Zurich!

This weekend I was in Zurich, having a completely fabulous time!

I went with two friends that I currently work with, and two who left the school at the end of last year.  It was great to see them again, and have a proper catch up.

Everyone's flights were delayed on Friday, so we didn't end up getting to the hotel until about 11.30pm.  The hotel was a lovely 5*, about a 20 minute walk from the city centre.  We knew how expensive Zurich is, so had bought some prosecco at duty free.  Maev had bought a bottle of Gin instead because it was the same price as the prosecco!  We had a couple of glasses of prosecco in our room on Friday night, before bed at about 1.  We were all pretty tired from being at work all day.

We got up late-ish on Saturday and headed out to find breakfast.  We ended up in a lovely cafe in the old town having scrambled eggs with Swiss cheese and bread.  Delicious, and not too expensive for Zurich's standard.  It was brunch by the time we finished, so we followed it up with a delicious ice cream cone.  Sean won the best flavour - his was mango, and was super yum!

We had a lovely wander around.  Zurich has a nice chilled vibe to it, and we enjoyed not doing lots of touristy things, just being together.

We wandered by the river (beautifully clear - you can see the bottom) to lake Zurich, and decided to go on an hour and a half boat tour of the lake.  You see about half of the lake in that time. It's very pretty, and there were lots of sailing boats out because it was windy.  The weather was actually really good.  It was meant to rain all day, but last minute the forecast changed and we had sunny spells and cloud.  It was really quite hot when the sun was out.  The boat ride was nice.  I enjoyed looking at all of the millionaires houses on the lake front, and deciding which one we would have.  We had got seats out the back of the boat, but the wind was a bit too chilly, so we came inside, and enjoyed a couple of (very expensive) Hugos/beers.

On our way back through the town, we spotted a terrace near the river with lots of tables.  It looked lovely so we went to investigate.  There was a band set up, with a dance floor and all of the old ladies were dancing, and the old couples were chachacha-ing!  It was very cute. We stayed there for a couple more Hugos and some chips, before heading back along the river.  We could hear a brass band from further along, and as we got closer, we could see Gondola style boats with people dressed traditionally standing on platforms on the back of them.  They had really long poles with a flat bit at the end, as as we were watching, two boats rowed towards each other and the men with the poles tried to knock the other person into the water!!!  I can only describe it as 'boat jousting'. Apparently this is a thing in Switzerland, according to Auntie Marianne!  It was hilarious. 

We ended up in a pub, drinking a couple of mojitos, then had a huge bowl of pesto pasta at a pasta takeaway place.  It was tasty and best of all, very cheap!  We went back to the hotel and finished up the Gin and prosecco.  I don't like Gin, so I wasn't too bad the next morning, but the other 4 had a litre bottle of Gin between them on Saturday night!

On Sunday, I got up earlier than everyone else and went off to get the train to visit Uncle Chris in Kyburg.  He met me at the bus stop with an umbrella and a hug.  It was lovely to see him and Auntie Marianne, who I hadn't seen since out wedding nearly 3 years ago.  Auntie Marianne cooked a wonderful lunch of soup, humus, bread and salad from the garden.  It was really quite chilly, so we had the fire on, and huddled around it to look at their holiday photos from Iceland.  It was a lovely afternoon. Uncle Chris drove me to the airport, where I met the two who were coming back to Germany with me.  It was a fabulous weekend, but now I'm really tired!

Football, Helicopters and Parks

Here are a few piccies from a staff vs students football match that Matt played in.  They lost 5-7, but played really well (much better than last year), and Matt even scored 2 of the goals!!!

On Tuesday, it was our whole school 'fun run'.  Definitely not two words I would ever put together, but there you go!  The sports teacher had asked me to take some photos of the kids running throughout the day, which I was happy to do.  It was a very busy day, with everyone running, from pre-nursery (2 year olds!) to 6th form, and parents.  The distances were divided up based on age groups.  The kids really enjoyed themselves, despite it being 35 degrees!

Just as we were about to start the year 1 and 2 run around the sports pitch 3 times, a helicopter started circling.  There were lots of jokes of 'oh, it's going to land on the field, haha', but then it started circling lower and lower, and we decided to move the kids behind the fence just in case.  Then the helicopter landed on the field!  The kids were going absolutely crackers.

It turns out that it was a medical helicopter, called out to an accident several miles from the school.  Our field is the only place large enough for it to land in the area, and this is the 3rd time this has happened at school apparently.  Two paramedics went off, but the pilot stayed with the helicopter.  He told our head teacher that since it wasn't an emergency, he was happy for the kids to come over and he would talk to them about what was happening, and they could ask him questions.  He spoke great English luckily.  The kids thought it was the best thing to ever happen!  I took some photos of the year 2s in front of the helicopter, and got my picture taken too with my friend.  Then the paramedics came back (without any injured people) and off the helicopter went. It certainly livened up the fun run!

On Wednesday, I went on the year 4 trip to Gruga Park in Essen.  They have been learning about the rainforest and we had a great talk for the afternoon in the greenhouses.  It was over 30 degrees though, so after an hour and a half in a greenhouse, no one felt particularly great!  The park is beautiful, and the kids loved running around and just playing on the swings.  There are a few bird areas there too, and I got some nice photos of some owls.

Below is in the park.  It's called Ronald McDonald House, and is right next door to the children's hospital just outside the park grounds.  The charity boxes you see in McDonalds are used to fund places like this, where up to 20 parents can stay for free for as long as they need, while their children are very ill.  It's sad, but a great thing too.   It will certainly make me donate next time i'm in McDonalds.

 

On Friday night it was the annual Staff Quiz, which is always good fun.  Matt's team won this year!  (I won 3 years ago), and my team came 4th (out of 8), so not too bad.  Matt went off to the airport straight after the quiz to go to Dublin to see Pete.  I went to the pub near work and didn't end up getting home until midnight!  Whenever we are in Enzos, we always seem to get home much later than planned, but this was late even for our group!

On Saturday was the summer fair.  We only had to work for 2 hours this year, compared to the 4 hours in previous years.  I chose my stall based on who else had signed up for it, but we made a bad choice!  We went for the 'can shoot', but didn't realize how much physical work it would be!  The children had 3 beanbags and had to try to hit a stack of 10 cans to win a prize.  But some genius had put us on a slope, so the cans just rolled everywhere, and we spent 2 hours constantly bending down to pick them up, and chasing them everywhere.  My back really hurt afterwards, and today, I feel like I've done 100 squats (which is probably not far off from what I did do!).

Still, the atmosphere at the fair is always nice, and it's my good friend who organised the whole thing, so it's good to support her.  We stayed for some food (pasta and amazing cream cake), which teachers get for free.  And we listened to the choir performances, before Laura, Sean, Liz and myself went off to Dusseldorf for coffee and shopping.  I got some lovely black sandals, and a swimming costume with flamingos on it.

I have now started packing up the flat, since getting 4 big boxes from the library at school.  The flat looks very odd without it's pictures on the walls, and all the photos stuck to the mirror, but I do at least feel like I've made a serious dent in the packing.  Still a long way to go, but I'm not feeling quite so overwhelmed by it all anymore.

Oh, and I signed my contract for China this week, so it's full speed ahead on that front.

Matt gets back later this evening, so I've had a productive day of packing, and spending several hours on my TEFL course, which is nearly finished.  I've completed all of the modules and tests and am currently working on assignment 1 of 2.  It's a lot of work, but I should have it all finished before we move.

Bonn, Phantasialand and Dusseldorf Horses

What a busy week, but such a good one too!  It was only a 3 day week at school, because it was a bank holiday here in Germany on Thursday and we got Friday as a bridge day.  Last minute we decided to go to Bonn for a couple of days.  It's only an hour and a half away, but is a lovely charming, and very quiet city worth exploring.

We decided to hire a car, and picked it up from the airport on Thursday morning.  We drove just a little past Bonn to Konigswinter for lunch, which is a very cute town on the Rhine.  We ate at a wonderful Greek restaurant, and had a stroll by the river, before driving to Bonn to check into our hotel and go out for dinner (pizza) and a few mojitos.

On Friday we went to Phantasialand, a theme park that was on our list of things to do before leaving Germany.  It did not disappoint! What a great theme park.  We had such a fun day, and it wasn't too busy.  The longest we had to wait was an hour, for the brand new roller coaster, which didn't have fast pass access.  It was fantastic!  The other rides we had a fast pass for, so got on everything within 3 minutes.  There are some really good rides there, including a log flume with the steepest drop in Europe, ghost train, runnaway train roller coaster, dangly leg roller coaster, and river rapid, which Matt got soaked on, and a spinning roller coaster that I loved (very unusual for me, I usually feel sick on spinners).  We saw a show with break dancers, BMX bikers and trampoline jumpers too which was really amazing.  They were bouncing and then walking up the side of the building.  Very cool.  We had such a fun day.

We were pretty exhausted on Friday evening, so we went to a German brewery for a schnitzel, then bed.  On Saturday, we had a wander around Bonn.  It is the home of Haribo (Hans Riber from Bonn - the first two letters of each makes the name Haribo), and we visited the shop there.  Bonn is also where Beethoven was born, so we went to visit his house too.

We got back at about 5pm on Saturday and were exhausted from our trip!

On Sunday, it was our leaving party!  We leave in 4 weeks, and thought it would be a great day out if we went to the Dusseldorf horse racing track.  We had a brilliant day in the sunshine (a bit too much sunshine probably!).  I won on one of my bets, and Matt won a couple. On the 1000 Guinneas race, which was the main event of the day, we decided to all chip in 5 euros and go on one horse.  As soon as I saw the program, I spotted a jockey jumper in claret and blue, and the jockey was from England too.  I knew it was fate.  He won the race!  So we each won 16 euros on our 5, and they played the English national anthem as he was awarded his trophy.  A nice end to a lovely day.