bottling day!

it's a beautiful sunny day in saas fee!  yesterday we had snow (not much though) and today we are back in short sleeves eating in the garden.  after this post i'm heading back to the apartment to bottle my first batch of kombucha!!!  i share a three bedroom apartment with two 20 somethings getting their PhD's.  i like to call it the "Real World-Saas Fee".  today is our last day with margarethe which makes me sad.  we all cried (including her) when we watched her film "Rosenstrasse" this morning.   i am going to miss her.

more scenery

one of many waterfalls, one of many glaciers

gnome incarceration

some of the gnomes in saas fee are not free.

day two of classes

this is a beautiful seed pod i found while hiking.  they were everywhere.

today was our second day of classes.  right now i have margarethe von trotta, a very famous german new wave director who is teaching "the political as personal".  so far, we have watched three of her films "The Promise", "The Other Woman", and "Marianne and Juliette".  "Marianne and Juliette" won the golden lion in venice and bergman wrote that it was one of his favorite films.  all are inspired by her life in germany as a child of WWII and what is was like to live in the shadow of the war.  personally, she is a lovely person and i have been able to spend one on one time with her discussing her films and art.  its pretty great!  see her on imbd:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0903137/

kindergarten

they start young in saas fee.

our classes begin today.  last night we all met and then went for a drink at a local bar where everyone was astounded that a pitcher of beer costs 50 ch f-about $43.  it is a resort town!  we found out that we will be attending the venice biennale in june! yippee!  http://www.labiennale.org/en/biennale/  this photo is from my first hotel room balcony.

gnomes abound

saas fee is home to a large population of gnomes, possibly even larger than the one in my yard back at home.

kombucha fangt an!

here's a picture of my travel kombucha's first moments-looking out over the alps.  its very happy here.

the voyage

i'm off!  a long flight from seattle to paris made much longer by the drunken, snoring, personal space invading man sitting next to me.  i didn't sleep at all but watched 4 films.  CDG was a mess, lots of construction and confusion but i survived and made my connection to geneva.  the train trip from geneva to visp was beautiful and also long.  most exciting was the hour long bus ride from visp to saas fee up tight steep curves.  the bus stopped often on the way up and by the time it reached saas fee i was the only passenger.  the bus pulled into a large garage and left me off on the outskirts of town.  saas fee is a car-free city.  

saas fee was clouded over and the afternoon became very dark by the time i arrived around 4pm.  i checked into my temporary hotel and went for a brief walk around town.  it seemed to be deserted and many of the businesses are closed until june or july.