Erika Weibel in the ward was so nice this week and invited us to go to the temple with her and her daughter Witny. The temple is an hour and a half drive from Zürich, and they close at noon. (On a Saturday!) So we arranged for them to pick us up at the train station by our house at 7 am. The next morning my alarm went off with a funny sound. I looked at it, and it was Erika, calling us. She wanted to know where we were. It was already 7:15 am. Oops! We hurried fast into our clothes. At 7:20, the real alarm finally went off. Oops again! We got on the road at 7:30, after running to the train station. Pretty good for wearing heels. I felt so bad because they didn’t have time to shop for temple clothing at the distribution center like they had wanted. It was a much more relaxing visit than the last time. I was really worried about returning to the temple after we went in March. It cost a lot to travel there, the temple clothes we rented were expensive, and the multiple languages heard all around all through the session were intimidating. After my always peaceful visits as a temple worker to the Seattle temple I wasn’t prepared for the multilingual Swiss temple experience. Once I knew how it would all play out I was able to really enjoy being in the temple again.
Google treated us to a family BBQ on Friday. Most of the Google employees think that Google is a family-friendly employer. Whenever people talk like that on the internal mailing lists, it makes me cringe. If Google already thinks that it is plenty family-friendly, then they won’t get the idea to stop doing the 3-day off-sites where spouses aren’t invited. Those trips are a great perk for young singles. They are long workdays for me though. So anyway, we were really happy that they hosted a BBQ and all the Google parents got to bring their kids to play.
The weather has been beautiful this week so we have been able to do some fun things outside. On Saturday we went with the Mascaros and the Jacksons to a little campground in Austria. From what we have seen camping is not near as private as in the states. Everyone just sets up camp all in the same place. Elisa and I both went swimming in the chilly water. I even went wading before I had changed all my clothes, because two of the kids tripped at the same time and were having trouble keeping their heads above water. The river was really nice and we had a campfire and even smores! Everyone kept passing us so inquisitively as we roasted our marshmallows. One lady finally stopped and asked if we were roasting “Käse” (cheese). We were able to treat her and her two grandkids to their very first marshmallows. The kids caught some trout at a little man-made trout fed pond. Matt cooked it up over the fire and it was delicious! It was a great time together.
Sunday afternoon we met up with some families from the ward and we went up to the hills over Zürich. Everyone had brought their dinner to roast over a fire. Chad and I didn’t know that was what we were doing but were amused as everyone creatively tried to cook their different things. The Baumanns showed us how to make snake bread. They had brought some dough and we wrapped a long thin piece of it around the end of a stick and then “baked” it over the fire. It was super tasty and fun to see the Swiss traditions. We also came home with 144 photos. Most were taken by Sienna. We kept the 3 photos that were in focus on people’s faces.