I now know why Homo Sapiens have larger brains than Felines.

I just went out for a short stroll and my two kittens decided to tag along.
Most of the meadows are fenced off with electric fences - these I have found to be efficient in keeping you on the right path in the dark!
Anyway - just out of sight of the house, there is a meadow without a fence so we walked through the grass around its perimeter and along the edge of the woods.
We didn't venture far into the meadow, because it looks as if the farmers will be able to mow just once more this year and they hate it when those city-people have walked right across the grass!
As we reached the third side of the meadow the house came back into view. I continued to walk along the edge/electric fence, but the kittens decided it would be shorter to run straight through the middle of the cows ...
(Why is it, that cats are wary of dogs at a distance of 500 meters but ignore the much larger cows even at 2 meters?)
Now cows have a tendency to leave those large brown puddles everywhere.
One of those puddles now has two perfect sets of cat-prints in it and I have two kittens with very smelly feet!

We awoke to the sound of gun-shots this morning.

In our peaceful alpine foothills we have, it would seem, a lone boar (that is boar - as in wild pig, not bore - as in blogger).
He is on the rampage in the fields and meadows, ripping up the ground on his forage for edibles. That alone, apparently, is reason enough for him to be shot. We can't have the tidy Swiss landscape being ripped up by a pig! That and the fact, that (in some parts of Europe) the hunting season has started.

Lots of restaurants now have signs hanging outside, advertising 'Wild Woche' - Wild Week means 'Game Week' and gives the restaurants an excuse to sell portions of Bambi and bits of Bambi's Dad at extortionate prices. This season will obviously give us wild boar too! I wonder if he was able to dig up any truffles before they shot him?

As today is the first day of Autumn (Heather your forecast was correct!) a lot of those restaurants are going to be able to advertise 'Metzgete' too - literally translated, Metzgete means Butchered. Autumn is the time of year, when the Swiss celebrate the blood sausage.
When I say blood sausage, please don't envisage anything like the English black-pudding - I am sorry to say, it has no similarity whatsoever.

The Alsatians (Elsaß, France) have blood sausage, as do the Germans and the Austrians. All are edible, most are good - if you enjoy that sort of thing - but I have yet to acquire a taste for the Swiss version.
The recipe? Quite simple:
Take 50 cm of pig's intestine and wash until clean. Tie a knot in one end and fill it with pig's blood. Tie a knot in the other end and twist it in the middle to make two sausages. Do not allow the blood to cool, but preferably, drop your sausages straight into boiling water. Not, however, for longer than two minutes, otherwise the blood will congeal.

I'll try anything once. The first time I tried Swiss Blutwurst was at a bar with standing-room only. When my sausage was placed in front of me along with Sauerkraut, potatoes and bread, I took my knife and fork and went to cut the sausage. The effect was astonishing! The two people to the left and the two to the right of me instantly jumped away from the bar!

"What did I do?" I asked.
"You've not eaten that before, have you?" the guy on my left asked.
"No." I admitted
"We cut them open along the bottom." he informed me, not proffering a solution for something that sounds impossible.

I turned my fork over and held the sausage down with it and slit the sausage open, as gently as I could. The people alongside me relaxed noticeably and I almost turned green! My plate was full of congealed blood!

I pushed the plate away from me and ordered a Schnapps to help me recover.

After a few minutes TGOML nudged me and said:
"You're not eating that then?"
"Definitely not!" I said emphatically.
"Mind if I have it then?" he asked.
"Be my guest," I said "but don't asked me to watch." and turned away.

Just in case you - like me - don't fancy the blood sausages, you may also order liver sausages.
Now please don't go confusing these with the German Leberwurst because, once again, there is no similarity!
The Swiss Leberwurst is similar to their Blutwurst - the only difference being, that the blood has been replaced by a revolting mass of minced liver and fat.

The weenies amongst you, may order a pigs tail or tongue in some places or, if those don't take your fancy, an ordinary piece of salted pork, all menus served with Sauerkraut, potatoes and bread. I wish you a guten Appetit.
I, myself, will give the Metzgete a miss again this year.

Anything that might make a noise is prohibited here on a Sunday - Jul has noted this too. "Not that I’m actually considering starting my own religion…"

Vacuuming is frowned upon, you may not wash your car and you most certainly may not take your empty bottles to the recycling containers!
Yet the churches openly break this strict law every Sunday, with bells clanging away for half an hour at a time as if they were trying to wake the dead!

There is another, more subtle way of breaking the law too. Cows!

Outside my window is a meadow full of cows, each one of them sporting a bell.
Surprising, the different sounds a cow-bell can make. First, there are different sized bells for the older and for the younger cows. Then there are the sounds of them cantering across the meadow, the more muffled sound of them eating and the slower sound of them chewing the cud.

My landlord lives in the next house 500 m away. He is 92 and has lived with the sound of cow-bells all his life.
He insists the local farmer remove the bells from the cows grazing in the meadow around his house - they disturb his mid-day nap!
I suppose you must get that way, as you grow older ...
... I, for one, find the sound of the cow-bells to be most calming - the world is in good order.

But no - now I come to think of it, it can't be age. Last month my neighbour had guests from Germany staying for a fortnight.
On their third morning, they asked, if there were any way to stop the cockerel from crowing every morning ...

... well, I thought that was one of the things about getting out of the city, at least they didn't need an alarm clock!

The female, that shared my life for the longest period of time, that put up most patiently with all of my foibles and, without fail, was there waiting for me, when I came home from a long day at work or a long night on the binge, died just over two months ago. We had been together for eighteen years.

When we first met, she was accompanied by her brother. He lived with us for a few years, but died after being hit by a car.
At eighteen, she was getting old - on cold days, you could really hear her joints complain when she moved. She was unable to move very quickly as she got older, but she always acted with great dignity and only rarely did she complain.

I missed her, when she went - eighteen years is a long time and a good age for a cat.

Neighbours were quick to ask, if I wanted to replace her ...
... last Tuesday I took delivery of this pair.



They are a pair of nuisances! They can't remember what I have told them for longer than fifteen seconds and are always getting into trouble!
I had forgotten, what it is like to have young kittens around.
I've named them Becca and Benson, but if they persist in presenting me with pictures like this, I might rename them Ying and Yang ...

Last night, sitting in one of those 'Farmhouse-Restaurants', that I so like in Switzerland (a 'pub' in the middle of nowhere, where the locals congregate), someone sat himself next to me and greeted me with 'Hi Rob, haven't seen you for a long time, how are you ...'
Not recognising him, I looked at him more closely and wondered, once again, about how informal the Swiss can be. Then I recognised him as the 'Communications Engineer' that fitted my telephone, when I originally moved here.

He arrived at 8:30, spread out his tools and then said "It's almost 9:00; in Switzerland we have a break at 9:00" Then he disappeared for half an hour!

When he returned, I asked him his advice on a problem I had hit upon.
He gave me the best advice, a Handwerker could give ...

When I moved into this place, I decided, that it was not logical to have the bedroom opposite the kitchen/dining room and the (smaller) living room opposite the bathroom, but that was the way the flat had been laid out.

I decided to swap the two rooms around. This meant moving the TV/radio antennae and to do so, I had started to drill through the wall. After just a few seconds I hit metal and, not knowing what it might be, stopped immediately.

I asked my Engineer what, in his experience, the metal might be and he told me it was probably just a mortice and that he and his colleagues, in my situation, would just continue drilling - not a lot can really happen ...

Not being entirely satisfied with this answer, I made my original hole a little larger (he'd gone by then) and discovered that my metal was a water pipe for the central heating!
I suppose he was right - except for flooding the whole house and rendering the heating inoperative in January (with three feet of snow), not a lot would have happened ...

I am, it would seem, a jerk.
Kate says so, anyway!

My trip through France took me over their motorway system. Most of the motorways in France are privately owned. The Swiss have their Vignette, the Austrians their Pickerl - annual tickets to stick on your windscreen, that cover all motorway mileage (the Austrians also have a bi-monthly option). The French prefer pay-as-you-go.

Taking the shortest route through France helped me to get acquainted with almost all of the French toll roads.
This, when travelling by motorbike, is most impractical - I felt like a jerk.
Drive up to the barrier, put the machine into neutral, take off your gloves.
Take the ticket that is automatically proffered. Think, for a second, where to put the ticket, so that it may be found easily when needed.
Put your gloves back on, ignoring the horns, that are being sounded behind you and the barrier that has been open for almost a minute and drive on.

After about 100 km the motorway owner changes, so it is time to pay.
Drive up to the barrier with the shortest queue (the one for credit cards), put the machine into neutral, take off your gloves.
Undo the press studs and the zip of your jacket, fish your wallet from your inside pocket, push the ticket into the ticket machine, take it out again and put it in the right way round, push your credit card into the machine, take it out again and put it in the right way round.
Ignore the fact that the barrier just rose. Put your credit card somewhere you can get at it easier next time (why didn't I think of that in the first place?), put your wallet away. Ignore the horns sounding behind you and try not to feel like the jerk Kate says you are. Do your zip up and fumble with the press studs while working out, that 100 km at approx 14 € actually costs more than a bi-monthly Pickerl in Austria - and drive on!

After 20 km of public motorway i.e. no toll, the cycle starts again.

Somewhere in Wales the magnetic strip on my credit card got zapped! Due to this fact, I decided to take the longer route for the home journey, avoiding as many toll roads as possible. The stretch between Luxembourg and Strasbourg was the only stretch I had to pay for.
The identification of those Euro-Cents, smirking at you from the depths of your wallet, is worthy of an entry of its own!

Over three thousand dead were honoured by bloggers around the world yesterday.
The site that did the co-ordination is down today - due to overload, I presume.

I read many of the tributes yesterday and today. The personal nature of these tributes, takes me a lot closer to 11/09/2001 (it will take more than a terrorist to convert me to the American date system) than I have ever been before and I feel like crying.

Five years ago today I discovered that my colleagues were sitting around the television in the media-room at work.
There was something amiss in New York.
When I asked what was happening they told me about some terrorist attacks.
My first reaction was "Yes, I just finished reading the book!" (John Grisham - The Brethren) Then I realised, that they were serious.

Sitting there watching the news and reflecting on the presidential elections of 2000, I couldn't help but draw further parallels to the novel.
Then, when the towers collapsed, I remarked, that it looked more like a well-planned demolition, than an attack.

Recently there was a documentary on German Television 'Loose Change' putting forward a conspiracy theory that is too close to Grisham's novel for comfort.
I hope, for the sake of America and for the sake of all those who tragically lost their lives five years ago, that the theory - however plausible it seems - is wrong!

I just got back from GB where I spent a fortnight touring with my motorbike.

You'd think that British plumbers don't go abroad for their holidays and have never seen the bathroom fittings on the continent.
I had forgotten all about British bathrooms!

After spending most of my life on the continent, I am used to turning on a tap and being presented with hot, warm or cold water, as I wish.
The hot water system is part of the central heating system (always in the cellar) and - probably due to the fact, that heat rises - hot water is almost instantaneously available.

The system in GB is different - the boiler for hot water always seems to be on the top floor, or in the attic. This allows water to trickle through the pipes unaided, instead of having to use a pump.
The hot and the cold taps are generally a minimum of 30 cm apart and when you open the tap with the red marking, you have to run off 20 litres of cold water before you can be sure, that it really is the hot tap.
This alone is a waste of water but then, if you wish to use warm water to wash your hands, you have to run a further litre into the sink - twice the amount I need to wash my hands under running water.

On those rare occasions when you find a tap where hot and cold water flow from a single nozzle, you get the shock of your life: when you hold your hand under the flow of water, the left side of your hand freezes, while the right hand side is scalded!

Then there are the showers.
Step into the shower-cabin, open the tap and have a shower?
You would have thought so.
But no, first you have to search for the switch to turn on the boiler - a so-called continuous-flow-heater. The switch is usually attached to a cord, dangling from a corner of the ceiling.
You will most likely have to experiment for ten minutes, until you find out which knob on the heater does what and which combination of settings sets the heat closest to your preferences. You may now carefully position yourself under the trickle of water from the almost-adjustable-mini-shower-head.

And then, in one case in Wales, someone bangs the door to attract your attention.
"We forgot to tell you - you can't use the shower in your room - the drain leaks and most of the water ends up in the dining room!"
And all that for just £30-a-night bed and breakfast.