Saturday, February 5th, 2005

I’m not going to bore you with the mundane details of my weekend. They are not worth repeating. Instead I will do something that is long overdue, something I would have gotten around to doing much sooner if my bed were not so darn comfortable! (That’s a complete lie; my mattress has so many loose springs that I’ve taken to sleeping curled up in the fetal position underneath my desk.)

No friends, today I will write about my first visit to Switzerland! It’s been on my mind quite a bit, but since I’m a lazy sod it just hasn’t happened. I don’t know what my problem is… maybe I’m must becoming more Turkish in nature. Ah well…

I arrived in Switzerland on the evening of January 3rd. I whisked through the customs and made my way to the exit, where my good friend Andi Curran was waiting for me. I was greeted with a big grin and a “Way to leave this until the 11th hour, you bandit monkey!” I should explain myself… I had called Andi a while back, while I was staying with my aunt and uncle, and told him about my plans. I’ll send you an email once I book the ticket Andi, I promise. I told him it would most probably be the third. And book the ticket I did. Problem is, I was about to email him when my Aunt Liz called up the stairs. “Simon, Eastenders is on in one minute.” Woah, can’t miss that! Fast forward to the morning of the third at about 11 am… did I email Andi? Oh crud.

I literally gave the guy eleven hours of notice. I am a bad friend. But Andi knows that, so we made up and headed off to the pub!

Andi was quite similar to how I remember him. We got to know each other while working at the SPEC Centre, a youth outreach program run by the Catholic Church in a town just north of London. Except this time Andi spoke German! Impressive. But it didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t, as everywhere I went I could speak English. The Swiss are very good with languages. Andi lives in Basel, located very close to both Germany and France. As a result, tons of people seem to know Swiss-German, French, English, and probably something else that I don’t even know about. And what was really wild is that there is a decent population of Turks in Basel, and sometimes I’d hear people speaking Turkish as I walked down the street! Talk about trippy…

Anyway, we caught up over a few pints of Boddingtons, and then made our way back to Andi’s apartment. It’s not just Andi’s place; Anja lives there too. Andi and Anja met at the SPEC Centre two years before I worked there. They dated for quite a while before tying the knot in May of 2001. Which was the last time I saw them! I didn’t make it to the wedding, which was in Switzerland, but managed to be in London for the big party they had there to celebrate. So there was plenty to catch up about.

I’m not going to keep with the chronological style here, as there is simply no way I can remember the order that everything happened. Also, I spent a good 1/4 of my time in Switzerland on their couch, which would be really boring for you to hear about. So I’ll just break my time in Switzerland up into some categories and carry on for a while.

First off let’s talk about the food. My god, Swiss food is tasty. I ate incredibly well with Anja and Andi. One thing I meant to do, and didn’t, is write down the German names of the foods we had. So, I’ll rely on Andi to reply to this thing with those names… come on buddy, you can break your vow of silence now that I’m writing about you!!! Our first meal, which is pictured here, was a beauty and perhaps my favorite. We set up a nice table, cracked open a bottle of wine and started grilling up all sorts of tasties on the little contraption you see there. This thing was wonderful. On the top, you put items like bacon, veal sausage (which is glorious), mushrooms, peppers, and really whatever you fancy. Underneath the grill, there are special compartment where you can slide a spatula-esque thing with a thick slice of cheese on it. You heat the cheese until it’s bubbling, then pull it out, dump in onto some boiled potatoes, add your little grilled munchies and then snarf away! Oh my…

What else did we eat? One day, along with Anja’s father (who also has the name Andy), we had a fondue. This is another classic Swiss meal, and one that you might be familiar with. It consists of a big pot of bubbling cheese goop, which is placed at the center of the table. Every takes a pile of cut up bread chunks and cut up apple chunks and places them on their plate. Then, you take your little fondue spear, stab it into a chunk, dip it into the bubbling cheese, and then pop it into your hungry mouth! Simply fantastic.

Andi often worked until 10 pm, so Anja and I would prepare dinner for ourselves in the evening. We ate very well, I have to say! Here’s a picture of one of them: mashed potatoes with a beef and mushroom sauce, and accompanied with some ratatouille. Yum. We also at veal a few times, which is really lovely. I’d never had veal before and was looking forward to trying it. I have now convinced myself that Swiss veal is one of the best meats on this earth. If someone can prove me wrong, invite me over and I’ll sample what you’ve got.

We also at a nice meat loaf thing, which was baked and is kind of like the inside of a sausage except not really. Anja also taught me how to make my own salad dressing, which is something I’ve never done before. It’s great; all you need is a willingness to experiment and a collection of spices and oils. Also, I had the best mustard I’ve ever tasted in my life at their house. (My mother has probably fainted while reading this after hearing that I ate mustard.) It was so flavorful and not incredibly strong. Oh man. I used to run whenever I saw mustard. Not anymore…

Ok, as this is getting to be über-long I’ve decided to save the rest for tomorrow. It may even stretch into Monday. Who knows???