As customary...

Yes yes, as usual for me before any form of departure, I am heavily procrastinating.

Usually this is the moment I start a stamp collection, gathering all of the envelopes lying around my room (quite a few in general) and steaming them off etc etc.

Now whilst I was in Switzerland I only got one letter, so I can hardly use this as an excuse, however, it very conveniently snowed last night, allowing me to build a snowman instead.
Flying off to Sweden in a few hours to see some friends, yay! :o)

Ah yes, and just for the fun of it, this is the pic of (most of) the wool I bought here.3 cheers for compulsive buying :o)

Switzerland..

For the no doubt many of you who don't follow all of my mouvements, I have been in Zürich, Switzerland for the last couple of weeks, and leaving again Friday.

I have come here a few times before, since one of my oldest friends lives in this country. However, it's the first time I've spent such a long time here in one go.

There are quite a few things to be said about Switzerland, yet I will not expand on it here, since I quite like to keep my opinions to myself unless under 4 eyes or not too many more, and so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves..

Zürich town sometimes and somewhat reminds me of Helsinki...Central Zürich

Handcarved skateboards from Nepal. Yeah.
Gassen in der Altstadt

Because the beginning of November is almost Christmas time... (I have to say the decorations are really nice...I especially like the idea of recycling old plastic bottles and turning them into street art)
This is not a decoration it's actually for sale and costs the eyes out of your head. Now I come to think of it, maybe this is one of the last customers who went and got something from the shop.


Yep, there's money in town, and always two sides to a medal. "Money stinks...." This actually stinks too. There are some really good sides to CH, but one of the bad ones is the hardly latent racism. This is an extremely shocking campaign (from a right wing party of course) for a referendum where people are going to have to vote for what is called the Ausschaffungsinitiative, a.i. "explusion initiative" which consists in expulsing all the so-called foreign criminals out of Switzerland and back to their respective unrespectable countries.
Now of course everything is debatable, and again there are always two sides blablabla. However I think the slogan in this one is really shocking, and not only meant to campaign for the initiative, but just downright racist and xenophobia enhancing. It reads "Ivan S., rapist, soon to be Swiss?"
I'll leave you to think on that one, but I think it's just disgusting.

They also have another poster which shows a nice clean little white sheep kicking a black sheep over the border and out of Switzerland. Cute.
Politics...
Apparently (though I haven't researched it thoroughly so again it is simplistic), in Switzerland the power is really with the people, since it is they who determine such issues through referendums and direct voting. Which has advantages and inconvenients.
Démocratie, quand tu nous tiens...

Anyway... the weather has been very clement at times, and even allowed for one grand day out cycling along the Zürich See through the countrysideand on to Rapperswil.

And the rest of the time when the weather is bad and I'm not keeping my friend's two kids (which is in effecto what I came here for) I knit, as usual.

It is lovely and a terrible thing to have turned into a knitter.
For the one it's great and entertaining, for the second, I can't help but feeling that to others I look or appear totally neurotic, throwing myself on balls of yarn as soon as I've got spare time and compulsively buying wool every time I see a shop. Added to that, considering the value of the CHF, it's kind of dangerous for the porte-monnaie, being a compulsive knitter in Switzerland...
Hlakka til ad fara aftur til Islands!!! :o)

However, these are the latest:
A tweed hat for Claudia (my friend's other half) and a first lopapeysu with sleeves for me...