It was another quiet weekend her in Zürich. Saturday was a beautiful day; so I got up and went for a long run while Julie went to the hairdresser. We don’t talk much about that here, because I come very close to a coronary when I get the text message about how much was billed to the credit card. I can almost go to my barber for a year for what she has to spend for one trip to the hairdresser. 10 months is close to a year, right?
For Mother’s Day, Julie wanted to go for a hike. I convinced her to get on the bus and go to the foot of the lake, and hike down the other side. The hike really showed us the difference between the two sides. During the development around Zürich, one side became industrial, and the other residential. We live on the more industrial side. On the other side of the lake, the lake side trail stays next to the lake longer, and there are a lot more parks, and swim areas. We also learned that young people are jerks everywhere. There are trash receptacles every 20 – 30 meters yet, the kids that stay out partying all night, never throw the garbage away. It is simply left on the ground for someone to come and clean up. The worst place, we bypassed the trail completely. The idiots were not satisfied with simply leaving the garbage. They brought literally hundreds of glass bottles, and decided to break all of them before they left. It was a very sad display for a country that prides itself on being clean.
I learned, once again, this morning that weather people are no better here than anywhere else. I either run or ride my bike 6 mornings per week. I hate going out in the rain, though, so if the chance of rain is really high, and the radar shows rain coming, I default to riding my bike. This morning, the radar said the rain was coming at about the time I would have been 1/2 way through my run; so I decided to ride. Here we are 4 hours later, there are almost no clouds, and there has been zero rain. I write this because I am hoping the weather people continue being wrong for the next few days. They are predicting rain for the rest of the week.
Thursday is one of the few Holidays that Julie gets this year, so we are taking off for the city of Vevey. Vevey is in the South part of Switzerland near Geneva. The town is known for two things. Nestle is headquartered in the town, the town claims to be the place where Milk Chocolate was invented. The second thing the town is known for is that Carlie Chaplain lived here from 1952 until he died in 1977. Vevey is one of the cities that make up the “Swiss Riviera”. I had never heard of that term until I tried to find a hotel.
Speaking of the Riviera. Julie and I were going to be heading to the French Riviera in June. We decided against it though, because there have not been any firm dates as to when France might open to visitors. We were afraid of getting caught like we did with Portugal, and having to potentially lose a lot of money if we couldn’t go. So we have decided that in June, we are going to take one of her vacation weeks and travel back to Zermatt and the Matterhorn area. This was the last trip we took before things locked down; so we thought it might be fitting to go back right before things open up again. We are both convinced that Switzerland will open up to visitors at some point this summer. The Government did announce they have settled on a vaccine passport that will put them in line with the EU. The passport is supposed to be rolled out sometime towards the end of June, so I think they will open up sometime in July for people that have been vaccinated. I know I could be really wrong on this one, but I don’t see Europe opening up until sometime in 2022 to people that have chosen to NOT get the covid vaccine.
I just found out once again, that sometimes I am really so dumb, that I should not be breathing….. So George just messaged me this morning saying thanks for the $$$$$. It turns out for the last two weeks, I thought I had been transferring money from one of our bank accounts to the account tied into our taxes. When I make that transfer, I always have just looked at the line that says Unknown Balance. Well apparently after USAA upgraded something in their banking system George’s USAA account also shows up, and since I am not on that account, it too says Unknown Balance. So Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday George. Now send me the money back, so the IRS doesn’t come after your mother and I.
All of this has been complicated by moving here. The fee to transfer money directly from our swiss bank account to our credit union account in WI is astronomical. I can transfer money into our USAA account for next to nothing so I started being cheap and making one big transfer into USAA instead of splitting the money into different banks. The problem is that I can only transfer money OUT of USAA in small increments; so I have to schedule multiple transfers . After this, though, I might just have to eat the costs, because obviously I am too stupid to handle multiple steps. I should also look and see if I can edit account names in USAA so that I can more easily identify the accounts instead of trying to memorize account numbers.
That is enough of my mis-adventures for today. The next time I post I will have some pictures from Vevey, Switzerland. I hope this finds you well. Until next time..