frohe ostern

Despite it being the beginning of Spring, it feels like the depths of winter (except the daylight doesn't go away at 4:30pm). It's been cold and snowy (SNOW!!) here for the past couple of weeks. At the moment the snow is coming down hard outside my window. It's really quite incredible, and it means at least two more good skiing adventures.

On Good Friday the weather was also schleckt. I had some friends over for a Good Friday lunch, mirroring a little the lunch in Melbourne last year. We ate warm food (including home made Hot Cross Buns by Kathryn, yum!), played Trivial Pursuit, discussed important topics and generally just enjoyed each other's company. For me that's the perfect way to spend Easter.

So, Happy Easter everyone!

randomness

I think I have to admit it now: I can kinda speak German. The new job is going well and I'm listening to German and Swiss German every day. This evening after work I went out for a drink with one of my new workmates and chatted in Hoch Deutsch for about an hour. It's sorta cool.

In other news, I've decided that twin-tip skis are awesome. I was able to try some out last weekend and I'm totally hooked. I can turn backwards (and around again) whilst moving and hopefully will soon manage to ski backwards for more than five metres without falling over. If all goes well I'll be able to rent some twin-tips tomorrow and be carving up the slopes again with some tricky moves. Exciting stuff.

anglo break

The between jobs holiday is almost over and it's back to the working world tomorrow.

One of the fun things I got to do in my break was go to London for a few days and catch up with my Aussie friends over there. I didn't plan anything, just went with the flow. Saw a movie, ate food and went to drinks with friends and new friends, went shopping and enjoyed some fish and chips (minus dim sims unfortunately).

On the Monday I went to Oxford Circus and found some old style Converse sneakers like I used to have in high school. They were fantastic and with them I feel like I'm sixteen again.

So at the checkout a girl in front of me was buying some black ugg boots, which she paid for, put on straight away and walked out. As with most Australians (I hope anyway) the idea of buying brand name ugg boots and wearing them outside of the house is a bit abhorrent. When she paid though, the price came up as £139!! When I paid for my shoes I asked the salesgirl about it and she said: "Yeah, they're expensive. They're much cheaper in America, only £70." I couldn't believe it - they'd cost me 20 bucks at Target. Seventy pounds is not cheap! I guess it just shows what good marketing can do.

führerschein

Today is my first (official) day of holidays. I don't start my new job for another two weeks and it is a sweet feeling!

So, rather than sleep for two weeks I want to take care of a bunch of things I've been putting off for the last six months, starting with transferring my Australian driver's licence to a Swiss one. This has become pressing lately as it needs to be done within twelve months of arriving here and I want to buy a motorbike.

Anyway... I went to an automatic passport photo machine and got photos, then over to the Kreisbüro for the forms. One of the things I had to do was take an optical exam at an optometrist's. Now, not a big deal you may think, except of course I had to do it in German. It shouldn't be that difficult, you just read out the letters and numbers, only in German. I didn't think about it too much at the time but afterwards, realising what I'd done, I was pretty stoked (and happy that "E" was not one of the letters I had to read out as it's very difficult for me to pronounce properly in German).

After successfully navigating the optical exam I filled in the rest of the medical section of the form (which had questions like: "Do you suffer from a mental illness"; "Have you ever been committed" etc.) and dropped it off at the roads authority. All things being equal I should have a shiny new Swiss driver's licence in a week. Then all I have to do is learn how to drive on the right-hand side of the road. That'll be interesting.