Casserole Quest

I stopped for a few hours in Bern on my way to Zurich.  I really just wanted to get a feel for a city I had heard do many good things about.

It was of course this cute old town with plenty of greenery situated around a river.  After checking my backpack into a locker at the station, I headed down the main pedestrian street.

On the sides of the street were the permanent stores for furniture, clothes, etc.  In the middle were tents selling varieties of things.  Mostly textiles, jewelry, sweets, meats, and cheeses.  Half way through the market portion of the street, I stumbled upon an over sized chess board that was part of the street.  Two old men were playing chess with pieces the size of toddlers, while a plethora of other men shouted suggestions from the sidelines.

The guy on my left should have won ten minutes into the game, but instead a draw was called about a half an hour later.  Because Bern is in the German part of Switzerland, I couldn't understand the suggestions being shouted, but some of the peanut gallery was getting intensely upset at certain moves.

I continued down the street, passing the famous clock tower, on my way to the bear park.  Bern has an open air bear park where they had four brown bears living.  I only saw the two younger ones and one older one. They were neat to watch, and they were definitely familiar with humans and illegal treats bring tossed into the cages.  The younger bears were especially dancing around, hoping for something to be thrown their way.

I took a leisurely walk back to the train station, using different roads, and boarded my train for Zurich.

Feodor picked me up from the train station in Zurich.  We then met up with his roommate Christophe to buy food to make another traditional Swiss dinner.

Want to guess what the main ingredient was?

Cheese

I was actually honored that a house full of four engineering guys was willing to cook ME dinner.

The meal required a griddle that also had a place for little metal "personal pans" underneath.  You placed the cheese chunk in your personal pan until it was all melted and bubbly.  Then you poured in over your potatoes.  That's the beginners version.  The pros also cook prosciutto, mushrooms, eggs, etc. on the top part of the griddle to be added to the potato cheese mixture.  Its really a clever little set up that I'm sure has plenty of room for creativity as well.

That night, the guys wanted to go out to a club for a bit.  But before we went out, being the resident American, I was challenged to a game of beer pong.  One on one against Christophe.

In my defense, its been a solid year since I've played pong AND the cups were much smaller than regulation Solo size.  It wasn't a slaughtering or anything, I just feel like I let down every Keystone drinking college student in America by losing to a Swiss.

Sorry 'Murca...

The next day everyone in the house had class or some various sorted project to do.  I took the metro into central Zurich to attack the national museum on my own.

The museum had a variety of interesting exhibits.  The main ones were centered around prehistoric Switzerland and the religious reforms started by Calvin.

Besides the witch burnings that took place during these times, there was actually done good ideas being thrown around, in my opinion at least.  Calvin thought the Catholic church was power hungry and abusing its holy status.  Citizens could pay for indulgences that would excuse them of their sins before they were even committed.

Kind of like a pre-rinse cycle for your soul.

Calvin also brought up the fact that entirely too much money was being put into beautiful churches and pope hats that could be better spent helping the poor.  A topic not unrelatable to modern times.  Churches built under Calvinism were painfully plain compared to the flying buttresses of other catholic cathedrals.  Needless to day, the Catholic church was somewhat unhappy with his public criticisms.  His ideas still live on today in the form of Protestants.

That night, as payment for them cooking for me, I promised I would make the guys a traditional Ohio dish.

Green bean casserole.

What's more midwestern than a casserole?

I had made it in Europe before when I studied in Maastricht.  One of my classes had a party after the final, and we were supposed to bring a traditional food and drink from our home country.  I made a joke that I could bring anything with corn or potatoes in it.  One of the Dutch girls got very offended, claiming potatoes were definitely from the Netherlands. 
Ah no. And they're not from Ireland either.

I choose to bring a casserole then because the only other traditional American foods I could think of were hot dogs, mac and cheese, or burgers.  The only tough part was taking the American recipe and converting it to metric.  Easier said than done.

Anyways.  I boarded a train to go back to Feodor's neighborhood.

Or so I thought.

His neighborhood was called Affoltern.  Turns out, there was also a neighborhood called Affoltern Albis.

Guess which one I ended up in.

By the time I figured out where I was, how to get back to Zurich, and then where to find the correct train, three hours had passed.  It was about 8:30, and all grocery stores close at 8.

I trudged back to the house with my head hung low, thinking how I could break the news to the guys.

Turns out, they knew I was going to run into grocery problems as soon as I texted Feodor that I was in the wrong suburb, so it wasn't a shocking disappointment.

I would have stayed one more night to make that casserole, if I hadn't already had hosts set up in Munich the next day.

Tschüss Zurich
Tegs