I’m sad to say that the food here is better than in California. I know, I know, this shouldn’t be true. It goes against everything I’ve been told to believe, but as far as I can tell it’s true. Things are definitely more expensive as well, but damn if they aren’t (generally) worth it.

This really stunned me because I’m so picky about what I’ll eat. Basically only locally grown produce or restaurants that freshly prepare the same. So it should be food that comes from “America’s Grocery Basket” without ever being frozen or otherwise preserved. And yet, the blueberries, apples, peaches, plums, carrots, cheese (obviously), and even tofu(?) are somehow better.

The hillsides around the city are dotted with farms, each of which seems to have a little farmstand stocked with either fresh cheese, eggs, vegetables, or fresh fruit. All of which are delicious. So far Zurich feels like Marin - if it got rainfall.

The ready access to all of these things seems to influence me into shopping less and more often. There’s small grocery stores everywhere, and the whole city is walkable. So there’s no need to ‘stock up’ on groceries, when in 3 minutes I can pop into a store just down the street and get any staple of specific ingredient that I need. The concept of something like Costco in a city like this would feel ridiculous.

Layer on top of this that I have been able to eat lettuce without the fear of cyclospora, and other food without any of the slew of issues that are currently plaguing the US food industry. Being in Switzerland has definitely felt relaxing (despite the stress of moving) and feeling free to just eat whatever has played an outsized impact in that tranquility.

Culture shocks:

Everywhere has jalapeno poppers for some reason?

My office has a juicer and an array of vegetables we can just cut up whenever we want juice??

On the plane I watched a 90 minute documentary about an apparently expert Swiss cheese maker. This is his ‘Jersey Blue’ which is made specifically with the milk of jersey cows, which apparently has a higher fat content that he swore he could differentiate from one cow to the next. Anyway it was pretty good.

There continue to be adds for potatoes everywhere

The grocery store has (unsurprisingly) a huge variety of butters and other milk products and (surprisingly) a huge selection of vegan meat alternatives!

Also there’s some fight around a proposition that would have Swiss farm land produce more meat alternatives or something but the result is a bunch of billboards calling out vegans

People love summer here - I stumbled across two street festivals this weekend. It’s a big change from the bay where we basically don’t give a fuck if it’s a nice day. It’s really nice to see people enjoying the good weather, but it also makes me anxious for winter

Sightseeing:

Swiss politics are confusing

What are these kids doing?

Check out this farmstand vending machine!

The prices continue to astound

Electrolyte CapriSun!

And of course potatoes

Albums

Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days

Since all of my guitars are waiting to be shipped to Switzerland I bought a cheap Fender Acoustasonic after watching the Rick Beato + Sean Ono Lennon interview where he mentioned he liked it as a practice guitar since it was easy to play, sounded nice, and he didn’t care if it got trashed. So as a result of having a (semi) acoustic guitar for the first time in a while I started listening to some acoustic guitar music. And man this album is still so good, just catchy stuff. Unfortunately all of the guitar is in alternate tunings with capos and is generally 2-3 tracked, so I haven’t learned anything yet - but maybe eventually. If you know some good acoustic songs (that are not just strumming chords) drop me a line!

Squeeze - assorted

For some reason or another some Squeeze song popped into my head and then I listened to some greatest hits, and now I can’t stop listening to Pulling Mussels (from the shell) and Another Nail For My Heart. I don’t really understand how this band did those as well as Cool For Cats and Tempted - they’re all so different! Anyway, Pulling Mussels is such a weird song, it’s melancholic, apparently the chords are inspired by The Tubes’ White Punks On Dope(?!), but otherwise seems to be describing a reasonably nice weekend. I really can’t tell what sort of message it’s trying to get across.

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

I listened to this because it’s mentioned in Answering The Phone by The Mountain Goats and I was surprised that I either had listened to it before or knew all the songs through osmosis. The other thing I was surprised by was that (if I can accurately assess music) it’s all basically blues with a heavy guitar tone and maybe some extra minor chords. This is really confusing to me because it came out in 1970 when I would have assumed we were well into prog and other things. Though I just looked at the list of albums from 1970 and I guess not - but wow, some good albums came out that year, including Paranoid by Black Sabbath!

Ok! That’s all for now!
Noah