Cora Azalea: Welcome to Schwarzenburg

Besides seeing daddy and Tanner, coming back to Switzerland was really hard. Dealing with culture shock and coming home to a new house, in a new town, combined with getting through baby jet lag was a challenge. It took at least two weeks for us to really feel somewhat "normal" and get back into the slow, calculated routine of Switzerland.

While we were gone, Nat was wonderful and moved us into a new house in a little farm town called Schwarzenburg, which is about 30 minutes from Bern by train. Most Swiss think we live out in the "middle of nowhere," but what they don't realize, is that I actually used to live smack in the "middle of nowhere," in Idaho and this doesn't even come close!

Besides being a little far from Bern, Schwarzenburg has everything we need - a train into Bern, two big grocery stores, some cute cafes, bars, an authentic beer store, a yarn store, an adorable old European cobblestone shopping center, and best of all, we are only about 10 minutes away from the alps and a little ski resort. We are also right next to a large river valley and are surrounded by open spaces and farm land. We feel like we can breathe out here and are not living in depressing white Swiss concrete land that makes up much of the cities.

We moved into a renovated attic of an old swiss house that was built in the early 1800s. Our landlord also happens to be American, which is incredible, and she is really nice. Plus, the family that lives on the first floor also knows English and they love practicing with me! Having only lived here a short while, I already feel more comfortable and more welcome in this tiny town then I ever did living in our apartment in Koniz. We are still lacking some key pieces of furniture, but are working on acquiring some in the near future. Once the house is a bit more put together I'll take more photos.

Cora, who just measured in at 18lbs and still 2% on the growth chart, seems to be liking it just fine, and hasn't encountered any ghosts yet, that I know about anyway!

Oh, I can't forget! Our house also backs up to the Schwarzenburg Gnome Garden, which is home to an assortment of crazy, huge and eerie concrete creatures that say hello to us every morning and night when we open and close our window shutters. Some are connected to motors and move around, some have glowing eyes, some look like demons and some like pterodactyls, but collectively, they are all very strange and still creep me out a little bit. Here's a link to see more of our interesting backyard neighbors: http://www.gnomengarten.ch/infos/01_willkommen.html

So basically, at this point you are probably thinking, "Ok, they moved to a haunted mansion which backs up to an equally haunted gnome garden in the middle of no-where." Yep, basically.

And the adventures continue ....