A Passport is a Girl's Best Friend

Throughout my entire life, I grew up with this fantastic oil painting in my home accompanied by hand drawings and a poem my Oma wrote in German. The theme of them all? Haslach in Kinzigtal. The place where my entire maternal family is from and where a large majority of them still reside. In 2008 I was the first member of the USA side to return in over 25 years. The reunion was so eye opening and soul awakening that I am not sure I can put the feelings into words. The best way I can put it is that you feel whole and you leave with a better understanding of yourself, as if you found the missing piece. I am so excited that I got to share my heritage with Duane, because it is a huge part of who I am. We left for Haslach Friday after Duane got off work. Since it is such a small town, we took a train over to Freiburg, Germany, which is a bit bigger. My cousin Florian and his girlfriend picked us up from there to make the last 40 min stretch through the Schwartzwald (th...

This week has been filled with lots of discoveries. In addition to visiting the Lindt & Sprüngli chocolate factory, I also went .... and had some traditional overpriced Swizz Fondue with the Googlers, I made stuffed peppers with polenta, went to a farmers market, walked around old town and found a great park, with old men playing on a giant chess board, found a cool church called St. Peter's, lots of chocolate stores, and found signs of Christmas everywhere. Off to visit the German family this weekend! Stay tuned!

I died and went to heaven. Yup, it's true. This blog is being written by yours truly via God's wireless internet connection. Ok, that's a lie, but I did feel like that today. My day started out by renting a free city bike for the afternoon at Hauptbahnhof. I decided to take the scenic route to the factory, located in a small town on the lake just south of Zurich called Kilchberg, by riding along the lake. A rain/snow storm is headed to the region at the end of the week, so I want to take in as much of the outdoors as I can before I am forced indoors. You can already feel the cold front coming in, because boy was it chilly today! A high of 48*! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. My wheels for the day. Look at this bad boy! Even had a zebra head bell to top it off! A water park  I found at the lake! Complete with a slide, water slide, diving board and fresh water swimming pool. I want to come back in the summertime. Upon arrival in Kilchber...

We have had quite the weekend full of exploring die Schweiz! Friday I met the boys over at Google for a social TGIF, which is when Googlers are allowed to invite friends and family for a social cocktail hour. Lots of wine, beer, popcorn and live music. While talking to Duane's co-workers, I discovered that in their building, Google installed fire poles for a "quick transfer" to lower floors. Immediately I decided the whole group (all 6 of us) was going to exit the building via fire poles. So, we started at the 6th floor and found our way down and exited by sliding down a giant slide to the dining room. I. Love. Google. After, we went out for some delicious kebab and gelato in the old town of Zurich. Soooo good. Saturday we went to a small town about an hour north east of Zurich called Schaffhausen, which is right on the Rhine river and has the largest waterfall in Europe, Rheinfalls. The Rheinfalls were quite impressive, they are 450 ft wide and 75 ft high. Th...