revenge of the snow chicken

the schneepoulet had a bit of a mishap with the high winds last night.

but we fixed it up, and now it's flying happy.

larry and sergey

martin and i were off to our bioinformatik I class, when we were assaulted by posters screaming at us to go instead to the main building of the ETH to hear larry page and sergey brin of google fame and fortune speak for an hour! not much can be done to turn down such an offer.

the room was so completely chock full that we could only just get through the door, and would have had to walk up a staircase full of people to actually see the stage. we figured we could still hear though, so stayed put. i was then rather nonplused at the group of students who then bustled right past me up the stairs, and was about to launch into some heavy scowling (swiss-style) before i realised that they were in fact da man. wow - i almost abused celebrity billionares.

the talk was not so exciting - basically a geeky, non-polished sales pitch to get computing and engineering students to apply for jobs with google. i'm actually amazed they feel they need to do press-the-flesh type shows, but i suppose it doesn't hurt their celebrityness. the most interesting comment they made was the dream of search engines morphing into artificial intelligence - if you could ask any question (of the web), and get an answer that was correct or at least 'intelligent', you're getting quite close to ai!

schneepoulet!

with all the recent snow in zürich, there was nothing cristina and i could do to stop ourselves making a snowman outside our lab this afternoon! the only problem was that being from sicily and brisbane, we didn't really have that much relevant experience. luckily some strategically placed lab supplies brought the monster back from the dead to become the super cute zombie snow chicken!

hiren in da house!

no more parents :(

they caught the plane to hong kong on tuesday night, and just as their plane was taking off, it started snowing in downtown zürich. just the thing my mum had wanted to see for all of the two weeks she'd been here, and had instead received brilliant warm and sunny winter weather!

so later tuesday night i had to make the most of the free time, and was back late in the lab with martin, cooking up some deviously genius experiments.

but then hiren arrived within 24 hours, so i was back to having some company at home. hiren was a bit slacker at the washing and shopping than my parents, but was quite the devil with the indian-style curries.

we did most of the usual zürich tourist things (see below), but also checked out up near the zoo on zürichberg, and around the zürichsee a bit more. hiren was also a bit more at home on the powerbook than my parents.

more italian mountains

being once again perfect weather, there was no other option but to head upwards again. we headed south-eastwards from trento, up branching valleys until we hit snow. the walk was actually quite popular, so there were plenty of people around to make a nice walkable trail through the ~1m deep snow. it was all pretty steep too, which made for lots of fun in the icy patches! luckily mum's a bit of a star, and flew through it all :)

after some cups of fresh tea and lemon at the hut at the top of the walk (and the bottom of the basin surrounded by very nice rock spires), it was a slip-and-slide back down again, and onwards to trento.

it was fantastic to catch up with francesco, and also his mum and dad, in trento. they are amazingly friendly and welcoming. it's also brilliant how much can be communicated, even if his parents (claim they) can't speak too much english.

schneeschuhe tour!

sorry, i'm just don't know what snowshoes are in italian. however, i am mildly distressed that after living in switzerland for 6 months, and never learning any italian, i can still understand more italian than swiss german. hmmmm.

the snow-shoe walk up in the mountains above sopra monte was simply stunning. firstly we woke up to a brilliant morning,

then headed up the mountain, donned the shoes, and hopped up and down the mountain. it was great!

this all made us a bit chilly and tired, for which hot chocolates were clearly the best remedy.

milano

mum dad and i were heading down for a long weekend in milano and trentino, visiting francesco and fam, and had just passed through the very cool super-long gotthard tunnel through the alps, when i realised i didn't have my passport with me. shit. luckily the italian passport control man seemed to think all the forms i would have caused were too much trouble.

so we arrived safely in milano, which was a bit chilly and foggy. but that was all ok, since we had the (currently) local guide francesco to show us the sites. that it was the first time he'd seen most of them as well (he must work in the lab way to much!) didn't make it any less fun!

nice pretty green park near the castle, small churches from the 5th century (!), and the most impressive doumo cathedral filled the afternoon, along with some v yum italian coffee!



(ps to see more pictures and older posts, click on the archive button for the relevant month at the top right of the page)

bern for a day

was where mum and dad were today. lots of fun for the whole family to be had there, checking out chocolate shops, gazing out towards the mönch and jungfrau, or wondering about the kinderfressen, a statue raised in memory of the baby skeleton remains found buried in a tunnel between the city monestry and nunnary.

zürich walking tour

the weather was so nice, and we had 4 hours till we were scheduled to meet up with moni, so we rather naively decided it would be a great idea to walk from my place at höngg into central zürich. it was actually a really nice walk, and only took 2 hours or so. great way to spend an afternoon, as long as the chocolate supplies lasted!



then we met up with moni, who was an exchange student from just outside of luzern living with my parents for 3 months in 1999. was great to catch up!

mt rigi

the weather has been simply stunning the past week, and it was similarly this weekend. we made the train trip from zürich up to mt rigi, which is aparently the most visited mountain in switzerland. it's right between zug and luzern lakes, and really close to zürich, bern, and luzern, so i suppose that's not too much of a surprise. that the view is rather superb probably doesn't hurt either.

we had lunch...

...took quite a few piccies, since as said the view was rather nice...

...had some glühwein...

...and headed back to zürich nicely sunned.

parents in da house!

my mum and dad have been staying for the past week, doing a very good job indeed of keeping my little flat spic and span. it's great having someone to do the grocery shopping during the day!

i've been poddling off to the lab, and let them wander around, doing all the usual zürich tourist things (the old city, uetliberg, cruise on the lake, climbing the grossmünster).

more fun planned for the weekend though!