View lately

Spring arrived to Central Switzerland maybe two weeks ago. It was pretty cold before but suddenly the weather turned into sunny with a 20-25 degrees although there is getting cold and rainy some days with a storm here and there. The snow melted in most of the mountains and suddenly in one of the mornings they were covered again.
Here are a couple of pics of the view recently.

Shopping in Switzerland

I have to admit we regularly do grocery shopping in Germany and/or if we go to Italy or France for a weekend trip we do some grocery shopping there. Most of the products, to be precise, everything is much more expensive here than at the other side of the border but there are certain things we only buy Swiss mainly because the quality. We do buy Swiss meat, milk and locally grown vegetables and fruits whenever it's possible. We do not eat a lot of meat but since we moved here the amount certainly went up compared to the Netherlands. Although prices are INSANE here, we mostly would prefer the Swiss one.
One of the other expensive products include ice cream and creme fraiche.

As a comparison:
Chicken breast 1 kg:
CH: 33 Chf, which is about 27 EUR
Germany: 7 EUR


Haagen Dazs ice cream 500 ml:
CH: 9.95 Chf, which is about 8 EUR
Germany: 4.99 EUR

Creme fraiche 200 ml:
CH: 2.20 Chf, which is about 2 EUR
Germany: 59 cents

There are branded products we would only buy in Germany and that would include toiletries and other household items. Here is an example:

Nive sunscreen 200 ml:
CH: 25.40 Chf, which is about 20 EUR
Germany: 8.45 EUR

A treat

This was my first Easter in Switzerland and as such I was curious what kind of specialties hold this country. One of them was this pastry formed into a bunny holding a stick of Swiss chocolate. The flavor and texture is close to the French brioche but a bit heavier in texture and probably sweeter. The chocolate stick is way too much though, but luckily it's not baked into the bunny, so stays optional to eat it or not. Overall, it's a nice breakfast pastry but would rather indulge in strictly occasionally otherwise it can easily become a staple for breakfast, which we all know not a healthy option.
I bought it in Migros, one of the Swiss supermarket chains.

Weekend trip

Last weekend we got ourselves together and went down to Lugano and Como. It's about a 2-2,5 hour drive from central Switzerland, which makes it an ideal short weekend gateway. The weather is getting warmer here around Luzern but still there are days when although there is some sun, it's not yet warm enough. We really wanted to have some nice sunny and warm weather and turned out we can get it by traveling only a couple of hours by car. It sounds funny, but that's true. As you are driving down and you cross the Gotthard Tunnel (which requires a separate blog post), the climate instantly changes. It's not the mountain air anymore but more mediterranean with palm trees. Yes, it's possible...palm trees in Switzerland. Here is a short 'you need to know about Switzerland': the country has more than one official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. The latter is mainly spoken in one canton but the rest is dominating in different regions of the country. The West side is mainly French, the middle/north/east part is German, the South is Italian. The different languages bring different traditions, food and culture too. For example in the Italian part there is Italian gelato (yumm), while in the French side you can get things more close to the French traditions. 

So, first, we stopped at Lake Lugano, which is still in Switzerland; got there around 11 am, had breakfast/lunch by the lake under the Sun, ate plenty of ice cream and were hanging around by the lake during the afternoon. I would recommend trying out a couple of ice cream (gelato) places in the city to decide which one is your favorite;-)

In the evening we went to find our hotel, which located up in the hills near the lake, with a lovely garden and view.

Defending the country

Switzerland takes many things seriously, including defending itself and its people. They not only testing the sirens once in a while but they regularly monitoring their airspace. Well, to be honest, they actually kind of do it during office hours and weekdays only. Yes, that's right. Twice a day the planes of the Swiss Air Force take off and go around above the country but finish their work when everyone else does and obviously (?) they are off during the weekends.
The first time I heard the planes I thought there is a plane that was actually crushing into our apartment. It's unbelievably loud as they prepare for landing.
Of course they monitor the country out of office hours from the ground but they do not have planes ready to take off in case something happens.
The next nationwide voting in May includes a question about whether or not Switzerland should buy 22 new fighter jets from Sweden costing billions of franks.

Recycling update

Shortly after we moved to Switzerland, I faced with the question of recycling basically everything. I wrote about this before. Since then I figured out how to create a corner, which looks good. Now, obviously I am not there yet as I could not manage to put my hands on the baskets I want but we made some small progress. There are a couple of IKEA bins in the same size for carton, paper and metal tins, and I still collect the plastic ones in a bag. Besides, there are two small baskets for batteries, small electrical things, wood, and milk bottles.
This is how the small progress look like and hoping to get a nice big basket shortly; something like this or that, in which I can partially place some of the IKEA holders.

Another nationwide vote

After the nationwide vote in February (topics included immigration cap), another vote is coming up in May. This time one of the topics is whether or not ban convicted child abusers from working with kids. Apparently now that's not the case and there were precedents in the past, where convicted abusers cold go back teaching after their sentence was over. I am just hoping this initiative will pass. There has to be some common sense...