Quick post

Here's a link to our pictures from last weekend's trip to Basel : http://web.mac.com/sdwr98/iWeb/Geneva.

Awesome food which I'll write about later in the week.

On things that are better in Europe

In no particular order...

1. Cheese.
   
2. Bread
   
3. Public transportation
4. Museli with chocolate (ask Joy)
5. House wines at restaurants
6. Grocery stores (think 4-wheel steering on carts!)
   
7. Cell phones
   

Now, to be fair, there are some things lacking:

1. Air conditioning
2. Ice
3. Inexpensive anything (well, except bread, cheese, wine and apparently Red Bull)
   

That's pretty much what I've observed over the course of my last few trips.

On another note: tacos with Gruyere cheese? Really tasty. Who would have thought. Bleu d'Auvergne cheese from our local farmer's market on fresh-baked bread from the same farmer's market? Out of this world.

Check out where we're going for my birthday: The Omnia in Zermatt. Whoooo!

Mozzarella Magnifica!

Holy cow - yesterday we went to the farmer's market that's literally 100 yards from our apartment. It happens on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and it was packed. And my goodness. We got fresh vegetables and fresh bread. Both of which were outstanding - super fresh, super tasty, and full of real vegetable taste. And then there was the mozzarella. I've had a lot of good cheese in my time. But nothing has compared to this - it must have been in the buffalo the day before. Unlike virtually all the mozzarella I've had in the US, this had such flavor - a tangy cheese-ness that was unreal. Man. I don't know how I'm going to go home to Target and Harris Teeter now.

In other news, we went out yesterday to run some errands (after the farmer's market) and we discovered M-Ville. So there's the grocery chain Migros (which I wrote about earlier). Turns out they have this shopping center which is essentially a mini-Ikea, Linens-n-Things, Lowes, Circuit City, and grocery store all rolled into one. We bought a toaster, two pre-paid mobile phones, and a bunch of groceries. All at one place!

Coming soon - all the cool things they have here that they don't have in America.

Cooking again

Well yesterday was my first attempt at cooking here at Rue Ancienne 15. We went to the Migros store that's a block away and got all our daily groceries for CHF 57, which works out to be about 48 USD. That covered coffee, bread, jam, filled pasta and sauce, and then 2 smallish steaks, new potatoes, and peas for dinner. Not too bad for around here. Apparently everybody here goes to France for their groceries (if they're on a budget) because it's much cheaper. However, that's about a 45 minute bus ride each way, so maybe we'll stick to shopping locally.

Cooking here is interesting - it's nice because we have a 4-burner gas stove. We did have to find instructions on the internet to decipher the strange symbols on the oven - it's a convection/traditional oven, so there are some funny settings, but it roasted potatoes like nobody's business.

Today we're off to explore the neighborhood. There's a bigger Migros about 3 blocks away, so we're going to see how it is in terms of selection and prices. They also sell budget mobile phones, so we may get a couple of those for communicating when Joy's working downtown.