Blog Break: It's Lovely! I'll Take It!

I've gone off the travel research path for a bit tonight to check out so many of the blogs I like to read. What's a girl to do at night when all of her decorating magazines have been canceled (so many of them, more than what's listed there--so sad) and all the TV shows are in German except for CNN? (And who wants to listen to the depressing headlines repetitively for hours on end?) One of my favorite blogs for a good laugh is "It's Lovely! I'll take it!" This blog cracks me up! It's a blog all about insanely stupid real estate listing pictures. What really makes it so funny is Sarah's commentaries on the pictures, like the one above where she says, "awww, the deer head is singing the tiger to sleep. Good night, tiger!" I have a lot of other favorites: here and here and here and here and here and here. Ah, so many! LOL. Happily off to bed now.

Flea Market Update

I heard that this flea market wasn't the best, but I wanted to check it out anyway. I love looking at old stuff, even if it's crapola. There's another flea market in the city that's supposedly better, but it's only open from spring to fall, and I can understand why. It was really cold and the ground was frozen. For real, frozen. See the ground in the picture above under that groovy buggy? Well, sitting on top of the gravel you can see a layer of ice. Our feet felt like ice blocks just after about an hour. I can only imagine how the vendors felt. This flea market had a garage sale vibe along with a "stuff that fell off a truck" vibe (one vendor had a bunch of new TVs wrapped in saran wrap).

I didn't take many pictures because I got nervous again. I felt like I was getting the evil eye for pulling out my camera (probably my imagination). I have to get my picture-taking confidence back! The language barrier is the hardest thing. I'm afraid of even asking, "kann ich ein bild für mein blog?" which is, I guess, what I should say? One vendor had amazing scarves, TONS of them. I was in scarf heaven looking at them. I wanted to take a picture of them and also wanted to know how much they were. I asked him how much they were but couldn't understand if he said 4 Swiss francs or 14. I asked, "sprechen sie English" and he got all pissy--he grumbled, "English! blah, blah (something I couldn't understand), English!" He was obviously irritated that I asked if he could (or would?) speak English. So he marked out with his finger on the table how much, and it looked like he was writing 24 Swiss francs. Crap. I wasn't sure--4, 14, 24, and I knew I made him mad, so I moved on. No picture of scarves; no scarves brought home. I'm going to bring my translation book with me next time. Maybe then I'll get more pictures and a scarf or two.

PS. I'm not the type of jerky person who expects everyone to speak English to me in other countries. I think you should always make an effort to speak the language (or one of the languages, in the case of Switzerland) of the country you're in. Even if it's just "hello" and "thank you." I sound like an ass trying to speak any language other than English, but when you're in another country, I think you have to try. When we were in Paris some women were at the train station ticket counter in front of us and just started speaking English to the woman at the information desk. They didn't say, "bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?" (hello, do you speak English?). No, they just started talking to the woman in English. I assume they were Americans, though I guess it's possible they were Canadian. The woman spoke English back to them, but it was obvious she wasn't too happy about it. I thought it was so rude. I don't want to be like them. Today I made some notes of things I've been wanting to say that go a little beyond the basics. Google translate is great for that. Did you know you can use it to translate entire web pages? It's a great travel tool.

Zurich Flea Market

Today we're going to one of Zurich's flea markets, the Kanzlei flea market. Looks like I might find some cool stuff there. Well see. I'm not sure how popular it is in winter. Maybe some the vendors will actually let me take pictures at this one. Update to come. The picture above is from flickr, where I found a good pool of photos from viernullvier.

Baby on Board

A number of people have asked us how traveling with Lois has been. I think some people might think we're nuts for bringing a 4 month old on such a big trip, but then again others have said it's a lot easier to travel when they're littler. After watching a few monkeys run up and down the isle on the plane and watching their worn out looking parents do everything they could to entertain them for 9 hours, I'd much rather travel such a long way with a 4 month old than a 2 year old. In general it's been a lot easier than we thought it would be. She slept for most of the plane ride here (whew), we have a real crib in the apartment where we're staying, so we didn't have to bring a portable crib (that was a load off), and she adjusted pretty quickly to the time difference (after the first week anyway). We've only had a few stressful moments, most of which we got through without me getting horribly nervous and sweaty like I get sometimes when we're having a hard time with her in public.

The train ride from Paris to Zurich, though, was probably the most stressful in public time we've ever had with her. A packed train with people standing in the isles and between the cars and a screaming baby who is tired and wants to eat are not a good combination. I felt so guilty! I was thinking we should have stayed home. Everyone was quiet and staring at us (at least it felt like everyone was staring at us), so I squeezed down the isle with her and took her into the nasty train bathroom to feed her since there was no way to do it discretely anyplace else. After I fed her I squeezed back up the isle to find my seat with Andrew (a nice guy got up and let us sit). Just as I started to feel a little more relaxed about the situation, Lois made a HUGE poop that people could probably hear (and smell, ewww, I know) about 3 rows away. More stares. Lately Lois has had some pretty explosive poops so I knew if I didn't change her diaper right away, we could have a big mess on our hands. I searched my bag for a diaper so I could change it. We couldn't find a diaper. I was out! Mom rule #1: ALWAYS have extra diapers. I couldn't believe we were out of diapers. We had 3 more hours on the train. I had to change it. It was way too full and gross not to, and soon I knew it would get all over her clothes. So Andrew and I both went into the nasty train bathroom to change her nasty diaper. I needed his help because the "changing table" in the bathroom was just a metal ledge with no straps. I couldn't hold her and clean her up at the same time. So we cleaned out her diaper with paper towels and put it back on. Can you believe that? DISGUSTING, I know. But we had to do it. It was stressful, but we made it through. And it could have been worse. I was so distracted by the diaper situation that I didn't even think about our bags, which were at our seats. There was a stop while we were in the bathroom and when we got back to our seats we realized a bunch of people got off and other people got on. We were lucky nobody stole our bags.

Now we're back at our apartment in Zurich. In more recent, and much less stressful, baby news, Lois had her first real solid food experience! (I don't think the other one counts really.) We went for rice cereal this time, and she liked it! She takes after her parents--likes to eat.

After she was done, she was like, "yes, I did it, Mom!" We're headed out today to check out more of Zurich. I will have plenty of extra diapers.

Doors of Paris

Paris has no shortage of eye candy. Everywhere you turn, there's something aesthetically pleasing. It's one of the few places I've been that exceeded my expectations. Not every place is for everyone. Paris just happens to be a place for me. It just speaks to me and reminds me of so many things I like. Like the door pull above--the door is chippy and old, with patina. It looks warm and worn, just how I like so many things. To me it's almost as if Paris is a caricature of itself--everything is accentuated and exaggerated. Everywhere I went, I thought, "oh that's so French!" From the guy on the train playing the accordion, to the cute carousels playing French music, to the lines of people at pastry shops getting their daily croissant or baguette, to the romantic (and attractive) French couples gazing into each other's eyes, to the very smartly dressed older ladies with their shopping bags, to the chippy and worn art and architecture everywhere--all of these things make Paris what it is. The doors in Paris are just one of the many beautiful things that stand out. Most of the architecture is a stone gray color, so the doors really pop against the buildings. Here are just a few of the beautiful doors I noticed on our block and on a few surrounding streets. There were so many beautiful doors!













"L"--that would be my door.