Funny and true!

I saw this picture shared on Facebook today and it made me smile:

English translation:
"Étre un bébé" = Being a baby
"Selon..." = according to...
"...ma mère" = my mother
"...mon père" = my father
"...mes grands-parents" = my grandparents
"...mes voisins" = my neighbours
"En rêve" = in dreams
"En réalité" = in reality

Swisscom App just got better!

Back in February I wrote an article recommending the Swisscom TV smartphone app as a very useful addition to the life of someone with both (see For Anyone with Swisscom TV). Well, the app just got better.

In addition to all the handy features I mentioned before, the latest version also allows you to use your mobile device as a remote control by pairing it with your Swisscom TV box. Fantastic!

No more worries about losing the remote control, batteries dying, etc. Now, you simply need to open the app on your phone, browse the channels (which you can also search through by entering categories or keywords) and switch your TV on to whatever you want to watch.

Whether the kids have hidden it, the missus has lost it or the dog has swallowed it, searching for the remote is an almost daily occurrence for some people. That's where Swisscom TV's app comes in handy - as no one ever seems to misplace their phone these days (they follow us wherever we go), you'll always be able to operate your TV without having to stand up and press buttons on the box. Very, very useful.

Add to this the fact that Swisscom TV also lets you "rewind" back 30 hours, giving you a chance to watch programmes that you missed and forgot to record, and it's clear to see their service offerings are getting better and better.

Once again, as in my last article, I heartily recommend the Swisscom TV app to those with Swisscom TV and a smartphone.

I am not receiving any money or discount from Swisscom for promoting their services in this article; however, if someone from Swisscom happens to read this then I would certainly not turn down any offers!

Holiday Update

I posted a while back about the fact that we were undecided about what to do for a holiday this year (see Holiday Planning). I was leaning towards staying in Switzerland to keep the cost down, but still harboured hope that we could go somewhere with a beach to make sure we had a "proper" summer holiday. For me, a beach is a key ingredient of a real summer holiday, so our search always kept this in mind.

The camp site's swimming pool

After much deliberation and searching, we came across a camp site in the Aigues-Mortes area in the south of France, which is next to the Mediterranean Sea and therefore guarantees a beach-assisted holiday. We plan to go with some friends to the camp site that promises to be child friendly, and has lots of activities for kids to do.

It has a huge swimming pool area, plenty of playgrounds, entertainment, a bakery and a restaurant plus loads more facilities to help enjoy our stay. We'll be staying in a little cottage with it's own terrace area, that should be ideal for meals and evening drinks to wind the day down.

We'll be driving to get there in a journey that should take around 5 hours to complete. We have never before undertaken such a mammoth drive with Lydia as a passenger, and given that she oftens complains when a trip takes longer than half an hour, this would seem somewhat foolhardy on our part.

We plan to leave in the early hours of the morning in the hope that Lydia will sleep in the car, but fortunately my in-laws bought us a portable DVD player to keep Lydia occupied on our recent flight to England, and it can be attached to the back of a head rest in the car for the passengers to view, so this - with any luck - will entertain a restless Lydia during the trip.

I have already recorded a few episodes of In the Night Garden, Postman Pat and T'Choupi - all Lydia's favourite TV shows - onto DVDs, to make sure we are well prepared for any eventualities. I'll also try to get some music on there and some children's music videos (there are loads on YouTube), as that will no doubt help Lydia forget about that she is stuck in a car for such an extended period of time.

Aside from the slight hesitancy over the long drive to get to the camp site, I'm now really looking forward to going on holiday, and hopefully getting some sun in the south of France. The fact that there will be a beach involved only makes it better. I can already see us having a BBQ next to our little cottage, playing bowls on the lawn and generally having a great time as a little family.

I can't wait to see Lydia exploring the sandy beach and getting her toes wet in the sea... She has experienced this before during our trip to Cornwall in England last year (see Holiday in Cornwall), and she wasn't a big fan of sand at the time, but now that she is a bit older, bigger and more worldly, she might get a taste for building sand castles with her daddy.

A Cake fit for a Princess!

Well, we did it. We actually managed to bake a cake that a) looked pretty good, and b) was edible.

To my knowledge, no one who ate a bite of cake ended up either in hospital or face down in the toilet for several hours, and no police officers called on our door to arrest us for attempted bakery (i.e. pre-meditated mass poisoning), so on all accounts it could be considered a pretty good first attempt.

I wrote last week about my trepidation as we braced ourselves to plunge into a world of sugar frosting and cake-carving chaos (see To Bake, or not to Bake...). I really was not looking forward to the task, given our complete lack of experience in baking anything other than pre-made mixtures of bog-standard "cake-in-a-box" goodies.

As it turns out, I need not have been so worried.

We had already decided to make a cake in the form of one of Lydia's favourite CBeebies characters, IgglePiggle from In the Night Garden. IgglePiggle is a more or less man-shaped creature who is entirely blue from head to toe, save for some sprouty bits of red hair, and completely naked. This meant we didn't have to fiddle around with multiple colours or worry about different layers. In essence, it meant making a blue cake and sticking some hair on it.

The Night Garden is a strange forest world populated by characters called IgglePiggle, Upsy Daisy, Makka Pakka, the Tombleboos and many other bizarre things. To be honest, I'm not really a fan of In the Night Garden. For me, it's a little too much like the Teletubbies in that it's main characters are weird creatures that cannot speak properly or even say anything other than their own name. Each episode is also incredibly dull as they seem to do the same thing every time. However, Lydia loves it and gets excited at the sight of Makka Pakka pushing his odd little tricycle around or Upsy Daisy "singing" into her megaphone, so it seemed like a good choice for the cake.

Just before the end of last week, I raised the possibility to Chris of making a simple cake and then shaping an IgglePiggle out of marzipan (or icing) to sit on top. Fortunately for both of us, she agreed with this idea and we set about making the cake on Saturday afternoon, the day before Lydia's birthday, while my parents kept the little monkey busy.

I made the cake itself earlier in the day, using a simple Victoria Sponge Cake recipe I found on the Internet. I actually made two cakes and sandwiched them together with a layer of jam and some home-made buttercream, before coating the top and sides of the double-decker cake with more buttercream.

Chris had been to a specialist baking goods shop in Lausanne on Friday and picked up some white, blue and red packs of ready to roll icing. Using my watching mum's advice, we carefully rolled out the white icing and placed it over the top of our cake, then carefully folded the sides down and chopped off the jagged corners.

The making of IgglePiggle

Having made our simple cake, we then took on the task of making IgglePiggle.

This was the toughest part as we were using blue icing instead of marzipan, which is very fiddly to shape without cracking. Eventually, we managed to piece IgglePiggle together on top of the cake, sitting down clutching his red towel. We added some cubes made out of more blue icing and drew Lydia's name onto them (in edible ink).

Finally we rolled out a red ribbon to go around the cake and added a red star with a 2 on the front (Lydia's age), then hid the cake in our room where Lydia's curious eyes wouldn't find it.

The finished cake

When all the guests were gathered in our living room on Sunday, with Lydia - in full princess regalia - sat comfortably on the sofa, we brought the cake round and sang "Joyeux Anniversaire". To my delight, not only did she join in with the song and look happy doing so, but she also recognised IgglePiggle straight away. Phew!

It was great that Lydia liked her cake, and that it looked like what it was supposed to look like. At the end of the party, there was still more than half the cake left over and I hadn't bought any party bags to hand out to the guests, so the cake has formed part of my daily diet ever since.

I think it should be finished by this time next week.

Just for those who don't know who IgglePiggle is, this is him (left) compared to our version (right):

OK, so it isn't perfect, but I'm pretty proud of it!

To Bake, or not to Bake...

...that is the question.

This particular question could reasonably be re-phrased as "to burn the flat down, or not to burn the flat down", given my lack of baking experience and general uselessness in the kitchen.

My past attempts at MasterCheffery have seen me make such gaffs as setting fire to oven gloves, melting a spatula into a wok, and burning rice (complete with actual flames). This coming from someone who's proudest culinary creation is chocolate scrambled eggs, a concoction borne from a fridge with nothing but eggs and chocolate milk whilst backpacking around Australia.
 It's not that I don't want to cook; in fact, I quite enjoy having a go at a new recipe and new techniques, or new foods that I've never cooked before. I'm just not very good at it.

Every now and then I manage to make something edible, and on rarer occasions something quite tasty. Such examples include Gordon Ramsay's Shepherd's Pie, and Jamie Oliver's vegetable stir fry. I also once made a big meal of Indian food back (see Her First Mothers' Day) and cooked Christmas Turkey Dinner (see I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday), so I do get it right sometimes.

The reason I'm thinking about baking is because Lydia's 2nd birthday is coming up this weekend. Last year she was too young to really understand anything about what a birthday actually is, and in fact cried when we brought out the birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to her. That took some of the gloss off the celebrations, but you can't really expect a 1 year old to be ecstaticly excited about a birthday party.


This year, she is probably still too young to really grasp what all the fuss is about, but hopefully she will be a bit happier on the day. We won't have a big party with 40+ people this time, so she shouldn't be too overwhelmed, and we've been practising singing happy birthday with her for the last few weeks in preparation for the big moment.

Having worked on steeling Lydia's nerve for her birthday celebrations, our thoughts now turn to the centre piece - the birthday cake.

There are a lot of people out there know how to bake, but I am not one of them. My culinary "skills" stretch only to main courses, or occasionally starters, and bakery has never really grabbed my interest. I prefer salty snacks (like crisps and nuts) to sweet treats, but I don't think the candles would stand up properly in a pile of Walkers cheese and onion flavour crisps. A good Shepherd's Pie would probably hold the candles well, but not really appropriate for a child's birthday party.

And so, a cake must be baked, and there's only two people who can do it - me and my wife, Chris.

We've got a general theme for the cake, based on a kids' TV show she likes, but we lack the know-how to actually put it together. I've found what is supposed to be a foolproof sponge cake recipe on the Internet, and I have no doubt that the "foolproof" claim will be strongly put to the test this weekend.

Chris has gone in search of food colouring in the right colours, while I have researched how to decorate a cake. It all looks very complicated, and I honestly have no idea if we will be able to pull this off. The sponge cake base seems straightforward enough, but certain items like self-raising flour don't seem to be available in the Migros supermarket chain here. Chris has substituted this for normal flour and a raising-agent called "levure", which is typically used in baking here. It'll mean adjusting the recipe and keeping our fingers crossed.

It could go either way: it might be a stunning success that we'll look back on in years to come with fond memories, or it might be a complete disaster that results in stomachs being pumped in hospital.

My parents will be flying over tonight so they'll be here for the birthday girl's big weekend, and it'll be their job to keep her busy while we get cracking with the cake.

We will know by tea-time tomorrow if we've been successful or not. Please, everyone out there in Internet-land, keep your fingers crossed for us this weekend.

If all else fails, the local bakery / patisserie is open on Sunday mornings so we do have a backup plan.

World Radio Switzerland

I just found out that my blogs ("erniemcpeck - Adventures in Switzerland" and "Swiss Red") were mentioned as part of a broadcast by World Radio Switzerland last Thursday.

As part of their regular feature called "The Connectors", presenter (and blogger) Catherine Nelson-Pollard discussed the My Big Geneva website with Michael Shevlin (another blogger and local teacher), and as a side note also mentioned my own blogs. What an honour!

The My Big Geneva website is a fantastic source of information, and quite rightly the focus of a programme discussing expat experiences here, as it has a ton of articles on what to do in Geneva. Before talking directly to Emilie and Carla of My Big Geneva, Catherine mentioned my blogs as an example of a British expat who blogs about life in Switzerland.

You can listen to the programme through the WRS website, or download it directly through this link.

I always find it incredibly flattering whenever anyone mentions my blogs, as with my recent interview on the Expat Dads Who Blog series on the Geneva Family Diaries website. It humbles me just to know that people read what I write, and I sincerely hope that what I blog about can help other people in some small way.

I would like to express my thanks to Catherine and WRS in general for mentioning my blogs, which are also linked from their website. In return, I would like to encourage others to tune in to WRS, either through 101.7 FM in the Geneva region or by streaming through their website. Listening to shows such as The Connectors can help you find information from other expat sources that could be interesting or even helpful to you.


Below is a list of websites and blogs run by other expats here in Switzerland:

Geneva Family Diaries
- I've mentioned my appreciation for this website in past articles, after they first came to my attention when they asked me to do an interview for their series on Expat Dads Who Blog. Michela runs a very tidy and information-packed website that is mainly focused on Geneva but also stretches to the surrounding areas, and is a great source to check if you want to find out what's going on in the coming days or weeks.

Know It All Passport
- The Know It All Passport is a guide book for English-speakers in the Geneva and Vaud regions of Switzerland, and this website supports the book with expanded information and articles. As you would expect with a guide book and an accompanying website, it is absolutely jam-packed with information on what to do and where to go in these areas of Switzerland. Having read some sample pages, I think this just might be next on my list of books to read!

Lausanne Mom
- A brilliant website written my Meta, an expat mother of two who lives in Lausanne and blogs about very wide-ranging subjects related to daily life in Lausanne as well as things to see and do in other parts of Switzerland. She also has loads of great ideas for things to do with kids, with many articles on craft ideas that will come in very handy during the winter months when the kids can't go outside!

Linda - Lost in Switzerland
- This was a cracking blog by Linda who moved to Switzerland from her native Sweden. She blogged about her views on things in life, which were often unrelated to Switzerland, but amongst the articles about fashion or movies she liked there were some real gems, such as "Sweden vs Switzerland", where she compared the pros and cons of the two countries (Sweden won). Sadly she no longer blogs here as she moved back to Sweden earlier this year, but historically it's still a good read.

Living in Nyon
- This blog is written by The Connectors presenter Catherine Nelson-Pollard herself, providing a view of life in Nyon from a British expat. Lots of information about life in Switzerland can be found here, as well as articles for tourists visiting the area and upcoming events. It's another website that I wish I had found out about sooner, and this is now firmly in my list of sites to follow. Catherine also runs a blog about life in Switzerland called "The Perpetual Expatriate", giving her view on life here.

Mamizeit
- This is a web magazine written with expat mothers in mind, that aims to share information amongst international women living here in Switzerland, with topics ranging from daily life to fashion tips. It's an interesting read, even from a male perspective!

Mr Shev
- A blog written by Michael Shevlin, who was part of the WRS The Connectors broadcast that mentioned my blogs, on his views on life, which are written with a kind of humour that strikes a chord with me (quote from his Snow Driving Tips article in January: "...the motherland has had a couple of inches of snow so the whole country has come to a complete standstill and people have started eating their pets..." - funny stuff!). A good read that will make you chuckle.

One Big Yodel
- Written by an American living in Switzerland, this is a useful and often humorous look at life in here, albeit in the German part of the country. A good read and full of useful info, it's a good place to go for English-speaking expats.

Your Swiss Life Line
- A website dedicated to helping people who are moving to Switzerland, with helpful info on orientation and how to settle in and adjust to life here - why have I only just found out about this site?? It has loads of useful blog articles that would probably have come in handy to me had I read them over three and half years ago! If you are in the same situation as I was - i.e. about to move to Switzerland - I sincerely recommend this blog!


A useful list of blogs from expats here in Switzerland is also available through the Expat Blog website, here.
If you've come to my blog from the WRS website then thank you very much for your interest in me, and feel free to browse my blog entries! :)

Pigtail Princess

Lydia's hair has never been particularly long. She wasn't one of those babies born with a luxurious full head of hair; with dark hair round the sides and a fairly sparse covering on top, she actually looked like she had styled her hair on the typical image of a monk.

We have had to wait what has felt like a very long time for her hair to grow - she's nearly 2 years old - and now that it's finally long enough to play with my wife is taking every opportunity to do just that. Ponytails and pigtails are the fashion of the day in our house now!

Unfortunately, and probably fairly understandably, Lydia doesn't like the process of tying her hair up, as yanking on her hair is rather uncomfortable. She therefore objects whenever we try, and it's not really fair of us to force this on her. The problem is that she looks so damn cute with pigtails, it's hard to resist!

This is her with pigtails:

...to me, she looks really cheeky and yet unbelievably cute at the same time, although this is coming from my biased, proud-father viewpoint.

She is just starting to like the concept of a princess, so hopefully this will be the beginning of a long phase of wanting to wear pretty dresses, tiaras (plastic ones, of course), etc...

Allez Lausanne!

Back in May 2010, during my first twelve months in Switzerland, I travelled to Basel to watch FC Lausanne-Sport play against FC Basel in the final of the Coupe Suisse (see "Following FC Lausanne-Sport to the Final"), in what promised to be a great day out.

As it turns out, FCLS were on the wrong end of a serious spanking, losing 6-0 in what was truly a dire performance. Having spent 120.- CHF for a round trip train ticket, plus the cost of the match ticket, then sat for the duration of the game with a headache in torrential rain, I can honestly say I was not particularly impressed with Swiss football.

I wrote in my blog entry afterwards that I doubted I would attend another FCLS match unless they made it to another cup final. On 27th February, FCLS were scheduled to host FC Sion in the quarter final of the Swiss Cup, and an invitation from my brother-in-law Pascal tempted me to go back on my words.

La Pontaise starts to fill up with hopeful supporters...

It was a bitterly cold evening, coming a few days after most of the Canton of Vaud was covered by a few centimetres of snow, and the match was only scheduled to start at 8:30pm. I met up with Pascal and a few of his friends, and we quickly bought our tickets and went inside to warm up.

I'll admit I was a little surprised by the price of the ticket, forking out a whopping 50.- CHF for my seat in block J of the Stade Olympique de la Pontaise, the home of FCLS. Granted, my seat was well placed in row 22 slightly to the right of the stand with a side view of the pitch, a viewpoint that would let me see all the action regardless of where it happened on the pitch, but I honestly found the ticket price to be rather high considering it was FCLS.

The other side of the stadium has cheaper tickets, at around 30.- CHF, but it is more open to the elements and on such a cold night a little wind protection was a welcome bonus. Still, I wasn't impressed at the dent this made in my cash flow, and hoped that the match would be an open, entertaining affair to at least make it worth my money.

Sadly, this hope was totally misplaced.

Insipid, dire, dreadful, dull. Plenty of words come to mind that would describe the match, but none of them are positive. Both sides played some truly awful, uninspired football of a standard that would be unacceptable at even a fourth division team in England.

FC Sion scored a goal in the 28th minute of the first half, and that was practically the only effort on goal. In an attempt to keep some level of interest in what was a terrible display of half-arsed football, we spent the first half counting the successive passes by each team to see if either side managed to string more than 5 passes together before losing possession. FCLS managed this just once in the opening period, and FC Sion not at all.

On such a cold night, the shivering supporters searched desperately for a reason to applaud their side, if only to generate a bit of much-needed heat through banging their hands together. These occassions were few and far between, aside from the solitary goal.

When the referee's whistle signaled the end of the first half, there was a sense of huge, collective disappointment amongst the FCLS fans. We headed to the bar and grabbed a beer; at least that gave us something to be happy about.

The second half, unfortunately, was full of the same tripe as the first, with very little to cheer for either set of supporters. To their credit, the FC Sion fans entertained themselves with songs and the occasional flare, and they actually looked to be enjoying themselves despite the shockingly bad game they were witnessing.

The only real move for the FCLS fans to cheer was when a shot from distance crashed back off the crossbar. At that moment, the supporters might have sensed a small hope that their team might be about to wake up and suddenly start playing some actual football. The hope died shortly afterwards as the match reverted back to being the equivalent of watching paint dry.

Right at the death, FC Sion won a penalty that they duly converted with the very last kick of the game. The ref whistled the end of the match, with FCLS on the wrong side of a 2-0 defeat, exiting the Coupe Suisse with little more than a whimper.

I headed home after the match (where a hot shower helped to warm my semi-frozen body) thoroughly disappointed and a little angry to have spent so much money on such a terrible, terrible game.

This brings me back to the same sentiment as the last time I watched them play in 2010, as I really don't think they are worth my money.

It's a shame as I enjoy the experience of watching a football match, with songs ringing around the stadium and flags being waved from passionate supporters. If the ticket price was cheaper I might be tempted to go more often, but at 50.- CHF for sub-standard football, I think my wallet will be staying firmly shut.

Dashing through the snow...

This weekend we decided to take advantage of the good weather to take Lydia tobogganing at Aminona, near Crans-Montana in Valais. Having barely seen the sun in the last couple of weeks, it was a good opportunity to get some fresh air and do something fun.

The timing of our trip was perfect weather-wise with glorious sunshine and clear blue skies, but unfortunately it was also a Sunday during half-term break, which meant a lot of other parents had the same idea as us. Parking near the tele-cabin wasn't too bad, as a free multi-storey car park is very nearby. Sadly, getting a ticket was much harder.

There was a large queue lined up en masse in front of the ticket office, with only two guichets open to serve the waiting throng of people, and doing so at an incredibly slow pace. I'm not sure if it was due to language barriers - I heard all sorts of different languages in the mass of people around us - but it often took up to ten minutes for some people to buy their tickets, in what is normally a pretty simple process.

This meant that we waited for about an hour to finally buy our tickets for the tele-cabin and sledge rental, which meant we had to keep Lydia busy the whole time. You can't realistically expect a nearly-two year old child to wait patiently for this length of time, although she did well to last about twenty minutes before getting a bit grumpy.

I managed to keep her occupied for most of the hour, before the eventual bout of tears (possibly tears of boredom) just before we got to the front of the queue and bought our tickets. For information, our total time in the queue was sixty minutes, and only two minutes at the desk to actually buy the damn things.

We quickly grabbed two sledges and jumped in the tele-cabin to get up to the top of the mountain. We only purchased one trip in the tele-cabin, reasoning that we didn't fancy doing the queue again.

Lydia enjoyed riding in the tele-cabin, looking at the view and pointing at various items of interest such as trees and people skiing down the mountain.

Picnic lunch at the top

When we arrived at the top we made our way out to the piste, and sat down out of the way of the skiers and tobogganers for a picnic lunch. Eating our fill of bread, ham, cheese and crisps - washed down with a chilled beer - we lapped up the sun's warming rays in preparation for the ride down.

It took us a couple of minutes to work out exactly where the sledge run starts, as the beginning of the trail is for both skis and sledges, and we certainly didn't want to get stuck going down the wrong one. Having found the right path to follow, we negotiated some particularly steep descents on our sledges, Lydia sitting with me while Chris (very slowly) followed behind.

Although Lydia enjoyed the speed and the sensation of going fast downhill, she was definitely not a fan of having snow sprayed in her face. Some of the trail was very steep indeed, and I had to really dig my heels into the snow to try and stop us going too fast, fearing slightly for Lydia's safety. This lead to snow being flung up in front of the sledge, most of which went straight onto Lydia.

Despite being well protected in her ski combination, hat, scarf, gloves and sunglasses, the snow managed to get on every available patch of bare skin on Lydia's face. After one decidedly scary downhill slide, I stopped and looked at Lydia - her entire face was covered in bits of snow, she looked almost like a tiny snowman! Naturally, she did not appreciate this, and she cried for most of the time wanting to stop the downhill snow showers.

Unfortunately, you can't really stop halfway down a mountain, so we had to keep going. I would stop every couple of minutes to try to calm Lydia's tears, but she really didn't enjoy it very much.

Pit stop with a view!

We came across a little kiosk/café after about 2km of the track, and stopped for a rest and a glass of mulled wine. The friendly barman told us that we still had around 4km to go before we reached the bottom, but that we had already gone past the worst of the descents. This cheered us up, and a little bit of chocolate eventually made Lydia cheer up as well.

When we restarted the course, Lydia's tears restarted as well. She really didn't enjoy the sledging, and on several occasions she tried to stand up and turn around, leading me to have to restrain her while I stopped the sledge to be able to comfort her. For the final 3km of the course I managed to avoid spraying any snow on her at all, but this didn't stop the crying.

We finally reached the bottom, with me carrying Lydia in my arms for the last few hundred metres just to stop her near-hysterical screaming. I instantly stood up and carried Lydia back to the car, feeling her calming down with each step. By the time I got to the car, she felt completely relaxed in my arms, and I'm pretty sure another five minutes like that and she would have fallen asleep (I should point out here that it is incredibly rare for Lydia to sleep anywhere other than her bed or occasionally her car seat)!

I eased her into the car, covered her up with a blanket and then drove off. After only two minutes in the car, Lydia was asleep. She slept the whole way back to Bussigny, and promptly woke up just as we arrived at home. Think the little munchkin tired herself out with all the crying!

Thinking back to the sledging itself, I quite enjoyed it (if you remove the screaming child aspect). The trail has some very steep parts and some sharp turns, but we managed to negotiate the entire course without falling off the sledge.

The views from the top are stunning, and on a sunny day such as this one the trip to the bottom is very nice indeed.

The downside for us is that the next day it was clear that Lydia has picked up a cold, most likely from getting snow in her face so often. It seems that every time we go tobogganing with her she ends up with the sniffles.

I think this is the last time we will go tobogganing this winter. We'll see how we get on next year - hopefully Lydia will like it more than she did this time.

I would definitely go back to Aminona as the course was fun, but try to avoid going during school holidays.

For anyone with Swisscom TV

We have Swisscom TV at home, giving us a larger choice of channels to watch that a typical cable connection (although the vast majority of those channels are in German).

The main reason why I wanted to have this was because it comes with a selection of English-speaking channels, including BBC, ITV and Channel 4 from England, and I thought being able to watch shows from my homeland would help me keep my sanity after making the move to Switzerland.

In fairness, my wife and I generally end up watching the same shows, so having a larger choice of channels doesn't really make much difference, except for the fact that I can watch English shows.



Swisscom TV's iPhone application

One excellent feature of Swisscom TV is the digital recorder box - much like Sky Digital that I had in England. It allows you to record your favourite programs onto a hard drive to watch later. This has been particularly useful to record episodes of T'Choupi, a cartoon that Lydia demands to watch while she has her morning and evening bottles. We don't generally have the TV on when Lydia is around, but she refuses to drink her bottle without T'Choupi... Think our Swisscom TV box now has every single episode of T'Choupi ever made saved on the hard drive!



I recently stumbled across an iPhone application for Swisscom TV that I think is really worth getting - it's completely free, and allows you to browse the channel listings for every channel that you receive.

But that's not the best part - you can use the application to tell your box to record programmes, meaning you needn't be worried about forgetting to set the box to record a programme as you can do it on the go!

And, as an added bonus, you can watch many of the shows through your phone, so you don't even need to be watching your TV at home!

I have made fair use of this feature recently to watch football matches - we only have 1 TV at home and my wife is not a footie fan, so Swisscom TV app spared us an argument or two.

As it's free and has lots of handy features, I recommend this to anyone who has a Swisscom TV subscription and wants to make sure they don't miss their favourite shows!

I should point out that I am not affiliated in any way with Swisscom, nor am I benefitting at all from advertising their products on this blog. I am simply happy with their offerings and want to spread the good word! :)