Cherry blossom in the fountain.



The thing I like here, is that the meadows haven't, as yet, been totally over-dunged so in spring we go through a mass of different colours instead of the typical yellow of suffocated grazing land ...

It is Frühling (Spring) we are surrounded by various shades of fresh green and the apple- and cherry-trees are in blossom!
And the cows are back in the meadows.

In Spring, the cows in the meadow behind my house are those, that are considered useless, i.e. those that don't give milk yet because they haven't calved.
They will spend the next two months here and will then be presented to the bull.
If the farmer is lucky, the cows will, nine months later, give birth to a calf.
If not the bull will return.

The cows aren't allowed to keep their calves. The calves are raised in separate pens.
Instead the cows are now allowed to join their co-workers in the meadows. Calving behind them, they now produce milk which will be subventioned by the Swiss government. They have a purpose in life.
They are woken at six-in-the-morning so that the farmer-down-the-road can have milk in his coffee and they get milked a second time at six-in-the-evening.
The milk is taken down into the valley and turned into cheese.

The calves have a fifty-fifty chance of being turned into veal within a few short weeks.
Male calves are unwanted on a dairy farm.

This makes my f-d-t-r sound like a pretty heartless person, but actually he's a nice guy who is just doing the job he learned to do.
We often have a beer together.




Useless cow (for the moment). It will spend the next two months, day and night, rain or shine, grazing 'my' meadow.

Party Girl Paris Hilton was in Basel yesterday, where she arrived 50 minutes late to present her collection of watches at the Baselworld Jewellery Exhibition.
She prefers Rolex herself ...



Apparently she has problems with her geography.
During a televised interview she said:
"This is my first visit to Zurich"

Perhaps she does too much partying?

The air is full of the smell of conifers.

Yesterday machines arrived and de-barked the trees.
Now their scent is almost overwhelming.



On the drive up to the house, the house is hidden for a few seconds
as you drive past the trees.
There are two large piles of 15-meter logs and one smaller pile of large logs.
They were too thick to go through the machines.



There are also two large piles of bark.
The larger of the two is almost 2 meters high.

I now have access to my bike again.

They have started to clear up the mess that my coppice has now become.

When I came home this evening, I was presented with this:



They hardly made a mess at all, getting them there, they just dragged
them through my back garden:



I'm sure it won't take longer than six months to look decent again
and they didn't drag anything over their own land,
so at least their grazing won't be affected!



So the only problem I have now is - how do I get at my Motorbike,
which just happens to be enclosed behind those logs?!



Well, I shouldn't have to wait for long - last time I had logs lying in my
back garden, they were only there for four months ...

The snow vanished this last week.
In its place flowers have appeared:


Something tiny in a delicate blue ...


... cyclamen (Alpenveilchen - Alpine Violets) ...


... something in yellow and then some in white, but that picture was un-sharp!

I can't say I really mind, I think I've had enough snow for this season.

For the umpteenth time I have tested the speed of my internet connection, only to find that I am still not getting what I am paying for!
Not even close!
I'm supposed to get download speeds of up to 3500 Kbit/s and upload speeds of up to 300 Kbit/s.

I suppose I have to consider myself lucky - when I first applied for ADSL, I was informed it wasn't available where I live. You see, up here on my hill we still have telegraph poles with wires running from one to the next ...
... not suitable at all!

Then someone changed their mind - it is technically possible after all. I can't have Cable TV, but to prevent me making more silly requests, I may have ADSL. What flavour would I like?
Well, something fast please, so that I can remotely access my machine ...

I suppose the definition wasn't precise enough. I can access my machine remotely but it doesn't do me any good - I can look at my screen but to move anything on it is impossible.

The crazy thing is - were I to swap my 'digital' connection for an analogue connection, I could attain higher speeds. I couldn't be online all day, because I wouldn't be available by phone, but the bandwidth is larger.

Logical isn't it, that analogue is faster than digital?

... or Swiss German

Swiss German is basically Middle-High-German, but whereas the language in Germany has transformed and progressed, Swiss German has stood still for some centuries.

I understand Eastern Swiss German quite well (there are different dialects across the country just like anywhere else) but whenever I open my mouth to talk to someone, they immediately switch from Swiss German to [what they think is] High German!

Of course, I can tell them 'Sie chönnt Tüütsch rede - you may speak Swiss' but as soon as a single word crops up, that I didn't understand and I ask for it to be repeated, they immediately switch back to German! It can be very frustrating.

I thought perhaps I might be able to solve the problem by learning to speak Schwiizertüütsch myself, after all I picked up Brummy English and Swabian German quite easily!

'To qualify to learn Swiss German one has to be fluent in German'
it says in the brochure.
Well, no problem there - the Swiss assume that I'm German when I open my mouth to speak ...
... so I enrolled - there was no test beforehand.
Now, I do not wish to be racially discriminating, after all, I'm foreign myself – wherever I go! But the other five people in my course were: two Thai ladies (who insisted in talking Thai throughout lessons), one Indian Lady (whose Saris I liked very much), a Russian girl and an Albanian gentleman.
None of these people were able to build a correct German sentence; the Thai and the Indian ladies pronounced the text in the textbook as if it were English.
We [I] got nowhere at all with our lessons!
After five lessons, I was so frustrated at having learned zilch, that I gave up and stopped visiting classes!

Perhaps I shall never learn to speak Swiss German after all - perhaps I don't need to imitate the Swiss? But how can I stop them from trying to wrap their tongues around High German when they talk to me?

Here are some interesting Swiss German words for you:

Bireweich – As soft as a pear – silly, stupid
Chäuzgi – Chewing gum
Chlüpperli – Clothes pegs
Drufabe – Afterwards
Nòòdisnòò – Bit by bit
Goofe – Children
Liismele – Knit
Vertschudlet – tousled

One of my favourite sentences: Chasch mr es teleofo geh. – You can give me a Telephone – You can call me. (If the first word is raised in tone, it is a question)
I brought one of my colleagues a telephone once when he 'asked for one' and he gave me a blank look!
One of my all time favorites: Chan ii e [Zigarett] - Can I a [cigarette] (please insert an object of your choice)
Sorry?! What happened to the verb - what exactly would you like to do with that cigarette?