Villars--January 28, 2006

It was a bright sunny and clear day in the Swiss Alps, perfect conditions for skiing, so that is what we did. Jadyn, Steve and I all piled into the car and made our way around Lake Geneva to the mountains. Villars, was our mountain of choice today.

About an hour and a half from Geneva, we slowly worked our way up the switchback roads to the tiny ski town of Villars. We parked the car, rented ski gear for Jadyn and headed up the gondola.

Pictures of us on our way up the mountain and our views from the top

Here are Jadyn and Steve heading down the mountain. Jadyn is first down (that's her giggling in the background) and Steve follows...




After a few runs in the sun, we needed a break. Jadyn spotted this top-of-the-mountain open bar that looked like it should have been on a beach and not the snow. This bar was awesome: great music playing, comfortable lounge chairs reclining, and Swiss beer being consumed. What more could one ask for...hum, maybe a palm tree. Oh wait, there were palm trees too. Talk about paradise.

We enjoyed lunch, drinks and the sun before hitting the slopes once again.

Mid-run we stopped to strike a pose:

Jadyn: "voila les montagnes!"

Jaren and Steve.

..."it was just beyond beautiful"--Jadyn.

Bowling, International style--January 27, 2007

Walking into a smokey dive bowling alley, I felt like I was back home in 'merica. Amélie, Oana, Laurent, Steve, Jadyn (our guest for a few weeks) and I all went to the Meryin Bowling Alley for a few games of fun. It was quite entertaining because Amélie had never bowled before and it was only Oana and Laurent's second time. Before going, I talked up Jadyn and Steve (both being stellar bowlers with competitive reputations), so the others were a bit intimidated to bowl with 2 superstars.


First up, Oana. And what does she bowl, a spare. Not bad.
Second up, Amélie. This first timer, bowled a spare too. (And, she was the first person I've seen bowl in a skirt.)
Third up, Jaren. Not too bad of a bowl with 8 pins down.


Fourth up, Laurent. Descent with 6.
Fifth up, Steve. Beautiful Superman approach, however it didn't help him much. He bowled a 5.
Sixth up, Jads. What? The best only knocked down 6 pins.
...so you could guess how the rest of the game went. Those who never or barely played did well. And unfortunately, the 2 superstars were anything but stellar.

The (surprising) winner of the first game, Jaren! I AM AWESOME! I had 2 strikes back to back and was working on a turkey, but that was a no go. At least I broke 100 (big time)!

Second game, same as the first. Steve and Jadyn demonstrated their skills more in this game. I think is was after the beer they drank. That's all they needed.

Side note, Jadyn bowls with a heavy ball, 15 lbs. (Yes, even the balls were marked in pounds instead of kilos. The computer was in English too. We really felt like we were in America).

After two good games (with me winning both) we headed to chez Schwartz for an international feeding frenzy. Everyone was tasked to bring a local food from where they are from:

Amélie: savory crepes with salmon and crème fraishe, croque monsieurs (French)
Oana: tartelettes au citron (Swiss)
Laurent: pommes au fromage de chèvre avec le sirop de Liege (Belgian)
Jadyn: sugar cookies (her buttercream frosting was the BEST. Better than Magnolia, Buttercup and Party Favors)
Jaren: twice-baked potatoes
Steve: Buffalo-style chicken wings

As you can see we had quite an eclectic meal, but it was all so delicous. My hat goes off to all the chefs!

Gruyère--January 7, 2007

My co-work, Amélie, and I are obsessed with cheese. She is French, so her love for cheese is understandable. Me, on the other hand, I am not sure where I get the constant desire to chomp on fromage at any time of day.

One day at work while we both were eating cheese with our lunch, we decided to plan a trip to Gruyère, the town where the cheese hails.

Exploring our options with how to get there, the train was ridicously over-priced and a car rental would not have been necessarily worth it. We turned to option number 3, genevaonline.ch, the Geneva online networking community. Amélie posted a little blub about wanting to go to Gruyère, and about an hour later her phone rang. It was a nice sounding guy, Gregorie, who offered to drive the 3 of us (Jaren, Amélie and Steve) to the cheese capital of Switzerland.

Sunday morning rolled up hard and fast, but with cheese as our dangling carrot we were motivated to get going. Gregorie picked all 3 of us up and we were on our way. After some small talk, we later find out that Gregorie was a former tourguide in Switzerland. He took us on the back roads through Vaud's vineyards, showed us where famous people live (or lived) and talked about Swiss culture and history.

Before we knew it, we were at the Gruyère cheese factory.

At la maison de la Gruyère, we took a tour of the dairy and learned why Gruyère is, how do it put it, so damn delicious.



In short, it soley depends on when and what the cow eats. The cheese actually has several different flavors and colors.

For example, if Cherry, the cow, ate flowers in the summertime her milk and therefore cheese would taste different than her milk in the winter when she is fed hey.



Left to right: salé (salted), mi-salé (slightly salted), and doux (soft) . Can you see the difference in color (and texture)?

We also caught a special treat: real life cheese making by fire.




After learning how to make the cheese, it was time to TASTE it. We headed up the hill to the medevil town of Gruyère. This is mainstreet.

Gregorie took us on a stroll through old town, down the hill to the church, up and around the castle to one of his favorite restaurants, Le chalet de Gruyère.




LEFT: The castle. CENTER: beautiful landscape. RIGHT: Steve, Jaren and Gregorie





At the restaurant, the 4 of us dined on raclette and fondue made with the local cheese.

But we were not done eating. Dessert was next on the agenda.We went to another local restaurant where were had "double-crème" made from local Gruyère cream with fresh rasberries and meraugine. Here is Amélie enjoying the delicious dessert...

By this time, we stuffed ourselves to the rim. Nothing but dairy was in us (this day would have been a lactards nightmare). I ate so much cheese, I didn't eat anyfor several days.

For more pictures of our cheese fest, click HERE

Skiing in Chamonix --January 4, 2007

We recovered from the week-long journey through Northern Italy and Southern France for a few days in Geneva before deciding to take a day and ski in the French Alps, specifically at Chamonix. Aaron didn’t have any of his gear with him, so he purchased a few necessities (snowpants, gloves) to get him through the day. We also found him a good deal on renting a snowboard. Aaron had never snowboarded before, but convinced himself it was a good idea. Heck, how many people get to say they spent their holidays walking along the French Riviera and skiing in the Alps???

We rented another dinky little European car (Mitsubishi Colt, and a sassy one at that) and headed for the mountains. We made it to Chamonix in under an hour and found the rental place shortly thereafter. Since the region just got hit with its first snowfall of the year, not all the ski resorts were open. The guy at the rental place suggested, Le Tour, as it was one of two resorts open in Chamonix.

Getting off the Le Tour gondola, we decided to continue up the mountain where there was better snow.

Exiting the lift was interesting. Jaren, wearing skis, was in the middle with Aaron and Steve on either side with boards. This order had the potential to be disastrous, and lived up to 50% of our expectations (Steve managed to plow into Jaren while trying to avoid another skiier).

Now could we make it down the mountain? Aaron followed Steve’s instructions:


Taking a break guys?

First run down the hill. We’re all ok.


View from mid-mountain. The mid-mountain lodge is in the foreground and the village of Chamonix is in the background.

Aaron survived his first run, so we headed back up the mountain...

Steve decided to take the lead on this next run. Well, what Steve didn't know is that the trail he was taking the group on was nothing but unskiiable heavy and wet snow. We all got stuck in it, right up to the waist. Merde.

Steve jumped and wiggled his way through the muck and Jaren easily skid on through. Aaron, however, decided to make the beginner move -- take off his board and walk it to another trail.

As Jaren waited, she saw Aaron sit down and prepare to strap into his board. He tossed the board down, but before he could get his feet in the board...

Pfft...gone.

Freshly waxed, the board whized right by Jaren, who quickly tried to ski after it, but got caught in the off-the-trail wet powder again. Regardless, the effort was futile - the board went off the cliff and down into a ravine.
Aaron just started running after it, down the hill, screaming "F-this, F-that....F, F, F".

Long story short, the three of us went on an expedition to find the board, but to no avail. Jaren skied down and went up again to try and follow the board's tracks. NOTHING. Aaron and Steve, in the meantime, walked down the rest of the run.

Investing in new snowpants, gloggle and gloves: 100CHF;

Buying a liftticket to ski in the Alps: 46 Euros;

Renting a snowboard and boots: 30 Euros;

Watching the snowboard run-away down the mountain in a whiteout, never to be found again: PRICELESS.

But, loosing the snowboard didn't keep Aaron down. Oh, no. We all took the gondola down the mountain to the base where we saw another ski rental place. Aaron went in (with his rented snowboard boots on and everything) and rented a pair of skis.

After a quick lunch, we were back on the mountain.

Little did we know that while we were at the base, clouds were rolling in. A whiteout was forming.

The first run down, we all thought it was pretty cool not knowing where we were skiing. We went up the lift again (the only ones. We are idiots) and skied down. There was no one else in sight.

As we worked our way down the mountain, the horizon disappeared. Snow and sky became one white sheet and you only knew where down was when you fell because you had turned without realizing it. We all got vertigo and in our confusion and nausea, we decided we should wait out the storm.

Jaren on skies...in the start of the whiteout.



Aaron on his skies?!?!

We waited a bit and decided to ski the bottom half of the mountain a few times before calling it quits for the day.

Heading back to the snowboard rental place, Aaron started doing some contingency calculations in his head, having tried to keep himself focused on skiing as to not ruin his good time. We all anticipated the cost to be around 250 Euros ($325), but he only had to be 150 Euro, plus if the board was to be returned (or found once the snow melts) he could get a refund.

All in all, Aaron's experience makes for another entertaining blog post.

LINK to more skiing pictures

And with that, Aaron's European adventure came to an end. It was back to Chicago, where a whole chunk of dirt awaited, leaving us here to continue do discover Switzerland.

New Year's Eve -- January 1, 2007

We could tell you a lot of things about New Year's Eve -- about the crowd and ambiance at Wayne's, about the food and Jennifer eating pate because her brothers would only tell her what it was after she ate it, about the rounds of fruity happy hour cocktails, and about how Olivier was uncharacteristically calm as he had to pick up his brother from another party.

We could tell you about all of those things, but somehow we felt this was a better way to convey everything you need to know about that night...




The first reported delivery of the new year was the birth of a LEGEND.