the most wonderful time of the year.

to get in the spirit for the holidays, i decided to visit one of europe's famous christmas markets. i mapped out all the ones listed on that link, and ultimately chose strasbourg, as it was the closest to zurich - a mere 2 hour train ride away which meant a good day trip for my last weekend in the middle of europe. my train left at 10:02 in the morning, but due to a slight alarm mishap, i woke up at 9:15 and was staying at least 30 minutes from the train station. whoops. i made it though.

one of the funny things i forget about europe sometimes is that you can spend 2 hours on a train, get off, and have to speak another language. i don't know french or german, so it was just as puzzling as zurich. but i managed to figure things out/find a place that spoke english and sat down for a delicious lunch with my book. man, do they love cheese in france.

i headed out to explore the rest of the small-ish city. it was opening day of the festival, so it was quite crowded. there aren't a lot of sites to see in strasbourg, but it does have an amazing cathedral in the middle of the city.

as the day turned into night, all the christmas lights began to turn on, i ate some more cheese on bread (delish but i could feel my heart slowing down as i ate it) and it became christmas in strasbourg. the whole album is linked here. but here's a few shots that i liked the most.

and lastly, to get everyone else in the mood for the holiday season, a favorite christmas song. happy almost holidays!

thanksgiving.

thanksgiving isn't a huge holiday in zurich other than the fact that at the google office there are good chunk of americans who naturally want to celebrate the holiday and have the traditional fixings. i got sick on thanksgiving day - nothing serious, a bad cold - but this ruined my plans to make myself my very own thanksgiving dinner at the corporate 'chalet' i was staying at in zurich. i went to the grocery store on wednesday night and picked up all the fixings or at least what i could - potatoes, green beans, a piece of turkey (a whole one cost 58 CHF - about $60 USD), some cranberry jam - they didn't have canned cranberry sauce, and sadly no stuffing - this is something that doesn't translate evidently. picture of expensive turkey for proof.

anyway, because of the tragic-ly timed cold, the dinner i shopped for didn't happen until friday, although the google office came through with an awesome turkey lunch so i still got my thanksgiving meal on thanksgiving. but when it did happen it was delicious if i do say so myself.

and i did get over the cold eventually, though without the help of medicine. something about trying to communicate with hand gestures at a swiss pharmacy where everything is over the counter that i just couldn't overcome.