I went thrifting and swimming

Today was a rather successful day. Finally I was taken to a 'real' second-hand shop. Not just a consignment shop that sells used clothes for 20 times more than they should be. Maya took the kids and I to St. Gallen where there was a Swiss affiliated Salvation Army store...a 'real' second-hand shop. This had all the sections a store back home would have: incomplete table settings, Don Johnson records, ugly china, and a nice selection of used clothing. I hope to make this a monthly or bi-monthly trip. Today I came away with four items, totaling 6 Swiss Francs.

I picked up three different beer glasses. All are .3L, instead of the 'normal' European .5L. This is good because they just don't sell beer in half-liter portions in the US. One is even a boot.



When perusing the t-shirts, I was hoping to load up on shirts that had different things written on them in German. None really stuck out to me, until I came to this one:



After thrifting we went to a sports club (think YMCA). There we went swimming. Nothing much to report about that other than that I float about the same over here.

Brace yourselves for the next section. It may involve some gruesome pictures.


It was time
Yes, it was time. Since early August, I had not trimmed my facial hair. Until Thursday night. Things were starting to get tangly and knotty (naughty?).

After 8 months, it had grown about 9 cm. We'll just say about a centimeter a month:





I decided to have a little fun with it, so I let Tim tell me how to trim it. Here's the beginning:



During:



I wanted to leave it like this, but Tim didn't want me to:



Wrapping up:



.....aaaaaaaand......

(cue fanfare)

(play fanfare)

The nearly finished product:



Finished!:



What have I learned about having a beard such as the epically long (for me) one that I just trimmed? It comes down to this. Having a beard is one of the easiest ways to keep people from sitting beside you on the train. They take one look at you and possibly at the book you're reading and keep walking down the aisle. I enjoyed that. I always had a seat or foursome of seats to myself unless the train was really full.


Fun upcoming things

I will be heading into Germany for Easter and visiting my old friend from high school, Phil. This seems to be our only chance to catch up with one another in the entire year I'm here, so I'm taking advantage of the opportunity.

Rumor has it that the Dave Matthews Band will be playing the festival that such acts as Eric Clapton, Chuck Berry, BB King, Bo Diddley, Deep Purple, and Stevie Ray Vaughn have been apart of. Held every year on the shore of Lake Geneva, the Montreux Jazz Festival is one of the most prestigious music festivals in Europe. If the rumors are true and they are playing on a Saturday night (July 4th to be exact) I will try to make this show.

With that,
Jon

I was busy

Wow. What a weekend. It was filled with wonderful people, food and conversation.

I headed out of Hemberg last Thursday and arrived at Debbie's house about three hours later. There, we did some last planning and train connection checking while I finished off that night's supper.

I began Friday by sharing a breakfast with Debbie's grandma, whose attic I slept in. She speaks no English which meant I had to communicate in German. She also can't hear very well so I had to repeat things a lot, which was good practice for my language skills. Friday was an especially busy day, with me being 'responsible' to pick up everyone from where they were arriving. The first person was Matt, a Dutch trainee, who flew in to the airport at about 10:30. I had been expecting a call from Meredith before this time, but she had to rush onto a train in Geneva. She had flown in from Wichita that day. Finally easing my growing worries, she called from the Basel train station, safe and sound. Around this time, Debbie, who had to teach that morning, also showed up. Blaire came in on time back out at the airport and our posse was almost complete. Charles came in around 5:30 and we made our way to Debbie's house.

This whole weekend emerged from a Facebook wall post that Meredith sent to me back in November: "You may just be the impetus for a highly improbable Swiss Spring Break that Blaire and I are talking about. I want it pretty badly, but let's not get too crazy just yet. In any case, you should eat lots of cheese, all the time." Like she said, it was highly improbable but as time went on and tickets got cheaper, the planets aligned and things started happening. Not wanting everyone to have to travel all the way out to the boonies of Switzerland, I asked Debbie if we could get together at her place. She said yes and plans began to form.

Friday night we had a traditional Swiss meal of fondue. For this meal, you have a long metal fork and cut cubes of bread. You then dip the bread into the cheese and eat it. It's a very simple meal that doesn't take much preparation and makes for fun conversation.

We went to the Basel Zoo on Saturday. While a bit windy, the weather was wonderful. The weather was great all weekend.

Charles and Meredith on the train:



Baby hippo:



Much of the crew watching the baby hippo:



Monkeys!:





Debbie petting a horned animal:



We then left the zoo and traveled down to the Rhine River and sat on the waterfront for awhile, lazily watching the water travel by:



Matt is my Dutch counterpart, he's the Dutch Trainee Rep:



Sunday was another day spent outside. We went up a gondola to the top of a Swiss hill, which would be considered a mountain by Kansas standards.



"Asian Tourist Pose":



We did a lot of hiking. It was almost too much hiking on snow and ice for my knees to handle. They let me know of it. The views were worth the pain though:





This morning, Blaire headed back to the airport and eventually to Barcelona where she's been studying this semester. Meredith meanwhile went the other way to Luzern. She plans on doing a day of skiing and then meeting back up with Blaire in Barcelona.



I hung out at Debbie's place until later in the afternoon when I made my trek back to Hemberg. While changing trains in a town, I couldn't help but notice the return of the smell of spring rain. Though it was still quite nippy and windy, this smell made me breathe deeper and enjoy my surroundings.

I don't have much more on my palette. Phil will be in Rudesheim for Easter and I may take advantage of the four-day weekend and finally visit him. I'm sure you'll hear about it.

Until next time,
Jon

I jumped on a mountain

Last week on Wednesday afternoon, we packed up the car and went to Flawil. There we visited the Schoggi Fabrik, or chocolate factory. It was a nice attempt at a tour, with a movie and real live tour guide to show us the process. However, there wasn't much going on down on the packing floor and we were left to imagine thousands of bars of chocolate going down many conveyor belts. I still found some cheap chocolate in the scratch and dent store at the end of the tour.



That night as it was nearing time to go to bed, I had a sick feeling. I was really tired and had a sore throat. I knew that I would be sick in the morning. I woke up and came downstairs in the morning to work the stall, but Maya stopped me and took my temperature. It was 39C, or about 102F. She told me to go back to bed where I stayed until about 2 pm. That's when Dirk knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted to eat anything, which I did. Then I rolled back over and went back to sleep.

You may recall that I was sick around Christmas time, when my parents visited. It seems that my body likes getting sick at the most inopportune moments. Fortunately, I was better on Friday, because that's when my I went to pick my mom up from the train station. Earlier in the day my older brother, Tim, put her on a train in Mannheim. We had helped her find cheap airfare for her spring break. That was two days before she was to leave Wichita, bound for Europe.

She won the award of "First Visitor" that I've had in Hemberg. That also meant that I hadn't really gone anywhere and didn't know where to take anyone. We ended up following our noses on Saturday morning and headed up to St. Gallen for the day. We mainly walked around and peaked into little shops, though we also went into a church or two. For lunch, we went to the market in the square and got different things for a picnic.



----------------
Short story:
I emailed a Huber cousin, Gene, because I remember getting an email awhile ago in 2006 that had Huber information in it. It ends up that between 1300 and 1600, Huber's that I'm related to occupied at least three towns in Switzerland, near Bern, Basel, and Zurich. That said, the Huber name is all over things, the most prominent being on the side of silos. But here's a picture of a Huber Fenster (Huber Window) company.



I do plan to make a 'pilgrimage' or two to some of these towns and see what kind of Huber dirt I can dig up.
----------------
We walked a lot and this made me realize how in shape I will be by the time I get home in early August. It's a 10-20 minute walk from the house to the bus stop in Hemberg. Here's our driveway:





Mom got to see where it is that I live and work. She got to see the sheep:



My house (on the left, silly):



The cows and milking equipment:





The family:



Sunday was a relatively lazy day. We went to church and then came back and had lunch. The rainy/cloudy day didn't make us want to go up a mountain, so we hung around the house and napped in the afternoon.

Monday was a beautiful day with not many clouds in the sky, thus making it a good day to go up a mountain. We chose the one that I can see out my window, the Säntis. Here's a live camera link from the top of the 8,200 foot peak.

At the top of the gondola ride was an area of mannequin's dressed as Swiss people.



It was a good day to go up a mountain, even if a little cold:







(I could think of a better looking girl to stand next to.):







From there, we used our day tickets and went to the city of Appenzell, 'capital' of the canton of Appenzell. They are famous for their cheese and bitter liquor. We wandered their streets for an hour or two.



The mountain we went up earlier in the day, from Hemberg:



I was glad she came! We woke up early this morning and went to the Zurich Airport, where she got on a flight to Frankfurt. Right now she is on a plane bound for Chicago. Eventually she'll get to Wichita later tonight.

Until next time,
Jon

I like to stay positive

Before anything else, here are pictures I promised a time or two ago of Debbie and I in the wheelhouse of the most awesome train ride ever:





I never realized how positive I can be until it was pointed out to me by Ruth, a German committee member. On the way home from the committee meeting in Krefeld, they were asking me how things were settling down in Switzerland with the new family. I mentioned how everything was great except for one tiny thing. I get called Jeff a lot. Jeff was the trainee here a year ago, before our group began. Apparently the family really adored him and I can see why. At the end of his time, he decided to stay since he didn't know what he was going to do when he got back to Canada. He stayed until October when he left to go build villages in Africa or something.

Ruth asked how that made me feel when I get called Jeff. I said that it makes me want to work hard so that they call the next male trainee Jon, whatever his name is. It can be frustrating though. Today, Tim called me Jeff about 6 times. If that's the worst thing that I'm dealing with at the moment, I think it's going pretty good.

It keeps snowing. This morning I walked out of the cow stall and there were little ice pellets coming down and it changed to snow through the morning. Over lunch there was sun and then the clouds came back and dumped heavy snow in late afternoon. It was so thick that I couldn't see out my window to the power line tower down the hill.

My mom is in Germany right now visiting Tim, Heidi, and Gustav. We helped her find cheap airfare over her spring break so she's making use of that. She actually came over with two fairly empty suitcases (except for random North American baking supplies) so Tim and Heidi can send some things back with her. For those of you who don't know, their visas have been rejected and they may be forced to go home before their term is up in July. Mom will be coming down my way on Friday where she'll stay until Tuesday, when her flight out of Zurich leaves. I still have a little bit of planning to do, but I think we're going to have fun.

The next weekend (20th), I'm meeting Bethel friends in Basel. Blaire, who is studying in Barcelona, and Meredith, who also found cheap Spring Break tickets, are flying in on Friday the 20th. Fellow trainee Charles will be arriving that afternoon and we're all staying at Debbie's house. It should be a fun weekend of story-telling and sightseeing with good friends.

Until next time,
Jon

I can milk a cow

Cyrill is a terror and likes doing things with either his fecal matter or another person's.

Preface: He has ADHD and probably more things wrong with him. He is a pseudo-foster child that the Fellmann's take care of. He is here during the week to go to a school in Hemberg and then goes home on the weekends.

Tuesday's it is my job to get him out of bed, eat breakfast, and get him on his way to school. He must leave by 8:30 to be at school on time but he usually leaves much later, sometimes by 8:45. To battle this lateness, I decided to set the clock forward about 15 minutes. Much to my amazement, he left at exactly 8:30, but the clock he was looking at said 8:45. Dirk and Maya thought that was a novel idea. However, they learned at lunch that he was still late. I don't know how he can get lost on the way to school, there's only one road between here and the school.

He was also late on Wednesday. I brought up an even better idea, better than moving the clock forward, at lunch. I walk him to school, in through the front door, all while holding his hand. How perfect would that be? We still haven't put that plan to use, but it's there, ready to be launched.

(This has nothing to do with Cyrill, but for the sake of telling things in chronological order, it needs to go here.) Last night, Salome was running around and it was a bit after her bedtime, but there was no Dirk and Maya around. So I did the only logical thing and took her to bed. After she 'read' the story of Bambi to me, I said, "Gute Nacht," walked out and shut off the lights. Dirk appeared and asked where Salome was and I told him I put her to bed. He, the soft-spoken man that he is, said, "Vielen Dank!" and Maya was equally happy this morning when she found out.

Today he got in trouble. Apparently he took someone's shoe off of their foot, took it into the bathroom, and pooped on it. Because of this, he got to work with me this afternoon. Hooray me! From 2-3 pm, he helped me split wood and stack it. Then he was supposed to do homework for a half hour. While he was doing homework, I made more No-Bake Cookies. He came down at 3:30 and I asked him if he was done with his homework, to which he replied no. Then I asked him to go and finish his homework and he asked me why. My German is not so good that I can explain to 8 year old ADHD kids the reasons why it is good to finish homework. So without a suitable explanation, he began playing with Salome. 20 minutes later I again asked him to finish his homework, to which he and Salome ran upstairs and 'hid' underneath his bed. In this time, I was cleaning up my small mess in the kitchen. He comes flying down the stairs and throws the diaper that Salome was wearing at me. Luckily the contents were only yellow in nature. In response to this, I marched up the stairs after him, pulled him out from under the bed, sat (threw) him down in his chair, placed (shoved) a pencil in his hand, pushed his chair closer to the desk, and walked out of the room. I didn't see him until it was time for stall work with the cows.

He helps Dirk in the stall twice a week and today was that day. Dirk has been teaching me all the aspects of the stall so that I can eventually do it all by myself. This includes the ability to milk a cow, by hand or by machine. I've never been able to milk anything before. Anyway, today Dirk had some other things to take care of and only got the cows hooked up to their chains and the poop cleared from under them. He put Cyrill in charge of cleaning the fenced area outside which left me to do the 'Misten' (poo cleaning) and milking. Then I got to keep Cyrill busy and on the other side of the stable so I couldn't hear his complaining. We finished in decent time. Dirk got back from what it was he was doing and asked me how it went. Maya said, "He did it all!" Dirk shook my hand and said, "Mega cool!"

I'm also beginning to use the descriptive word 'mega' when I'm describing something. Perhaps it was a former trainee that got them started on it, but it's fun.

I'm coming up on a month of being here. I know I wrote this at the month mark in September, but wow, time sure is flying and I don't know how I feel about it.

Until next time,
Jon

I had a great weekend

Friday was a day of normal work, but filled with great anticipation. The first celebratory event observed for my birthday was a lunch of raclette. This was done on Friday, because I was leaving later in the afternoon to go to Basel and then on to an Intermenno committee meeting in Germany for the weekend. Throughout the week I'd been getting envelopes in the mail from relatives and friends from church. The eating of raclette sometimes involves long pauses, so I was able to open my cards as we were eating. I got some recipes along with many well-wishes. Thanks to everyone who sent cards!

Here are some pictures of the meal with the family gathered around the table. From left, Jara, Maya, Salome and Dirk:



Me with my cards. (I got more when I got back from the weekend today.)



Maya asked me earlier in the week what kind of cake I wanted. My traditional birthday cake is a Buttermilk Chocolate Cake, first made by Grandma Friesen. I emailed my mom and she obliged with the recipe. Here's Maya's quite tasty result, with Tim:



I was off Friday after work to Basel, where Debbie (Swiss Committee Member and officially one of the coolest people ever) had promised a meal of chicken fajitas. She and Alyssa (other Swiss trainee) picked me up at the train station and the food was ready. They were very good! For dessert, she asked me what kind of cake I'd like and my response to her was something chocolaty with cherries. She produced Chocolate Cherry Kirch (cherry liquor) Cupcakes. Splendid! After the meal they gave me a package. Inside was a cookbook full of Swiss delicacies that I will attempt to reproduce and an apron. The apron is a 'professional' model that many waitresses and cooks wear in Europe. It's black. The evening, like all the evenings over the weekend, was fulled with wonderful conversation. We didn't go to bed until 2 am.

Debbie and I were up the next day for our 5:27 train toward Krefeld, site of the meeting. The train ride was uneventful and we were in Krefeld before lunch. The meeting began soon after lunch. This was a joint meeting between the Dutch and German/Swiss committees with the main focus being the selecting of trainees for next year.

As my last post stated, I turned 22 on Saturday. This did not go unnoticed by the committee. At lunch there were two presents at my place at the table. Awhile ago Debbie asked me what my shoe size was and led me to believe that she had found some awesome shoes. It ended up that she was doing reconnaissance work for some Dutch people. I now have a pair of authentic Dutch clogs. The German committee gave me a German soccer scarf with "DEUTSCHLAND" in large letters. Both are super swell!

Sadly, the number of applications have steadily gone down, from 100 many years ago, to 40 a couple years ago, 30 last year, and 20 this year. This fact made for a depressing meeting. We were only able to accept about 15 of the applicants. With such a small number, it is not feasible to split up the trainees. Next year, all of the trainees will come to either Germany or Switzerland, with none going to the Netherlands. Hopefully with some advertising and more vigorous word of mouth, the number of applicants will rise and things will be fine. However, if numbers keep dwindling, the program will end after the next year. So: current and former trainees who read this, do your share and help advertise! It is too late for this year, but keep talking about it and save Intermenno!

The meeting lasted well into the evening and for an hour or two after supper. In need of a happy pick-me-up, we played games like Pictionary all night. I went to bed about 3 am. After breakfast at 8:45 on Sunday, we all headed to the train station and unknowingly embarked on what would be a most excellent adventure.

We had two ICE (super fast train, 300 km/h or 186 mph) connections. One leg was between Duisburg and Mannheim. This includes a stretch between Cologne and Frankfurt where the train is able to reach 300 km/h. There were four of us on the train, but only two of us had reservations, which were at the very back of the train. Our seats looked backward into what would be the 'cockpit'. The glass was fogged up and were thinking how cool it would be if we could see out the back of the train. That thought then evolved to us wishing that we were at the front of the train. When the ticket checker came by, this remark was restated. She replied that in Cologne, the train would change directions and we'd be at the front.

Debbie, being the cool person that she is, asked the driver when he got on in Cologne if I could have my picture taken in the seat. He said sure, but only after he'd gotten his 'preflight' finished. While this was happening he pushed a button and the fogged glass separating us from him suddenly turned clear. I thought something like that could only happen in Star Trek. Then he waved us in and I got to sit at the controls. I don't have the pictures quite yet, but they'll get posted. Then he left the door open and we were able to ride in the cockpit from Cologne til we got off in Mannheim. He was explaining all the controls and screens while we were taking pictures. It was great to be able to see where the train was going and not just out the sides.

Eventually Debbie and I made it back to Basel. I decided to take today off and observe the Fasnacht celebrations. This meant I didn't have to rush back to Hemberg and spend most of my waking hours on Sunday on a train. Alyssa was back for supper and Crystal, the trainee who is in Wintersheim, came down to see what all the Fasnacht hubbub was about. The Dettweiler's hadn't forgotten about my birthday and sent a bottle of my favorite wine with Crystal, who made me guess what they sent, which I did on the first try.

We were attending the Morgastraich, or the beginning of Fasnacht. Precisely at 4 am, the lights to the street are cut. There are different groups that participate. Each group is made up of piccolo players, drummers, and people who pull giant lanterns (sadly no fire). Painted on the lanterns are normally things of political importance. In 2003, Bush was a popular face. This year it was Obama. At 4 am they all take to the streets and march, playing different melodies on the piccolos and from what I could tell they just walked. And walked. Everybody in the group is in a costume and wearing a hat with a lantern on it. I actually wasn't too enthralled by it. Perhaps it was the fact of staying up all night and getting to bed by 6. I wasn't too impressed. Here are some unimpressive pictures:





4 am, the lights are cut:


This morning, as in 1 pm, Debbie made the four of us an awesome breakfast of rösti, eggs and pancakes. Then we chatted for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to take our trains back home.

In retrospect, this was one of my more memorable birthday weekends. Perhaps because it was the first one spent without any family. There were people who made sure that my birthday did not go unnoticed and that made my spirits even higher than they already are.

Until next time,
Jon