Well, That Was Amazing! Details About Our First Anniversary Trip

In my last post, I wrote about how Florian planned a fun surprise for our 1-year wedding anniversary and now you no longer have to wait to know what it was! My female intuition (i.e. my ability to snoop) was correct and he did take me to beautiful Lausanne! We stayed at the gorgeous Angelterre & Residence hotel and had an amazing view of mountains and Lake Geneva (oh, the landscapes in Switz never cease to amaze me!). 

Besides the hotel and the location being amazing, Flo picked this place because it has one of the best restaurants in all of Switzerland! I’ll pause for a second here – for those of you who don’t know me well, you may not understand that I am quite possibly the pickiest eater of all time. Ever. And I really, strongly, positively hate the food here. It’s one of the only things to which I just simply have not been able to adjust! Why would they put half a stick of butter on my bagel with lox? Why do they call iceberg lettuce with half a kilo of creamy dressing a healthy salad?? Why don’t they understand that bacon does come from a pig?? And why can’t I ask them to put sauce on the side or substitute a different sauce instead without getting a dirty look and a “I’ll have to ask my manager” response????????

So, yeah, you can imagine my poor husband constantly suffers and we don’t get to enjoy eating out too much together. That’s why he took me to the spectacular foodie restaurant Beau-Rivage Palace with amazing 3-Michelin-star chef Anne-Sophie Pic, who would make foods with flavor instead of extra butter and spices instead of cream. Yay! Honestly, the food was amazing, of course. We loved all 7 courses that we gorged ourselves on, including the beetroot with coffee flavor main dish (who would have thought the two would mix?!).

Doesn’t she just look like she was born to be a chef?

And even though we loved the food at the restaurant, I think overall the place was a tad too decadent for us. I mean, every single sip of water I took prompted a garçon to run over and pour that tiny bit back into my crystal glass so I always had a perfectly full cup of water. Really, I could have just waited until my glass was near empty for a refill. I think the guy came over about 100 different times throughout the night. 

Flo and I also had to laugh a bit at the other people dining around us. The woman to the right of us requested a special little silk foot stool. For. Her. Purse. I get it, if your bag probably cost over $5,000, you want to keep it nice, but I hope I never own a bag that requires its own throne.

By the end, Florian and I couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness around us. I mean, come on, a dessert that serves you massive amounts of edible gold?? TOO MUCH!! It’s pretty but I don’t ever need to eat gold again while people in the world are starving to death.

Overall, we loved the room and the food and being able to spend our anniversary happily together. Next year is my turn to plan a romantic getaway – eek! I hope I can pick somewhere that will be half as great as this weekend was 🙂

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How Many Places Do I Have To Be Published Before I Can Claim To Be A Writer?

So… I think I accidentally became a writer. I don’t know exactly how it happened. Boredom? Experimentation? Florian was sick of hearing me ramble out loud? I started with my blog just to keep friends and family updated on my new crazy life in Switz and all of a sudden I’m writing serious stuff for The Jerusalem Post? How’d that happen?!? Obv I have a variety of things I write about, partially because I likely have adult ADHD and partially because I’m exploring the age-old question “what do I want to do with the rest of my life.” In case you haven’t noticed by my weirdly diverse blog entries, some days I think I’m going to save the world and some days all I can think about is what a disaster I am in the kitchen. And some days I don’t get off the couch for 14 hours (only when I’m catching up on 4 seasons of Mad Men!).

Anyway, since I accidentally started writing, I’ve dabbled in writing for different audiences to see what it was like to “be a real writer.”

International Writing: People always ask what’s different about Switzerland and America. I could talk for hours and hours and hours about it (and you can be sure future blogs will continue to make fun of the ridiculous ways I figure these differences out), but one of the biggest I felt when I moved was that if you’re different from the Swiss, they don’t exactly… like it (I’m being polite here, please use your imagination to read between the lines). My guest blog post was featured here for The Jerusalem Post about how Jews do and don’t fit into Swiss culture, but honestly it’s about any different culture fitting in, in Switz (ie, Muslims receive the same unwelcome feeling the Jews do. Hey, I guess I finally found the cause to unite Jews + Muslims!).

Local Zurich Writing: My interview with an awesome chef in Zurich was posted here on My Girlfriend Guide, a local online mag in Zurich. I had eaten at this amazing restaurant for my birthday dinner and immediately thought that other people needed to know about the place. I mean, it was and still remains the best meal I’ve had in Switzerland! So, I asked the waiter if I could please speak with the chef (which caused some confusion because “chef” in German means “boss” and they sent out the owner. Oops!). Oh well, I told the owner that I wanted to do the interview and it was really just that easy to get a Michelin-star-rated chef to tell me all of his cooking secrets. And since I’m nice, I’m sharing them all with you in that article.

A Super-Secret New Adventure: Ok, I’ll admit it just to you guys and it will be our little secret. I feel a bit like an egomaniac when I constantly just write about myself all the time so I was trying to think up something else to write about that could be a little bit more… important to the world. I had an idea that nobody else is doing and I started writing some sample material, so stay tuned and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be telling you all about my super-secret-awesome-for-the-world website very soon!

You be the judge, do I get to start printing business cards with the title Author on them?? Or should I stick to my day job as housewife extraordinaire…

How Many Places Do I Have To Be Published Before I Can Claim To Be A Writer?

So… I think I accidentally became a writer. I don’t know exactly how it happened. Boredom? Experimentation? Florian was sick of hearing me ramble out loud? I started with my blog just to keep friends and family updated on my new crazy life in Switz and all of a sudden I’m writing serious stuff for The Jerusalem Post? How’d that happen?!? Obv I have a variety of things I write about, partially because I likely have adult ADHD and partially because I’m exploring the age-old question “what do I want to do with the rest of my life.” In case you haven’t noticed by my weirdly diverse blog entries, some days I think I’m going to save the world and some days all I can think about is what a disaster I am in the kitchen. And some days I don’t get off the couch for 14 hours (only when I’m catching up on 4 seasons of Mad Men!).

Anyway, since I accidentally started writing, I’ve dabbled in writing for different audiences to see what it was like to “be a real writer.”

International Writing: People always ask what’s different about Switzerland and America. I could talk for hours and hours and hours about it (and you can be sure future blogs will continue to make fun of the ridiculous ways I figure these differences out), but one of the biggest I felt when I moved was that if you’re different from the Swiss, they don’t exactly… like it (I’m being polite here, please use your imagination to read between the lines). My guest blog post was featured here for The Jerusalem Post about how Jews do and don’t fit into Swiss culture, but honestly it’s about any different culture fitting in, in Switz (ie, Muslims receive the same unwelcome feeling the Jews do. Hey, I guess I finally found the cause to unite Jews + Muslims!).

Local Zurich Writing: My interview with an awesome chef in Zurich was posted here on My Girlfriend Guide, a local online mag in Zurich. I had eaten at this amazing restaurant for my birthday dinner and immediately thought that other people needed to know about the place. I mean, it was and still remains the best meal I’ve had in Switzerland! So, I asked the waiter if I could please speak with the chef (which caused some confusion because “chef” in German means “boss” and they sent out the owner. Oops!). Oh well, I told the owner that I wanted to do the interview and it was really just that easy to get a Michelin-star-rated chef to tell me all of his cooking secrets. And since I’m nice, I’m sharing them all with you in that article.

A Super-Secret New Adventure: Ok, I’ll admit it just to you guys and it will be our little secret. I feel a bit like an egomaniac when I constantly just write about myself all the time so I was trying to think up something else to write about that could be a little bit more… important to the world. I had an idea that nobody else is doing and I started writing some sample material, so stay tuned and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be telling you all about my super-secret-awesome-for-the-world website very soon!

You be the judge, do I get to start printing business cards with the title Author on them?? Or should I stick to my day job as housewife extraordinaire…