Happy Almost New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

Kyle and I are really enjoying our cruise (and writing down everything we do so we don't forget). I've even starting typing out a few of the blog posts... I purchased a little bit of internet time and thought I would let you know we're not dead. Although, we probably should be, Kyle's motto for the trip has been 'That looks seedy - let's go check it out!'

Tomorrow we're heading to Alexandria and Ciaro, Egypt and we'll be sure to take LOTS of pictures (I've already taken over 1,200)

Be ready to be flooded with emails from the blog after the first of the year - I'm going to be a blogging machine! You might want to invest in a new, larger monitor too - these photos, all 1,200 of them, are great!

A Quicky before I Head to Bed

We leave for Barcelona in 9 hours and 55 minutes (but who's counting right?). We'll be gone through January 6th - SUNNY SKIES HERE I COME!! I'll make sure to keep a journal or something so that I can remember what I do for the next 3 weeks...promise.

Instead of packing and cleaning the house today I went up to the HB (that's the BIG train station for those of you that don't pay attention) to the Christmas Markt. The booths were pretty cool (that's where everyone is getting their presents from next year, btw) but the 'piece de resistance' was the HUGE Christmas tree COVERED in Swarovski Crystals...B.E.A.UTIFUL (if you can name that movie I'll send you some chocolate - or maybe just bring you some next time I come home....)

Here are my pics...Doesn't everyone need a red $100 cow?Or a $400 ashtray?I thought these were super cute. They are Russian nesting dolls of Pooh characters (sorry my picture came out crappy).I will only buy a $1,000 coffee machine if he comes with it - then it's a steal!

Amsterdam, Netherlands (November 25-30)

You didn't really think I wouldn't tell you about our Thanksgiving trip to Amsterdam, did you?

We left early Wednesday morning and that put us into Amsterdam about lunch time. First thing off the plane this is what I saw (took this just for your Carol).We got all checked into the hotel and into our room. Wanna see something funny? This is the room we were in!
No really, I can't make that up!

After a little nap (for some reason Kyle and I get SOO tired after being on a plane - even for just a couple of hours) we headed out to look around. I found my preferred food for this location - the chocolate covered Belgium waffle: Kyle got one with sprinkles - and we continued walking around. We found our way to their Banhofstrasse (Rodeo Drive) and walked around there a little bit.

We found a comic book store that was selling Obama bobbleheads (I think I broke his head off...oops!) so we stopped in and did some window shopping. I couldn't help but take a picture of this!
The summer after 4th grade my friend, Lori Neves, and I rented this movie and watched it on a rainy night while we were living in an apartment over by Best Buy. I'm not sure we got all the way through it because it was really creepy. To this day it's still one of my favorite - but still super creepy - movies.

After the shopping (we bought nothing) we found the Dam Hotel. So I asked some dam questions and took some dam pictures. I couldn't find the dam tour guide.Unfortunately, they were doing construction - but this is the train station. Isn't it just beautiful?That night we decided to go to the Casino - to satisfy one of our vices. My all time favorite slot game is 'The Munsters'. I could play it all day long and some day will have a Musters slot machine of my very own... Well, they aren't really popular so they are hard to find - THE HOLLAND CASINO HAD ONE!! So I played 10 euros worth (about $13) and then decided I had to let Kyle lose at something (he was just sitting there staring at me).

We found the bingo machines and it was a total bust. Super Stupid. So, we went over to the video black jack machines. We both put in 5 euros - Kyle had to put in another 5 when he lost but I walked away with 16 Euros. I was up 1 euro - take that casino!!

Now we were hungry. So we walked across the little intersection (of course it's pouring down rain now) to the Hard Rock. At first Kyle thought it was the stupidist idea ever to eat at Hard Rock but I wanted my HRC pin so he was just going to have to deal with it. Once he got a look at the menu he changed his mind. There were glorious things on the menu - like unlimited soda, and rum and cokes, and real hambergers, baked beans, baby back ribs...he can't wait to go back to another Hard Rock on our next vacation (lucky for him 5 out of 9 stops on our cruise have a HRC).

After dinner I went do the gift shop and picked up my pin (I now have 3 - Rome, Paris, Amsterdam) and we decided to head back to the hotel. It was late and we were wet and tired. We took the scenic route back to the tram and walked around the bar district a little bit before we hopped on the tram.

The next morning we picked up our 24 hour I amsterdam passes and started out on our day. We were walking to Anne Frank's house when we saw some green and thought we would check it out. There's some really neat history with this area (unfortunately I can't remember it all). This used to be a nunnery but is now subsidized housing for single women. I think these row homes are so neat!So off to Anne Frank's house. We weren't allowed to take any pictures in there so I kinda put my camera away and forgot about it for a while.

Anne Frank's house was so neat (and creepy at the same time). I vaguely remember the book from elementary school. You know, you read this book when you're 12 and even though you know it's real you don't really get it. I'm sure even if I read it before I went I still wouldn't get it. (Now I really want to read it again) So you walk through the warehouse that was below the hideout and then up a couple of flights of stairs to where 8 people lived. They had to be silent during the day because the warehouse workers (all but about 3) didn't know they were up there. Then, at night, they had to be even quieter because no one was supposed to be in the building at all.

Anne's actually diary - written in Dutch - was there. I don't think I knew that she wanted to be a writter. Once she went into hiding she began to keep this diary and at one point she heard that after the war was over there was publishers that wanted to publish stories. Once she heard this (on the radio, I think) she started to edit her own work to get it ready to submit to the publisher.

To this day they still don't know who alerted the authorities that the family was in the warehouse. When they were captured the entire place was ransacked and all the furniture was removed. SOMEHOW the diary was left behind. After the authorities left, one of the people that helped the Frank family came in and found the diary. They kept it so that it could be returned to Anne once she was released from the concentration camp. Anne died in the camp about 1 month before the liberation. She thought that the rest of her family and friends had died as well - but her father survived (he was the only one).

After years of trying to find Anne her father, Otto, decided to read her diary (he had promised he would never read it) and then spent the rest of his life trying to get it published and her memory honored.

We spent a LOT of time in the museum - it was so interesting and really made me realize just how much went on during WWII. The trip to Amsterdam would have been complete by just going to Anne Franks house.

After that we decided we would go on a canal cruise that was included in our card. It was really a neat thing. We got to go past a lot of the big attractions in Amsterdam and kind of decided if there was anything else we wanted to see. Plus, it was raining outside and the boat was covered so we were dry.

After our cruise we thought we would go to the Jewish History museum because it was open late on Thursdays. It is NOT open late on Thursdays and as we were walking up (it's literally around the corner from Anne Frank's House) we heard them lock the door. Ok, fine - no Jewish history today - we'll go to the big church, it's open late. Well, it IS open late - but it's also completely closed from October to January. Alright 0 for 2.

By now it's dark, cold, and raining. We decide that the Amsterdam gods are not interested in letting us do any more touring tonight so we found a place to have dinner and then went back to the hotel to watch a movie (I don't remember what it was but it was BAD!)

The next morning we got up and decided to hit some art museums.

**Side note** The longer I'm in Europe the more I lose faith in humanity. Some people have too much G.D. money. Including, but not limited to: The Catholic church, people who be-dazzle human skulls with diamonds and rubies, and people who make me pay them money to go see their house. These people have some messed up views if you ask me. When you are stealing marble columns and building fake canals to get them to your church, or are bored and think it's a good idea to super glue diamonds to grandpa's head - you need to get your priorities in order! Give some freaking money to charity! If not, at least do something productive with it - put it in a savings account and earn some interest or something.

First we went to the Rijks Museum. The building it was in was beautiful (so beautiful in fact my HRC pin is of it) but most of it was scaffled off for restoration. Abby, please excuse me for saying this. I just don't appreciate art like I'm sure I should. I am able to look at it and decide if I like it or not based on color or subject etc. but I just don't get into more than that. Probably because I'm not cultured enough. I do appreciate the talent these artists have - I've tried to paint before and I can't even paint a wall. So, it doesn't take me hours to visit an art museum.

The last exhibit we saw was For the Love of God. Tell me you don't look at this and go 'OHH, EWW!' Those are real human teeth from the original skull.

After I decided that some people have too much money/time we headed over to the Van Gogh museum. After a quick lunch in the cafeteria we took the tour. All the exhibits were beatutiful but I expected to see more famous works by Van Gogh - like Starry Night or the self portraits where we chopped off his ear or the blue one. We did see the Sunflowers and the Room at Arles though.

We did find the I (am)sterdam sign and waited quite a while to get a picture without people in front of it. This is the best I could do.After the art museums we headed over to the Dutch resistance museum. Now THIS museum was something I could really sink my teeth into. Unfortunately we only had just over an hour to see it. There was so much to read and watch! The museum started before the Nazi's invaded and went all the way through the liberation. When you combine this museum with Anne Frank's House you almost completely negate the lack of human decency apparent in the other museums around town.

(Maybe I'm being hypocritical. I do want a Kansas Castle...but I don't want a GIANT castle, or want to imprison people to wait on me hand and foot, or carve out canals to have my custom marble delivered to me personally (that I'm not paying for, of course, because it was 'given' to me) or bronze grandma's hand and hang it on the wall for that matter...)

Speaking of decency, after we finished up at the at the Dutch Resistance Museum we decided to take a walk through a couple of the many red light districts. The hookers didn't like their pictures being taken so I didn't. Kyle was less than impressed with the quality...I had to remind him that it was Friday afternoon while most people were still at work - not exactly the prime hooking hour.

**Entrepreneurial sidenote** There are no pimps in Amsterdam. There are madams that are normally older prostitutes. They own the property that the hunger prostitutes rent by the hour (normally in 8 hour blocks). Hours during the day are cheaper then hours at night (a good spot can cost 100 USD during the day and 200 USD at night). Prostitution was recently legalized in Amsterdam and most of the professionals actually didn't want it to be legalized - now they have to pay taxes, file paperwork, and the industry is heavily regulated. Prostitutes are actually licensed: they can't have criminal records, must be disease free, keep their 'workspace' hygienic, use protection, and stay away from minors.

It's dark by this point again so we went and had dinner (and more Belgium waffles) and then back to the hotel for bed.

Saturday we got up and headed out to the Heineken Experience. What a blast! We were lucky - they are in the process of remodeling, updating and adding to the experience so since it was still under construction a little bit we got the old (lower) price but got all the new experiences. It was similar to the brewery tours in the US except they don't actually brew beer here any more and it is a little more high tech. We took most of our pictures here (because we were allowed to and because it wasn't freezing...) Here was a neat little thing. Different parts of the wall would light up as the brewing process moved along.Here is the bar area - in the shape of a star!The ceiling was made out of Heineken bottles. The lights behind it changed colors and it actually looked like a wave (you can kinda tell in the picture).Heineken sponsors the 007 movies so they had James Bond's suit on display. I took a picture of a girl kissing Daniel Craig's picture and I couldn't be outdone!We were also able to make some Heineken inspired videos and send them to ourselves. Heineken videos are always more fun to make after a couple Heineken (Heineken).

We finished up our tour with a couple of purchases (you can see the picture of what we got at the end of the blog).

We took a walk along the most expensive part of Amsterdam (the homes were beautiful! - it was right between the shopping area and the red light district) and here was the ending view...On our way back to the hotel we found this cute little car. It smaller then the Smart but still holds 2 people. I couldn't help but take a picture! We actually saw one driving down the road on our way to the train station and it was totally full! We actually saw one smaller then this with only 3 wheels too...The next morning we got up and headed to the airport. We spent 5 days looking for a coffee shop and finally at the last minute, in the airport, we were able to find one!!
The plane right home was, luckily, uneventful. We were cold and tired and ready to come home.

Here are the toys we bought at the Heineken experience:
The stein holds a litter of beer!
Kyle also made his own bottle of beer - take a look at the bottom of the bottle!

Alright - now were off on another vacation in 2 days...we really gotta stop going places :)

My (not so) Pretty House

I really have a lot to do to get out of town next week...so what am I doing? Playing with my new toy! Click on the link to see a few 360 views of our apartment here. They aren't perfect, I'm still learning to to make them look pretty (like don't stand 3 inches from a giant cabinet and expect the picture to come out right) but I thought you might like to see what our place looks like.

Now that I'm done taking all the pictures I'm going to for now - and slathering them all over the internet - I'm going to go clean my house. DON'T MAKE FUN OF MY DIRTY HOUSE! I have a hard life! I have to read smut (that's cosmo, not penthouse) magazines, eat bon-bons, and watch stories all day!

Click Here

...actually if my slave driver of a boss would leave me alone for 5 minutes I might be able to do a couple of those things...

(I hope to get at least one more **real** blog post up before we leave next week. Until then - HAPPY HOLIDAYS!)

I Fixed the Link!

Sorry! I, somehow, didn't put the link in right so you could see our pictures of Mt Pilatus. I've fixed it and you can how see the beautiful view from the peak. Try this...

Click Here

You can also go to the old post, I fixed that one too.

**Funny side note** I had trouble uploading the file to the website so I had to call customer service. Aaron was very nice and fixed all my problems and then he said "I normally don't look at the pictures, but this is BEAUTIFUL! What is this? Is that a lake?" So I told him that those were mountains in Switzerland and that I was actually calling him from the CH and my 3 minute fix turned into a 30 minute conversation :)

I promise to take more pictures like this on our cruise and will take some more for my house too...but I have to clean my house first - we'll see if that actually happens!

Wanna Creep Kyle Out?

There are 2 things that I can do that totally freak Kyle out. Like, screech like a little girl, cover his eyes freak out.

1. Dye my hair (you know, to it's natural color) including eyebrows...
2. Put on my cleansing green Mary Kay Face mask

Although I've never down both at the same time I think I need to sometime.

15 Months

I was scrolling through my blog entries this morning and I realized something. I've had this blog for 15 months. I started keeping this September 17th (ok, maybe not EXACTLY), that was the day that Kyle told me we were probably going to move here.

I remember the night vividly, It was Monday, September 17th and I was at John's Upper Deck. (September 15th is a big tax deadline but when that falls on a weekend the due date moves to the next Monday.) September 15th is really bigger then April 15th for people in Big Four Accounting Firms. So we were having a big ol' party. I'd been drinking since about noon and Kyle showed up to the party about the time all the spouses did.

We were upstairs on the deck (the upper deck to be exact); it was dark outside and we were all being obnoxious (we'd ALL been drinking). Kyle was like 'Hey, I have something to tell you. Do you want to move to Switzerland?'

About that time one of Kyle's college flings that worked at another accounting firm in the area walked by and said something snarky...I remember thinking 'Sucker, I got the guy and am moving to Switzerland - take that!' Of course, I said nothing, laughed at her stupid comment, and let her walk off thinking she was awesome...the rest is history and here we are - 15 months later.

We also have 15 months left of our stay here...the last 9 months living here have just flown by looking back.

Here's to another great and quick 15 months!

As of Tomorrow We Will Have Christmas Plans

Kyle and I have been doing a lot of talking lately...what are we going to do for Christmas? Even though we said we weren't going to be coming back to the states until our rotation here was over it was kinda unspoken that we would probably end up coming home for Christmas.

But going home went against or travel budget philosophy: The more money we spend on going places we've already been the less money we can spend on going places we haven't been yet.

Then, we had to consider the 'home sickness factor'. I equate going home to visit now like sawing off my arm then putting a band-aid on it. It might make things a little better now but in the long run it's not going to help anything and probably will just make things worse.

I'm definitely homesick right now, and I think Kyle is a little bit too. When we came home in September we had a great time and really enjoyed it but coming back to CH was the pits! It was like 'Ha, ha! Look at where you could be!'

And the money. I can guarantee you that no matter what we spend on a vacation in Europe we will spend more then that on a vacation in the US. Why? I mean we wouldn't necessarily have to pay for room and board in the US. It's because I can afford things in the US, and they have Mexican food, and the Gap, and literature in English...

Then there's the memories... What sounds better? "Remember that time we lived in Switzerland and went home to Kansas for Christmas?" or "Remember the time we lived in Switzerland and went on a Mediterranean cruise for the holidays?" - yeah, definitely the last one.

So, after a lot of 'I want to go home but I know we shouldn't' we finally made a decision and we will be booking our trip tomorrow. We're going to take a cruise.

We leave for Barcelona in a week where we'll spend 4.5 days before we board the boat for a 15 night cruise! The best part? It's maybe $100 more then the 7 night cruise and we will be on the water December 21-Jan 5 - that means we'll be traveling for both Christmas and New Year's!

We will definitely miss everyone over the holidays (we already do, more then you know) but think that this is probably a better arrangement then coming home right now (plus, we just saw you all in September, right?).

Luzern, Switzerland (Nov 15, 2008)

We decided to take another day trip (wow, I'm soo far behind....) like almost a month ago! It originally was going to be with several people from Kyle's office but since it was the weekend before Thanksgiving all but one other person dropped out

***American holidays are weird here - obviously no one celebrates Thanksgiving here (can I just tell you how creepy that is? How the hell are you supposed to know it's time to start playing Christmas music and shopping?) but us Americans are all excited about it. There were originally supposed to be about 7 people from Swiss Re that were going to Luzern with us. Two of the IAs ended on Thanksgiving so they were trying to get home for the holiday. One guy's family is still in the US so he was working extra hard that weekend so he could go home and be with his family, and everyone else just seemed to have other Thanksgiving plans that they were trying to get ready for.

So we took the train to Luzern, it took about an hour. The trains here are like the coolest things ever. I really wish that the US had decent trains that actualy went somewhere other then St. Louis and Chicago. You just get on, there are bathrooms and food, and you sit and have a conversation until it's time to get off. You don't have to worry about driving or potty breaks or I'm hungery or anything!

Once we got there we really didn't know what we were going to do. We took our Rick Steve's book so we did the walking tour that was in there first. Here are some pictures from our adventure...

Here's Flat Stanley in front of the train station. How cool!

And Flat Stanley and Kyle in front of an extra long Mini Cooper - I'd never seen one of these before. We got some free all-nateral energy drink from the company that owns this car. We decided to save it until later since we'd gotten up at like 5 and were going to be walking all day...it tasted like crap.
Please notice all the guys in red coats. That's really what we were taking a picture of.
Why would we take a picture of some guys in red matching coats? Click here.

...ok, NOW we're starting our walking tour....

This bridge what was protected the city from water invations but in the 1800's (I think) it caught on fire and the whole middle part was distroyed. This picture is a little hard to tell but in person you could see where they rebuilt it. The tower in the middle is both a lookout and a church.
As we walked across the bridge we found this...yeah, that's a bike.
I found my souvenir magnet and Joe's souveniers.
This is the outside...
...and inside of the big church in the city.
This alter and pillars look like they should be super expensive because they're made of marble right? (not to mention super heavy). When they were building the church they didn't have the money (must not be a catholic church ;) ) so this is actually a stucco finish where they just mixed in some marble powder and buffed it up to make it look like marble...maybe I need something like this for my castle in Kansas...
We stood around the water most of the morning, just looking at it and all that was going on; mostly because it was so clean and we could actually see through it. We watched the ducks dive to the bottom and I thought it was pretty funny. The flower market was right next to us so when they would through their flower water into the lake the ducks would go crazy for the food. If you look really closely you can see a duck diving on the left side of this picture.
Here's a view of the town from where we were standing by the lake.
Luzern regulates the water that leaves the lake. The lake is filled with snow melt from the mountains They use these wooden stakes to keep the lake full and to keep the river from flooding the towns below them. In the summer there are fewer of these wooden stakes and as the year goes on they add more. Kyle stood and looked at this for like 45 minutes trying to figure out just how it worked...I still don't think he knows.
After our morning at the lake we walked around all the cool old buildings.
This building actually spells our 'wine market' if you look at the blue shutter between the windows: w.e.i.n.m.a.r.k.t.

Luzern has a facination with death. They want to constantly remind everyone that they will die some time. This building was the jewerly store. It's hard to see but if you look at the far left diamond it's actually a skull. You could find skulls all over the city.
This pictures for the mixed fruits. It reminds me of Sutib - and it's an actual clothing store.
This building is really cool! It tells the story of the Swiss Marti Gras. The rooster wakes up up at 5 am and then they have a parade where they throw oranges at you and they everybody parties down.
Here's just a cute little street where they are getting ready for Christmas.
After our walking tour we decided to go up Mt Pilatus. This was the last weekend that the cogwheel train was open so we couldn't have timed that much better. We thought we would take the gondola up and the train down. The gondola was very cool!
Here are some views from the gondola:

Kyle was very happy after he saw the next picture!
That's Pilatus...he's the mascot of the mountain.
At one point we went through the fog - we could barely see the gondolas behind us.
Then we got above the fog and clouds. How freaking cool is this!!??!!
About half way up the mountain you have to switch to a larger gondola. So we got off and walked around. Here is an original gondola from the 50's.
This is a slide that you can do in the summers (it's closed in the winters). It reminds me of the waterslide in Branson that the Castrop's do every year. It looks like a whole lotta fun - until you do it. By the bottom every limb of your body has been banged up and bruised and you started going down on your butt feet first and you end up going headfirst on your back and your 'goods' are just about completely exposed to jesus and everyone - including your grandma who's sitting at the end watching everyone go down the waterslide going 'WEEEEE, that was fun!'.

...the more I think about this I not taking Kyle to do this on his birthday...
On the second gondola we found this cute little church on the mountian. Notice the cross up at the top! You can't see it in this picture but there were actually people hiking up to it, crazies...
We finally got there! 7000ft up.
We went into the giftshop and I did a bad thing...I bought something. I t-shirt that says this. Kyle saw it and laughed out loud - that's when I knew it was mine.
After our little shopping trip we went out to climb up to the very peak. On our way this guy was playing his horn. All I could think about was RIIIIICOOOOOOLAAAA
Here are some views from the top:

***Side Note***This was an absolutely stunning view! Bob got some new software that he said I could play with so click on the icon below to see the 360 pictures Kyle took...



After we were went up to the peak we took a lunch break and had some pasta in the cafeteria. I was so excited that they had Coke Lite from the fountain! But, of course, it was broken - so I had water. After a few more pictures we decided to head back down the other side of the mountain.

This is the cogwheel train we took back down.

And some more BEAUTIFUL views from the train:






After we got down the mountain we decided it was getting dark, and late, and we were tired. We just decided to take the trains back to Zurich and call it a night but it was a great day of really pretty things!