May - An Interesting Month

I cannot believe that today is already May 24! This has been for me a pivotal month, a month of reflection and introspection, and one of those times in life when one must stop, take a deep breath, and try to understand where to go next.

Exactly a month ago, it was Easter Sunday and I was at my parents' place for a few days. Then, I had a crazy, crazy week full of irrational events, and a weekend with my friend here in Zurich.The following week, I decided to take a step back and reassess my life, as I was going through some rough times. Mostly, I am really hard on myself and sometimes I lose confidence, going through periods of highs and lows. Often, I try to overcome these feelings by being strong and carrying on, but at times I just feel low. I have learned to enjoy the highs and cope with the inevitable lows of life as best as I can - I am not always successful, but, at least, I try my best to stay positive.

I have discussed and found inspiration from some dear people in my life, while others, albeit concerned for my well-being, don't really understand who I am, how I think, and what I do. In particular, I have been really motivated by a book I am reading, which encourages the reader to let go of some things, and start doing other things not because they are expected, but because one wants to do them.

Expectations are an aspect I particularly struggle with: on one hand, I place high expectations on myself, and on the other hand, I recognize that other people also place their high expectations on me. I am expected to be smart, rational, do well, settle down, et cetera. However, do I stop and wonder what is it that I really want? I have responsibilites, I generally make rational decisions, and keep my focus. At the same time, perhaps I am not interested in being rational, settling down, and all that. And this is also ok.

Last year, I started listening more to what my heart says, and, although it's been hard and I have questioned my choices many times inside me, I have not looked back and I have not regretted it. I plan to continue doing so - always with a rational backup plan in my drawer, of course. After all, they say:

"Expect the worst, hope for the best".

Earlier this month I turned 30, which makes me really happy and at the same time it makes me think about the place in life I am at the moment, and where I want to go. I have been having some general health and anxiety/ stress-related issues, I have been traveling quite a bit, and I have started letting go of things, situations, and people that, while important, are taking time and energy from me and the pursuits I want to focus on. At the same time, I have tried to strengthen and develop old and new relationships. I love, I hate, I am emotional, and I like every minute of it.

Now I will finish this week, then spend a few fun days with my friend in Lisbon. And then, on to new and exciting adventures: a greater focus on my blog and cookbook, developing my newly-official relationship, thinking carefully about my next steps, fighting my fights against the world. Business as usual, but with a pleasant twist.

Life is a good thing.

Food Finds

Being a big time foodie, I am constantly on the lookout for new food experiences: restaurants, cafes, grocery stores to find ingredients for my recipes, and mostly to discover new flavors that inspire me in my recipe-creation endeavours. I find Zurich a particularly generous city in terms of exposure and access to diverse culinary adventures. Some people have complained about prices (too high), variety (or lack thereof), and quality (volatile), but my experience so far has been extremely positive and I will try to address the objections strictly from my own personal experience.

On the money side, I should mention that food, together with traveling, is one area where I allow myself to "splurge": my budgeting, financially conservative, living-way-under-my-means and bargain-savvy happy self will not blink a second time at spending a ridiculous sum of money for a fine dining experience (which I will have saved the cash in advance for - sorry, I am that way and I can't help it!). Therefore, while I agree that eating out in Zurich can be expensive, my saving nature, and the fact that I perceive eating out as a treat (to myself and to my loved ones) rather than a habit make me more inclined to spend the money on that.

On the variety side, there are very few foods I don't like or eat*, and so far I have not been disappointed by the availability of choices in Zurich. Also, if I crave a certain type of food and I either can't find it or I am not particularly impressed with what I found in a restaurant, I will most definitely try and make it from scratch. Chicken fried steak and homemade biscuits, anyone? Of course, if I expected to eat Korean food like in Korea, or Italian food like at home, I would be sorely disappointed, but this is true for all places I have been to/ lived in the world.

On the quality side, well, it is all a stroke of luck in my opinion, wherever one is: the chances of finding good food and the misadventure of eating bad food can happen.

The questions I ask myself all the time are the following: 1) Is there enough variety of food here to keep me entertained/ not bored? 2) Does a particular food satisfy my taste buds and experience demands? 3) Can I find the ingredients to make what I want to eat from scratch?

Zurich's answers to these questions has been "YES" so far, with one important exception. Until now, I have not been particularly impressed by any Japanese restaurant I have been to, neither in taste (nothing truly outstanding) nor in variety of available choices (nothing exceptionally creative). Being my favorite cuisine, I will admit that it is somewhat hard, and I still cannot bring myself to cook it from scratch. So for now I will keep on looking, until I find my happy Japanese spot here in Zurich.

Lastly, I would like to share some interesting food finds that I stumbled upon lately.

Churrascaria Rincao, a Brazilian restaurant located near Sihlpost. I went there with a big group of people for an all-you-can-eat-meat type of evening. We were served all types of meat, some more satisfying to my taste than other, but while the quality was good and I enjoyed most of it, it was nothing to write home about. I have definitely had more interesting all-meat dining experiences in the past (such as the Argentinian Pampas in Palo Alto, California and Papagaio in Tel Aviv, Israel). The company was amazing though, so all in all a good experience.

Abyssinia, an Ethiopian place where we had a buffet with different plates and again a big group of people. I am a lover of Ethiopian cuisine, and I truly thought that this place was amazing - particularly, I loved lamb in a spicy sauce and the beef tartare. And that bread...yum....A definite positive on my "great restaurants" book, I will go back again for sure, and I highly, highly recommend it.

Le Cedre, a Lebanese restaurant I checked out with a friend who was a newbie at this kind of food. I liked the way they cooked the usual things, eggplants, hummus, falafel, their meats were good, their wine was good. I was disappointed by one thing though: I wanted kanafeh, and that's why I went there - because I read they make it. However, they told me they make it only in the morning, and therefore only have it for lunch - they are right that it must be eaten hot, so they cannot keep it until evening, but still...oh well, the excellent company of the friend I went with erased the disappointment for missed kanafeh, at least a bit ;) No, seriously, I had a fine time and I recommend the place.

Currently, there are a couple of stores I am looking forward to visiting, as well as a couple more restaurants, on which I will share my impressions in a later post.
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*For the records: I don't particularly like cucumbers and would not consciously choose them, but will eat the occasional ones if they are already there in a dish. I will not eat blood sausage, even if it was the last available food on earth. I love oysters, but for some reason my stomach does not, whether they are raw, grilled, fried, or whatever, and so I won't eat them if I can avoid it. Aside from these, I eat everything, and I will try everything at least once.

Impressions Genevoises

A few weeks ago, I spent a wonderful couple of days in Geneva. I must say that, ever since I saw it for the first time, I always love when I go back and visit the city. The reasons are several: I enjoy speaking French and understanding the random conversations taking place all around me; people are cold but friendly, and this reminds me of a more laid back and sleepy version of Paris; finally, when I go there I somehow feel relaxed and on vacation.

This time I met a friend from school in the States, and we caught up with each other’s lives, dreams, directions, and recent happenings. We had a coffee by the lake, then excellent Vietnamese food at Cho Lon (Rue de Zurich, 43). As everyone knows, I love food and I always enjoy trying new recipes and discovering new ways to spoil my senses. However, of all the possible world cuisines, Vietnamese was never on top of my list, albeit I have a deep love for noodles (particularly egg noodles, rice noodles are ok); it’s not that I dislike it, on the contrary: what I want to say is that, whenever I happened to go to a Vietnamese restaurant, I generally liked it, but it’s not the type of food I would look for nor crave. Perhaps the best way to describe my relationship with Vietnamese food is that I am neutral to it.

I was in for a surprise: as I sat in front of an outstanding bowl of pho, I realized that I had really missed Vietnamese food. After years of Vietnamese food overload in California (and thanks to the culinary skills of very capable friends with Vietnamese heritage) I had not had it ever since I moved to Switzerland, and it never occurred to me I’d miss it. Craving Korean food - perhaps. Craving Japanese food - for sure. But Vietnamese food…My taste buds and brain thought differently though, and I highly, highly recommend the place if you ever visit Geneva.

My friend and I walked around and saw all the United Nations buildings, and I even got the “insider tour” – for me, an economist with a focus in international institutions and business who originally picked her college major with the idea of becoming a diplomat, it was like heaven. It was excellent to share personal impressions about our experiences in Switzerland, which are different, but at the same time there is a sort of fil rouge.

Later I said goodbye to my friend, and headed for a walk in the old part of Geneva, which I did not know: a cobweb of quiet cobblestone streets, a two-faced heart of Catholicism and Reformation. Somehow, I couldn’t help but think that Geneva is the perfect place to have a coffee, go to the hairdresser, buy cute jewelry and lingerie, bon bons, and rose-scented products. Funny enough, to this day only two other places in the whole world give me this feeling, which is a mixture of decadent paresse and uninterrupted intellectual stimulation: Paris and New Orleans. It was nice to find the same sensations in Geneva.

I wish I’d had more time to wander around, and also go shopping more seriously in the new part of town, but I had to go back to Gare Cornavin to catch my train back to Zurich. I said au revoir to Geneva, and hopped on the train accompanied by pleasant thoughts of the weekend, as well as the perspective of upcoming fun in Zurich. Little did I know that I was in for a shocking surprise in Zurich too!

Destiny is cruel – sometimes you meet wonderful people and never see them again even though you would die to, and some other times you meet people who pierce your heart ruthlessly, whom you hope, for your own sake, never to meet again and not reopen the wounds, and you bump into them months later, on a random evening, as you exit the Hauptbanhof, cross the street, and turn right on your way to the grocery store. Natürlich…

Clubbing in Zurich

Contrary to expectations, I must admit that the Zurich nightlife is amazing. Prior to moving here, I thought I'd find a fairly quiet and laid back city, nothing too exciting, and I was prepared to live with that. What I found, instead, is a vibrant, young, and cosmopolitan city.

Last weekend I had a couple of interesting and fun "excursions" into the Zuercher night, starting from Valmann where I met some random cool people, such as a German-by-birth, Basler-by-choice working for a big pharma company (guess which one), a Polish personal trainer and psychologist, a Slovakian risk manager for an investment bank, an Italian American intellectual property lawyer from Boston, a Dutch wine trader, a chef from Canton Schwyz, and the list continues...

Then my dear friend S.G. came for the weekend, and we had a blast walking around the city, enjoying the very nice and warm weather, eating all kinds of foods, talking about plans for the future. After a nice couple of glasses at D-Vino, we headed for a night of dancing at Amber, and let me tell you...we danced until we couldn't take it anymore, and when we eventually left, we walked into the Zurich night with happy feelings.

Here is a picture of me having a grand time, courtesy of usgang.ch - I am not even going to say how sore I was on Sunday, and then Monday, and then Tuesday (with the added bonus of soreness from the gym!). Today was the first day I was completely OK, but I think it's a fair enough price to pay for such an outstanding time.

Let's leave it at that.

On the other hand, giving the increasingly longer "recovery times" and to quote one of my favorite country music singers, some might say "I ain't as good as I once was"...

In reality, it is all in the brain.

Graubünden Adventures

Last weekend we went to Laax (canton of Graubünden) with a few friends and coworkers for a pleasant ski weekend. I must say that it was my first weekend ever since I got back to Zurich, and while I wouldn't have minded to be home a bit (!), I greatly, greatly enjoyed the time spent with friends as well as the majestic landscape. Not so much being sore after a day of skiing, when I hadn't worn my skis for about three years...

We left Zurich on Friday afternoon, and, already at the Hauptbanhof, I lost my travelling companions! Here's how it happened: it was entirely my fault, because I decided to stop for a cigarette before getting on the train, and we agreed to meet on the train on the way to Chur. Natürlich, we got separated: the train was very full and we didn't see each other, but talked on the phone and agreed we'd meet on the platform or on the bus Chur-Laax. From the time the train arrived to the bus leaving time, there was exactly a 6-minute time span, so we had to run. Of course, not knowing exactly where I was supposed to go, I ran on the opposite direction to where the bus stop was, and ended up missing the bus! No big deal, because I had plenty of time to get to Laax before dinner time, but it was already dark, I had never been there, and somehow I had to explain to my German-only speaking bus driver to please tell me which stop I had to get off at to get to the hotel. I know it doesn't sound like a huge deal, except that, as I said, it was pitch black outside, and the stops were quite far one from the other, in the middle of nowhere. I thought it would suck if I got off at the wrong stop, with no one around, and even if there was any soul around, they probably wouldn't speak any English. Worst case scenario, I thought, I'll find someone who speaks Italian or French, which shouldn't be too hard, or just guess my way through the labyrinth of understanding/speaking Swiss German...Well, to cut a long story short, I was able to somehow successfully communicate with the bus driver in some mixture of undefined language, met a couple of nice Rumantsch-speaking old ladies on the bus (the Rumantsch sounds a bit like the spoken dialect of my neck of the wood in Northern Italy), and made it successfully to the hotel. Moral of the story: cigarettes are bad for you, hehehe...

The first night we had dinner and then went dancing and it was a lot of fun, but I left quite early (1:30am) because I really wanted to ski the next day. On Saturday morning, we wake up and there is a very nasty snow storm coming down, we can barely see anything for the fog, but of course we are not deterred, and armed with skis, ski boots, helmets, and goggles, we head up the mountain for a day of fun. Let me tell you that I hadn't skied in more or less three years  - and the last time I was in Tahoe on a very easy slope, so nothing comparable to the intensity of skiing in these slopes, on top of the very bad snow condition and snow storm - and because I was in Italy in the past few months, I didn't really go to the gym, so I was both out of practice and out of shape. I had fun and it was good to be back in the snow, but I took it easy and at the end of the day I was as tired as I could be.

In the evening, taken by snow trucks, we went up the mountain and went to an outstanding restaurant, Grandis Startgels where, after an aperitif, we had a four-hour dinner. The chef, who spoke Italian and is awesome, delighted us with an avocado mousse with shrimps, cranberry sauce, pumpkin chips, meat roti, salad, green risotto with fish, a selection of cheeses and jams, three types of desserts, coffee, and the unforgettable main course: polenta enriched with cheese and cooked directly on the burning fire, and four types of fire-roasted meats: lamb, chicken, filet, and deer. All accompanied by cascades of excellent red wine. I was in Heaven. I never wanted to leave again. Actually, I want to go back and "hide" there for a few days, hiking, reading, and eating, assuming they let me. Needless to say, I did not go out that night, but straight to bed after dinner...I was done.

The next morning, some people left early, but the day was sunny and beautiful, and perfect conditions for skiing. Except that I was so sore I couldn't even dream of wearing my skis, so instead I had breakfast and then went on a hike around the mountains with my friend. We walked all the way to Flims, where we had a nice hot chocolate and I tried for the first time Capuns. Delicious.

Then, we made it back to Zurich later that afternoon. I must admit I really liked Laax and Flims, and canton Graubünden in general: people are super nice, they speak Italian, and they definitely know how to cook! Added bonus, the landscape is breathtaking.

January Travels

Chile, a brief stop in New York, a visit to London, chilling in Varese, then back to Zurich.

Amazing.

I stepped back, recharged my batteries, and learned some important things in all these trips.

First, my heart has reasons that go against reason, and I accept that.

Second, the challenges ahead will make me stronger as I walk right into them.

Third, all is important, but there is nothing more important than family.

Fourth, I am blessed to have the greatest friends in the world.

Now let this year begin...a big question mark, but I am curious.

Holiday Season

This holiday season, for some interesting life turn, doesn't seem quite real to me. At the end of the day, it's almost Friday, December 24 (in three minutes to be exact) and it really feels just like a regular week. Everybody told me that I would feel the Christmas atmosphere much more once back in Europe, but to be honest, between the very busy season at work, health issues, high stress, visitors, wedding news, and running around all the time, my mind has just been too engaged elsewhere to really think about it.

When I was in the Bay Area, after the big rush of the summer and early fall, December used to be quite calm at work and in my surroundings, so I would just take my time to decorate my apartment, plan holiday parties, fundraisers, take a whole day for myself and do my Christmas shopping for everyone, send out cards, drink pumpkin spice lattes...This time around, I have visited the Christmas markets, celebrated with friends, and I am here with my family, which I am extremely grateful for, but this incredible sequence of events happened so fast that I didn't really have time to realize that, indeed, it's my most favorite time of the year!

If I look back at the past few months, my life has undergone dramatic changes: six months ago, I was living in the USA, single, with a good grasp of life in that country, lots of friends, lots of activities, making rational, brain-driven decisions. Six months later, I am living in Switzerland, just learning how things work in this country, no knowledge of the local language, meeting old and new friends, trying to figure out my place and recreate a community life here, and making instinctive, heart-driven decisions. Most importantly, for the first time in many years, I am listening to my heart in a way I thought I had forgotten, and it feels wonderful.

Next year many challenges lie ahead, but I am really excited about all the things that await me: after a much-needed vacation, I have a new life to build up. My word for 2011 is going to be "German". Until then, I leave everyone with my best wishes for a warm, love-filled holiday season, and a picture of good things. Perhaps they don't have pumpkin spice latte over here, but definitely gluehwein is quite up there on top of my wishlist!

With love.

Swarovski Tree and Gluehwein