Brrr! Winterthur, Switzerland

Still here in Winterthur, probably will be for another week. The campground is rather pleasant - quiet, clean and folks here are very friendly. I think the entire campground came out to greet us when we pulled in. To give them credit, the site is not really laid out for a vehicle of our size; neither is the lane one must take to get here (think "alley" size). Most speak English – all speak German. Nice! I feel like we can understand our surroundings again.

We’ve spent a lot of time wandering the city and not doing much else (well, besides feeding the ducks that seem to be at virtually every campground we've visited. I'm starting to think they are following us).

Winterthur is a cute little town and has a lot to offer visitors in all seasons. On the agenda for this weekend: a marionette show (in German), a family concert (free!), the kid's science museum and maybe the “winter mässi” (mässi = fair) and hopefully some winter holiday festivities. Things are gearing up for the holidays with the decorative street lights hung; the Christmas trees up (there’s about one on every block in the center of town) and the stores decked out with trimmings of the season. Megan and I decided we really liked this non-traditional Christmas tree in the window of a nearby store (see right). Megan especially was excited about the oversized butterflies on the tree!

This is an interesting country – many of you may know there are 3 official languages: German, French and Italian. However, there’s no indication of what language each city speaks. So we find ourselves wondering how it’s determined and by whom. The folks we encountered in the French region did not speak German and definitely did not speak English (something we knew we would encounter in France, but in Switzerland?). Here in the cities that speak German, folks appear on the surface more friendly and they want to speak English! We’ve had more conversations with people from the area in Winterthur than in our travels to date. (Note: It's Swiss German - so I still miss a lot of the context sometimes. One mom I talked to told me that the kids are now being taught "high" German (aka: formal) in schools.)

On a whim, we jumped on a bus to the “Gürze Markt” – based on an advertisement on said bus. The advertisement listed MediaMarkt, Coop “bau and hobby” (which would be building and hobby supplies) and a few other stores. We were looking for a hardware store. We found the Coop complex (this is the primary grocery brand over here… this particular one was a huge store with sub-stores and a hardware/hobby store surrounding it). Not finding what we needed, we wandered out and looked around the streets…. Hmmm. Couldn’t see any sign of any other significant consumer stores. Later that evening, at the Migros (the other grocery store) near us, I found an ad for Obi (large hardware store) – and, guess where it was? Just about 2 blocks from where we were earlier in the day. Sometimes, you can’t see the forest for the trees (especially true if you don't know the name of the forest...we only saw Obi stores in Germany). The morale of the story is – the city centers seem to have the more boutique shopping and you have to wander out to more industrial areas for the hardware or other specialty stores. I know the same is probably true in Seattle, but I’m so used to our mass merchant, big boxed stores – with several of each in the shopping areas. Of course, it could just be that I’m used to having a car and being able to drive around, wandering a bit vs. hoping on/off a bus and hoofing it. =)

On the RV side of the house…
Dan took on the project of wrangling together a grey water drain hose. For a few bucks and an hour or so of work, we can now stretch a hose over to the dump station and empty our shower/dishes water. This saves us about 50% of the movement of the RV (we were needing to move about every 2-days to empty tanks). Though if we stay still too long, we might just freeze in place (there's about an inch of ice on the roof already).

Weather is very crisp but this city is only infrequently graced by snow (yeah!). Lows are in the mid-20’s and highs in the mid-30’s. A little chilly. During Dan’s outing to the hardware store today, he also found a propane filling station – this is GREAT news for us as it’s less than 5km away and we are definitely using the propane to stay warm these days. For others considering this trip, we recommend an electric oil heater (looks like a radiator) and a fan to help circulate air. (We had a little 12v fan that runs off a cigarette lighter, but it met an untimely death under someone’s foot.)

Condensation is a daily battle. We welcome any input or ideas from other folks who overwintered in a cold climate in their motorhome. We have the calcium carbonate blocks, intended for dehumidification in boats and RVs. They can't compete very well with a freezing window though, so aren't the most effective. We have been experimenting with running the AC and fans each day. The best solution seems to be to air the unit out early in the morning… which is not the most pleasant of exercises as we are all just crawling out of our warm, cozy beds. We’re also pulling the bedroom slide in at night to help minimize the amount of surface area exposed to the cold air.

The holidays…
The winter holidays are coming quickly and we are going to start asking around for local customs. We see bags of shelled peanuts mixed with candy in the stores (presumably peanuts for the reindeer and candy for the little guy?) as well as long sticks formed in the shape of a broom with candy tied to it. Add in the delightful display of all sorts of Christmas cookies and cakes and I'm wondering how we'll survive the cold, cold winter and NOT gain about 30lb each on all the yummy goodies.

Will update again in a day or so and let you know how the Marionette show and concert go. Hopefully we'll have some holiday market pictures soon too.

Keep the emails and comments coming. We love hearing from our friends and family - it's like little presents everytime a new message shows up.

Ciao for now!

Sherry, Dan & kids