It's all about categories

My Dear Aussie Pal called this evening to tell me she had 'arrived in this popsicle of a city' - meaning, of course, Zürich! Exciting for me to show her some sites and the now refreshingly not-so-stinky apartment.

Tomorrow we are expecting a high of -2 degrees C, and a low of -8 tonight! And it's well on the way there: this evening I raced out of the apartment into flurries of fluffy snow to put the compost in the Big Green Bin.

Yes, we have composting! It gets taken to the local recycling plant, which is just around the corner and up the road a bit.

I just realised I thought I was going to be writing about snow, but I'm actually writing about waste product. How about that. But I've been meaning to blab on about this for a while anyway, because I'd heard (prior to arrival in Z) that one had to pay for tickets to stick on rubbish bags so that the garbos would take them away.

Of course, this information was slightly baffling to us, sitting in our Wohnzimmer (ha! just showing off - living room, it means) in Canberra, since we couldn't imagine leaving bags on the streets due to the presence of curious Aussie wildlife. And secondly, we couldn't imagine Joe Blow being so civil-minded as to purchase his tickets and dutifully stick them on bags.

In fact, it's slightly easier than that. You do have to buy specific rubbish bags appropriate for your area (about $20 for a roll of 35 litre bags), and only these can be left for pickup.

We were most impressed that there are an abundance of recycling bins for glass and tins on most streets in the city of Zürich, and PET and milk cartons can be recycled at all the Co-op supermarkets.

I'm not quite on top of all various types of recycling in our town yet, as I was given all the information in German and have been too lazy to babelfish it. But the gist of it is that there are particular days where you can leave out e.g. cardboard, paper, etc. (I just look out the window and think: 'Oh look. There's a whole bunch of cardboard...')

So back to the snow: I happened to be doing some surfing about snow, because I wanted to know all the Inuit words and what they meant. Mainly because since we've been here we've had: sleet, fluffy snow, hard hexagonal ice-bits, hail-ish looking tiny balls, and slushy wet big flat bits of snow.

So here's a list, from the Inuit, Aivilik and Igloolik languages:

Aluiqqaniq : Snowdrift on a steep hill, overhanging on top
Aniuk : Snow for drinking water
Aniuvak : Snow remaining in holes
Aput : Snow on the ground (close to the generic Snow)
Aqilluqqaaq : Fresh and soggy snow
Auviq : snow brick, to build igloo
Ijaruvak : Melted snow, turned in ice crystals
Isiriartaq : Falling snow, yellow or red
Kanangniut : Snowdrift made by North-East wind
Katakartanaq : Crusty snow, broken by steps
Kavisilaq : snow hardened by rain or frost
Kinirtaq : wet and compact snow
Masak : wet snow, saturated
Matsaaq : snow in water
Maujaq : deep and soft snow, where it's difficult to walk
Mingullaut : thin powder snow, enters by cracks and covers objects
Mituk : small snow layer on the water of a fishing hole
Munnguqtuq : compressed snow which began to soften in spring
Natiruviaqtuq: snow blasts on the ground
Niggiut : snowdrift with South-east wind
Niummak : hard waving snow staying on ice fields
Pingangnuit : snowdrift made by south-west wind
Piqsiq : snow lift by wind. Blizzard
Pukak : dry snow crystals, like sugar powder
Qannialaaq : light falling snow
Qanniq : falling snow
Quiasuqaq : re-frozen snow surface, making crust
Qiqiqralijarnatuq: snow when walked on
Uangniut : snowdrift made by north-west wind
Uluarnaq : round snowdrift
Uqaluraq : taper snowdrift

PS. Watch where the huskies go: beware of the yellow snow.

(... and with that I guess we're back to waste product.)

Candles

Yes, it's been an indulgent week...

I'd also like to post a pic of my special candle. It was made for us before we left Oz.


Friends all put a chunk of wax into the mold - for themselves and for absent friends.

We lit it on Sunday night.

...and (would you believe) another night-time outing

On the last night of my parents' and brother's visit, DH and I went to dinner with some other Infotech-ish Aussies. It's great to hear stories from home, and it's also good to hear how others are viewing the Zürich experience.

(Me: So how much chocolate did you eat the first week you were here?)

DH went on to hook up with DB for coffee, as DB was heading back to Berlin the next arvo, but I headed home to sneak in a bit more time with DM and DF before they left.

I was so distracted on the tram on the way home that I missed my stop, but a walk on a bitterly cold night was seriously good fun, because whichever way you look at it, Zürich is a pretty amazing city.

Chocolate cake, anyone?

While DF and DM were in town, I managed a child-free jaunt to the city with DB, whereupon we visited several art galleries and forced ourselves to stop for treats and coffee in the sun (oh, OK, tea - I have had two coffees so far... one of which I had to load with sugar and chunks of the kids' ice-creams in order to make it palatable).

We saw a few different exhibitions, but my fave was one half of the Daros collection, which I enjoyed immensely, mainly because they had a couple of good Warhols and also Camnitzer's Coca Cola Bottle filled with a Coca Cola Bottle (literally a Coke bottle filled with a broken Coke bottle), which quite appealed to my sense of humour.

Naturally, all this was on Limmatstrasse in Industriequartier, a somewhat emerging theme for recent outings in the city.

I would just like to add this image from our recent night-time outing to a club in Industriequartier... (It was the next-door shop, so sadly I won't be able to say: 'Yeah, so I was hanging out at Bogen 33 when... etc.')

Beetroot, anyone?

On Friday night, DS was deposited at kindergarten at a 6pm for what's known as the Räbelichtli Umzug.

In these parts (Zürich, Schaffhausen and Aargau) the Räbelichtli Umzug is celebrated on the first weekend of November, with a lantern procession around the streets. It's not Halloween, but rather a welcoming of winter.

That Friday morning, I'd been invited to the kindergarten with the other parents to assist DS as he hollowed out Räbe (white beetroot) with a melon ball-er.

[Me: Mum, Dad, I'll see you later. I have to go and carve turnips. Help yourself to the chocolate coins.]

Once hollowed out, decorations are carved on the outside of their Räbe: stars, hearts, flowers, Swiss flag crosses, and I even saw an edelweiss.

DS carved a rocket and, as it turned out, wasn't keen on letting me do anything much except tie up the strings, so I sat back and watched him earnestly add to the growing pile of Räbe shavings, while I had the occasional reviving beetroot snack with the little girl I was sitting next to.

At 6pm DS joined the other children and they all filed past the parents with their lanterns. Then they proceeded to walk around the local streets, singing traditional songs with the kindergarten teachers. (I've heard that the songs are about how friends and family and lanterns will keep them warm even though the winter is cold.)

Then we watched through the window as the children sat in the kindergarten at a candle-lit table and were served bratwurst and hot soup and bread by their teachers. I haven't seen DS look so content for a long time. It warmed the Hausfrau's heart.


PS. The next very chilly evening it was the whole of Horgen's turn to have a procession, complete with wagons adorned with lanterns. The streetlights were turned off, lanterns glowed on windowsills, and (mostly older) people watched from the windows as huge numbers of children and parents walked down the hill to the town square, where we were greeted with free sausages and bread for the kids, while a brass band ripped out disco medleys; 'I will survive' and 'Eye of the Tiger' to kick it off. (Oh, and then the church bells started chiming on top of it all.)

Would you like fries with that...?

You know I said I'd never get to see Industriequartier at night?

Well, I'm now eating my words.

Due to the arrival of the Hausfrau's parents and own Dear Brother (who mostly lives in Berlin), I was equipped with built-in babysitting and able to attend the Infotech Central Halloween Party.

O Happy Day!

Mostly the fun was had travelling on the train with DH and DB and walking around the Industriequartier dressed up as Death Eaters. (Yes, Harry Potter is still big in our house. In fact the other day I found - I kid you not - five of the seven HP books, each open and face-down at various points around the house. DD is a multi-tasker of the extreme kind.)

I won't go into too much detail about the Infotech Central party lest I be deported for revealing trade secrets, but it must be said that there were a few other Hausfraus present, a few of whom I'd met at a 'Spouses and Partners of...' brunch. I'm happy to report that they could keep up with me doing the Time Warp, plus two of them were equipped with flashing devil-horns.

PS. That pic at the top is the Freitag store (you'll get a much better daytime pic on this site). It seems like every second person in Zürich has one of these recycled truck tarpaulin bags, including grannies and granddads. The store is basically old shipping containers piled up on top of each other. Rumour has it that they had a taller building which they had to pull down because it used to sway in the wind a bit too much, but I've since discovered it was because of this clip on YouTube...

The downside of Italian mineral water

Once upon a time, a small boy spilled sparkling Italian mineral water all over his mother's computer keyboard. (Poor child. Who makes him drink such horrors?)

This was most frustrating for the Hausfrau as she found to her dismay that she was typing a language she didn't think she knew. Presently she realised her keyboard was completely fried.

Sadly she unplugged it and placed it on the warm floor overnight but when she discovered that the keyboard was still channelling crazy language in the morning, she was forced to go to the next level.

'Pull it apart and use a hairdryer,' texted DH.

Knowing this information was reliable and hot off the press from the man at Infotech Central, she obeyed. But it was no use. It was a sad day indeed.

Happily, a different keyboard is now standing in while the Hausfrau travels whole-heartedly down the online purchasing track, her newest obsession.

Home shopping in German (or French, as one of the supermarket websites happens to be), is very interesting. One can't be quite sure what one's children will be eating for the next week... One could be diligent and do online babelfish-ing in painstaking paragraph-by-paragraph cut-and-paste or somesuch, but frankly one doesn't want to return to Oz having spent quite that much time online. Mind you, it's quicker than going to the shops and dragging it all up The Hill with the OGT.

Hypothetical Person: So did you see Europe?
Me: Oh yes, it has a great website.

Other Hypothetical Person: So did you see Europe?
Me: No, I had to do the grocery shopping.