Visitors #3 and 4!

Some friends from our New Zealand trip 2 years ago came to visit us this past weekend. Katy and Hans from England came down for a Swiss weekend, and Christina popped over from working in Zurich to see us too!

We had lovely, lazy time eating, touring, swimming in the lake, and just taking it easy - the way weekends should be. A few more photos can be seen on our Flickr.

Doug Prints Things!

I thought I would let you, our faithful readers, know what I have been doing this summer beyond keeping up the apartment and carrying a ton of groceries back on the train. I have been letterpress printing at an art college here in Geneva and I have printed two different prints.

For those who do no know, letterpress is the old fashion way of printing that was invented by our good friend Johannes Gutenberg in the middle of the 15th century. It was the common way to print things until the 1960's when other technologies took over. I love letterpress because it is difficult, dirty, and extremely rewarding. The type physically impresses into the paper and is beautifully tactile. You can read more about it here and see a great intro video here.

I have been letterpressing for more than three years and I have an online gallery based in London, England that sells my prints online. It is called Keep Calm Gallery and they are very nice people. If you want to see more of my work, you can see it on their site.

Anyway, you can see a few more photos on our Flickr if you so desire.

Scottish Summer

After two years, we felt that we needed to see the beautiful United Kingdom again so we jumped up to Scotland this week!

I (Doug) have been interested in Edinburgh College of Art for my MFA degree for quite some time and we felt it best to visit the school, see the facilities, and speak with people in the Graphic Design department. Don't worry, I'm not starting school this fall or anything, we just wanted to get a feel for the school and it is much cheaper to fly to Scotland from here than from back in the States.


As an added bonus, we got to see two sets of our good friends in Scotland and England from our YWAM days. We flew into Birmingham, England, rented (or "hired" as they say in the UK) a car and drove up to Scotland. We spent two days with our friends Conor and Lucia and toured around the very windy, very chilly (long sleeves, jackets and hoods in July?!) and very beautiful Edinburgh. We then drove down to Macclesfield, England to see Hans and Katy - who actually will be visiting us here in Geneva in a few weeks.

We don't know yet if Scotland is where we will end up for school, but we do know that the weather will be a big factor in our decision (both good and bad)!

A Flickr account? Yeah we have one.

"Frank and the City of Zurich"

My good friend, Frank Chimero, came to visit for a bit! He is a friend from my undergraduate design school and this is his first visit to Europe. We enjoyed tooling around Geneva and he even helped print a small edition letterpress print.

This past weekend, we all went up to Zurich to see the sights. Although it was rainy and cold, we really enjoyed the city. Changing from French to German was a bit of an embarrassing challenge, but we made it! Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the financial capital of Europe - which means it is very clean, efficient, and expensive. It is situated on a beautiful lake, has great old churches, a very fine art museum, and is easily walkable - all things that make Zurich a top-notch city in our book!


Like the big dorks that we are, we visited the Freitag Flagship Store which is made from old, stacked shipping containers. Freitag makes super-awesome messenger bags that are from completely recycled materials - mainly semi-truck tarps, bicycle inner tubes, and old seat belts. If you live in Springfield, Pastiche sells them downtown and they are worth every penny!


Our hotel was in a prime location and we just wandered around the city along the river toward lake Zurich. While we were walking we heard a brass band and polka music being played outside. As we got closer, we realized that they were playing music for a water jousting competition between different (very old and very exclusive) mens fraternal organizations - awesome!

More fotos on Flickr.

Daily Life in Switzerland

We've really settled into life here and feel like locals (minus the fact that we still can't communicate in French). Some things we appreciate about being here:

- amazingly accurate public transportation
- the sun not setting until 10pm
- cool summer nights
- living within a 5 minute walk to the lake
- the Alps from our balcony
- little cars and so many people walking

However, we do miss things about home too, such as:

- friends and family (of course!)
- American keyboards (Allison - I can never find the parenthesis at work!)
- an oven
- clothes dryer
- Target (have to admit it)

So, lesson of the day, there are always positive and negative things no matter where you live - just depends on how you view it!

Summer Reading

Books we are currently reading:

In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan (A)
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand (D)
A Severe Mercy - Sheldon Vanauken (A)
Lonely Planet Switzerland & Eyewitness Travel Switzerland (mostly D)
Bound for Glory - Woody Guthrie's Autobiography (D)
New Seeds of Contemplation - Thomas Merton (A & D)
Three by Flannery O'Connor (D)
W.H.O. books (obviously A)
And listening to the occasional This American Life podcast.

And for those interested, here's a recent article about one of the things the department I'm interning for is involved in.

Double Rainbow Over Lake Geneva

I feel like my dad on this one, but after a day of rain, we stepped out on our balcony and saw this! It was the brightest rainbow either of us have ever seen - the picture doesn't do it justice!