Harder! Better! Faster! Stronger!

Since we moved to Switzerland two years ago, I started "Operation Get Slim".

Everyone around me was running nearly daily, doing triathlons "because it's fun and I was bored" and looking stick thin even though I saw them eating full fat cheeses, croissants and cakes all the damn time. BITCHES!

"How unfair", I thought as I stuffed my face with chocolate. Things were going to have to change.

Also, I started the operation as I didn't want to get married and look at the pictures thinking..."Wow... I was fat on the most important day of my life". 

Operation Get Slim was basically calorie counting with a help of a web community I found in Finland. On the side of counting the calories, there was an option to write a blog about my journey towards the smaller me as well as read other people's inspiring battle against their bulges.

In about half a year I lost a lot of weight and became tiny and gazelle-like. My frame is very petite anyways so when I am tiny, I mean I am tiny. However, losing so much weight in a short period of time made me a skinny fat (even though I was trying to work out every now and then). Gravity was winning the battle and I looked somewhat droopy.

Dammit, Operation Get Slim wasn't enough. I wanted to be fit, too!

Harder! Better! Faster! Stronger! 

After a lazy and difficult winter/spring I gained a couple of kilos (which was fine as at that weight I didn't have to think every single thing I was eating) but I also lost the little muscle tone I might have had before. My arms and tummy were now wobbly and my ass far from being pert. Hell, it was non-existent. Oh well, sometimes life gets you that way and you lose your motivation to challenge yourself.

In the summer, however, I picked up the tempo; concentrated on endurance and strength, started running and worked hard on my core. I have since become somewhat "bigger", I certainly do not look hungry anymore and I've gained more muscle around my formerly stick thin limbs. Yet my weight has stayed the same. Peculiar, eh? A girl can look very different in the same weight, I now know. Tummy is no longer the wobbly balloon it used to be but quite nicely sucked and tucked in (which is a wonderful thing for an apple shaped girl like me).

I bought a dress last November when I was at my lowest weight but I always felt I couldn't do the dress justice with my frame and so I tucked it away in the closet. And there it stayed, hidden, as I tried to forget I used to be size EUR34.

Today I took it out, being curious if I could still fit in. Would my tummy bulge out like it used to? Would my ass nearly fall out of it?

Eeeeek. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!

Oh. Ok. It's not even tight?!

So, even though I've gained a couple of kilos since I bought the dress, I now fit it....better? With some thick black tights I have a nice Autumn outfit ready and won't be looking like a sausage roll.
















How absolutely refreshing. Usually things go the other way for me. I think I can fit into something and then regret ever trying the garment on. But not this time. :)
















Hoorray, now pass me that croissant, please...

Bern

An hour or so by train and we were whisked away to the Swiss capital: Bern.

Don't get me wrong. Where we live is ok. But oh my... I was hit by a severe case of Canton Envy when I saw Bern.

We've been pretty isolated where we live (for various of reasons) for a long time so now that we finally have an opportunity to discover Switzerland, the contrast is hitting home. Big time.

I had totally forgotten how nice it feels to understand and to be understood. I studied German in the past but thought it was long lost in the labyrinth of my limited linguistic brain as I never had to use it. Wrong! I do understand it, written especially. Swiss German sounds a little odd to my ear (even though one of my oldest and dearest friend is Swiss and speaks Swiss German so I've been exposed before) but I do get an odd word here or there every now and then. That's about 900% more than my understanding of French. And being isolated in a French speaking city with a very French attitude, being exposed to German made me feel like home. How odd!
....Or maybe it was all the Marimekko and Iittala I saw....?

I fell in love with Bern then second I stepped out the train station. So much so we made not one but two day trips there. First time (Saturday) was a very general one and then a more detailed tour on Monday. And both my husband and I were just sighing away as we fell more and more in love with the place the more we saw it. This was the kind of Switzerland I had in mind (and I was more familiar with) before we moved.

People were less pushy and grumpy, we got really good service everywhere we went, I wasn't the tallest/blondest woman around and I felt like I pretty much fitted in. :) The city was bigger but not too big, it was clean without feeling sterile.... Simply wonderful. I'm not surprised most Nordics end up in the German speaking part and love living in CH (which I never did, before this anyways) as it feels much more like home (only on steroids) than where we are living at the moment.

"Oh what the hell... Close enough, I say!"

Right there and then my husband swore that we'd only "suffer" (we're not suffering, really) in our surroundings for a year/two years more and then we try to settle in the German speaking part or go back to the Nordics as we feel more comfortable there. I guess my smile was so wide he had to say it. ;)

....Or maybe it was these random little guys that stole his heart:

When we get a few more days off again, we continue discovering this beautiful little country. Stay tuned!

Spitting Image

Marimekko Unikko (Marimekko Poppy)

My coffee this morning after adding crappy budget sweetener that doesn't
 a)dissolve b)sweeten

Meatball Mayhem

To cheer up my tired husband I decided to cook some simple comfort food. As the day had been dark and rainy, I felt like comfort food, too.

I hadn't done meatballs for some time now so I thought... Let's make some Mafia Meatballs!

Meatballs themselves had nothing too extravagant in them, bread that was dissolved in hot milk, herbs, grated parmesan cheese, eggs, salt, pepper etc. 

After the mixture was roughly combined, it was time to shape the balls and coat them with flour. Please note that the balls began to get bigger and bigger as my patience wore thinner and thinner. Goddamn balls. 

I sent my husband a picture what was going to be the dinner. The little boy He was very excited, clearly comfort food was very high on his list.

Next, I quickly browned the meatballs in a large skillet and then drowned them in tomato sauce that had been simmering away for a couple of hours already. 

As the balls were pretty big, I then let them happily swim for half an hour or so while I prepared the pasta.

I then served the Mafia Meatballs (my father-in-law calls me  lovingly as "Mafiosa", hence the Mafia Meatballs) with pasta and more parmesan cheese. You should've seen the huge grin on my little boy's husband's face. It was literally from ear to ear.

To top it all off, I toasted a slice of my no-knead-wholegrain-bread (I make it a couple of times every week).

Conclusion: Operation "Cheering up people with comfort food" was a great success. However, as the dinner was pretty lardy, today I think I have to survive on lettuce. 

Only kiddin' peeps, round is a shape, too! There are 16 more meatballs to go, I think I know what my mission tonight is. Stretchy pants, get ready!

Location, location, location....

There is one novelty thing I never seem to get used to while living here in the continental Europe:
all the other countries are so damn near. 

I've always lived in quite excluded/logistically challenged countries and it always took some effort (read: blood, sweat and tears) to travel from/back to.

When I was a kid back in the days when travelling was still considered as quite a luxury (80s and early 90s), my parents would pack us 3 kids & camping gear and we'd either take the ferry to Germany or we'd drive through Sweden to reach the continental Europe.

While all the others retrieved to their cottages for the holidays, we'd spend our summers on the road. Driving all over the (Western) Europe by car, sleeping at the camping sites. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, UK....You name it. I literally grew up in the backseat of our family car watching the blurry, ever changing landscape through the window. We were like travellers, restless, always needing to be on the move. It was the time before navigators, Tom-Toms and such. It was just us, the car and the Michelin map of Europe. We only knew the day we'd have to go back home but everything before that was organic. We went where the wind blew us (as long as there was a camping site nearby).

When we started growing up, my parents ditched the tents and we began staying at Guest Houses, B&Bs and hostels. As we grew even more (both horizontally and vertically) the next logical step was staying at hotels. When we reached that point, though, it was simply cheaper to start flying to places. Road trips became a thing of the past. We discovered the convenience of air travelling. And solo travelling (which I began at the tender age of 15).

Flying was never that cheap and it always still took some time to reach the destination, however. It was still "somewhere there" far far away. Continental Europe back then was what China is today.

And things never really changed when I left Finland. When I lived in UK, it was a damn island. And Australia was far from...Well... Absolutely everything.

Where am I going with this? What does this all have to do with Switzerland?

Now knowing my history a little, try to imagine my feelings when my husband tells me that he's off to France for training. The training takes 3 days in total.

My heart automatically sank, of course. France... The country of baguette, red wine and garlic. Au revoir mon amour, send me a postcard...

It's only when my husband continues "so, it's closer to home than the office I go every day so I'll be home for dinner earlier than usual" I realise....

Effin' hell....

Everything is so.....damn.....CLOSE.

Day Trippin'

After finishing the morning sport session, my husband and I decided to venture to Vevey. Weather was good, Vevey is near and there would be retro cars on a display for free. Hey-ho, let's go!

It's the first time I actually went to Vevey instead of only passing through. What makes my dirty confession even more shameful is the fact that my childhood idol Charlie Chaplin used to live there for decades and yet, I had never visited the place. So close, yet so far away....10 minutes by train can sometimes be a lifetime away.

It was a hot and humid day, there were many storm fronts circling us but like most of the times, we never got the actual storm/thunder/rain, just the sticky promise of it. Grrrrr....
Unlike at the Geneva Car show, this time I heard no Finnish spoken. Usually those two go together. Oh well!

My husband loves the "vrooom vrooms", like most of red blooded men (I've noticed), and he was like a little kid in a candy shop seeing cars like Morgan while there were some quirky ones for me, as well.

Morgan

BMW

Messerschmitt KR200

Can you tell I don't drive....? What tipped you off? Messerschmitt KR200? Are you CRAZY? Who WOULDN'T want one???

Anyways, after we got enough of the retro car display (well, after I got enough of the display) it was time to take a little walk around Vevey, eat some ice cream and enjoy the hot weather.

What a beautiful place it turned out to be! Definitely have to come back very soon.

And there we have it. Yet another pearl discovered from our neighbourhood and another super Sunday spent. 

One size doesn't always fit all.

Whereas my husband stood out in my home country, here I am the one who is "exotic".

Not because of my fair hair/skin or anything but mainly because of my height and shape. Here I could be considered as a (hopefully handsome) tall man. When my husband first saw me back in the day, his first thought was "Wow, two meter tall babies, here we go!". That's a true story, by the way. Who said romance was dead, sigh. Luckily, I didn't learn about this until after many years of being together.

Not only am I hovering in my own stratosphere but I'm also not the classical "junk in the trunk" pear shape, I'm rather an "egg on sticks" or "giraffe on roller skates" apple shape. My (unfortunate?) height doesn't come from my back but from my limbs.
And being this tall means also that my shoes are considered as canoes. Some locals could use them to paddle across the lake to France.

I usually haven't paid attention to my height or shape but here I feel it each time I'm trying to find clothes and/or shoes. If the trousers are long enough, they're for someone with more....uhm..."girth" than me. All fashionable skirts and dresses become mini skirts and cocktail dresses when I put them on. Shoes? Oh please. I might find a pair but rarely are they the pretty ones.

I'm not suffering alone as my husband's tall as well but there is far more choice for a tall man than there is for a tall woman. And I refuse to buy from any special shop as I don't consider myself to be a damn giant! I would be a shortie in The Netherlands, for example.

I think I have to visit home with an empty luggage and go on a shopping spree there before I freeze my boney ass here.

The giant has spoken.

Random |ˈrandəm|

I like randomness.

But I never expected to see an antique looking hot air balloon from our kitchen window.

At 7AM.

On a Sunday morning.

That, my friends, is a perfect example of randomness.

Just when I thought I had seen it all, this country surprises me.