My life as an Expat: Switzerland!!!! Bern and Zermatt

Well, well, well, I usually look forward to my trips, but this one I especially was looking forward to. The BIG thing was that I loooooooooooooove nature and mountains, so helloooo Switzerland. And really? Who doesn't like Switzerland? It has it all, a sound economy, neutral political stances, the best banks in the world, the best chocolates in the world (hehe), and of course it is the most organized and timely (a bit OCD). The Swiss precision is more than welcome to me! Fortunately, upon arrival, we had a nice warm weather welcome, and of course had to treat ourselves to a cappuccino with Swiss chocolate flakes:

This trip I was combining work and pleasure. A quick trip of 2 days at a Conference and 2 days ... Skiing in Zermatt! Ze best of ze best!! Then pretty much 2 days of travel.

I went with a colleague, and lo and behold, when we got there it was just what I imagined Switzerland to be, the weather was cool, crisp, and the air so fresh and nice. As a capital, Bern is pretty... well, small and low key, I would say, and quite quaint. I was particularly pleased that I managed to get in 2 x 10-12km's runs in as I have worked too hard to get in shape, get out of shape quickly, and did NOT want to loose ground. And this is one morning in the rain (which I found quite euphoric, to be honest), but the 2nd morning when it was still raining and the temps dropped, not as much fun!

Anyhoo, as mentioned, Bern is a cute city:

So nice when the weather is nice! The food is quite... Heavy!!! I did know Swiss was all about cheese and potatoes (and chocolate for that matter), but phew! First night we had a staple dish called Rosti - basically baked hash-brown like (NOT fried) potatoes which I had with a mushroom sauce, quite filling and delish!

The next night we met up with a colleague we had met last year in Portugal, Ricardo, who is German, but happens to live in Switzerland, and he advised us to have the famous fondue. Phew, for someone that has been avoiding dairy for awhile now, although delish, my stomach was NOT happy that night, haha:

We so happened to catch this quite amazing 3D light show that was on a ... Parliament building? It had music and everything and was really cool! Haven't seen such an elaborate 3D light show before that had a whole storyline:

The conference was REALLY good and worth the visit, many top notch researchers and great to hear the latest updates. Have a lot of reading and reviewing to do to keep up with everything, but all interesting stuffs.

Next it was off to Zermatt! Ricardo was awesome and drove and we even drove in our ski gear and immediately went up to the mountain upon dropping off our bags at the hotel. My colleague/friend doesn't ski, so he had fun wandering around the mountain. And we had fun on the mountains! As it was still pre-season, a lot of the mountain was closed, BUT the little that was open had quite good snow. We did have to repeat a few runs a few times, but as it was my first time skiing in 3 years, appreciated the warm-up. Loved the mountain and seeing the famous Matrerhorn:

I heart skiing! Especially when it is a brilliant sunny day!

Had another local dish that night, pasta with bacon and cheese and... Apple sauce! Ha!

Then of course apple strudle, yum!

Zermatt is a super quaint ski village, all the hotels are almost cottage like, very warm feeling and have such cute little touches, of course fire places, but also all places had a really nice homey feel. And again, just love being in the mountains!

Amazing! This above pic is my current screen saver :-)

View from our room!

Love all the Swiss clock churches!

Our hotel through the window

The next day Ricardo left us to get back to work, and after a chillax'ing morning, went off skiing again, but this time more of the mountain was open and skied to Cervino, Italy!!! Sooo fun!!!

Soooo. A quick trip but well worth it! Switzerland is meeeeggggggaaaa expensive, phew, but besides that a beautiful country. We left by train, went through St Nicholas town,