Canadamerican Thanksgiving

After being away from Calgary for so long, we thought it'd be nice to use late-Canadian / early-American Thanksgiving as an excuse to have a potluck-style dinner with our Calgary family.  It was great to visit with everyone and, of course, the best part of Thanksgiving - eating all of the delicious leftovers for an entire week ;)

Automne à Montréal

On our way home from Zurich, we stopped by Montreal to spend some time visiting friends and family.


While we were there, Jen's parent happened to be flying through Montreal on the way to their cruise.  Dom's mom, Charlotte, hosted them for a couple of days so they finally got to meet Dom's family, get a little taste of rural life, and practice some French.  They've always wanted to see Eastern Canada during the colourful autumn season, so we were crossing our fingers that the timing would work out. Unfortunately, they just missed the most vibrant colours... but they still enjoyed the amazing views from Charlotte's place and driving around to sightsee the surrounding areas.  


Jen's dad was especially thrilled to drive Charlotte's tractor around to mow the lawn - apparently it's something he's always wanted to try! hehe



Steampunk Party

We happened to be in Zurich during Iris's birthday.  Lucky for Dom, she wanted to have a "steampunk" themed party.  Steampunk is a genre of science fiction inspired by 19th-century steam-powered machinery and fashion. 

We didn't bring any costumes to Zurich, so with the help of Yannis, Iris, and Fabian, we all started designing/making our costumes and decorations for the party.  We all focussed our attention on weapons first and spent an entire day creating them out of random things including cardboard, old plastic containers, spray cans, nerf guns, and.. a saw! 


Jen also wrote an app for Yannis so he could put an iPad inside of his costume.  The app had a metal door that he could slide open to reveal his beating heart. 


On the day of the party, Fabian airbrushed some body-art on for us and it was time to put everything together.. Et voilà...


The rest of Iris and Fabian's friends arrived a short time later.  We all had a really great night!


Happy Birthday Iris! :)

Luzern

On one weekend, we decided to rent a car to visit a city called Luzern.  We walked around the cute storybook town and its surrounding wall while shopping for accessories for our Steampunk costumes.  We also happened to be there during an air-show and boat race, so the town was just buzzing with people, despite the gloomy weather!


Luzern was also hosting a local winter festival where we got to sample some authentic raclette!!  Here, they put a special blend of spices on top of the cheese which enhance the flavour :)  Unfortunately the experience somewhat destroyed our previous love for home-raclette as the real thing was SO much better!  


Dom's first Unicorn

As you probably know, unicorns are very rare.  What is less known is that the lifecycle of unicorns are similar to butterflies in that they have multiple stages. In the unicorn's case, the stages are: grober, cocoon, and unicorn.  

For Dom's first graffiti, he decided to introduce the grober to the world.  We went to Richterswil, where Fabian’s friend had a legal wall that we could create our very first official street art on.  

Vlad did the elephant, Dom did the grober, Bane did the squid, Gabriel did the lettering, and Pest did the skull. 

Here are some photos of the creations in-progress.


Chur and Crestasee

For Iris's birthday, Fabian organized a surprise dinner at a gourmet restaurant in a city called Chur (where Iris works during the week).  The surprise was a great success as she had no idea that a bunch of us were heading down to Chur for the dinner!  Since game-meat was in season, we ate a delicious set-menu... the waiter's translation of what we were eating was "Bambi", "Bambi's mom", and "Pumba".  

Prior to the dinner, we decided to take the day off to meet up with Fabian and Yannis who were in already in Chur for a kids graffiti workshop.  The workshop was at a school where, just a couple of weeks ago, they had just finished one of their biggest works!


Since we had some time before dinner, we decided to head to the mountains for a short hike.  Fabian brought us to a favourite local spot called Crestasee.  The trees had already started changing colours so the scenery was gorgeous.  


The lake had a rope swing, so we did a few swings on it until Fabian and Yannis mustered up the courage to actually jump in!  Being October, the water was really.. NOT.. warm!!  


Dom and Yannis had rock-skipping and other rock-throwing competitions :), while Fabian had a great time taking some amazing photos!

Learning Graffiti

During our visit, we had an amazing opportunity to learn graffiti with Fabian (Bane) and Yannis (Pest)!  

Wuma, a paint store near Landquart, Switzerland, hosted a free "open-wall" graffiti day.  Pest gave us a lesson on the basic techniques, and then Dom started on a small graffiti on the practice wall to get a feel for how the cans work. He tried some lettering - the word “Beyond” (in case you can't read it ;)) 


Jen's cousin and boyfriend, Shannon & Oleg, also made it out to the event along with their friends, Vlad & Becky, who were visiting from the U.S.  We found out that Vlad is an artist at Pixar, so he was also excited to try graffiti for the first time!


After a bit of practice, the next step was to paint over the first graffiti with an even bigger one!  With help from Pest and Vlad, the first-ever “Digital Nomads” tag came to fruition.  


Bane also worked on a piece with one of his young little students:


The end product from the practice wall:


A bunch of Bane's "older" students (they looked around 10-12 years old), worked together to complete this piece on the side wall of the Wuma building:


During the event, Wuma also served us wine, beer, baked treats, and a huge vat of really yummy "Gerstensuppe", a traditional barley soup common in this area.


It was such a beautiful warm day and the event was so much fun!  Thanks to both Pest and Bane for the opportunity (and the much needed graffiti help! :)).

Switzerland

During our trip to Kos we met up with our Kitesurfing Swiss friends Elias and Fabian again!  Fabian invited us to visit Switzerland and stay at their home... little did he know that we would actually take his offer seriously!! :P  

Within a couple of months, we found ourselves in Switzerland - Elias was kind enough to pick us up from the airport and drive us to Fabian's house where we finally met Fabian's girlfriend, Iris.  We were also excited to find out that Yannis (Pest) from Cypress (who we also just met in Vietnam this past winter), was also staying with Fabian for a few months while we were there. :)  

We stayed for about 3 weeks and had such a great time with them - working, visiting, eating, drinking, doing graffiti, partying, catching up on movies, etc... what more could you ask for!  :)


Jen's cousin, Shannon and her boyfriend, Oleg, had also moved to Zurich within weeks of our arrival!  We met up with Shannon and she took us on a tour of the campus where she's doing her masters degree.  We also checked out some key areas of Zurich and had a nice thorough tour of Zurich's variety of public transportation options!  Within one evening, we had taken the bus, train, tram, funicular, and ferry boat :)


Of course, we had to check out some food including one of the well-known frankfurter stops in Bellevue, and some typical winter-Zurich heissi marroni (warm roasted chestnuts)!  Yum!!  We discovered that chestnuts actually look like sea urchins, how cool is that!


Last Weeks in London

Since we weren't able to get UK work Visas for the rest of the year, we had to hop back and forth to London for meetings every 6-7 weeks in June, July, and September.  Each trip was only a week long, so we didn't have time to do much sight-seeing.

We spent a lot of time doing what the Londoners do.. drinking with friends and coworkers!

We also made time to check out the Turner paintings and other "art" at the Tate Britain Museum.


Dom and I don't often go to art museums.  There's usually some stuff that we like, but there's also a lot that we just.. don't.. really.. get!  Here are a few examples:

Sarcophaguses made from slices of old bread with bites taken out of them... ?


A canvas with just black and yellow intersecting lines


A painting called "Veil"... that's just an entirely black canvas

If someone can explain the significance of these pieces and why they're amazing enough to be in a prestigious museum, please enlighten us, we're really quite curious!!



All roads lead to Rome

After travelling so many roads around the world, we finally made it... to Rome!  It was only a quick 3 day stopover on our way back to Montreal.  Too many things to see/do and so little time... so we just visited the major sites and will leave the rest for next time :).

As part of our "quest" to see the Wonders of the World (no, not really), we had to see the Colosseum and neighbouring Foro Romano (Roman Forum).


We also popped by to visit Pope Francis, but he wasn't home... guess we'll just have to come back!


We spent the rest of the time casually wandering the streets of Rome to see what else the city has to offer.


Oh!  Of course we can't forget the most important part of the trip.. the Gelato!  During our 3 days, we visited what the internet considers to be the best gelato places in Rome.  Miam miam.  :P