Happy New Year To All!

Thanks everyone who visits this site! Thanks for your interest and support through this past year! I hope 2008 is good to all of us and I hope to see you all here again. I hope we can all laugh at, mock, and overcome our new trials and tribulations of 2008! Cheers!

Enough Said!

I rest my case!

Christmas Paragliding

And this is how some crazy man decided to spend his Christmas! I took those from my window on the afternoon of December 26th. Think his ass might have been an icicle by the time he landed. Some people!

Invasion Of The Crowds

Poor little Gstaad is getting too small for the season crowds! Or are the crowds getting too big for little Gstaad?? In either case, the village is brimming with activity. The tourists and seasonal folk have arrived! The place is a zoo! The streets are jam packed with traffic, the roundabouts congested, the parking lots over filled!


I can't say we like it. My husband needs three times as much time to go to work and come home every day due to the heavy traffic and congestions. I have to run into the train before everyone else to ensure I get a seat. And going on our regular grocery shopping trips on Saturdays is anything but regular any more - we have to elbow people in the ribs to get by in the store and wait on long lineups to go through the cash register.


Ah well, the cash infusion does the tiny village good. And speaking of cash, the richie riches have arrived and are now invading not only Gstaad but my place of work too! And we have to, must, accommodate them! They call and demand appointments whenever it suits them, totally oblivious to the fact that our office does not exist solely for their convenience. But my boss, God love him, he's great, is too weak to stand up to those spoiled brats and throws the office in complete chaos just to accommodate them, changing the schedule around and pushing my lunch break to later in the day so that I'm stuffing my face with cookies and chocolate in between patients!


And here's a little observation I have made while working with those rich pains-in-the neck, literally. I'm convinced now that having money causes tooth sensitivity! It must! All the rich people have sensitive teeth! Of course this is no scientific research here or anything, just my own findings with a margin of error of course since not all those people fall into this criteria, but it holds true. Those people are not used to feeling any sort of discomfort whatsoever. They are never too cold, never too warm, never hungry or thirsty. They don't know how to wait for things and have the patience of 2 year-olds. And here they are, in my chair, having to open their mouth uncomfortably wide and endure me poking around their gums. The littlest discomfort and they flinch and wince and groan and proceed to tell me in whiny voices just how sensitive they are! Oh give me a break! And do me a favour - take a Valium before you come in!


Our peace and quiet is over for a couple of months and we've got no choice but to grin and bare it. It's good business for my husband on the ski slopes and we're lucky to live in the neighbouring village, so that we're somewhat sheltered from all the commotion.

Merry Christmas Everyone And Peace On Earth!

Here is Luther Vandros singing my absolute favourite Christmas song! I hope you all are safe, warm and with the ones you love this season! Love you all!

Winterabend In The Shower

I have to blog about this, because i'm absolutely in love with it! It's my new shower gel, "Winterabend" meaning Winter Evening. I found it a couple of weeks ago while shopping in Bern but i only began using it a couple of days ago after my old shower gel was finished. Well actually, my friend saw it and pointed it out to me. I snapped the cap open to sample its scent and it was love at first sniff!

It smells like....Christmas! Like glüwein, like gingerbread cookies, like caramel apple, like vanilla tea. Every shower is a sweet, delicious experience. Aromatherapy has a whole new meaning! It's amazing how something as simple as a scent can bring out such happy feelings in a person. Very clever, combining the scents of a warm, cozy winter evening, the scents of Christmas and bottling them up for our enjoyment! Whoever thought of it must love Christmas just as much as i do.

It is my bottle filled with magic and it transports me right into Santa's workshop every evening!

Working Up A Sweat

As of yesterday, I've got absolutely no excuse to get my fat ass in shape, not to mention my struggling heart! I've got me a new exercise bike! Well, I shouldn't say new because it is not. I saw it in my landlord's second hand store and asked him about it. He said it was in a relatively good condition, for a piece of used equipment, you see, so it was a done deal.

Twenty bucks later and the thing's sitting in the middle of my living room sticking out like a sore thumb! Hubby still needs to move it to the office. But I did get on it for about 10 minutes today! Hey, you've gotta be proud of me now! Ten minutes on the lowest possible setting and I was panting like a 100-year old lady and my legs were shaking and really hurting me...ouch! That's the kind of physical shape I'm in. I really hope to remedy that now that I'd have to trip over the bike in order to get to the computer chair! And with the Christmas season of over indulgence upon us, I don't believe I have a choice!

A Chilling Disaster

So here I am walking home from the train station last night, body shivering, teeth clattering, thinking of my warm and cozy living room and dreaming of my usual hot shower. During winter, I take my showers in the evening for a couple of reasons. One, I'm usually quite cold when I come home after a long day's work and my muscles are stiff and achy. Thanks to my amazing friend Allie Pallie, we've now got a "massage" shower head with four different adjustable settings. And there's nothing like a hot hard stream of water to soothe my cold and tired muscles and transform me from a rigid icicle into a soft, warm, pliable, oozing piece of happiness and content! Second, I can barely find the strength to roll out of my warm sheep skin bed in the early, cold, dark winter mornings let alone shower and walk out in the freezing mountain air after that.


So, returning to my original story. As I near our house, I notice the lights in the second hand store underneath are on. This is unusual because the second hand store is not open on Wednesdays and even if it was, it would surely be closed for business at 5 minutes to 6 in the evening. I don't think too much of it, however, since our landlord sometimes roams around in there at odd hours of the day. As i walk past the door, quickly heading towards our stairway which will take me to my haven, a man i don't recognize walks out of the store in a hurry murmuring to himself. I nod politely and proceed to put one foot on the bottom stair. In that moment, Landlord pokes his head out from the storeroom.


"Hi", I greet him, "How's it going?"

"Not good, not good at all" he shakes his head.

"What's wrong?" I ask only to be polite but hope the answer will be short and sweet so I can head on upstairs finally.

"The heater's broke. I've got the man here trying to fix it" Landlord says.

"Oh, really" I say absent-mindedly. I am just about ready to tell him to have a nice evening and climb up the stairs when it hits me! The heater's broken!!!!

"In our side of the house too?" I ask. It's more of a plead than a question.

"Yeah, the whole house. But don't worry, it takes a while for the house to cool off. It's still warm in there." Landlord reassures me waiving his hand toward our windows above my head.



Suddenly my comforting image of my evening at my warm, cozy home disintegrates in my mind and a very different image takes its place. The Titanic wreckage and the frozen bodies of the dead victims floating stiffly in the arctic waters!

"OK" i whisper and head on upstairs.



Landlord was right. The house had not yet completely cooled off. My husband was waiting for me with his usual smile on his face. He had about a million candles covering every possible available surface in the living room. It looked quite cozy in fact and very romantic on top of that!

"Oh honey, I've got some bad news for you" hubby tells me his smile fading somewhat but not disappearing completely.

"I know" I whimper.

"Don't worry baby" he says "I'm here. I'll keep you warm."



I knew that of course. My husband is a heater himself. He's my personal, portable radiator. When I'm in his arms, I'm not afraid of anything at all, least of all plummeting temperatures. But I had to part with my hot shower. This thought made me think of something.

"Hey, you took a shower" I said to my husband.

"Yeah, I did, with cold water. It was not too bad" he smiled.



Whatever you say, Iceman. Poor thing. Unlike me, he cannot afford not to take a shower after work. He comes home literally covered in saw dust and with wood chips in his hair.



A few hours later, the landlord rang the door bell to inform us the heater had been fixed. Mmmmkaaay. I shifted slightly in hubby's bear hug. The water will be hot again in the morning. I'll take a rain cheque on that shower.

Saanen Christmas Fair, Friday, December 14th

Every year the village of Saanen puts on a Christmas Fair. They close down a portion of the main street to traffic and put up all kinds of stands full of beautiful Christmas 'stuff', most of it hand-made. A live band walks around the fair grounds making stops along the way to play a Christmas tune or two. And since we live in the village of Saanen, and since i love Christmas fairs and just about anything that has to do with Christmas, we're happy to attend every year. Last Friday was our second time.

It was a brutally cold evening. My husband advised me to put on long johns under my pants to which i laughed but did it anyway and was i ever glad i did! Despite my long johns, jacket, boots, mitts, and hat, i could only brave the elements for just over half an hour. The good people of Saanen had built fires in special fire pits along the fair grounds with cauldrons of "glüwein" boiling over the fire and we made a stop at everyone of them, drinking glüwein and warming up by the fire. I still can't get the smell of smoke out of my jacket!

Glüwein is a traditional Swiss winter drink of boiled red wine spiced with .... well, everyone makes their own little different concoction but the main ingredients are cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and anise. It tastes like...like Christmas and it's hot, so it keeps you warm. So that was the reason behind our four cups of glüwein in the course of about 30 minutes! It went down fast and as soon as one cup was finished we quickly got another one lest we freeze. It helped only a little bit in keeping us warm but it did help tremendously in getting me drunk! By the time we got home i was belching Christmas carols at the top of my lungs!

Advent Wreath Switch-A-Roo!

What's wrong with this picture? Look closely. This is our Christmas Advent wreath. Two of the candles have already been lit, of course, since last Sunday was Second Advent. But notice something odd? You may not, because to an unaware set of eyes, it all looks perfectly fine. But i know different!

My husband and I were in the store looking at Christmas Advent wreaths. They had a few different kinds. They were all made of real, live pine branches but the difference was in the pine cones, bows and candles. Only one wreath had natural pine cones while all the others had their pine cones sprayed with either silver or gold sparkles. My husband wanted the natural pine cone wreath, of course, but I didn't like the colour of the candles. They were orange. I wanted red candles. So, we had a slight problem? Not really.

My "handy" husband had a "brilliant" idea. He first checked to see if the candles were really stuck on the wreath or if you could pull them off. You could pull them off. Next, he pulled all the orange candles off the natural pine cone wreath and replaced them with red candles from another wreath while putting the orange ones on the other one. Right there in the store! I wasn't aware Swiss people did this sort of thing! I'm very much afraid my North American lifestyle is rubbing off on him!

So now, he's got his natural pine cones and I've got my red candles, and who cares the orange/gold rimmed ribbon does not match!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...

T'was two weeks before Christmas and all through the forest one creature was stirring looking for the perfect Christmas tree!

Last Saturday, my husband equipped himself with a pair of skis and a hand-held saw and headed up the mountain with the gondula. He skied down an off-road wild terrain through untouched serene snowy forest to a place he knew well, a patch of forest owned by his parents with a little wooden hut in a middle of a small clearing. He criss-crossed the forest looking for the perfect Christmas tree for our place: not too big but not too small, not too thick but not too thin. It also had to be a tree which would not have a surviving chance in the forest and would die in a few years anyway, because we don't want to cut down strong, healthy trees.

He finally found what he was looking for, a pretty little thing which was rotting away at the bottom. He cut it down, cut off the brown, rotting part off, mounted it on his back and proceeded to ski down the rough to the bottom of the mountain.

When he brought the tree home, it still had snow covering its branches. It looked absolutely beautiful. If it could only stay like this, I wouldn't need to decorate it at all! But the trouble with any live Christmas tree is that it doesn't last long at all. Within a week of bringing it indoors into the warm, it begins getting brown and loosing its needles quite quickly. So for now, our tree is being hung out on our balcony. We're only bringing it in this coming weekend which is exactly ten days before Christmas. If we're lucky, it will last till after New Year's without going bald too soon.

Weird Weather

Just as i said that our snow had melted all away, here came the new batch! Monday and Tuesday brought the white stuff back to the Alps. Just in time for Santa Clause Day tomorrow, December 6th. Today, however, was quite an unusual day as far as weather is concerned. It started out sunny and clear and suddenly, a strange blanket of fog covered the land but could not exterminate the sunshine completely. So we spent the day in a sort of ... haze...

This is the view out of my boss' op on Monday

And following are pics i took today of the bizarre fog/haze thing:

Creepy, no? Oh, and Mom, here's my "snow"-covered poinsettia! Isn't she pretty?

The Christmas Story Told Through Round-abouts!

Even though the initial snow has almost all melted away, we're still in good Christmas cheer! The roundabouts of Saanen and Gstaad have been decked with scenes from the Christmas story, all carved out of wood, of course, and equipped with lights which bring them to life at night! Unfortunately, i didn't get to snap a pic of all of them at night, but it is much better seen live anyway!

Santa&His Sleigh, Saanen

and lit up in the evening (sorry pic's a bit blurry but it's taken in motion through the wet windshield and in dim light)

Candles&Snowballs, Gstaad

and lit up (again apologies for the quality)

The Nativity Scene, Gstaad

The Sheppard&His Sheep, Gstaad

The Three Wise Men, Gstaad