Schmutzli is coming to town

Who is that with Santa? Well, that's not exactly Santa. That is St. Nicholas. He's in town until December 6th. On the night of the 5th he leaves a little bag of treats in the shoes of all the good children. The bag usually holds a mandarin orange, nuts, dried fruit, and chocolate. After that he leaves town. Baby Jesus will take care of bringing gifts on Christmas Eve. With St Nicholas (who is called Samichlaus here) is Schmutzli. He is a holdover from old pagan winter festivals. Traditionally he is a dark bad guy who beats the bad children with switches and stuffs the really bad children into his bag. Why St Nicholas thought Schmutzli would make a good companion on his big night is unclear. 

Nowadays Schmutzli has undergone a  makeover. He is much more PC. He has a beard, but does not make-up his face anymore, thank goodness. And he doesn't abuse children. In fact, at the Samichlaus parade tonight he was downright helpful, passing out gingerbread to all the children. The floats gave us a glipse of his new hobbies - cards and playing in the Schmutzli jazz quartet.

A quiet evening in with Samichlaus. Jazzy Schmutzlis.

We got to the parade early and spent some time listening to the singing Christmas Tree. Then we went searching for a place to change L's diaper. Because it is Sunday nothing was open. I thought one of the department stores or the huge grocery stores might be open, but they weren't. Finally we found a Japanese take out restaurant. So the kids and E ate sushi and edamame (the cost of admission to their bathroom) while I scoped a parade spot. We were very lucky to find a great spot (with a Jersey barrier behind us to limit crowding) and it stopped raining right before the parade started.

Birthday Blog

Today's blog care of E

It's winter in Zurich, there is snow on the ground, it's hovering around 0 C, so we decided that a great way to celebrate my birthday (tomorrow) would be to go swimming. So we packed up our bathing suits and water wings and headed to Bernaqua, a pool/water park/spa.

The cold air and hot water make for a dense fog

Giant faucets give great shoulder massages

Our first stop after arriving and changing was one of the two outdoor pools (you enter the water indoors and swim through a down out into the snow. With the air at 0 C and the water at 33 C (and the occasional snowfall) it was surprisingly comfortable -- though we skipped jumping out to go run through the snow as others were doing. I've done my polar bear swim and this was MUCH preferable.  The pool had several different attractions.  There were chaise lounges with small holes in them that water bubbled up through.  L particularly loved this as the water pushed her right up to the surface to her excited "Wheees!" and "Oooohs!"  There was a wall with jets of water coming out and up to give a great massage, as well as what looked like giant faucets that gave great shoulder massages.  Even a waterfall (to swim under, not go over).  

Instant Christmas

For a couple of weeks now we have seen signs of Christmas around town. The grocery stores have chocolates and Christmas plants for sale, the farmer's markets have wreaths and arrangements, the chocolate shops are selling candy bags for St Nicholas Day. And there have been some decorations like little trees here and there or Christmas shop windows.

But last night was the real deal. S, the littles, and I left the house at 5:00 just as the first snow was starting to fall. We met E and R in front of the Bretzelkönig stand at Stadelhofen station. In front of the station was a big new hot drinks stand in the shape of a lit up Christmas pyramid, complete with spinning fan.

From there we took the tram to Bahnhofstrasse, where a crowd had gathered. There were very few signs of why the crowd was there, though, hanging out in the street under umbrellas. Here and there were some unusual sights: a small hot drinks stand manned by Santa, a gospel choir, and a couple of tv news vans. Then, at six o clock it happened. Just as all the church bells were ringing the lights went on in Zurich. The Christmas lights strung across Bahnhofstrasse turned on starting at the station and moving toward Bürkliplatz. (We were at Paradeplatz next to Sprüngli, of course.) But it was more than just the street lights. All of the buildings lit up with their Christmas lights for the first time this season, and all of the side streets lit up with their lights, too. Christmas trees lit up. And all of the stores stayed open late (meaning past 5 or 6) for Christmas shopping.

BEFORE

AFTER

I thought this was cool. Instead of lights, a projected image.

The circle also rotated.

Each of the gift boxes had a little scene inside. 

For example, one had a scene of antique tin toys.

Baking

When I was growing up my family focused on one type of Christmas cookie, called "Christmas cookies." The note at the top of the recipe card says that it was from my grandmother Louise's grandmother Louisa. Unofficially, I think I remember Grandma saying that the recipe was even older than that and had come over with the family from Germany. It was a very secret recipe. Grandma used to make the dough and bring it to us to cut, decorate, and cook.

E's family went for an assortment of cookies. I think the first time I went to his house for Christmas they had: lefse, krumkake, meringues, frango mints, mint brownies, and peanut butter kiss cookies. I'm probably forgetting something.

So we do things E's way with an assortment of cookies heavily weighted toward Christmas cookies and krumkake. I've already written about how the assortment has to be different this year. But I have been surprised to find some more things not easily available here like mint extract, food coloring, colored sugar, vanilla extract, etc.

Technorama field trip

This is S again, reporting about my awesome field trip.

There was a take your kids to work day last Thursday and kids who weren't participating were allowed to go on a field trip to a science museum called Technorama. At Technorama most of the time the teacher just let the kids do whatever they wanted and come back at a certain time. Except one time we all went to a chemistry lab for a special demonstration where there were tables with different chemistry experiments and they just let the kids do whichever ones they wanted with all the explosive chemicals and stuff with no supervision unless they raised their hands for help. The kids were also allowed to check out the museum shop which had a lot of cool science toys.

My teacher Herr S brought his son with him. My partner and I near the end of the trip did some things with them in the body section. There we did some things like learning how cats can make their landing soft and seeing if we could make our landing soft, too, and there was a camera that said it could predict where we would land before we even landed. It took pictures of us in midair and was usually about right. There was also a part with humungous plasma balls. When I saw them it made me think of R.

I loved it there so much that I finally decided what I want to do on my birthday. I want to go to Technorama on my birthday. I think T and L will even like some of the stuff there. I think L will like the bubbles. They were really huge. I bet a bubble like that will fit over her whole body. I think she will also like the plasma ball because it is as big as she is.

On the day after my birthday, hopefully we will have some pictures to show you, too!