking full advantage of all the Sound of Music photo opportunities we decided to head into the city for a look around. One of the famous streets of Salzburg is Getreidgasse. It is a major shopping street with one of the coolest parts being all the signs for the shops.

see the old fashioned signs? Even Claire's is a darker color (although you can't really tell here)

Fun fact: McDonald's tried to put up their golden arches as the sign but the place was boycotted for 3 weeks until Mickey D's replaced the sign.

This street is also where Mozart's Geburtshaus (birthplace) is located. After some wandering through the shops and getting a few postcards we met up with our couch-surfing friend and had a quick stop back at his place before heading to one of the highlights of the trip a concert in the Salzburg fortress.

Nicole with our host Georg

I had wanted to have one experience of Mozart's music in his birthplace and the fortress was just perfect. It was candlelit and we listen to a Haydn quartet followed by a Mozart clarinet quintet and then a Mozart quartet. Overall very good and a really cool experience in the fortress.

The fortress where we had our concert.

the stage area of our concert

Sunday was filled with more wandering of the city. We went to Mozarts Wohnsthaus. The girls were not as excited as I was I don't think....

Not excited AT ALL

So excited I thought it deserved a jumping picture!

Mozart and I are pretty tight. NBD

They had a lot of Mozart's work and about the lifestyle and his development as an artist. After a bit of a sightseeing overload we ended our trip walking around the city and having coffee in one of the most famous cafes in Salzburg, Tomaselli's before catching our train back to Zurich.

We had a coffee break on the balcony overlooking the square. Nice people watching!

Weekend recap

This weekend was my first weekend in Zurich that I was officially on my own- apart from my brother and sister-in-law and not taking care of a cat! By Friday night I was exhausted from the week that I had had, full of lots of pretend-play (Mermaids and owls, anyone? no? just my kinder then...) Lots of park time and lots of cooking. I met some more family members (H's brother and 2 nephews) and played some rousing games of Candy Land with J and a little girl that lives next door.Saturday, I was invited with about 6 other au pairs, and a couple non-au pairs to go to a wine-tasting festival in Sierre, Switzerland- the french speaking part of Switzerland. With over 1200 wines- I was able to put my awesome (or lack of) wine-tasting skills (you know, swirl, smell, taste, and talk in depth about every flavor you taste) to the test. We tasted quite a few of the wines from different places all over Switzerland. Some were good and some were terrible but it was definitely a lot of fun! I found, I liked Gamay, and some of the Humagne were good. I only tried one or two Sauvignon Blanc which were also quite good.

There were about 50 tents set up around the town. 4 wineries in each tent makes for a lot of wine to taste!

L-r Kajsa, Kristina, Adam and Michelle Mid-wine tasting.

Kristina decided she was hungry

Cheers!

We saw a lot of stag parties around the wine festival as well. The groom was clearly having a great time.

We ended our wine tasting with some pizza and a short walk for some pretty good views.


Sunday was spent around Zurich. I spent some time down at the lake with a couple of other au pairs for awhile and then met up at a Beer Garden for a little while in the afternoon.Amie and Claire swimming in the lake. It was a little too cold for my taste!

Enjoying the river at Burkliplatz. l-r nicole, Kristina, Michelle, Nick and Adam.

I started my German classes today, and I realize they are going to be a little slow going at first. There are about 10 people in my class from all over the world (Brazil, Singapore, Cuba, Peru, and the Ukraine.) The class should be okay overall. The teacher also only speaks in German which will be a huge help in getting the basics down!