Traveling Switzerland 2

Weekend Continued in Switzerland...

The rest of the weekend; after the day in St. Gallen.


On Sunday we went to the church in the Zurich area we have been attending almost consecutively for the past 2 months or something. Then we went home to eat and go to the gym; which is also a regular routine for us now. Sunday night we went back to Zurich with Pat the see the downtown area all decked out for Christmas. We also walked through the Christmas markets while we were there as well.

Zurich was definitely the most decorative and had the nicest displays for sure. They also had a major Christmas market inside the train station. This was kinda nice since we didn't have to be in the cold the whole night wandering around. There were also small set ups outside around the downtown area of continued from the market. And of coarse many roasted chestnut stands available all around as well as lots of gluehwein.

Traveling Switzerland

Before Luxemburg...

Since it's Christmas time...well getting closer to Christmas anyways...we decided that we better check out the Christmas markets around Switzerland. Apparently Switzerland (as well as everywhere else in Europe I'm assuming; especially Germany) is known for these markets that occur every year around December until Christmas I guess. So Brian, Pat and I randomly picked a place and ended up going to St. Gallen for the day.

St. Gallen was a pretty nice village; I don't really know how big it is or anything because we basically just stayed around the Old Town area. This is where the majority of the markets take place and where all the best Christmas decorations are.

Unfortunately we didn't go at night so it wasn't that dark; therefore the Christmas lights didn't look as good as they would have but that's alright it was still neat. The markets here, like all the other markets we have seen so far, consist of lots of different stuff. Everything Christmas of coarse; ranging from candles, to knitted sweaters and mittens, to jewelery. Also every market has many food/snack tables where you can sample different things...if you are thinking about buying something, and of coarse they have Glüwein. Glüwein is spiced wine; which is a special Swedish drink. Everywhere around Switzerland there are venues set up selling roasted chestnuts; apparently they have these as soon as it starts to get cold outside. Every train station you get off, Christmas market you go to....and street corner basically there are stands selling roasted chestnuts. It is actually a pretty tasty little snack; they taste like potatoes almost with a bit of a sweet taste too. We get them often since it's the thing to do!

Here are some pictures of St. Gallen at Christmas time:

In St. Gallen we saw something very unusual and had to take some photos of it. Even though this has nothing to do with Christmas:

Luxembourg in December

So we went to Luxembourg, on a really short notice. We booked the plane at 7pm Friday night and flew out at 9am the following morning. Found cheap tickets and thought, why not?

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a super small country, squished between Belgium, France, and Germany. And when I say small, I mean small. In fact, it would fit twice into Prince Edward Island. We went to the main city, Luxembourg and it was an amazing little city. It was a nice mix between old and new buildings; although we didn't hang out in the newer area because it was out of the way and was mainly the business center. We mainly hung out in the old town, which was beautiful. The city used to be a huge castle and the castle walls, turrets and churches still remained. We took soo many pictures, and a lot of it looked like it was out of a fairy tale, and not a real city.



























Luxembourg is a rich country as well, but luckily we found a hostel which was cheap and very, very nice. Also, because it was Christmas, the town square held their Christmas market and was filled with Christmas booths selling, candy, ornaments, soup, sausages, Gluehwein (hot, spiced wine), waffles and other delicious treats. We hung out at the Christmas market a lot because it was such a nice atmosphere with lots going on. Besides that we also wandered around through the cobblestone streets, appreciating the European buildings and life.
























Without knowing it, we had booked this trip on the weekend that Luxembourg hosts a fireworks display on their bridge, Ponte Adolph which spans over a huge valley. After a lot of walking down paths late at night, we found the perfect viewing point for the fireworks display in an uncrowded area in the valley. The fireworks where great, not quite as good as "Thunder in the Valley" in Crowsnest Pass, but they where really good.



We flew out Sunday night at 18:45, the flight home only took 35 mins. We were barely in the air and the pilot already announces that we are starting our decent to land. We got home by 9 and started getting ready for the Christmas party we are hosting on Tuesday, December 12th; which is also dads birthday!!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Linked to Friends

If anyone still checks our blog periodically here is a quick little update.

We want to explain our "links" list on the RHS. Some people know the people on there, some don't. So since we are linked to these sites, we figure we should explain to you who these people are, and ENCOURAGE you to visit some of the sites.

The obvious ones are:
The Brian List: Brian's way of using spare time at work....
James and Heather Boldt: Brian's older brother and sister-in-law
Johnny Boldt: Brian's younger Brother
Miriam DeCock: Louise's sister; whom was in Uganda at this time.

The not as obvious ones are:
Gord and Janice Mills: Our friends from Calgary that we used to go to church with. We now go to a different church. For those who where at our wedding, Janice was the amazing singer!
Mike Birdgeneau: Brian's good friend from Engineering, classy guy, classy webpage.
Kelsey Plowman: Will and Kelsey are friends of ours; Brian met Will in his first year of school, and Will helped him out a lot. His wife Kelsey is an amazing singer also. You can here her sing on her website. Please go and listen, and check out when she sings in Calgary....and then go watch her!
Kate Stam: Louise met Kate her first year of school and we have been friends ever since.
Kurt Pearson: Could be the worst role model Brian ever had....haha! Mohawks are cool, and so is punk music. He lived in Pincher Creek in the winter, working at the ski hill. Brian hung out with him a lot back in the day.
Becca: Went to school with Miriam in Briercrest. During her blog she was in Korea to teach English.
Beth and Jeff Beer: Bethany used to live in Pincher Creek and her family was good friends with the Boldts and hence, Brian and Beth where good friends. She has since gotten married to Jeff. Louise also knows Beth quite well through high school sports; playing against each other. Now they live in Pincher Creek and Jeff is now the Baptist Church's Youth Pastor. They also just had a baby!

Upcoming Plans.......

So as you may have guessed we haven't been doing a heck of a lot this last little while but we have a good reason...

This post is basically just a heads up as to what we will be doing trip wise that we know of at this point, from now until the end.

A lot of you know our plans already so I'm sorry for those of you who have emailed me in the past little while and are aware of everything in this post already.
And for everyone else...........

We have no trips planned out officially from now until Christmas but we intend on doing at least one in December for sure before that. It may or may not involve Germany but if it does we are planning on going to Berlin. We want to see this city at some point while we're here so if we can get a cheap night train there, that is what we will do. I think there are supposed to be some really nice Christmas markets there as well so that would be cool to check out.
We also want to see more of Switzerland like usual; especially in December because apparently most cities/villages are decked out in Christmas decorations and full of markets as well. It should be pretty sweet.

The main reason as to why we are not doing much right now; or at least why we are staying in Switzerland and haven't planned anything for December yet is because we do not have our passports at the moment!
Brian gets a 2 week vacation for Christmas and I get a 3 week one. Because of this and since we're not coming home during this time we want to make the most of it. So.........
For the holiday we are going to 4 different places all in the same area. We will be flying to Helsinki and then hopping on a boat to Tallinn. Next we will bus to St. Petersburg and from there we will fly to Riga. We will also be flying to and from Zurich to get there and back. So we will technically be in Finland for Christmas this year and Russia for New Years.
(For those of you who don't know Helsinki is in Finland,

Tallinn is in Estonia, St. Petersburg is in Russia,

and Riga is in Latvia.)
If you don't know much about any of those cities then....well....then we're on the same page! But seriously just google any of them with the words winter or Christmas and look at pictures; it should be gorgeous. Cold, but gorgeous. We will have to pack heavy though

unfortunately because it will be so cold and the fact that we'll be gone for 2 weeks. Wow! We're excited though.

So back to what I was saying earlier about our passports. To enter and leave Russia you have to have a Russian visa; therefore we had to apply to get this visa. In doing so we had to fill out a bunch of forms, photocopy our documents, plus whatever else, and send our passports. At least they're still in Switzerland though. We had to take all of this to the Russian Consolate in Bern and then we will find out in a week or 2 whether or not we get to go! We could have mailed everything but we didn't know if we filled everything out correctly and if we had everything we needed for sure so we thought we would just go there. Even though this was the biggest waste of time to do so at least it's done and over with. So hopefully we will get the good or bad news soon, get our passports back so we can leave the country, and get to go to Russia. If not I guess we wasted some money and cut our trip short; but I'm sure it could be worse, right?
Haha, anyways we'll let you know.

After Christmas we have 4 trips planned already for the new year:
In January we are going to Brussels in Belgium

and Warsaw in Poland. Then in February we are going to

London (everyone knows where that is)
and in March we are going to Dublin in Ireland!
We are super excited about all of them; especially Ireland. Unfortunately we will be in Dublin the weekend after St. Patrick's Day but maybe it will be better this way and not such a gongshow! Other than that nothing is booked but we plan to see 1, preferably 2 places each month after Christmas. Outside of that we want to see even more of this Suisse land and snowboard a lot. Well I don't want to speak too soon but if I like it and if Brian can find the patience to teach me we will be going as much as possible......or as much as our bank account will allow us!

This week we also took a day off of our regular work out routine (Pat, Brian, and I have been consecutively going to the gym most days of the week for over 2 months now) to catch the new James Bond Movie: Casino Royal. Great movie by the way. We have been attending an international church we found in Zurich that we really enjoy, so that is nice. The people there are great; we even almost feel at home. We have had a few supers at different families houses even already so it's great that we're making some more friends here; even though not many of the people who attend are Suisse! I am even going to be singing in the worship team at some point as well which will be super! Anyways now everyone will be forced to read the blog actually rather than just look at the pictures for once! Well hopefully that's not the case but if it is that is fine as well. Take care, God bless, hope to hear from some of you on the posts or via email!

Tchüss, Tchüss, Ciao!

More About Amsterdam

Here are a few key photo's that didn't make it into the last post and thought it is only right that we share them with you.

The first picture : A weird car and an even weirder public bathroom. Like really, what the heck?? It's wiiiiiiide open, in broad daylight. Too much for us... The midget car looks pretty hilarious as well.


The second picture: Yes, you can still live in a trailer if you live in Amsterdam. A little harder to get that "trailer park" atmosphere, but you can get close. Anyways, pretty ridiculous, I couldn't imagine living in a house boat for my whole life.


Picture three: Look closely, cause this bike is decked out. Windshield for the front child(yes that is a kid seat right after the windshield), you can also trap a kid on the back, basket in the front, and a nice paint job. The Amsterdamers love their bikes, sooo many bikes there, all old-school bikes as well, quite funny.


And here are some more pictures of the beautiful city.

Amsterdam

So The Netherlands is another country added to the list of countries we have visited after we spent two days in Amsterdam. Let's just say Amsterdam was an "interesting" city. Nowadays, it is basically famous for its legalized prostitution and marijuana. We don't really fish from that pond if you know what I mean; so we weren't really sure what to expect. But Amsterdam is actually a beautiful city, and because that sorta stuff is legal, it is all concentrated in one small area of the city, and the rest of the city has nothing to do with that (except for the "coffee shops" which are sporadically spread throughout the city and sell weed).

So, here is how the trip went down:
Flew from Basel, Switzerland to Amsterdam; arriving around 11:30ish on Saturday morning.
Found our hostel and dropped our stuff off.
Wandered around the city a bit, found some cheap food.
Stumbled upon the Red Light District and discovered our Hostel was on the very edge of this.
Went for a free walking tour of the city given by a Canadian from Vancouver. This was pretty cool, we learned a lot about the history of the city and the different sites to visit. Walked around a bit more, and then back to the hostel.

On Sunday we got up and had the hostels free breakfast.
Went to the Anne Frank Haus, which is the house in which Anne Frank was in hiding before the Nazi's captured her and her family. This was quite the experience and definitely worth seeing. Found a place for lunch, checked out the shopping district in Amsterdam, also saw the Jewish quarter, and the port.
Other than that it was raining the rest of the time (and a bit in between stuff) so we didn't do too much else.
Lastly we flew back to Basel around 9:30pm; then finally caught a train home to Baden around 12:00am and got home by 1:30am.

It was a long weekend but so much fun; Amsterdam is a beautiful city!

Hockey Night In..........Switzerland!

Robert Kohler told Brian, Pat, and I about a national hockey game coming up between Switzerland and of course Canada. So needless to say we were there like cheese on a pizza. We gathered up the Canadians and almost everyone came plus some of our other friends from different countries as well...Robert came too. We all dressed as Canadian and red as possible (even though Swiss colors are red and white also) and brought all our flags we could fine; to have a huge cheering section for Canada.



The event was a lot of fun and were actually more Canadian fans than we expected to see.
Here are some of them that we saw near us:

The team wasn't the real national team just a team of Canadians playing in Europe right now and it wasn't the real Swiss team either. So obviously it wasn't the best game to watch; a little slow and not as good but there were some really nice goals by both teams.

Also European hockey is very different than the NHL that we're used to....especially when it comes to hitting! The game was also very quiet in comparison; the fans weren't really crazy and loud but there were a lot of Swiss flags waved when they scored. Then when Canada scored the few cheering sections stood up and yelled but it wasn't enough to make a huge difference.

Unfortunately the Canadians lost 6 - 4 in the end but it was a fun night anyways. We were all very disappointed but were glad that we came out to cheer on our country.




We traveled to Holland this weekend to see Amsterdam
so stay tuned for the post about this trip!