St Moritz - White Turf

St Moritz - Skijoerking

Well, I went to the White Dinner, and now I’ve been to White Turf. These are two very different events!

I’ve been to White Turf several times before and wanted to grab the opportunity to go again while I was having a year in Switzerland. At this event, the horses race, not on green turf, but on the frozen lake of St Moritz. Even the spectators watch the event on what should be a lake. That’s how cold it gets.

We took the train to get there, changing at Chur, and then sat in the panorama carriage from Chur to St Moritz (drinking champagne and eating cheese and chocolate). The panorama carriage has windows stretching up across the ceiling so that you are bathed in light and get the full view of everything around you. St Moritz is in the south of Switzerland – but because of the higher altitude, it’s colder.

At this time of year, everything should really be snow covered for most of the journey, but this year it wasn’t until we were nearly there that we could start to see that the ground was fully snowed over. White Turf had been cancelled the previous week (it’s held for three Sundays in February each year), so with the lack of visible snow, we were becoming concerned that we would arrive and find it wouldn’t run.

When we got there, it was cloudy with snow falling, although the platform was ice- and snow-free (unlike in previous years). But with the snowflakes all around me, I felt I was finally experiencing a proper winter. 

White Turf is positioned as an up-market event, so you see many people in fur coats, there’s an oyster and champagne bar, and I saw a few Rolls Royces. It’s not unusual for people to bring their dogs with them, either. Multiple white, tented stalls sell food (including more down-market sausages and Chinese); others sell art and there’s usually a stand for cars, but I didn’t see that one this year. However, I did spot a horseshoe throwing competition, which was new to me.

You can sit on chairs on a podium (for a premium), or you can have a standing place by the ringside. Some races are peculiar to White Turf, or at least peculiar to horse racing on the snow; there’s skijoerking (pictured, to save me trying to explain it, although in the race the jockey's legs are  splayed out in a V-shape and he leans back) and also a race where they ski behind the horse as the way to guide it.

Although the event wasn’t cancelled (they got a lot of bad press for the previous week’s cancellation), the races were shortened, one race remained with only one competitor (subsequently declared the winner), another race was cancelled. There were long waits between races due to “technical issues” and it seemed that several jockeys were unwilling to enter their horses.

Puddles formed by the fence where people were standing. I’d never seen that before, either. It was fun to take in the atmosphere and to watch all the people, but the waits for the races were frustrating and the races were all over very quickly.

We disbanded at 3pm to go to a hotel overlooking the lake where they served a chocolate buffet and afternoon tea. Because we’d booked in advance, we managed to get one of the only two window seats. The chocolate buffet was amazing.

Feeling completely stuffed, we got the train back to arrive back in the late evening. 

This is now the third horse event I’ve been to in my year away (Ascot, Sahl Hasheesh, and now St Moritz), but all three were completely different!

Zurich - Fasnacht

Some Bar Staff at Fasnacht

The Swiss are a fairly rule-driven people, but at Fasnacht, this all changes!

I asked some people what Fasnacht (“Carnival”) was in aid of and nobody could quite answer. I looked it up on Wikipedia and apparently they didn’t know either. One option (and let’s go for this one) is that it marks the last night before fasting starts (ie, Lent). Nowadays, it happens usually some time in February and the dates are different from Kanton to Kanton.

It’s a peculiarly Swiss tradition and is at its most famous in Basel. There’s not so much celebration of it in Zurich, but weirdly a small village called Bassersdorf then becomes famous for this one short period as the place to go for Fasnacht in Zurich and beyond.

I remember being on the train one night in Zurich at this time of year and it was the train that takes you up the Zurichberg; during the journey, they suddenly turned off all the lights in the train. I thought we were stranded and panicked a bit, but then realized how beautiful it was outside – the lights of the city were twinkling down below and you could see the stars above in the darkness. It was a magical moment. It was a little Fasnacht treat.

Anyway, this year, I went to Bassersdorf to join in the Fasnacht celebrations. The event consists of various tents set up as bars. Everyone dresses up in costumes. There don’t appear to be any rules about what the costume should be, but the vast majority of people do go in fancy dress. This year, there were men dressed as babies, various animals (tiger, penguin, emu, giraffe), various nationalities and characters (Viking, Eskimo), horror figures (zombies, devils), or just plain weird was also fine. Music is playing, people drink, and bands come round from tent to tent.

The bands play a special type of music that you hear only at this time of year called “Guggenmusik”. It’s quite hard to explain. The bands typically consist mostly of brass band music (trumpets, horns, etc), drums, and cymbals. They play “deutsche Schlager”, or “oom pah pah” music as the Brits would probably describe it, and also modern hits. However, they are played with a bit of a twist. It all sounds slightly out of tune and gives the impression of being spontaneous and improvised. It’s a bit of an acquired taste and you might think it’s something that’s gone horribly wrong, but actually it’s how it’s supposed to be. The bands spend the entire year practicing for their performance at these events and they go all round Switzerland to perform. I actually really like it as it’s associated with some very good memories.

A group of us met up beforehand, ate, had some champagne, then got changed into our costumes and went. We ended up staying mostly in the largest tent. To my complete surprise, Kelly Braendli (used to work in my previous company) was serving at the bar (I can hear Yuen and Gerard gasping as I write!). Zurich can really be quite a small place at times. More people came as the night went on, including people that at least some of us knew.

Somehow, I’m not quite sure how it happened, but someone ended up tapping my shoulder and asking me to lead the conga line that had built up. I should probably have refused, but I’d had a bit to drink, so joined in and before I knew it I was leading 60 strangers round the packed tent and getting myself into a right muddle. The guy behind me, who was originally the leader, spoke to me twice, once when I reached a dead end and didn’t know what to do, so made everyone do a 180 degree turn, and once at the end of the dance. Unfortunately, I couldn’t understand him, so I wasn’t exactly responsive. I have a strange feeling that maybe I wasn’t doing the right thing.

By the end of the evening, everyone was standing and dancing on the benches, swinging side to side, arm in arm, all very merry and convivial. The atmosphere was friendly and as inhibitions went down, strangers were more and more likely to talk to you. The age range was mixed; some children were even present. It was enough to make you think that the human race can be pretty fantastic at times.

Zurich - Writing Arabic

Practice Makes Perfect!

My Arabic classes resumed in January. In the classes our teacher always writes on the board in Arabic and I’m generally not confident enough to copy it down. Also, even if I do copy it down, I’m never quite sure I can read what I’ve written, so I transliterate it as well, thinking that I can piece the two together afterwards. Unfortunately, this is a lot of work to do in little time, as I need to concentrate on what he’s saying next as well, so I lose a lot.

Consequently, over the holidays, I’d decided to start practicing writing in Arabic. I had a book in Egypt that I bought ages ago called “Mastering Arabic Script”, so I’d waited until I was back there for my holidays so that I could work through this book. Looking at it briefly, it brought back memories of learning to write as a child – all the rows of letters you had to write, line after line. I can remember finding it quite dull and itching to move on!

Anyway, I hadn’t paid enough attention to the title of the book. The word “mastering” implies that you already have some knowledge and so the book was really teaching you how to handwrite in Arabic, which is different from the typed lettering. Apparently, at school, in the Arabic countries, children learn to write the typed lettering first and then look forward to learning how to do the handwriting much later at around the age of nine (I guess a bit like looking forward to doing joined-up writing, although joined-up writing isn’t so very different, whereas the handwritten Arabic is quite a change from the typed script).

As a result, the waiting was in vain, as I ended up ignoring the book after just a few chapters because I needed to get my head round how to write the typed script first. The workbook that comes with the book we’re using in class has quite a few writing exercises, so I worked through them, thinking it would also be a good vocabulary reminder.

It’s quite hard to correct yourself, as you don’t necessarily notice all your mistakes. I think my most common mistakes were to forget to use the different letter form at the end of a word (I tended to mistakenly use the one that came in the middle of the word), to notice that some letters (particularly at the end of the word) go below the line, and to fathom out how to write “l” and “a” when they come together in the middle of a word as it seems to differ as to whether the preceding letter is joined to the previous one or not and whether it’s a standalone combination.

Although I feel I would find learning new vocabulary more useful than learning to write, I could see the benefit of learning to write. It made me focus much more on the word’s pronunciation. For example, there are three “t” sounds in Arabic and I don’t really differentiate them enough when I try to speak. Consequently, when I’m trying to spell a word, I will often use the wrong “t”; to spell correctly, I have to be more aware of which sound it is. I’m not sure whether Arabic children would have the same difficulty as presumably for them the difference in sounds is much clearer than it is for my foreign ear.

It’s also surprisingly hard to write different letter forms where you’ve had no practice. Some letters had to be written in a slightly different way when working from left-to-right than right-to-left. For example, when writing a “g” shape I would normally start at the top of the top loop and go anti-clockwise; in Arabic, going from left-to-right, it’s easier to start at the bottom of the loop and circle clockwise.

I think all the practice did help me quite a bit, even just in being able to read my teacher’s writing more easily having now seen my own variations on the theme, but I can’t say I’m exactly a confident writer yet!

Zurich - First Snow

Walk to Work - Boots now Required!

And so another year starts again. It’s a bit of a false distinction, because a new year is just the continuation of the last one, really, but psychologically it’s easy to get brain-washed into it. As the author of books of New Year’s resolutions, I guess I shouldn’t be casting aspersions on the "new year" concept! I don’t really have a New Year’s resolution this year, although I am trying to go to bed an hour earlier to see if that makes me less reluctant to get up in the morning.

Usually we’ve had meaningful snow in Zurich before January, but just as the summer and autumn were exceptional, winter too has been very mild to date. It started snowing on my first week back at work and I was quite excited to see the large, wet flakes drifting down against the grey sky. That first day, the snow didn’t really settle, but the other weekend it really started properly. Well, it settled on the ground at any rate and it got pretty icy where it melted and then froze again.

I’d forgotten that the first week back at work in the New Year usually means that there are lots of chocolates on offer as everyone tries to offload the excess of goodies that have been eaten over the festive season.

It also seemed that all of management had been requested to do a Drei-Koenigsgebaeck (Three Kings cake) for the staff on 6th January because we had one for our Dept and the Dept in the other half of our floor also had one (not that I’m scouring the building for cakes, of course). Maybe it was just coincidence that the other Dept had one too. For those who don’t know, it’s a cake with a token inside and whoever gets the piece of cake with the token inside becomes King or Queen for the day and is granted certain privileges. At work, of course, no privileges were granted, but it was a nice thought!

The concept of the Three Kings Cake is a bit like Christmas Pudding in the UK (although the Three Kings cake [ours was puff pastry with almonds, I think] is very different from Christmas Pudding; the latter is dense with dried fruits and brandy, it's aged for at least a month beforehand and then steamed for hours and finally eaten hot with brandy butter– I don’t like the taste, but it’s a proper UK Christmas ritual!). In my youth, at least, a Christmas Pudding would always have a sixpence baked inside it, which the lucky person would keep if they found it in their slice. My mother kept the sixpences even when they were taken out of circulation, just so that they could go in the Christmas Pudding. I really loved the excitement of that as a child (I was money-oriented even in those days!) and would take a piece just so that I could take part and have a chance of winning. It’s a once-a-year thing – Christmas Pudding is only ever eaten on Christmas Day (or maybe the day after, Boxing Day, too, if you have left-overs).

Anyway, at work we had the Drei-Koenigsgebaeck, which I was quite excited about (just because it was a free goodie – not interested in the token!) until somebody said that each slice was some horrific amount of calories. Not that it stopped me from eating it, of course, but it did prevent me from taking a second slice (a theoretical option only, since actually we ran out of cake).

So, what with people drifting back to work during the course of the first and second weeks, the continual chime of “Happy New Year!”, the never-ending chocolates in the kitchen, the Three Kings cake and the arrival of snow, this year felt much more like a new year than when I am in Egypt (where it feels like just another day).

It’s also slowly dawning on me that I have only 12 weeks left before my stint back in Switzerland is over. Who would have thought that a year could go by so quickly?

Zurich - Back Again

Back in Zurich! (photo (c) Sheila Kunwar)

I arrived back at around 9.30pm on New Year’s Eve. From the airport, I caught the bus back home and walked to my flat. The air was cold and for the first time I really noticed all the Christmas decorations lit up in the windows along my street. Stars, shapes of Christmas trees, coloured lights, a whole array of decorations shone out into the dark night to welcome me. Blasts of fireworks echoed around me; up one of the side streets I could see a firework being lit, smoke furling in the air, and again, another misty cloud swirled further up the street where I was walking. Colourful sprays of light sped up into the night sky along with the cracks splitting the air. I had the full sense of being back, of it being New Year, of Christmas; time was defined, I breathed in the cold air, I was here, back in Zurich. It was like magic.

All the fireworks reminded me that the next day would be a bank holiday, so I dumped my luggage and went round to the shops to buy some essentials (milk, orange juice). I reflected that I must live in an area that’s particularly keen on fireworks as I couldn’t remember having heard so many before. Later, I learned that this abundance of fireworks was at least in part due to private fireworks having been banned in the city centre this year.

When I entered my flat, I felt that sense of relief I always have that everything was just as I’d left it. No burglaries. Leaflets were on my table about the fibre optic network that had been installed in my absence (on 23rd Dec – what a date to choose!), one of the orchids had now flowered in a beautiful, poppy-like, white and purple. A large box thing with handles had appeared in my kitchen. Even now I can’t remember what it is. It looks as if it might have been a hamper, but I can’t remember receiving one. It looks familiar and I think it belongs to the flat, but I have no idea where it should be. That’s the problem of living in someone else’s place – if things aren’t yours, you don’t pay much attention so you’re stumped if they turn up somewhere strange. I’d had to tidy things away since the fibre optic people were going to be coming into my flat in my absence, so it took a while for me to relocate my slippers, which are usually in the lounge or by my bed, and to find the kitchen hand towel, which I normally leave lying on one of the kitchen tops.

I checked my emails, flicked through the TV channels and settled down to watch Quantum of Solace, which, to my surprise, I hadn’t seen before. Relaxing in front of a Bond movie with a bar of chocolate is just the thing to do on New Year’s Eve. 

There was no mistaking midnight. Even with double glazing, the sound of the fireworks going off all around me drowned out the television (at first I thought it was guns in the film, but no!). I stepped outside, but the ground was wet, so I didn’t venture far. The air was alive with cracks, whistles, streaming lights reaching across the sky. I decided most of it was coming from the other side of the flat, so I went to the kitchen to see if I could see more from there.

To my horror and fascination, people were setting off fireworks right by the parked cars! To a Brit, this lack of respect for the danger associated with fireworks is completely mind-boggling – I’ve mentioned before about all the education that we have on television (or used to have, at least) and at school about handling fireworks. It seems like madness to light the fireworks just by a car. They even lit a jumping jack and it bounced along under the car. I waited with baited breath for the car to explode wondering if the car owners knew what was happening. Jumping jacks are banned in the UK!

To my astonishment, some people came out and went round the cars with a torch. Meanwhile, the fireworks continued to be let off just beside them. I assume those people with the torches were the car owners. They made no effort to reprimand the people letting off the fireworks or to speak to them at all, as far as I could see. For me, this was just beyond my understanding. I got too nervous watching the fireworks being lit so close to the cars (if the cars exploded, the window I was looking through may also explode!), so I went back to the film and further away from the action.

However, with the noise of fireworks all around me and watching a Bond movie, I felt that in my own little way I was marking the New Year and it was good to have that sensation of temporal locatedness again.

The next day was grey, cold, and everywhere was wet. The whole of Zurich was closed. 

I felt a pang of longing to be back in Sahl Hasheesh and felt I’d lost my way a bit. What was I doing here? I could be reading my book on the beach, I could be swimming. Why had I come back to this grey, miserable place? The memories of the sun and sea were stirring me into a sulk. 

I cured it by going out on a boat trip on Lake Zurich – to remind myself that life can be good here, even in winter, if I just make the effort!

Hurghada-Zurich - Return Flight

El Andalous - Beautiful Flowers in December

The time in Egypt went by all too quickly. I’d barely arrived and I had to go.

Hurghada used to be a pleasant airport – it was safe enough (I thought) and it all worked well. Now, though, security procedures have tightened. Although I appreciate the need for this and am in agreement with it in principle, I hope that the procedures will improve in efficiency at some point.

People had been saying you need to arrive 3 hours in advance. I thought this was a bit daft, but Nicole was taking me to the airport and she had an appointment, so she was taking me the whole three hours in advance. This was fine as I’m happy enough to sit and have coffee and cake or even just to read, if need be. It’s no great hardship.

As it turned out, I needed the entire three hours. First of all, the car was stopped as we entered the airport grounds. Nicole’s driving license was checked, they opened the boot of the car, they asked which of us was the passenger. Needless to say, this meant there was a queue of cars to enter the airport while these checks were performed.

I was at the new terminal and was relieved that the people in front of me were also going to Zurich as I wasn’t actually too sure if I had the right terminal (there used to be only one so I didn’t used to have to think about this kind of thing). You wouldn’t know that tourism was at only 30% looking at the queues as you entered the airport. The queue to get in stretched as far as I could see and, when I got that far, it turned out that there were only three luggage scanners, which was why there was a huge bottleneck. Heaven knows what it will be like when tourism is back to 100%! 

Unlike in most European airports, all your luggage was scanned before you even checked in (in Europe, you check in and then only your hand luggage is scanned). It’s always been like this in Hurghada, as I recall, so I’m not sure why the queues were so long this time. Anyway, that took me an entire hour. To be fair, I should point out that passport control on arrival in the US often takes an hour, too.

At least it meant that the check-in queues were non-existent. I checked in and then joined the queue for passport control. This wasn’t so bad. One confused guy tried twice to get through without having checked in and he was turned away twice, so the procedures were working.

I think – although I lost the plot a bit – passport control was then followed by a queue to check again that you’d had your passport stamped. Then you had to join another queue to scan your hand luggage, again. This was more chaotic. A German yelled out (in German) that one of the queues was for women only and it would go faster if people weren’t in the wrong queue. Luckily I can understand German, so I moved queues appropriately. I tried taking out my laptop, but a woman (again, in German) told me it wasn’t necessary.

By this time, the full three hours had passed. My flight was due to take off in 15 minutes, but they still weren’t boarding, so I nipped to a café and had a quick cup of coffee and a cake as I was parched after all that waiting and associated stress.

They checked passports again as you boarded and then one guy in front of me was patted down and had his hand luggage thoroughly searched with a torch as he entered the plane. A German woman complained very loudly about yet another check and how ridiculous she felt it was.

To my surprise I ended up sitting next to the guy who had his luggage searched again and it turned out that he was travelling with his twin (sitting next to him). Or maybe it was vice versa. Maybe I was actually sitting next to the twin and not him. I'm really not sure!

After that it was all plain sailing - or smooth flying is maybe a better expression - I treated myself to a wine (not included in the flight) and finally got to read my book. Finally, I was on my way back to Zurich.

Sahl Hasheesh - Sporting Highlights

Sahl Hasheesh - Horse Jumping Competition

The first day after I arrived, the beach was empty at El Andalous and, as I walked up to the Piazza (it’s so beautiful!), the beaches of the Premier Romance, Le Clessidre, and Il Gusto were also all only sparsely populated after the recent alleged bombing of the plane from Sharm El Sheikh. The weather was perfect, as it always is – blue skies, sunshine - and the mountains on that day were sharply defined.

I was headed towards the horse jumping competition just behind the Premier Romance hotel, near the Piazza. Horse riding competitions aren’t something I’d normally associate with Egypt, and Egyptians who do horse riding must be very much the wealthier elite. 

There seemed to be three paddocks – one for waiting, one for practicing, and then one for the competition. The horses were beautiful and the riders were dressed in full riding attire even in the sun. A few competitors wore what looked like captain’s or military suits adorned with golden epaulettes and shiny buttons. To my surprise, young children appeared to be competing alongside the adults, also all in the proper clothing.

Large white bean bags were dotted along the fences for people to sit on and there was one section with white folding seats. Trainers would yell at the riders (I got to learn how to say “hold her back!” in Arabic, but I’m not sure it’s going to help me very much) from the sidelines. The atmosphere was relaxed and convivial; there were quite a lot of Egyptians, cheering on their competing relatives, no doubt, and some tourists also watching on.

I’ve only ever seen these competitions on television before, so I was surprised at how small the course looked (it looks larger on TV). The first two riders I watched jumped clear rounds, so I initially thought that it was an easy course. I had to rethink that when each subsequent competitor gained faults.

The event was well organized. The next horse would enter the ring before the previous horse had finished, so no time was lost. I practiced my understanding of Arabic as I listened to the achieved times being announced over the loud speakers. Il Gusto had set up a satellite café/restaurant so that people could have a snack without having to walk down to the sea front. It’s not often that you see things so well planned in the Red Sea area. 

I was gratified to see commercial use being made of the otherwise empty land and rumour has it that international competitions will be held here in the future. It was fun to watch and all very casual.

But, predictably, swimming was my major anticipated highlight on returning to El Andalous. The water was colder than in Zurich or Turkey previously and on my first few days on the beach I’d even wonder for a moment if I really wanted to go in (but, of course, I did). However, once I got going, the sea was really quite warm (around 22 degrees?). I didn’t even feel cold on coming out of the water, so once I’d plucked up the courage to get in, I was fine.

I’d recently bought myself a Suunto Ambit3 Sport watch (inspired by someone from my swimming holiday). It has GPS and can map out where you’ve swum, how far, with which stroke, how fast you swam, how many strokes you use per metre, etc. I’m learning the crawl, so I wanted it to inspire me to achieve longer and longer distances.

However, although they advertised the product as waterproof to a certain depth, their adverts failed to explain that the GPS wouldn’t work under water and therefore would not be able to record breast stroke. These sporty types always assume that front crawl is the only stroke available! So, I spent a lot of my holiday playing around with getting the watch to function properly for alternating breast stroke and crawl.

After trying multiple ways of wearing the watch, I ended up attaching it to the back of my goggles. The distances seemed to be more realistic than when I wore it on my wrist or on the shoulder strap of my costume (the watch would slip down), but it can’t detect my stroke (yet). Getting the watch to work to my satisfaction is still a work in progress.

However, swimming every day brought home to me how healthy a lifestyle I lead in Egypt. I feel invigorated and brimming with health after my swim; it’s always that point of the day where I think that this is all I want to do in life. I’d go back to my flat in the evening and eagerly await to see which data my watch gave me for that day’s swim. It was frustrating not being able to stop and say hello to the fish (for fear of further disturbing the GPS reading), but hopefully I have more of my life left to do that again at a later stage. I hope the fish will forgive me.