Out and about

We're seeing our fair share of Switzerland these days. Yesterday, we drove to a town near Zurich to have dinner with an American family who's also here working for Thomson. This morning, we went to Lucerne for church. This afternoon, we drove to another town to have dinner with our friends from Germany. Each of those drives is about an hour round-trip, so it's a good thing that gas is cheap here. (I'm kidding. It's not. It hurts.) And, of course, most of this driving doesn't take place on nice four-lane freeways. Nope. It's on narrow two-lane roads. The Swiss don't really seem to have the concept of a "shoulder." So you drive on these narrow roads until you come to a village, you pass through the obligatory one or two traffic circles in the village, and then you speed up again for a couple of miles until you come to the next village. (All of this happens, of course, against a backdrop of spectacular mountains and forests.)

Tomorrow night, Stace and I will ride a train to the top of one of the mountains overlooking Zurich for my company's holiday celebration. That should be fun. And next Monday, which is a Swiss holiday, Stace is going to go with some friends to Germany to do some shopping. It's also a school holiday, so I might take a day-trip with the kids to Italy or at least to the Italian part of Switzerland. Our trip to the French part over the summer was interesting. So, we're getting a good look at what there is to see here.

I still haven't written that post about all of the rules around here, but I think I got busted by one of them last week. I think they nailed me for running a red light. The light was yellow, and I still maintain that I had plenty of time, but I saw the dreaded flash of light as I went through the intersection. When you see that flash, you can expect to receive a ticket in the mail about two weeks later. Speeding tickets and other moving violations are all done by photo-cop; there's no sweet-talking the digital camera into giving you just a warning "this time." According to another Thomson family who got a ticket a couple of weeks ago for running a red light by eight tenths of a second, I can expect to pay about 250 Swiss francs ($200) for this one. I'm starting a collection, so feel free to pitch in. Our mailing address is:

PO Box 64523
St. Paul, MN 55164-0523

(I'm kidding about the collection but not about the mailing address. You can mail cards and letters to that address and they'll be forwarded to us. You can't send packages that way, just mail. And be sure you address it to one of us by first name, not just to "Wood," because my company uses that mailing address for many, many Thomson families all over the world. But remember that we're seven hours ahead of Minnesota and eight hours ahead of Utah, so you need to drop your letters in the mail several hours earlier than you normally would.)

And, finally, Stace did that which I had long dreaded: she sat down to read this blog. She says that the India deal is off and that Switzerland is enough adventure for her right now. What she doesn't realize is that they speak English in India, so the language thing would be easier there than it is here. All of you faithful readers out there (yes, I mean both of you) have a couple of years to soften her up and convince her that India should be our next move. Come on--you're all eager to visit India, and if we live there, you've got the perfect excuse, right? (For those of you who have been watching the news lately, no, the office is not in Mumbai.)