was that really necessary?

Our apartment in Zurich is situated near at least two churches, one of which you can see from our balcony, and the other you cannot. Regardless. At 11:00 in the AM and 7:00 in the PM, they peal the bells of said churches, which can be charming, but can also wear a bit thin occasionally. For instance, just now, when the bells went off for EIGHTEEN MINUTES. I watched the clock.

Here's what it sounds like from my balcony.

And now, onto (hopefully) my one and only grammar-related rant. I had my first Google-sponsored German class on Thursday, and BOY, was it intimidating. It was fairly basic stuff, most of which I knew from the audio course I've been using (THANK YOU, PIMSLEUR!!), but just being in a class with other people and having an actual teacher  speaking German at us was fairly overwhelming. That, and the fact that YOU CANNOT DETERMINE THE GENDER OF A GERMAN NOUN BY ITS ENDING. What?? They can do that with languages? It was a hard enough realization, all of those years ago in high school, that there are masculine-, feminine-, and sometimes even neuter-gender nouns in most non-Asian languages, but at least with the few languages I've dabbled in thus far, the nouns have consistent endings that communicate to you exactly what gender they are, and therefore, what gender any modifiers might be. BUT NOT GERMAN. Apparently, you just have to know. THIS. IS. HORRIBLE. Thanks heaps, everyone who told us that German is "easy"...I hope you're enjoying your linguistic superiority. I say to you all, BAH, HUMBUG.

And now that that's off of my chest, to the food! We've done LOTS of cooking at home, recently, so I don't have many restaurants on which to report. Ok, really, just the one. With a few friends, both new and old, we hit this chain-looking-place in Wietikon called King's Kurry; one begins to suspect trouble when the alliteration in the place's name involves misspellings. But what a nice surprise! A lovely, modern Indian restaurant with quite decent food, and a little of it even a bit spicy. You can tell that we have our favorites: I had some sort of dal dish (I'm really into the Indian vegetarian food right now, woohooo!), and Mike had lamb vindaloo again, which was funny, 'cause the other guy who ordered dal actually had FAR more spice in his dish than Mike did. The naan was tasty, as was everything that everyone else was kind enough to pass around. Mmmmmmmmm, Indian food!

Let's see, what else... How 'bout a new segment I'm calling "Guess What's Five Minutes from My House," in which I'm going to put up a few photos, and you can all guess what's five minutes from my house.

That's right, friends, it's the Zurich botanic gardens. Which are about a tenth the size of even the one in Denver, but still...it's five minutes' walk, it's lots of pretty flowers, and it's free. And it's also got this amazing sort of rock wall (...hill? pile?) that you can clamber around on, which is also covered in plants and their labels and "slippery when wet" warnings. (Once again, I apologize for the resolution and exposure of some of these photos: it's that whole I-used-my-phone thing.)

Here are a couple of "before spring really hits" photos...note rock wall in front of building at bottom.

I will do my best to remember to post "after" photos, when everything's green(er) and covered in flowers. FYI, I took these photos between 5 and 7 days ago, and there are already TONS more pretty things there now, then there were all the way back then. Yaaaaaaaay, spring.  =)

Also, I've found THIS just a few minutes away:

...a gorgeous little walking trail running next to a stream.

There were sheep.

There were neat old buildings. (What I like about the Tudor-style timbers here is that they're actually OLD.)

There was this water fountain. (These things are ALL over the city and are all drinking water!)

And finally, these things are EVERYWHERE:

I think they're some type of primrose, and I LOVE THEM. I want it to be spring all year long, they're so pretty and prolific. Naturally, there are the standard crocuses and daffodils and various hyacinths and these other little blue flowers, which I also love, all growing everywhere, but these little guys were new to me, at least, in the wild. 

I feel as though spring has sprung in earnest, people, and I--clearly--am loving it. The weather is amazing--so warm, such blue skies! I have so many more photos to post just now, but I feel as though I've rambled on enough for one evening, so I'm going to reheat some homemade bolognese and sit on the terrace for dinner. Lovely, lovely, lovely SPRING.