What we have noticed are Christmas decorations in the stores. It seems like in the U.S. that you start seeing stores trying to sneak out there Christmas items starting in August, but stuff hasn't shown up here until November. The chocolate sections in the department/grocery stores seemed to have exploded and are threatening to take over half the stores. There are chocolate-filled advent calendars, sampler gift boxes, and bags of liqueur-filled chocolates everywhere. (And believe or not, no Thanksgiving decorations out yet?!)
The weather has been kind of crazy. We've had a lot of rain lately, and the dark is continuing to close in. This past week, we had several days with temperatures very close to 0. In fact, Monday night when M went to pick up K from working (after she had come home to start a load of laundry), it was actually snowing up at the plant, a few hundred meters up hill from our apartment. We did seem to have (at least) a brief respite from the dreary and cold weather this weekend with mostly blue sky and highs in the upper 50s/low 60s.
Lessons in learned:
1. There are special attachments you can buy for your shoes to ensure better traction on icy surfaces. They're essentially crampons for high heels or fancy oxford shoes. Even K, who spent quite a bit of his time growing up in Michigan, did not recall such items being sold in the lower peninsula. I think this is foreshadowing what we're in for this winter.
2. Swiss refrigerated cookie dough is not made by Pillsbury. Don't expect the spread-out, chewy cookies. Basically, the cookies baked into these little 1 1/4 inch pucks the same diameter as the dough roll. Ah well, it was worth a shot. I think I'll stick to the Tollhouse recipe.
3. On our last post, we mentioned our eye-exams for our Swiss driving licenses. What we subsequently learned was that the Cantonal DMV takes your old license (not really a surprise) and in its place gives you a piece of paper that says you have a license. None of this late-20th Century technology, instant-print license nonsense.
Now, we are quite confident that this piece of paper will work fine within the French-speaking/reading part of CH. And it will probably work in the rest of CH. But with a business-trip to the US coming up, K wasn't so sure that Avis would be so accepting. K: "But it says right here that I have a license." Avis: "Sir, that's a piece of paper with some French writing on it. Do you have an actual license?" K: broken dance
So, we may stick a little closer to home until our new licenses arrive.
No comments:
Post a Comment