It’s grey and foggy and windy and cold and rainy. Half snow, half rain. Unfortunately, it’s one of these days where we are forced to go outside several times, and not for fun but to run errands and go to work (with two kids). All with a headache and a sore throat.
Boy, on days like this I do wish we’d own a car….
Halfway through January and again almost no time to write. So much to do, so many plans, so much laughter, cries and shambles here. So many things I want to write about. About all the minor decision that I made last week. About all the beautiful christmas presents. About the new year. About the hobbit being 4 months old. About going from breastfeeding to formula. About some more Swiss quirks. About some handicrafts.
Instead, I will try and tidy up the flat (major havoc here tonight!) and then relax with a cup of hot elderberry juice to cure a slightly sore throat. And for you I got some pictures from the weekend: the weather has been absolutely shitty (excuse my words) recently. Rain, rain and rain. The constant sound of raindrops on the window does make us all a bit lazy and the bathroom has a neverending wet smell due to all the wet waterproofs trying to dry. But on Saturday late afternoon, it stopped for an hour and we had the chance to watch an amazing sunset. Somehow, it feels like ages since I last saw a proper sunset.
A single photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama.
(And if you have a blog yourself, feel free to join in and leave a link to your photo in the comment section.)
Have a wonderful Sunday everyone!
Instead of the little one, I picked up a little king from the playgroup today.
On the sixth of January, the shops in Switzerland traditionally sell King’s Cake. It’s a sweet yeast cake with raisins and coarse sugar which is formed into several small balls. In one of them, a little king is hidden and the one who gets the piece with the figurine is allowed to be king for one day.
Unfortunately, even kings have to brush their teeth and go to bed at one point. But a king is allowed to watch Mouse and Elephant before going to sleep.
Happy New Year to all of you!!
The garden season has been finished for a while now and due to the unforeseeable future next year, I haven’t done a lot of planning or preparation in the garden. The last visits were always accompanied by some melancholia – I wanted to plan, wanted to prepare, but I still don’t know whether we will actually see the outcome.
Like last year, I tried to take a picture of our garden each month. This year, it looked a bit more chaotic than the year before. The paths were sometimes more green than the flower beds. August had been awesome – despite the high temperatures which made me suffer a lot, we spent a lot of time in the garden and the little one was eager to harvest all kind of vegetables. After the beginning of September it was difficult to find the time to work in the garden. But I am extremly grateful for this little spot as it has been such a joy to watch the little one play and discover everything (I don’t think there are many two-year-olds that can distinguish fennel and dill…).
So, here is the garden review from 2015. This winter is missing though, since it didn’t look very different from October. Still no snow in Switzerland…
(A garden journal with pictures and seed catalogues and everything that went well and went wrong is still a big idea on my to-do-list. But god knows when I’ll find the time for it.)
The last relatives have left and it looks like a bit of post-christmas-end-of-the-year tranquillity will find its way into our house, at least for a couple of hours each day. Do you feel the same? This feeling of being exhausted from all the christmas preparations, with your belly being full of christmas goodies (this is probably why so many people write down “more sports” for their New Year resolutions) and your mind filled with laughter, music and the sound of 14 people talking simultaneously in the same room?
For me, there has to be at least one moment during the chrismas holidays where I can calm down and have my moments of peace and reflection. Its not until that moment that I can feel real christmassy. With two kids and all in all 14 people in the living room, I expected this year to be the first christmas without it. Hence, I am delighted to have had at least TWO of these moments!
The first one was the day before christmas eve. I went for a late afternoon walk with the hobbit and we went past the cathedral. It was dark alrady and the almost full moon was shining over the cathedral. Inside, the organist was practising christmas carols. Standing oustide in the dark with the full moon and a sleeping baby, listening to Silent Night was filled me with enough peace to make it through the chaos and the rather sleepless nights.
The second one was on the day of Christmas Eve when the hobbit was sleeping and Karsten was outside with the little one. My nephew sat down and practised christmas carols on his horn and it sounded extremly beautiful.
But christmas was also filled with many, many joyous moments which had nothing to do with reflection or peace. Laughter, chaos and jocularity are even more important than reflection, aren’t they? And we had plenty of every single one of them. For instance: the hobbit happily smiling and laughing away whenever he saw one of his relatives. The little one being absolutely thrilled whenever one of her cousins started to play hide and seek with her. My parents dancing their favorite waltz in the living room. The little one welcoming Santa Claus (and not being afraid at all). My nephew practising Micheal Jacksons Thriller in front of the Wii. My sister and my niece playing christmas carols on their violins. My niece happily carrying the hobbit around. The dinner table almost collapsing due to all the good food. Great christmas presents. My whole family playing games all evening long (mainly trying to convince each other not to be a werewolve). My brother sleeping in front of the christmas tree. A christmas tree outside in the dark, decorated with candles and seeds for the birds….
I think we will wallow the post-christmas feeling for a little bit longer. After all, it takes a whole year until we can stock up on christmas memories again.
Before we head deep down into the holidays, I want to wish you all a very Happy Christmas! We arrived at my parent’s place a few days ago – the night in the night train was fine for the kids and more or less sleepless for us, but we have had some chances to recover so far. By now, we are in the middle of the pre-christmas madness and a little bit into the real family christmas feeling already. My brother and his family arrived on Sunday and since then I have had several undisturbed dinners because my niece is so keen on the hobbit that she doesn’t want to give him away anymore. She is carrying him around with an endurance that I have lost a long time ago. The hobbit is absolutely excited about all the friendly and laughing faces around him, there are just small moments every now and then when he feels completely overwhelmed and cries a bit (just to stop it the next second again because hey, there’s someone smiling at him and he needs to smile back!). Only drawback is his running nose and I have my fingers crossed that it doesn’t turn into a real cold!
The little one is as excited as the hobbit to see so much family around her. Especially my nephew doesn’t have a free second anymore as the little one occupies him with all kind of games. The excitement and hence the slight lack of sleep (and her age in general) have caused quite a few tantrums, but every morning I am confident that the new day will bring nothing but happiness and smiling kids (ha! How good that my memory suffers from breastfeeding dementia!).
We started to fill up (and empty again) my mothers cookie jars, we visited the christmas market several times (newest culinary discovery there: Trdelnik! Oh sugary goodness!), went to the playground, are finishing the last christmas gifts, had beautiful family music (piano, flute, violin and vocal….the little one sat on the couch and we couldn’t tell whether she was somewhere in a state of shock or whether she was enjoying it) and played games every single evening since my brother arrived. (Note: family music and games are an essential part of my family’s christmas tradition. The first one can only be endured with several glasses of mulled wine or hot toddies, the second is chaotic and entertaining enough without it).
I had my first massage today – the masseur tried to soften my my muscles for thirty minutes and didn’t manage to do so – and we are still trying to convince my father that the heating is broken. It is starting to be very chilly inside and both Karsten and I had an ice-cold shower by now and we sincerely hope that it’ll be fixed before the christmas holidays!
This afternoon, my sister with her family will arrive and we’ll bring the christmas madness to a new stage!
In that sense I wish a wonderful time and I will be back in a few days! Merry Christmas!!
Fun with flats continues. After having spend my first semester in an anonymous student residency, I decided I was up for a more social place. So I moved into my first real shared flat. The evening with the plum wine had been very promising and I was looking forward to a cosy and fun new place to live.
Well, in retrospect I might have been a little naive.
My sister helped me move and we bought my first own furniture. A bed, a desk and a drawer. I moved into a 30 square metre room. Suddenly, I was surrounded by space. An additional piece of furniture was the old oven. Because, as the building had not been renovated, there was no central heating. The coal was stored in the basement. We lived on the fourth floor without elevator. Thank god that I moved there in spring…
When my father heard about the oven he said: “You should always keep your window a little bit open at night. When heating with an oven there is always a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. And since you are sleeping at night you won’t notice it. You will simply not wake up the next morning.”
Always good for a cheer-up, my dad!
But the oven wasn’t the problem. Neither was the barely furnished room. The problem turned out to be my flatmates.
On my first day, my flatmate gave me the keys and showed me around. As soon as we entered the flat, he mentioned: “Oh, by the way, we always leave the key outside in the entrance door! Everyone in the building does!” “Why?” I asked. “Because that way everyone can enter any flat if he or she needs something. You know, if you need some flour, you could just go to our neighbours flat and get some.” “Oh, ok.” I answered, feeling slightly concerned. It didn’t appear very safe to me to just leave the key in the entrance door and neither did I like the prospect of all the other inhabitants simply walking into our flat. But well.
A minute later, my flatmate showed me a warning hooter. “And what is that for?” I asked. “Oh, we recently accommodated a friend who got into some troubles with some Neonazis. So in case they show up for revenge, you use the hooter and someone in the building will come and help you!” he answered (completely earnest, may I add). I stared at him. Didn’t he just told me to always leave our entrance door open? Somehow, this didn’t go as well as I’d hoped for.
He showed me the bathroom. Old, but fine. But…”Oh, in case you are wondering: there is no key for the bathroom. We don’t lock the door.” Mh. Either the plum wine was more intense than I remembered or they left this piece of information out when we first met. Well, at least the restroom had a lock. Apparently, social gatherings stop when it starts to smell bad.
The next morning, I got up early as I neither wanted my flatmates nor any neighbours or neonazis to visit me while I was taking a shower. A little while later I had a coffee in the kitchen. My flatmate got up, waved me a good morning and went into my room. I stretched to see what he was doing in there. He went to the windows, opened them and took a deep breath. I was slightly bewildered.
A few days later, I wanted to brush my teeth in the evening. I opened the bathroom door only to see my flatmate taking a bath (and drinking a beer). He generously invited into the bathroom (“No, no, do come in, that’s fine!”).
During my next seminar, one of the other students in the course asked me where I live. I told him the address. “Oh, you live in the anarcho-house?” “I beg your pardon?”. “Your building! Isn’t it the anarcho house?”. Ah. Slowly everything added up. Maybe I should have paid more attention to all the graffiti and the posters in the hallway. But gee, I hadn’t had any experience with the anarcho-crowd.
not our house. but it gives you an impression.
The weird situations continued. The most lively one I remember was the day when Poland joined the European Union. My flatmates had friends from Berlin coming over and everyone went out to celebrate. In the middle of the night I suddenly woke up because one of the friends was continuously shouting: “Let me in!! Let me in!!”. I considered getting up in order to open the entrance door because apparently someone dared to lock it. But when I was halfway out of bed, I heard my flatmate shouting: “We can’t let you in! You are in the restroom! You have to turn the key around to get out!”, followed by loud noises indicating the riddance of superfluous food and booze…
I soon realised that this wasn’t the ultimate living experience I had hoped for. I am no anarchist. Nor do I appreciate communal bathing sessions. Not to mention the threat of being beaten up by Neonazis in the middle of the night. After one semester, I decided to move out again. When my father arrived after the semester break to help me move my stuff, he took one look at the building and just said: “Dry rot!”. Unfortunately, we also discovered that my flatmates moved all my stuff to the attic while I was away….good thing that I didn’t stuff my room!
After this social trauma, I decided to take a step back. I moved into a single room in a student residence.
We just came back from a weekend in Neuchâtel where we stayed with my sister and her family. The plan was to decorate gingerbread houses, but there was so much more! A walk to a local farm, with sunshine and view of the Alps. Climbin children. Cheese Fondue. Two very entertaining, homey puppet theater shows (though the little one wasn’t very fond of the devil. But who would, seriously, if he – excuse my words – craps into the fresh milk. Swiss devils seem to have a very down-to-earth way of acting :-)). Kids that outnumbered the adults. Lots and lots of games. A rather sleepless night for some of us. Santa Lucia and Lussekat for breakfast. Delicious coffee. The first loud (and long) laughter from the hobbit. Serious kid discussions while modelling with magic sand. And of course the gingerbread houses…
We’ll start into the new week with a head full of good memories and enough energy to make it to the christmas holidays.
“Are there any well-known mountains among them?” (Karsten exposes himself as German…)
Cousin and cousin
Chocolate ice-cream is good in any season!
Sunset in Neuchâtel
Self-made lussekat: such a luxury!
A single photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama.
(And if you have a blog yourself, feel free to join in and leave a link to your photo in the comment section.)
Have a wonderful Sunday everyone!
familial entropy 