Chess before coffee?

So Duncan and I have gotten into the weekend ritual of going to the cute little cafe (Bubbles) across the road and playing chess over breakfast. That's right - chess before coffee. Insanity, right? But I love it. These are the kind of things that remind me of the level of our compatibility.

We used to play chess all the time when we were traveling, particularly after we finished the cycling and transferred to trains as our main form of transport. My little notebook, initially filled with statistics such as average speed, total distance, top speed, etc., started to instead be filled with tallies of how many times Dunc had beaten me at chess. Yes, you read right. Not 'who won', but 'how many times Dunc beat me'.

He won a total of nineteen times before, on Christmas Eve (after I had plied him with a lot of that special Danish Christmas beer) I finally beat him. Time to insert another column in my notebook!

Now, it seems we are pretty even. The last three times I have won two times (including this morning!) and the other was a stalemate. Love it! I wonder, though, if I am actually getting better at chess, or if I am just learning how he plays chess...

In other news, I'm about to head to the lake for a swim down near my lovely Finnish friend's place. She's due to give birth in under three weeks! I hope she doesn't go into labour when we are out in the middle! Haha. It's alright - I've been practicing my survival stroke, so I've got it covered. I think I'll bring my waterproof camera to take gorgeous pictures of her belly sticking out of the water as she does backstroke with the mountains behind her.

Ahoy there! It's been a while, yes, I know. But remember, no blog post means major advancements in my novel writing... right? Actually, for the past few months, the major lack in blog posts have been more-so related to major advancements in my German language skills. I'm just a big whirl of languagey goodness in all its forms at the moment.

Why the German language and I are no longer friends:
It's a total bastard of a language. I mean... there are worse, it's true. I can't imagine how frustrated I'd be after a couple of months of learning Mandarin, for example. Or perhaps even French.

But, I mean, REALLY. Surely I can just learn one-for-one translations, develop my vocabulary, and then plough straight in, right? Nup. I have to learn bloody grammar. And yes, it is getting better. In my head, when sorting out what to say to someone and the crazy order in which my words should flow, I'm quite often getting it right. Without trying. It is slowly becoming automatic.

But some things will never be automatic, I fear. Take this example from Mark Twain's incredible essay, entitled 'The Awful German Language':

"The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions... are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. Here is an example: 'The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED." '

I will not continue to quote Mark Twain, though he manages to encapsulate all of my problems so concisely it nauseates me. If you'd like a ridiculously entertaining read on how Awful this German Language is, head here: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

I was studying it intensively, which means a solid 2.5 hours (with homework stacked ontop of that) of classes each day, where you are only able to speak German. Using any English in these classes is sure to earn you a stink-eye. After a little over two months of this, I realised two things:
1. I simply cannot absorb any more information. I need time to mull over this and actually use it without ploughing onto the next ridiculously difficult unit.
2. I had written only 1000 words of my novel.

Hence, I've pulled back. I am now taking the second most intensive option, which is (yes, really) one 1.5hour class, once a week.

The Great Battle (A.K.A. Writing a novel)
BUT, my novel is now coming along great guns! I just love writing it, I love getting so caught up in it that I lose all track of time, I love re-reading my work and being completely engrossed in it, forgetting it was me that wrote it. I love sharing it with a couple of people in the two writing groups I now belong to, and receiving the kind of praise that makes me blush for days afterwards. I love having this fire inside me, where I know that it is just a matter of time until I have it written.

So, yeah, it's going well. :)

Life in General
Switzerland is incredible. Summer is here, which means weekends of grilling with friends, swimming in the lake, cocktails by the river, and lots of terrace cafes, restaurants, bars, etc. It's a good life, this.

We have really gotten into a groove here, so I find it difficult to update people with 'news' - it's just our 'normal life' now. Dunc's work is going really well, we are making lots of friends and continually meeting new people. But Zurich is a small enough city that, even now, we are realising everyone is connected. I met a woman at my writing group, for instance, and we are going to get together next week to play some music. Turns out she runs a business with two other people - one of whom I met days earlier at a baby shower, the other is also in a writing group of mine. And her husband works with Dunc. :) That tends to be how things here happen. Everyone is connected.

It's nice. :)