I been GOOGLED

So a handful of weeks ago Bianca was fortuitous enough to meet a Lebanese gentleman named Rami at an IAESTE function. Rami was doing a 4 month internship at the Zurich Google office. One thing led to another and two weeks ago the three Bergsters headed into zurich on a friday night to check out the mystery that is a google head office.

There was a bit of TGIF (thank Google it's friday) celebration going on when we arrived so we were presented with a lovely glass of white wine and schmoozed with some of the employees. Needless to say it was lovely.

The entrance of the private part of the building opened right onto a cafeteria with a giant metal slide coming down from the second floor. more about that later..... Apparently all food is free at google. you come in and are given a menu, they have vegetarian, fish and a variety of other choices and you simply have to pick whatever sounds good.

while i was in the building I had:

1 tub of Cookies and Cream Ben and Jerry's Icecream
1 chocolate bar
1 iced coffee
1 cookie
1 sandwhich hand made by me.
2 handfuls of Haribou Gummy bears
1 glass of wine

There are 7 floors in the building and each is decorated with a distinct theme. Each floor also has a "micro kitchen" stocked with coffees, a giant espresso machine, ceral and milk, loaves of bread and cheese and ham, assorted snack, dried fruit, nuts, yogurt, ect. anything you could want you can pretty much find, though you may have to go to another floor to get it. each kitchen seemed to have slightly different things.
My favorite floor was the jungle floor. the micro kitchen was filled probably 70% with massive tropical greenery. There was also a particulary nice room on the top floor called the sky lounge.

We visited the in building gym, the massage room and the water lounge. The picture of me in the foam filled bath tube was in the water lounge. It consisted of a darkened room with a series of massage and lounge chairs. one whole wall was fish tanks and there were bird sounds playing faintly (soothingly?) in the background. helluva break room is all have to say.

We spent a couple hours wandering he building then headed back down to the second floor kitchen, nicely located next to the ROCKBAND ROOM complete with two projector screens for those tournaments you've gotta have. we played for another couple hours while snacking. played a little pool, a little foosball. all in all i don't know how anyone gets any work done. oh we also saw lots of pets.

after we left the premises Rami took us out for a drink at one of his favorite pubs. one of the best fridays i've had in a while.

Oh i also forgot to mention we went down a firepole.

Ramadan

Last Thursday, after our lindyhop lesson, Khalid introduced us to some of the traditional Moroccan foods that they eat during Ramadan.

First i should mention that Khalid is Moroccan, and an intern here as well. We've all been hanging out toghether for the last few months and so we were invited to this feast.

Khalid's sister had come to visit him and brought all these goodies with her so that he would have them for Ramadan. What a sister!


I couldn't believe how much he brought! He had said that there wasn't going to be enough for everyone because there turned out to be 7 of us but there was lots!

First he made a huge pot of soup with lentils, chickpeas and a plethora of spices. One thing i noticed with Moroccan food is that everything has a hint of sweet in it. Whether imagined because of my association with cinnamon and nutmeg, or real like anise.



There was a big bowl of of authentic Moroccan dates, much better than the ones at home. He cut up a loaf of bread which we then dipped in a really delicious version of "almond butter" but instead had a mix of a particular type of nut oil, I tried to find the name but I'm incompetent, almonds, and spices. The consensus was we would all be perfectly happy eating it for breakfast forever. Then we moved onto waht was sort of a fried noodle, at least that's what it looked like, but they dipped them in honey and spices and sprinkled them with sesame seeds. Khalid also brought the traditional herbal tea which had a nice sweet lemony flavor. Finally, there were a half dozen "fish rolls" for lack of a better term. The were flaky pastry stuffed with shrimp, squid and fish again with spices and skinny little rice noodle type things. It was actually reminiscent of Vietnamese, which i havn't had in a while.

The whole evening was marvelous, Khalid was so generous with us! I'm glad I had the opportunity to try everything and have every intention of making my way to Morocco at some point to continue my gustatory explorations....

Windstrubel Hike - Bernese Oberland, Simmenfalle to Crans-Montana

Bianca planned this hike. She heard from her previous flatmates that is was grueling but wonderful. That stats were as follows: 3 day hike (so obviously we will do it in two....) a total of 24 km, 11km the first two days which we combined and 13 km the next. 1600m elevation the first day, 53 the second. I will admit that I was intimidated at the thought of hiking almost 2km vertically.

The morning began at the startling hour of 6:22 when we caught the train. Bianca and I had made the unfortunate decision to get up at 5:45 that morning due to some poor planning the night before. We had been at a salsa party and didn't get home till quite late....another stroy all toghether but it made for a groggy morning.


These were the mysterious fog enrobed heights that we were to climb. Looking back I am thankful for the overcast day because seeing exactly how high we had to climb may have been a deterent...


We stumbled across several herds? flocks? of mountain sheep who, for all their charm, shit A LOT. Some points were minefields of droppings.


This sheep was laying directly across our path and obviously didn't mind Chan's close proximity. Chan was going to try to ride it but we were on the side of a mountain so common sense prevailed.



More sheep, steep terrain. Hiking, I now know, is very good for you. I can't remember the last time I kept my heart rate up for over 3 hours. You do feel like you are going to die but it passes.

This slate like rock formed natural stair cases all along the path. In the parts where it was too steep, chains were strung along and we got to spiderman our way to saftey.

At the top of the allotted first days hike which was approximately 4km in and 900m up there was a small lake nestled in the hills. Since the fog was still in it looked like it went on forever....


Then the fog cleared and we were left with this little gem. The water was veritably emerald in hue and sooo clear.

Dave, looking for something in his bag.

Steve grabbing a drink from the natural water fountain known as glacier runoff......

We reach the over night hut and were bedraggled beyond belief. The clouds had come back in during the last " steep spiraling ascent to the hut" and opened to pelt us with first a mist then a sprinkle and finally sleet. Even in those conditions though we were in our t shirts steaming away...

The hut was definitely more rustic then the previous ones id stayed at. It was fairly small, probably slept 40 people. the beds were essentially one big bed, ie single mattresses all lined up side by side in one big frame. very cosy. at least we all got our own blankets!

After we warmed up and changed into some dry clothes, dinner was served. It was three courses, 4 if you include the fruity custard we had for dessert, and ever so delightful. We started with a simple herb and scallion broth and then a mixed green salad. With all the boys at our table I think they felt bad that maybe we weren't getting enough food so they brought us seconds a couple of times. The main courses was a delicious curried chicken that we put over rice. perfect for after a full day of hiking.

We played cards for a little while that evening but it became frustrating when everyone wanted to play with a different set of rules. apparently some things are the same in europe....






As the sun was setting we went outside to enjoy the view. These were taken directly to the left of our hut. I think that this enormous panorama is the closest thing to earthly heaven that I have yet to see. The colors were vibrant, and though the wind nipped at your exposed bits, the clouds rolling snugly in the distance lent a sense of warmth.

We were the last ones into bed that night.


The next morning we were the last ones up. Breakfast was phenomenal. It was just bread with jam and ham and cheese, coffee, fruit tea and ovaltine(which is actually called Ovalmaltine over here) but they also had some muesli in yogurt with bananas peaches and apples, and that was the most delicious part...

We got a little lost on the second day and ended up taking the slightly harder route but it got us to the same place and we only did a little extra elevation.

Robyn, Bianca and Brit indulging me as I snap away.






We ended in the town of Crans- Montana where we took the cable car down to the train. Monday definitely proved that the glutes got a good workout on the weekend, I avoided stairs at all costs.

Zermatt

This is my first IAESTE trip! IAESTE is the organization that set up my Swiss Visa for me. All the interns here can then add themselves to the mailing list and get periodic updates about the trips being planned. It's great particularly for the non-Calgarians since they did not come with their own entourage like we did....... Anyway they organizers take turns planning these weekend trips, to Bern, or Basel, or Gruyere and this one was to Zermatt.

First things first, we were given a very brief packing outline that very specifically mentioned warm clothes. This was very exciting since the last time i tried do be fashionable and wear a toque i just starting sweating profusely and was not at all fashionable. On a side note, something in the air here in Switzerland seems to make people sweat more.....
Anyway, back to the point, I was told to bring my woolies! Hat, mittens and socks were immediately stuffed into the place of honor in my bag.

As far as Canadian attendees, the turn out was fairly small. Rachel Wong, Bruce, Chris, Steve Paige and I were the team. Kalid was also there but he is technically Moroccan, he just hangs out with us.... We met with the whole group on the train platform in Visp. There were 54 of us, not exactly a cosy gathering but all good people, and very international. In that first train ride I met Rosie from England, Victoria from China, Luke from Toronto, Nathaniel from the States, Daniel from Malaga and probably some others whose names I should remember.

We took the train to the winter get-away town of Zermatt. It was absolutely adorable. The quintessential Swiss mountain town complete with chalets and a plethora of beautiful flowers ( the chalets balconies always seem to be ringed with surprisingly lush planters. Purple and red seem to be one of the more popular color schemes...) It was less touristy than Banff and cuter than canmore so really the best of all worlds.

We first walked up to the HI hostel where we would be staying to divy up into rooms and leave anything that we didn't think we'd need. The hostel was really great, nice clean rooms with their own showers and bathrooms....

We then headed to the ski gondola that heads straight up the mountain from the heart of the town. We then proceeded up to the 3820m lookout point situated right across from the famous Matterhorn. The first thing we were told getting off the lift was take things slooow, you may be a little dizzy. It's true, you get tired quickly and your breathing picks up. One particularly unlucky fellow was severely affected and had to be taken back down the mountain because he couldn't even stand...

We spent some time here, went down and walked in the snow. Looked longingly at the hordes of skiers coming in off the mountain and then headed into the bowels of the glaciers where they'd carved out an ice cave. The caves weren't particularly spectacular, definitely not what I would have expected from the swiss but nevertheless, it was a cool concept.

We descended the mountain ( I swear we spent half the weekend in cable cars) and promptly got lost from the head of the group.... The funny thing about this was we were still a group of 30. I'm fairly certain it's their fault that we got lost. ha. Apparently we were supposed to have payed 2 francs to walk through a gorge at some point but we obviously missed that turn and bought beer instead. We all met back at the hostel though so not to worry!

Dinner was three courses with chocolate mousse for dessert and then we went out on the town to see what the Zermatt nightlife was like. We were a little early but ended up finding this gem of a place that had smoke machines AND a foam machine AND an acceptable DJ.

We were up bright and early the next morning to hop on a train bound for where we would start our days hike. We took another cable car up a mountain had some lunch and then got to walk along a beautiful glacier. They look just like roads for the mountain giants. This one even had strange dirty tracks in the appropriate spots.

The hike was beautiful, definitely worth the walk, especially since there was no elevation gain to speak of.



After the hike we re-descended and then were pretty much left to our own devices. We ended up taking five hours to get home but this was primarily due to one of our trains being 40 minutes late to leave. completely unheard of in swissland.....