I am a list person. Let’s be honest, writing them helps keep me sane. Early in 2009, I had a turning-thirty crisis. I dealt with it in the only way I could. I went on a safari in Tanzania. For other moments of existential crisis (which happens all too often when you write), I keep a list of all the countries that I have visited. I consider that list one of my life’s greatest accomplishments. All that well-channelled Wanderlust.

In September 2009, my big 3-0 fell smack in the middle of the week, on a Wednesday, the worst night for going out. I dealt with this obstacle in the best possible way, by taking yet another trip. This time we went to Turkey, home to the beautiful Bosphorus, the narrow strait that divides mainland Europe from Asia Minor. Unfortunately, it’s taken me five months to go through the hundreds of pics that we took. But better late than never. So expect to hear a bit more about Turkey in the next few posts, cause it was a fracking awesome trip.

Last year, in January, my friend T organized a snow-shoe hike complete with outdoor fondue. That walk through the Berner Oberland was pretty fracking incredible. Beautiful views, good company, yummy food and physically taxing in that wonderful way where you truly feel alive. This year we went to Arvenbüel in St. Gallen for a second go at snow-shoeing through some beautiful landscapes and outdoor fondue eating. It has been snowing a lot these days and we were blessed with lot of powdery snow. As you can see, everything was covered with a fresh coat of white.

The nice thing about powdery snow, it’s a lot easier to maneuver in. Don’t get me wrong. We were all drenched with sweat, but it was much more pleasant than having to trudge through wet snow, which is heavy and miserable to deal with.

Now it is hard to imagine any sorts of improvements from last year, but T. is quite ingenious. The only thing that I could complain about from last year was getting really cold while we waited for the fondue to melt. This year, she planned for our hike to pass a Schweizer Familie Feuerstelle, a public facility for outdoor grilling on hiking trails. She had her husband C and our friend J carry wood and kindling so that we could build a fire and thus stay warm while waiting for the food. One problem: the Feuerstelle was completely covered with snow. No matter. First we trampled down the area around the fire pit and then we dug it out with our snowshoes. I have to admit that the walking around part looked a bit like some pagan ritual.

We cleared off a bench and used it as a table to cook the first round of fondue. Unfortunately, it was very windy, so we had to construct a little cardboard hut to keep the fondue flame from going out.

However, by the time we were ready for the second round of fondue, we were all so cold that we decided to melt the cheese directly over the fire.

(This photo was taken by my friend and fellow blogger Chantal Panozzo. Check out her blog about life in CH and her blog about writing.)

The one unfortunate thing about huddling so close to the fire, we all stank from the smoke. On the bus ride back to the train station, some Swiss people even commented how we smelled like grilling. They were a bit surprised as we explained that we “grilled” fondue, not something more standard like sausages. We certainly did smell. In fact, my snow pants still reek of campfire. What a pleasant smell and what a lovely day.

I am quite amazed that I have only just discovered Backpapier. (It feels weird to refer to the stuff as “baking paper” since the packaging here calls it “Backpapier”. Besides, it’s more fun to say Backpapier.) I have been developing my cooking skills and my foodie palette for over a decade now, but only in the past two weeks have I used Backpapier instead of the more old-school cookie-sheet greasing alternative. So how did I discover Backpapier? Home-made pizzas.

Niko and I have recently been experimenting with them, and after scouring a pan with a brillo pad for what felt like an eternity, I decided we needed a new approach to dealing with burned cheese and spilled sauce. And that is when Backpapier entered our culinary lives. You put the dough on the paper, prepare the pizza, cook it, and then lift it off the paper. No mess. Fabulously simple. Ok, I could see how one could argue that using Backpapier is wasteful, creating more trash in the ol’Zuri Sack. But the time saved with the easier clean-up must be worth something. Especially considering the time spent chopping vegetables and making Frank Sinatra’s mother’s marinara sauce.

I know that I have complained about Word’s grammar check before, but yet again, it is getting on my nerves. This week, I have been editing stories for a short story contest, and for some reason, the grammar check keeps underlining the word pressing no matter how many times I tell the program to ignore the word.

Here is the sentence that it does not like:

Some matters were more pressing.

Ok, Word, I get it. You see the word pressing as a noun. You think the word more is being used as an adjective denoting an amount. In that sense, it makes sense that you think pressing should be plural, and thus, you repeatedly give me the suggested change pressings. However, you dumbass, I am using pressing as an adjective, with the more as a comparative modifier. Now, Word, unless English suddenly became like French (where adjectives agree in number with the nouns that they are modifying*), stop telling me that my adjective should be pluralized!

*The subject of the sentence, some matters, is plural, and in French, the modifying adjective would also be in plural, so then if some matters were more pressing were written in French, it would make sense for pressing to have an added -s.

In the almost five years that I have spent in Zurich, I have come to take it for granted that all things should work in an efficient manner. Thus, the surprise of anything done poorly compounds any sense of frustration that I already encounter with a given inconvenience. And the issues that we are having getting our bathroom sink fixed, I am starting to feel like we are living in Greece, not Switzerland.

I consider myself a good tenant, and like any good tenant, I know that you should report any water related problem ASAP. A few weeks ago, we started to hear a leaky noise shortly after we used our bathroom sink. The dripping would eventually stop, but we called our building’s management company anyway, just to make sure everything was on the up and up. After all, water damage can mean serious business. So they sent over the building’s usual repairman. He looked at the sink for all of two minutes, tightened some screw on the pipe and then declared the problem solved. I don’t claim to be an engineer or anything, but I had the distinct feeling that he did a half-assed job, one not worthy of Switzerland and its reputation for efficiency and quality. It turns out that I was right, because two weeks later, the dripping noise came back, but this time with a vengeance.

Again, like a good tenant should, we called our building’s management company and they sent over another repairman, this one different from the first. He spent a little more time looking at the pipes and discovered that the rubber connecting the pipes had corroded away. He explained that he didn’t have the proper part to fix the sink, but he said that it would could be ordered and then someone would come the following week to install it and finally fix the sink once and for all. In meantime, we put an improvised receptacle underneath the pipe to collect dripping water.

That happened last week, and in the days since the sink diagnosis, the dripping has become worse- so bad that we have to empty the excess water at least twice a day. This week, on Tuesday, a repairman was supposed to come with the proper part and fix the sink. Then, with some reason having to do with the snow, the management company rescheduled the repair for Wednesday. So, yesterday, the original repairman came with what was supposed to be the missing piece. I have to admit that I was dubious upon seeing him, and I was right. Not only was he unable to fix the damn pipe, he also made it so that we cannot use the bathroom sink at all. In theory, another repairman (or should I say repair-person because who knows, it could be a woman?) will be coming today to fix our sink. We shall see if our plumbing woes will finally be taken care of.

I should be grateful that the problem is only with the sink. We still have hot water, and, knock on wood, our toilet, shower and kitchen sink are doing just fine. Still, I can’t help feeling let down. At least, in Karpathos, there are beaches to balance out shoddy plumbing repairs.

This weekend Niko and I saw the movie Avatar in 3D. I had some mixed feelings about going to see this movie, and now that I have seen it, I feel like my misgivings were not off the mark. You see, I am one of the few people who really disliked Titanic, another James Cameron holiday-release film bloated with lots of hype. For me, the dialogue in that movie was incredibly flat, the characters terribly two-dimensional, and the plot hopelessly predictable. I feared it would be the same with Avatar, though this time, the movie ticket would come with an expensive Swiss price tag. Well, just like Titanic, the dialogue in Avatar was flat (and flat dialogue really stands out against a 3D backdrop), the characters were two-dimensional, and the plot was predictable. However, unlike Titanic, Avatar was visually stunning- so many bright colors to contrast with the grays and whites of Zurich winter- and the imagination that it took to come up with the core idea, I have a lot of respect for that.

After we saw the movie, Niko and I had a discussion about three-dimensional characters in movies and the lack thereof. The only movie that I could think of that had anything resembling a three-dimensional character was Little Miss Sunshine. Niko said that it was very hard to develop a 3D character in the span of two hours, and I have to admit that he has a valid point. That said, I can easily think of examples of three-dimensional writing in recent television shows like The Wire. Now there’s a great example how to construct character. No good guys, no bad guys, just people, which when it comes down to it, is what you try to get at when aiming for three-dimensionality in writing. Is there a writing lesson to be learned from Avatar, besides the obvious what not to do? Well, I would say that imagination can forgive a lot. Now just imagine the possibility for excellence if a healthy imagination met up with some 3D storytelling. Now that would be worth the 23chf price tag.

In the South in the US, it is traditional to eat black-eyed peas for good luck on New Year’s Day. According to Wikipedia, Sephardic Jews brought this New Year’s practice to the South, but it wasn’t until after the Civil War that gentiles started eating this dotted legume for luck and prosperity for the New Year.

In the South, black-eyed peas are normally cooked with some sort of pork product (not very Kosher, nor vegetarian friendly) and served with some sort of greens (probably also cooked with pork). My version was cooked with sauteed onions and spinach seasoned with a little cumin, salt and pepper, and I served my black-eyed peas over brown rice. Niko and I ate the dish on New Year’s Day, and then to add further luck to the year, I decided to repeat the meal today, the first work day of 2010. Happy New Year!

In 2007 we checked out the Christmas Market scene in Vienna. In 2008 we perused Europe’s largest Christmas Market in Nuremberg. This year we decided to see what happens when the Germanic tradition receives a Gallic twist by visiting two marchés de Noël, one in Colmar and one in Montreux. So how do they compare?

When it comes to cuteness, Colmar wipes the floor with Montreux. Of course, part of that has to do with its setting in the vieille ville. Colmar’s old town is easily the cutest place that I have ever been in Alsace. The city had several small markets spread through the quaint streets and the central canal.

As you can see, it was quite cold the day we visited the market, New England style cold. Fortunately, in Alsace, they make their gluehwein, or vin chaud as it is called in Colmar, from their fabulous local white wine. Once you’ve had white wine gluehwein, there’s no going back to red!

On a perfectly clear day, the Montreux Christmas Market could have looked really spectacular, since all the booths lined the lake.

Unfortunately, as you can the see, the day we visited, the sky was so hazy that you couldn’t see the lake unless you walked right up to it. Lack of views aside, the Montreux market rocked the food department. In addition to standard Swiss winter fare like raclette and fondue, there were open faced sandwiches, roasted chesnuts, and the biggest surprise of all… poutine!

Overall, both Colmar and Montreux were full of cheer, and when it comes down to it, that’s all you really need to make a Christmas market fun. Well, that and some gluehwein!

Niko and I have been gluttons this holiday weekend. Huevos rancheros, spanakopita with Greek potatoes, curried cauliflower with tomatoes and tofu. It’s a wonder that neither of us seem to have put on any extra pounds after such indulgences. It is particularly impressive when I think about the amount of butter that went into this recipe for vegetarian French onion soup that I found in a series about winter soups on theAtlantic.com

The soup looked so incredible (see recipe-accompanying photo below) that I decided I would attempt to make it in spite of the butter.

A brief tangential explanation about my issues with butter. It’s not that I’m squeamish about cooking with fats. Many of the Greek dishes that I make are covered with liberal amounts of olive oil, and there are divine combinations to be had when mixing peanut butter and coconut milk. My problem is with butter itself. Call me crazy, but I just don’t like the stuff all that much.

Prejudices aside, I only made two minor recipe adjustments. I decided to forego the mushrooms and I opted to use a healthier Vollkorn bread instead of a Pariserbrot (German translation for baguette.) I also did not have the cute little French mini-souffle bowls, so my version did not come out as picture perfect as the online version, but es hat sehr gut geschmeckt and will probably be featured at a future dinner party. It must be all that quality Swiss Gruyere!

Today is Christmas, and not surprisingly, it is a public holiday in Switzerland. All stores are closed. Most of my friends have flown to their respective homes. Niko and I have made a pot of Christmas tea with tea bought from the Montreux Christmas Market, and now we are sticking it to the man by doing two loads of laundry on a public holiday!!!

Frohe Feste und nos meilleurs voeux for the season.