November 13, 2010
Many people think the process of making soufflés is all about the stress and timing of getting them to come out at that perfect moment. You work out a plan, get your ingredients together, prep your ramekins, fill them up and into the oven they go. Then you watch this glorious symphony happen as they bake. Everything the soufflé was ever meant to be starts with a small puff, growing larger and larger reaching for higher and higher heights until it transforms itself into a vertiable masterpiece of art right before your very eyes. This is the moment that everyone wants to preserve when they serve them – it’s why after this moment everything is an insane rush to get them out on the table. If you want to get a picture of your perfect soufflé, there’s even more adrenaline flowing throughout the room, and I, the photographer, start running all over the place like a lost chicken every time I have to tweak something, unable to turn back the clock as I slowly watch the soufflé tragically fall as I tried to nail the focus. Its life work now completed entire minutes ago, the comparatively cool air of the room rushes over the dish as it lets out a long and weary sigh, until it has at last crumpled to a mere shell of its former self.
November 8, 2010
When I first announced to the world that I was moving to Switzerland, I had no clue the adventure I was about to embark on. However, the first week after we actually arrived en Suisse was rather tough. We arrived just in time for the New Year, and then preceded to starve for 3 days because New Years Day, Jan. 2nd, and the next day, Sunday, meant that all the major stores were closed. Not knowing the city, having no internet or knowing where to go for internet to look things up, no phone, and no way of contacting anyone that we knew who spoke English, and a more than bare bones “hotel”, we were pretty much stranded for a few days. I remember once we figured out that everything was closed rationing my yogurt and couple croissants that I had bought the day before. We didn’t know there were stores like Coop Pronto that were open when everyone else was closed. We didn’t know how to ask strangers on the street if anything was open or where to go, we just assumed everything wasn’t because what we saw wasn’t.
Luckily, despite our rather unhappy beginnings due to some rather poor planning on our part, we also quickly learned the meaning of Swiss hospitality. We found that Starbucks had free wifi, and one of our colleagues generously offered to us his place for a few weeks, which also included access to a kitchen, a shower that 30 other people weren’t also using, and the internets, our lifeline to the rest of the world. When stores did open, we went into a small shop to buy groceries, and upon learning the other lesson that not everyone takes credit cards or traveler’s checks, found an incredibly trusting and nice shopkeeper who told us it was ok, to take our groceries and that we could come back the next day and pay with cash (which we promptly did as soon as they opened the next morning). We learned that even with our complete lack of French, that merci and s’il vous plaît and a friendly smile go a long way. And as time has gone on and we have adjusted and become comfortable with our lives here, we have continuously been impressed at the easy-going and courteous nature of most of the people we meet.
