Reflections ... and plans for 2011

Can't believe it's already one month since Christmas! After spending almost all of our vacation days on our Asia-trip last year, we did not plan anything special for the end of the year - we spent the Christmas, as usually, with our families in Romania,

2010 - Karacsony Szilveszter

followed by a short, 4-day-skiing break in Grindelwald, where we also spent the New Years's Eve, visited (twice) our favorite Mexican restaurant (*El Azteka, for those interested to try the best Mexican food in Europe, accompanied by live music) and had fun in the snow:

From Grindelwald

And here we are, back to business and normal life - not sure if it's entirely 'normal' though with all the challenges waiting for us this year:
* German exam, which we still owe to ourselves since our last year's new year resolution (no more excuses this time, we have finally signed up to take the Goethe ZMP next Saturday),
* European Qualifying Examination - second part (for Zoli, of course)
* Starting my job in Zug (more about this in a later post)
* Searching for apartments in Zug (by the way, this one can be ticked out from the list today :-))
* Moving home
... and of course our regular yearly plans and desires for enjoying life in Switzerland and traveling as much as we can (no exact plans for our next big holiday, but it seems that we have a lack of travel experience in the southern hemisphere :D)
  

Over 9000 kms and 40ºC from Christmas to New Year

As usually, we spent our Christmas at home in Romania, together with our families and friends. A completely white scenery and -10ºC has been waiting for us when we landed at the airport in Cluj... we were hoping for a white Christmas, but unfortunately most of the snow has melted before x-mas day.
We spent the whole week with Christmas dinners, family visits and meeting friends ... it was a really busy, but very pleasant and enjoyable week. As we were planning to leave on the 25th, we started the x-mas celebrations a little earlier this year, with a dinner at my parents' place:

From 2009 - Karacsony Szilveszter

From 2009 - Karacsony Szilveszter

The Christmas Eve we spent at Zoli's parents' house, in an even bigger family circle, together with our parents, brothers and their wife/girlfriend, cousins, aunties, uncles... there were so many people talking at the same time that sometimes it became nearly impossible to understand what one was saying ;-))

From 2009 - Karacsony Szilveszter

We had a very hard time keeping ourselves away from the tons of food and drinks we were offered (for some strange reason everyone thinks that in Switzerland we do not cook and eat, therefore we need to eat for the whole coming year when we are at home...)

Before flying back to Zurich, we had a few drinks with our friends, former colleagues (at least we only had to 'organize' one gathering with our classmates as both Zoli and me attended the same class in the high school) and another Christmas supper at my brother's place ...

We had a great time, but we were already very excited about our New Year's Eve celebration in Miami. We only had one day in Zurich to pack out and repack our luggage, leave the cold and snow behind and fly off to the 'sunshine state'. Waiting for our connection in NY JFK we had the chance to meet our long-seen friends, Manyi and Csongor - it was great catching up on the past 5-6 years we haven't met each other on.

From USA - East Coast

AND FINALLY: we have arrived to Miami on the 27th and we had a fantastic New Year's Eve celebration at South Beach, enjoying the fireworks over the beach and palm trees on Ocean Drive, knowing that a Caribbean cruise was waiting for us on the 1st of January.

From 2009 - Karacsony Szilveszter

I would say, our start of the year couldn't have been any better (see our next blog posts for some amazing stories and photos on our holiday in Florida and the Caribbean)... the last relaxing days before the hard work starts, especially for Zoli studying for his patent attorney exam in March. So I guess building our career is our main goal for 2010 ... plus the ZMP (intermediate German exam) waiting for both of us in automn (and, of course, continuing to enjoy our life in Switzerland, do some nice trips and travel around).

You can see here our full Christmas and New Year's Eve Album.
Finally, we would like to wish a great 2010 to all our friends reading this post!

Christmas markets 2009

It's that time of the year again ... when Christmas markets open up all over Europe and you can barely walk 5 steps without running into a Gluehwein hut ... and you suddenly find yourself having the urgent need of shopping, eating or drinking something. This is however not the case in Zurich, where the entire Christmas-market, including the Christmas tree decorated by Swarovski crystals is hidden within the main station. Very practical set-up, no snow storm or sudden rain can ruin the 'business' ... but: there is no Christmas spirit either.

So we decided to visit some 'real' Christmas-markets in the last couple of weekends. This year we booked our room in Strasbourg early enough (in August already) as we found out last year that there is no chance finding a room several weeks in advance for any December - weekend within 60 kms radius around the city. No wonder there are so many people visiting Strasbourg this time of the year. It is called "la Capitale de Noël" – the Christmas capital ... the entire old town is one huge Christmas market with hunderds of little shops selling a huge variaty of toys, candles, Christmas-deko, crepes and vin chaud ... and thousands of people wondering around and enjoying the holiday-spirit. The only thing missing from turning the place into a real winter magic was the snow (looks like someone forgot to 'order' it from Santa this year :-))

You can see some of the photos we took in Strasbourg in our album here:

From EUROPE - FRANCE -Strasbourg

Strasbourg was however not the only (and first) Christmas market we visited this year. One week earlier we had a weekend trip to the Netherlands and Germany: first a housewarming party in NL with Krisztina's colleagues, then the Weihnachtsmarkt in Cologne. We had the feeling that german Christmas markets are all about eating an drinking (you can find here tons of tradional food, showing the many different nationalities living in the country) and of course, plenty of Gluehwein. See some of our photos here:

EUROPE - GERMANY - Cologne_by Christmas

Santa also arrived to our home in Zurich, bringing nice presents not only for us, but also for our little friend Gulliver.

From 2009 - Karacsony

Santa arrived to Zurich

As usually, Santa arrived a little earlier to us in Zurich. This time on a Saturday afternoon, while we went on a big shopping and wine-tasting tour ... he was knocking at the door, but since nobody opened it, he left on our doorstep a nice Christmas deco (which you can see on the table) along with this note:
"Én vagyok a Télapó, úgy beb@sztam mint a ló, van zsákomban mindenjó: tampon, bugyi műdákó. Ne várjatok nem megyek,pornófilmet rendezek"

Christmas Eve

As always we celebrated Christmas Eve at home with our family.
We started the evening at Krisztina's mother's place

and continued at Zoli's parent's house

http://picasaweb.google.com/emese.gyenge/2007Karacsony

Santa and Christmas in Zurich

We also celebrated Santa (5th of December)

and Christmas (one week before officially at home in Kolozsvar)

in our apartment in Zurich. We had an Advent Wreath and decorated a small but really nice tree as well.

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:

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 ...