El Andalous - Adapting Back

Back to My Other Lifestyle

It’s autumn, so it’s time for me to move back to Egypt. A different residence means different routines, and I’m really surprised at just how much I’ve forgotten.

My daily life for the first few days seemed to have been spent re-learning what it was I used to do.

One of the first things I did wrong, and I only realized after two days, was to make my ice cubes with tap water instead of bottled water. I think I’d got confused because my kitchen tap broke as soon as I returned (maybe a topic for another blog). Consequently, I had to constantly remind myself to get water from the bathroom and on no account to switch on the kitchen tap (which would result in water gushing out over the entire flat). I proudly filled up my ice cube tray with water from the bathroom thinking I was so clever not to have used the kitchen tap, only to realize two days later that I shouldn’t have used tap water at all. Oh well.

As it turned out, I haven’t got ill from using those ice cubes in my drinks, so I’ll just continue to use them up and then go back to using the bottled water afterwards. For those who are reading this and feeling horrified at my total disregard for my health, the water in my flat is filtered twice before it comes to me anyway, so it’s not too bad; I just don’t generally risk it though.

I’d also forgotten that it takes a while for my shower to produce hot water. Consequently, on my first morning, I stood under the shower and thought I’d forgotten to switch the hot water on. I dried myself off, clutched a towel round me in case anyone was looking through the window, and went to switch on the water heater only to find it was already on. Doh.

Another thing that I’m still struggling to remember is to clean my swim shoes after I come off the beach. If I don’t do this, my flat gets covered in sand from the shoes. I think I’m finally getting back into the habit but at the moment I forget more often than I remember and it’s annoying going onto my balcony every morning and seeing a pile of sand by my shoes.

I also have my established routines for the things I do frequently – such as going on the beach or working on my laptop. At first, I’d go to the beach and find I’d forgotten my kindle, forgotten my sports watch, forgotten my sunglasses, forgotten my shampoo for my goggles… these are usually all packed in a bag, although some things, like the watch, the kindle, and the sunglasses, have to be added in before departing because I use them also at other times.

Similarly, I’d get the laptop out, then realize that I’d forgotten the power cord, or my mobile phone, or pen and paper, or the lap table that I have for the laptop (so that it doesn’t get too hot on my lap). I’ve finally gathered all these things together and have them stored in a corner of my lounge, ready for me to pick up and take out on the balcony whenever I need them. It was just second nature before.

When I was in Switzerland, I’d often thought to myself that when I’m back in Egypt I mustn’t forget to turn the TV off as soon as I’m not really watching it anymore, because when I’m in Egypt, my TV usage eats up my internet allowance (and thus costs me money). I remembered this on returning and have been very good at turning the TV off straight away, but I completely forgot that I needed to set it to standard definition rather than high definition, as the latter also uses up at least twice as much of my internet allowance than the former. It’s taken me four days to remember this, so I’ve already used up a third of a month’s allowance now. But at least I remembered in the end!

I don’t recall ever having such a hard time of remembering my old routines, so I’m obviously long-overdue for having a stint in Egypt.

Zurich - Autumn

Autumn Sky

Autumn seems to have arrived very quickly this year; usually there’s a bit of a transition, but this time we seem to have gone straight from summer to autumn. We haven’t been given a chance to get our heads round the change.

I’m slowly adapting back to the rain. On the first downpour each year that I’m in Zurich, I’m always taken aback at just how wet I get. I exit the bus or tram, the rain drenches me immediately, my sopping skirt sucks itself to my legs and I feel like I’m barely wearing anything at all. How did that happen? Now, I’m just back to that state of resignation that this is just how it is for the next few months.

I’ve swapped back from dresses into trousers and am returning to that state of annoyance at all the effort it takes to dress in the morning and to wear all these clothes. I’m so used to life in Egypt where I just pull a light and loose dress quickly over my head and that’s it. Now, if I want to go swimming, it’s a right hassle with all these items (socks/tights, jeans, heavy shoes, t-shirt, cardigan, coat…). I swear it all takes a lot longer.

To my surprise, I’m now using a duvet on my bed. Last winter the flat was too hot because I couldn’t turn the heating down (that’s been sorted now), so I just used the bedspread. Then, this summer, I also needed only the bedspread because the nights were fairly warm (not hot like in Egypt, though, although I did miss having the air conditioning that I have in my flat in Egypt).

The open air swimming pools closed for the season this weekend, which also to me signifies the end of summer.

I’m suddenly getting mosquito bites for some strange reason. I think I must have one trapped in my flat that is using me as its sole feeding ground. I have all my mosquito repellent in Egypt – I’m not used to needing it here.

But along with this sense of a shift, I also feel the anticipation of events starting up in Zurich. Zurich is pretty good for having lots of things to do, but now that autumn is settling in, we have indoor events such as the Film Festival at the end of September / beginning of October, Cirque de Soleil is performing, the Blue Man Group are here, so are some dance events (I went to see Pearls of Ballet just the other week by the Singapore Dance Group). So, although outdoor options are dwindling, indoor activities are ramping up to see in the time between now and the ski season.

It’s this choice of cultural events that I miss in Egypt, but I guess a large part of that is due to the poverty in Egypt where most people are more concerned about finding money to eat rather than spending their precious resources on luxuries. I am lucky to live the life that I do.

Zurich - Mindful Triathlon

Wanderlust Mindful Triathlon in Zurich (photo (c) The Yoga Affair)

An event I booked a while ago was the Zurich Mindful Triathlon (5km walk/run, 90 minutes of yoga, 30 mins of meditation). I think this might be the first year it’s run, but I’m not too sure.

As usual when I book things, I spent the day before the event kind of regretting it – this time, I was sulking about the fact that I had to be there at 8.45am on a Sunday and I’d really prefer to lie in. I really do need to book things for myself because given the option on any day, laziness always wins.

The day started off rather stressfully – not really the aim of “mindfulness”! Firstly, we were supposed to be wearing company t-shirts to the event (work had paid for our tickets), but I’d left it until last thing on Friday to collect mine, and the person who had them had already gone home. I decided I could wear the company t-shirt that we had for a charity day a while back – it was bright orange instead of bright green, so I would be visibly very different, but at least I would have tried to be “corporate”.

And then I realized that actually I didn’t have any gym stuff at all. I’d left it all in Egypt. I’d meant to bring it across to Zurich since I never do the gym in Egypt, but I’d completely forgotten (I think I got too sidetracked into packing the bucket!). I could do the 5km walk OK in my skirt and t-shirt, but not the yoga. In the end I decided to use my pyjama bottoms. Very hippy-like!

And finally, the bus pulled away just as I got to the bus stop. This meant – horror of horrors – that I had to use my phone to inform my friends that I was going to be a bit late. It was all a bit of a shambles.

As it turned out, the others were also late and I wasn’t even the last one of us to arrive. I was surprised to see so many people on my train also heading to the triathlon but at least this made finding the venue easy, even if I was feeling a bit intimidated by their sporty appearance and possession of yoga mats.

It’s amazing how people can create events like this and people actually turn up. If I’d been organizing it, I’d have been petrified that it would fall flat on its face. It takes some guts. But I think there were probably about 1000 people there – apparently all tickets had been sold out.

Most people ran the 5km, but there were also a fair number walking. I don’t really do running but might have tried if I had the correct gear with me, but since I didn’t… anyway, I ran through the finishing line which is what counts but unfortunately nobody took a photograph of that. The run/walk was through a wooded area just by Sihl City and along the river, so it was also good to see a bit of Zurich that I hadn’t seen before.

Then there was time to look round the stands and there were a few other side activities. I tried doing the hula-hoop but I just couldn’t get it to stay round my waist. I’m sure I could do it as a child, so I don’t know how I’ve lost that skill.

The yoga, performed outside on a large field with a stage in front, was preceded by a quick warm-up of “breakletics” which is based on break dancing as a form of exercise.

I hadn’t done yoga for maybe decades now and I was a bit shocked at how demanding it was and how incapable I was of doing it. The weather teased us. It started to drizzle just as the yoga started and then it stopped, almost as if it had heard the collective “no!” that I’m sure all of us were inwardly whispering. At another point, it also started to rain, but again, it didn’t last long. I guess it was one way of getting in tune with nature!

You could choose which bits of the yoga you wanted to do and when you didn’t want to push your body any further. They also had people on the sidelines to correct you if you were doing things wrong. Despite having sat out at various points, I still ached the next few days, so it must have done something.

The meditation was a bit curtailed as we’d overran a bit, but all in all it was an enjoyable event and I somehow felt I’d achieved something. On top of that, it’s got me going to yoga every Thursday now, so you could say it was a life-changing experience!

Zurich - Rainy Day Activity

Glass Labryinth at Hergiswil (c)Mums:Tots:Zurich Blog

The first time Geraldine ever visited me in Switzerland, it was a September, she had glorious weather. Sunshine, blue sky, high temperatures – it couldn’t have been better. And, of course, it was never like that again on any subsequent visit.

So, we had some rain during her stay, but I did have some wet weather activities planned. Somehow, it’s always the children’s stuff that sounds the most fun and I got the suggestion of going to Hergiswil glass factory from a mother’s blog on rainy day activities for children (sorry, Geraldine!). Her blog is actually a far better guide to the factory than mine, actually, so do visit her site if you’re interested.

The factory is located right by the lake, so I imagine on a sunny day it would be really spectacular. It is located close to the Hergiswil train station and was well signposted. It’s a bit confusing when you get there because there’s a museum and then there’s the factory exhibition and there are arrows pointing in two directions.

It was a bit disconcerting when we first arrived because we were told to wait to one side while everyone else went in – apparently it was the next “sitting” which was going to be in English and the others were all German speakers. However, there were lots of people still milling about and we were scared (or I was, at any rate!) of missing our correct time to go in since we were totally reliant on the woman serving at the desk (who was busy).

But all was well and she signaled to us as to when to go  in. The tour was quite clever with doors suddenly opening out of nowhere after each historic scene played out before you, and you just had to hope that you were going to the right place each time. It felt a bit Indiana Jones-ish! They are very proud of the fact that they still use the hand-blowing methods, which is presumably part of the reason for the cost of some of the items.

We were able to watch people making items with the glass afterwards, although the area for the finer aspects of design was closed, so we didn’t see any engraving or animals being molded, etc. My ticket included the cost for blowing my own glass bauble, but the queues for this were long and were clearly primarily meant for children, so I skipped this in the end.

I agree with the mum’s blog that the best bit is the glass maze. You have to pay a small fee to go in and you have to wear slippers and gloves (provided) and leave your bags behind at the desk. You enter through a darkened door and then you find yourself in this maze of mirror and glass walls. Your aim is to come back out of the door that’s just next door to the one where you went in. It’s still fairly dark inside and I’m sure that when they change the lighting, some of the glass turns into mirrors and some of the mirrors turn into glass. You have to feel your way round gently as you can’t tell where the glass ends and a corridor begins.

I didn’t even think to try to get out, actually, as it was fun groping about. In the end, Geraldine spotted a father who she thought knew what he was doing and we followed him to get to the exit. My spatial awareness isn’t very good, so this isn’t the sort of thing I’d do well at anyway, but it was a lot of fun.

There were lots of other games to do with glass as well – from hitting the glass to see what sounds it made (I only noticed half-way through my enthusiastic hitting of it that they warned you not to do it too hard!), distorted mirrors, prisms, etc. Because it was raining, we didn’t do the massive “Kugelbahn” outside where you can buy marbles and roll them down the chute and they go through a whole massive obstacle course. That would also no doubt be a lot of fun.

There’s a seconds shop and a shop with premium quality items, so plenty of shopping opportunities too, if you want them. All in all, it makes a good rainy day activity for children and adults alike!

Zurich - Continuing with Arabic

Sample Page of My Book - Text and Vocabulary, Plus Exercises

Without really thinking about it, it seems that while I’m in Zurich, I try to learn Modern Standard Arabic and when I’m in Egypt, I go back to Egyptian Arabic. I’m not really getting the sense that I’m progressing, but I know I must be!

I dithered about taking classes again, but in the end I decided to teach myself via reading, since I’d like to be able to read fluently. I’ve been using the book “Easy Arabic Reader” to progress my skills. The cover claims “learn to read in Arabic almost instantly!”, which is, of course, a blatant lie.

I want to learn via reading because my French at A Level suddenly improved by leaps and bounds once I started to read novels in French. Unfortunately, I’m not finding it the same in Arabic.

I think there are several reasons for this (but I'm not reading a novel!) – firstly, Arabic has a completely different alphabet which means that I have to work a lot harder and I’m also reading much earlier in the learning process than when I did so for French. Secondly, whereas much of the vocabulary in French is similar to English so it’s easier to remember, there’s often no relation between the Arabic and the English: you’re just learning random sounds. Thirdly the grammar is more difficult or at least feels more foreign and I’m aware I don’t even know a lot of it (some of the ways things are phrased in my reader are really puzzling! And that’s even though I know, for example, that in Arabic if you put the verb first in a sentence, you no longer have to worry if the noun it refers to is singular or plural because you just use the singular). And, finally, Arabic is supposed to be one of the languages with the most vocabulary – since I’ve already learned three words for garden, the word for “not” changes depending on the tense, I know of about three or four words for woman, two words for “horse”, well, you can see how it all adds up and also increases the possibilities for non-comprehension.

Each time I read a new chapter (in reality, one short side of text), I feel thwarted. I need to go through it probably at least ten times, if not more, but weirdly on each repeat reading I understand more, even without looking up more vocabulary.

I’ll suddenly “click” what certain words are. Sometimes, it may be because I haven’t pronounced them correctly first time round and so didn’t realize what the word was, sometimes it’s because I’ve thought something is two words first time round and then realized that it’s just one word on my second or third reading. Written Arabic has this frustrating tendency to have spaces where you just don’t expect them to be or joins up words when you’re not expecting it, so I’m constantly getting confused. I do get fed up reading the same text so many times after a while and occasionally I’ll skip onto the next chapter just for some variation. On the positive side, I do both read and understand at the same time these days, which is more than I was able to do maybe a year ago where my whole energy was spent in just reading the words in isolation without being able to put them together.

But the book is well designed and repeats vocabulary as you go along to help you remember it and also so that you can see how one word can be used in different contexts. I'd really recommend it, since all my complaints are those of a beginner and not the book's fault at all. I carry the book with me everywhere so that if I’m waiting for my bus or need to take a long tram journey, I can delve into it. It also has some postcards in a more handwriting-type font, so that you can learn how to read that as well.

I’ve found a resource for vocabulary lists in English, Arabic and Egyptian Arabic (I’d forgotten to pack my book at the time), so I have a couple of them printed out for rote learning, too, just for variety. As if to highlight the greater vocabulary in Arabic vs English, apparently there is one word in Egyptian Arabic for a loud fart and another word for a quiet fart! I’m really not sure what that says about Egyptian culture. Don’t you just love learning languages?

Zurich - Quick Holiday in Mallorca

Cuevas del Drach
(photo (c).Candi... under a Creative Commons license)

I’ve been feeling in the need of a bit of a break recently. So, I got a travel agent (Kompas Travel – would highly recommend them) to find a short beach holiday for me for four days. It was fabulous. I gave them my dates, my desire for a beach holiday (suggested some locations, but they gave me another one), and my maximum price. They came back with two options, I picked one of them, and then everything was organized, including the transfers. This simplicity was just what I needed!

So, I ended up in Mallorca. I haven’t been there since just after my graduation (many years ago now!), when I went to a friend’s parents' holiday home in Porto Pollensa. I don’t really know why I haven’t been back.

The worst part was the initial flight time of 6.20am – it must be one of those many planes that fly over my home during 6am-7am. I had to get the first bus in the morning at 5,15am. This is one of the times where I’m glad I live near the airport.

I’d forgotten that when you book a package holiday, your transfer is bundled in with a load of other people, so on getting the transfer from Mallorca airport to the hotel, it was a huge bus that was subsequently delayed because some people had lost luggage. There was really no advantage to having carry-on baggage only. Also, although my flight back wasn’t until 10.30am and I checked in beforehand, I still had to have my pick-up at 7am to accommodate other people with earlier flights who also needed a transfer. But an hour’s taxi drive would have cost me quite a bit, so there’s always a compromise with a benefit.

To my surprise, I felt flummoxed when I went on the beach after arriving and saw all those people there – there were hundreds of them and I counted at least 80 heads bobbing about in the water, and I didn’t know a single person. In El Andalous, I’ve got so used to having the beach to myself, or knowing a few people by sight at least whenever maybe 6 or 7 others are there, and thinking it’s crowded when, heaven forbid, on the very occasional busy day, there are 20 people spread between the beach and the sea. So, it was a bit of a culture shock to see mass tourism in action.

To my delight, the water was really warm – I would guess around 28 degrees – and the beach itself was quite large. Consequently, although I am also not used to swimming where your permitted area of the sea is marked out for you with buoys, which makes me feel constricted, there was really plenty of space, particularly if I went over to the deep section (which was marked out as such with a warning).

On my third day, my body was telling me that I’d done a bit too much swimming (my arms were aching and my body was feeling floppy), so I took that day to do some excursions. In the late morning (it was my holiday, after all!), I went to see the Cuevas del Drach (Dragon Caves). I’d originally turned up the day before only to find that the tours for the next two hours were already sold out. I’d forgotten this was high season and that, unlike Egypt, tourists were everywhere.

Anyway, I bought a ticket for the next day, which was the third day of my stay. The caves were truly amazing and it was like entering the world of the Hobbit. Some of the formations looked like houses rising up out of the stone surface, some formed what looked like ornately-decorated columns but were just the markings of how the stalactites and stalagmites formed, some looked like a fine curtain pulled partly across; others looked like candles, or you could imagine trees. They were delicately lit up and then there’s the underground lake that reflects it all back again. It takes around a century for the stalactites to grow just 1cm, so many of them must have been hundreds of thousands years old; indeed some of the rock has been recorded as dating back 11 million years. It’s mind-boggling when you think humans have probably only been around for 200,000 years; the whole atmosphere to me was quite mystical. I could have cried at the beauty of it.

The tour ends with a 10-minute live performance of classical music with four musicians traversing the lake on a boat with the music reverberating in the cave. You don’t get an echo, but it’s been a tradition in the caves for 75 years now. But the real beauty is with mother nature herself.

In the afternoon, after a quick play in the water (rather than a proper swim), I took a boat trip (which itself included time for a 10-minute swim) along the coast. It was fun to be on a boat again and seeing some of the other beaches, it made me feel that the one at Porto Cristo was not so crowded after all! There were some bad reviews of the boat trips on tripadvisor, but actually I really enjoyed it – it all depends on your expectations I guess!

Anyway, after another day on the beach, and some lovely meals, I have arrived back in Zurich feeling suitably refreshed at having had a fix of proper sunshine and the opportunity to have had a few days where everything was done for me.

Zurich - Brunch at Uto Kulm

Uetliberg - A Planet on the Planetenweg

There’s no point in having a visitor if you can’t use it as an excuse to go for a brunch. The Uto Kulm hotel is situated right at the top of the Uetliberg – Zurich’s home hill / mountain – so it has great views over the lake and the rest of Zurich (and surrounding areas). I’d never had brunch there before so it was a good opportunity to try it out.

I booked in advance, so got a print-out of the ticket, which included the cost of travel all round Zurich Kanton for the entire day, so it was a good bargain. We arrived pretty much on time, but this is Switzerland so most people were already there. We climbed up the hill from the station wondering how many people were going to be at the brunch, but I think we were actually the stragglers.

It was packed (which I guess is a good sign). I’d asked for a window seat but we didn’t get one, but I didn’t have the energy to argue and I guess everyone asks for that anyway (and not everyone can have that).

It was a good brunch. At first I thought there wasn’t much there, but it later transpired that it came out in “courses”, so you really had to grab what you most wanted whenever it was on offer. It started off with a welcome prosecco and we could have as much coffee as we liked (including speciality coffees such as cappuccino, latte macchiato etc), but it was sometimes a bit hard to grab hold of a waiter.

But the food was good – it started off with a selection of breakfast items including pretty much everything you’d expect. There wasn’t a fresh egg station but they had scrambled and fried eggs for you to serve yourself, bacon, sausage, cereals, roesti, yoghurt, breads, cold meats, cheese, birchermuesli, etc. I was originally disappointed thinking that was it (although quite sufficient), but then they brought out the main courses. I can’t quite remember what they were now, but there were vegetarian options too, I was relieved to see (since Geraldine is a vegetarian). I seem to recall that there was a turkey and pork roast, some wonderful fish in batter, plus the vegetarian choices.

After this, they rolled out the dessert buffet, including chocolate and white chocolate mousse, I believe.

We decided to walk off at least some of our gluttony by going along the Planetenweg – it’s a walk along the top of the Uetliberg and they have models of all the planets, with the distance you walk being to scale with the distance between the planets (and the models of the planets at the side of the path themselves also being to scale). (Incidentally, apologies for the recent out-of-focus photos - I think my camera lens needs a clean! Either that, or I need to buy a new camera)

I was panic-stricken as we started the walk because the people coming up the hill that we were walking down were looking completely exhausted. They were wheezing! They were puffing! They were leaning on the handrail and taking a rest! And these people looked like they were so healthy and fit! So how would I be able to cope? We were going down steps and when we got to the bottom (but we were still on top of the hill, basically), it seemed that there was another path that wound its way up more gently. I think if I were going in the opposite direction, I’d take that route rather than up the stairs. Fortunately, it turned out that the way we went didn’t go up again, so I was spared the torture.

It’s a bit disconcerting as you walk, because once you start, there’s not really any option other than to continue. But you are rewarded with some beautiful views over the lake and Zurich and with the beautiful green trees and grass as you walk along. The paths are good, so you don’t really need any hiking gear as such, and if you start from Uto Kulm, you are spared the hard climb at the end.

We must have walked 6-7km in total and then got the cable car down to Adliswil. From there, to make the most of the free tickets we had, we took a bus to Thalwil and then took the boat back to Zurich, while the weather still held.

Again, I’d highly recommend this as a good Sunday activity for anyone looking for something to do in Zurich!