Christmas

Christmas came earlier this year in Zürich ... since we were planning to spend our holidays at home, in Cluj (or Klausenburg) together with our families and friends, we decorated our little Christmas-tree and had a nice dinner the previous weekend in Zürich:


One week later, after a 23-hour-drive (including long hours of waiting at the borders) we finally arrived home ... and dropped in just in time to celebrate Christmas Eve together with our families. We have decorated a huge Christmas tree and the entire family came home to our parents house where we had the traditional Christmas dinner. It was so nice to be home again...

http://picasaweb.google.com/zsengezsolt/KarCsony2006

The next days we spent by family-visits and meeting friends, everybody being home now for the holidays. It was a rush week with lots of fun, food and drink, ending with a gathering at a pizza-place:

Exploring the Alps: from St Moritz to Zermatt

Finally we got the chance to see how real winter feels like in Switzerland! Since Zurich still lacks the first snow, we decided to spend our weekend up in the Swiss Alps. The 7-hour trip with the Glacier Express was just the right choice to admire the fabulous winter landscape from St Moritz to Zermatt... and now we're looking forward very much to our first skiing in Davos!


More pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/gulliver.gyenge/GlacierExpress

DO-IT!

It was a great experience participating at the biggest national conference of AIESEC in Switzerland, with about 300 delegates from all over the world. The Conference took place in Fiesch, a very small town in the Alps. It’s a pity that the beautiful mountains around Fiesch were still not covered by snow --- however, it’s been a great opportunity to meeting all the other trainees working in Switzerland and enjoyed very much the time spent together.

I really hope we will have many other occasions (trips, parties, events) to spend some time together in the following months.

Thank you, LC Bern, for organizing it and for inviting me to DO-IT!

Walking through Zug and Luzern

It's been a sunny, warm autumn day. First we visited the old town of Zug, full of nicely painted few hundred - year - old houses and a wonderful view on the Zuger Lake and the Pilatus behind.



Then we visited Luzern, walked through the famous Kapellbrucke and enjoyed the sunshine at the bank of the river. At the end of the trip we climbed up to the Gutch Castle to admire the view of the city from the top:

Zurich by Christmas-time

We've been living in Zurich for more then 2 months now, but yesterday was the first day we've spent by exploring the city. Since my dad and my brother came to visit us, we took a beautiful boat trip on the Zurich Lake and walked around in the old town, climbing up also to the top of the Cathedral.

In the evening, we returned to the center to admire the modern Christmas-lights of the Bahnhof-strasse and to strall around the Christmas-markt at the main station, ending our tour with a glass of hot wine and a nice fondue dinner at home.

More photos coming soon ...

Weekend in Locarno

So, last weekend my parents visited us here in Zurich. After a busy Saturday with several invitations here and there, we had a long trip to Locarno. The train trip itself was also very special since the train passes by some magnificent mountains through nice valleys and the high peaks of the Alps. A different world is revealed when the train goes out on the southern end of the Gotthard tunnel, the scenery is different, the weather, the people and the architecture. Locarno turned out to be a very nice town, with a typical Mediterranean style. We spent some very nice hours here until about sunset when we headed back to Zurich.



More pics

Autumn Fair in Basel

Built at the point where France, Germany and Switzerland meet, Basel offered a lot of surprizes at our today's visit in the city. Due to the currently running autumn fair, the whole city seemed to be a huge theme park, full of different attractions (like Giant Wheel, Roller Coaster, etc), located all over the historical center, in the neighborhood of different points of interests.

Interested in more pictures? Take a look at
http://picasaweb.google.com/gulliver.gyenge/Basel

This weekned: Fondue + Biel + Neuchatel + Gokart

This weekend we started with a fondue dinner courtesy of AISEC Bern, which was delicious by the way.


Then Saturday we've started with a short stop in Biel to check out some sport programs, and to take a walk in its altstadt.


Then we went to Neuchatel.



We continued our day with a Go kart race (in the largest indoor kart track from Europe) with the colleagues of Krisztina. Well all I can say it was pure adrenalin. Some of us had little had accidents too (some even more) but it was really fun, and cheaper than speeding tickets and wrecking your own car.

Late night we were in a club in Bern were we've had a lot of fun with all these guys each from different country.

P.S. the only bad thing was driving home (both on FR and SAT) in the middle of the night, 120km by the way.

More pics at:
Biel
Neuchatel

Our Appartment

We've promised some photos of our appartment:



How do you like it?

Trip to Bern

sThanks, Daniel, for today's nice trip in Bern. We had a nice time in a wonderful city and a delicious swiss dessert afterwards. We will surely go back to spend some more time here.


It was nice to meeting all UPS-tranees, Kateryna, Maria and Carlos and spend a few hours together, by taking a walk on the Gurten-Berg.

More pics from Bern

Luzern and Pilatus

We had a nice trip to Luzern and the nearby Pilatus peak last sunday. It was amazing that a TRAIN can take you up right to Pilatus (above 2000 m).




From Pilatus the view was amazing (this panorama picture was taken by me) one could see the alps on one side and th eplains of northern Switzerland on the other.

If you liked these 3 pictures take a look at the entire albums at:
Luzern
Pilatus

Freestyle.ch

This event was a few weeks ago but we forget to blog it so here are a few photos and videos, enjoy them, we surely did.

The ski jumping:


The skateboard contest (winner was: Sandro Dias, Brazil)



The FMX championship:


The snowboard finals:

Zoltan's first week at work

A week has passed already.....
Monday I started working in Zug for an Intellectual Property law firm.


After being welcomed back (after about 1 year) by the team, I was shown to my desk.


It is in a nice office and I got a powerful PC too (software in GERMAN).
In my first week I started to get accustomed with the way things are handled in the company and started my training. I also tried to get to know the software that I will have to further develop (.NET and SQL server, thanks God) .
So how's my day of work many of you asked me:

• I get up at about 6 so that I can take the train from Zurich to Zug and still arrive at 8 to work
• 4 hours of work in the office
• Then I take a 1h lunch break. I usually take a walk by the lake, but in warm weather I will surely take a swim or go cayaking (is this how you spell it?) too.

• 4 more hours of work
• I get home at about 6:15 hungry and ready for a nice dinner
• After having a shower and dinner it's time to go to bed
• *** and *** maybe ***
• Now it's time for me to have my well deserved SLEEP

So this is it for now, take care

Krisztina's first days at work

Being warmly welcomed by a few members of LC Bern, we've been showed around in Biel, a nice little town 120 kms away from Zurich, where our firm is located.


(That's me and Carlos - another trainee from Venezuela - in front of the Office-building in Biel)

On my first day, when I arrived at 9 to the office, I had a little feeling of uncertainty and curiosity about my future work environment and the job I was expected to do as a trainee at a logistics firm... but after being introduced to a lot of young people from all over Europe, I got very soon used to this fully international environment.

As an intern, I got assigned to the Solutions Department, which is working on one of the crucial international projects of our firm. The first days at work I spent mainly with getting to know a little bit about the project I am going to work on in the next weeks, months ...

Wehntalerstrasse xx will be our address?

Settling in Switzerland is not easy at all. Supposing you already have a visa, you can only apply for the resident permit when you've got a place to stay at... but without a valid resident permit, you can't really do anything, not even apply for an apartment to rent.

Fortunately after an intensive "apartment-hunt" we finally got a confirmation for a flat in Wehntalerstrasse. :-) A very nice, 2-room- apartment, close to the railway station, which is quite important for us, since our workplaces in Biel and Zug are at 40 mins / 1h 10 mins - traveling from Zurich.

We're hardly waiting for the 1st of October now, to finally move in to our own flat!

Arrival to Switzerland

After an 18-hour-non stop drive we finally arrived to Zurich.