Goodbye EURO2008 from Switzerland and The Wonder of Bern

I prefer using my own photos when I blog, although it is not always possible. This shows the match Holland:France where Holland won 4:1 against France. These were the closing scenes after the victory where the Dutch players spoke to their fans and families and took their children in their arms. Note on the right Edwin Van Der Sar - my favourite of the tournament (but my husband always said it is not how they look but how they play). So I wrote a few thoughts down after the tournament and here they are.

The last football match of the EURO2008 has now been played in Switzerland, the final matches now being taken over by our neighbours in Austria. The dice have tumbled and on Sunday we have the final Germany v Spain. I can only say may the best team win, being a European with my roots in England and now many in Switzerland I have no priorities any more. England didn’t get there and Switzerland only made a short visit.

Switzerland was the host land. The games were played in the towns of Basel, Bern, Zürich and Geneva. I live in a village just down the road from the town of Solothurn. Solothurn is sort of between Basel and Bern so we were not involved to a large extent. Zürich is in the East and Geneva in the West. Our town, as many others in Switzerland, had a large screen sponsored by the Union Bank of Switzerland where you could watch the match live with friends and fellow supporters. I heard that was not such a success as hoped for, most people staying at home in comfort or sharing with their colleagues in a favourite restaurant.

So what happened. Well one match Switzerland v Turkey was more or less played under water. There was a cloud burst and everyone got wet and the ball just swam around. The result being that in Basel the turf had to be replaced by a lightening action for the next match. Actually Basel is one of our best pitches. The games in Bern also had their excitement. The pitch in Bern was rebuilt a couple of years ago and now goes by the name of Stade de Suisse. During the normal football days it is the home of Bern Young Boys. During the EM 2008 it was taken over by our Dutch colleagues. The orange team played mostly in Bern and the results were clear. All camping places in the area suddenly took on an orange hue. We share four languages in Switzerland, but we suddenly had a fifth, Dutch. The squares and streets of Bern were populated by people clad in orange and there was a problem with supplies of beer to the restaurants in Bern.

Speaking as a normal average person there was no great problem in Switzerland. Hooliganism was not more than usual (if Basel meet Zürich in a match there is usually an amount of disagreement – Basel people and Zürich people are known to be on two different wave lengths in Switzerland).

So now Switzerland can go back to its normal lazy days of Summer, entertaining tourists in the Bernese overland, Lucern and Lugano. The gnomes can start distributing their gold bars and talk amongst the people is back to the price of bread and milk and not who should have won, and whether it should have been a penalty or not.

I would now like to take you back to 1954. My husband was then 15 years old and I was 8 years old somewhere in the East end of London, not even thinking that a husband could exist somewhere in the world. 1954 was the year that the Jules Rimet cup came to Switzerland. Eight years after the war Europe was still recovering from what had happened and things were sort of getting back to normal. The football games that had been stopped during the war were returning to a normal situation.
The teams involved in in the tournament were stationed in Switzerland in various towns and qualification matches had been played.

It so happened that the Germans were situated in Spiez in the Bernese Overland on the Lake of Thun and the Hungarians in Solothurn. This was the day of the Hungarian success as football had not been seen for years, the hero of Hungary being Ferenc Puskas their captain. Now imagine my husband a 15 year old school boy knowing that the Hungarians were training on the football ground of Solothurn. Of course, he went to see them training along with many other school children of the time. One of his best school colleagues were the Häner brothers who were both involved in football in later life as physiotherapists for the Swiss National Football team and Young Boys Bern. The memories of this training camp in Solothurn left a long lasting impression, especially as the final for the Rimet cup was played between Hungary and Germany. This match was eventually known as the Wonder of Bern. I don’t know how many here remember the match, but it was apparently really a miracle. Hungary went into the lead in the first half scoring two goals and the way the Hungarians had been playing up to then it was expected that this is the winning team, but this was not to be. Germany caught up in the second half and it was 2:2 and then the unbelievable happened. Six minutes before the end of the game Germany scored to go into the lead 3:2. Was this the wonder or not. Just before the end of the game Ferenc Puskas scored the equalizer making it 3:3 and the goal was disallowed by the referee as the English linesman said it was offside. Since that day this match has been known as the Wonder of Bern. I was reading some reports of the match, but it seems that film coverage was not exactly perfect and it is still being discussed today whether it was or was not a goal. I would also mention that it seems it was the first time a football team, the Germans, wore football boots with screw on studs supplied by the company Adidas.

Many years have now gone by, Ferenc Puskas, the football legend, died in 2006, but his name will never be fogotton. A film “Der Wunder von Bern” was made over this World Cup 1954 and has been shown on European television, unfortunately only available in the German language and even includes interviews with people from Solothurn. I found a YouTube film of the match 1954 where at the beginning the Hungarians are shown in their training camp in Solothurn, afterwards the German in Spiez, but unfortunately only in French. I would add that my husband told me they played a friendly match with our local Solothurn football team. He couldn’t remember the exact result but it was something like Hungary 12: Solothurn 0.

The Invasion

A few days ago I decided to made some tarts with a lemon cream filling. Actually I was trying something out. As a kid I would visit my grandmother every second Sunday with my mum and dad. She lived on the outskirts of London in the county of Essex. Over the years Essex has become part of London, but at this time it was like going to the country. She had bluebells at the bottom of the garden which is one of my memories. Actually the family arrived there during the war as their house in Stratford, East End of London, had been destroyed by a stray bomb.

Anyhow my grandmother was a fantastic pastry cook. She had grown up at Sissinghurt castle where the family were occupied as farm labourers. As she was the only girl amongst 11 brothers she could not work on the farm so she had her job in the local diary. Mind you, I found this out only about 5 years ago when I started digging into the background of the family. I belonged to a few genealogy societies and got a lot of information. So, back to the pastry cooking – she made the best lemon tarts that I had ever tasted in my life. Neither my mother, nor anyone else in the family knew how she made them, but after eating one they were imprinted on your memory and about fifty odd years later I still remembered the taste.

Admittedly I am drifting off the topic here, but that is the beauty of blogging, I can ramble on how I want to – like the television you can always switch it off. So there I was in the kitchen capturing memories of a grandmother’s pastry and did my best and the result was almost perfect. I took two eggs and beat them with a good portion of sugar, added some milk and then poured the juice of a fresh lemon into the mixture beating as I did it. I was a bit worried that the mixture might curdle, but it didn’t. I had a rolled out flaky pastry that I had bought at the supermarket. I know gran made her own pastry, but she didn’t have a supermarket and the machines were then not invented for rolling out the pastry and being able to preserve it, so you couldn’t buy it then. Sorry gran, but these days things have gone a long way since around 1955 when I used to make my Sunday visits.

So my super granny tarts were baked in the oven and came out perfectly. The pastry nice and brown and the filling had set correctly. After they cooled down they were distributed amongst the natives at home and everyone was happy. They almost tasted the same as my gran’s pastries. There was one left, and out of politeness or forgetfulness it was left on the kitchen surface for someone to eat later.

That was the nice part of the story, now comes the exciting part. Around eleven in the evening Mr. Swiss found it was time to empty the dishwasher (something else gran didn’t have) and called out I should come into the kitchen, “where have they all come from?” The last lemon pastry was still sitting in the kitchen, but unfortunately its nice yellowy colour was disturbed by moving black dots, being ants. Looking further we found the complete kitchen surface to be more or less populated by them. The problem was that we had a sort of granite with a mottled pattern and it was difficult to find all the invaders. I took my courage in both hands and a wet dishcloth and swept them down into the sink. I afterwards submerged them in the water from the running tap and so the first invaders were sent to the eternal ant land. Actually my first thought at the beginning of the invasion was to take a photo. However, realising that Mr. Swiss was getting rather nervous, I decided against it. Just one of the problems we photographers have to deal with. Shame really, I am sure it would have been in the newspaper on the next day. Headlines “Home in swiss village kidnapped by ants”. That was phase one.

Phase two was where did they come from. They came in through the French window from the garden as we noticed that was the route of their ant path. Now ants are very slender animals, not bulky and find there way through all crevices. They decided to explore the dishwasher and indeed made a motorway to transport themselves along the side of the dishwasher door to the top of the kitchen surfaces – wait a minute I think we have been here before. So I sent them down the sink again. Rembering this was now around 11.30 at night, Mr. Swiss removed the bottom surrounds to the cupboards as behind there was a hollow room which was providing a nice hiding place for our new pets. Needless to say the air was rich with negative exclamations both in Swiss German and English – not impressing the ants very much. As we were not preprared for this attack, we had nothing to combat the ants with. However, we found a bottle of methylated spirits (which we use for the preparation of cheese fondue and not for drinking purposes) and cleaned all the surfaces with it. Unfortunately methylated spirits has the advantage of evaporating quickly. Both being very tired we eventually retired at about 12.30.

The next morning our first glance was to see whether there was any movement in the ant population. There was, a coming and going at the kitchen window. This time they had lost the interest in climbing, probably realising that many of their brothers and sisters had lost their life by drowning the evening before.

Mr. Swiss and I went shopping and returned armed with at least six anti ant tins. For those that do not know them, they are filled with a poison that attracts ants. They enter the tin, take a walk and afterwards return to the nest containing the egg laying machine known as the queen. Somehow the poison infects the nest, kills the queen and that is the end of an ant colony, the problem being that No. 1 you hope that they return to the nest, No. 2 you hope that the queen gets poisoned. This process does take a couple of days. On the second day I bought a can of anti insect to spray on the invasion, but they had disappeared. Since then I have not seen a single ant inside. Admittedly I have numerous tribes in all shapes, sizes and colours in the garden, but no longer indoors.

Here is the sequel to the story: Yesterday evening there was a ring at the door and Mr. Swiss opened it to find it was our neighbour. He was invited in and guess what he asked “Do you have anything against ants, we have an invasion in the kitchen”. No problem we told him, we still had two unused anti ant tins and told him to have them. We also gave him the spray which we had not yet used. We have wonderful next door neighbours, so we were glad to be of assistance. I saw his wife today and she said there were now only one or two ants left. I just had to write that down. Now I feel much better. Thank goodness earwigs are bigger than ants. We have quite a population in the garden at the moment, but they have not found the way indoors, yet?

The spy that came in from the Water

Tamara had begun to hate this place, but it was a lucrative business and she could always use some extra funds. “One day I will show them all” she thought as she parked her car at the edge of the lake. Although it was Sunday, it was quiet. There were a few dark clouds hanging over the lake which did not make it so inviting and a cold breeze was blowing. This time she was almost late. Just as she was leaving, she bumped into her neighbour Natasha.
“Going out Tamara? I just brought those plans I promised you.”
“I was actually just going to cool down in the lake at the jetty. But give them to me all the same, they are on a memory stick from the computer, so I can attach them to my necklace until I get back.”
Natasha was glad, as she was going away herself for a few days and knew that Tamara was depending on those details.“

When Tamara arrived at the jetty, it was empty except for one family that had taken their place on the beach.

“Come on Fred, time to get dressed, you will catch your death if you go into the water again.”
“But mum, I found some shells for my collection where I paddled the last time.”
“Fred, what did I say? Joe tell your son it is time to get ready and go home.”
Joe had been reading his Sunday paper and did not look like he wanted to go. However, it seemed that mum spoke the words of power in this family.
“Fred, you heard what your mother said, now put your clothes on.”

Tamara walked past the family on her way to the water. “Thank god for that” thought Tamara “at last they are making a move and I can do my business in peace.”

Tamara was one of the clerks at her country’s embassy organizing files on the computer and transmitting the information contained in them to her mother country. It was well paid work and she could use her knowledge of foreign languages. Her visits to the lake were relaxing although it was also business. She would get a message and knew it was time again for a swim. The last message was waiting for her when she got home at four in the morning after returning from a party at the embassy. Gregory, the first secretary, just did not want to let her leave and go home. He had other ideas, but Tamara decided to keep him on the waiting list until she had usage for him. Bleary eyed she automatically switched on the computer and saw the “you got mail” sign blinking at her.

So it was Sunday afternoon, here she was and a storm was brewing. She made her way warily along the wooden jetty. She was bare foot and dressed in her swimming costume to make it look as if she was just one of the natives having a relaxing Sunday afternoon. When she got to the end of the pier she started counting. One, two, three, four until she stood over the tenth plank from the end.
“Just the right place for a dive” she thought. She slid into the cold somewhat muddy looking water. Although the sight was blurred she could make out the outline of the supports to the pier. Just as she wanted to have a swim she felt a vice like grip around her body and a dull pain go through her arm.

She came to herself again in a room without windows and standing over her was a familiar figure, but who?
“You do not recognize me Miss Tamara, when I am dressed in what you would call street clothes.”
but the voice was very familiar.
“Boris, the guard at the door to the embassy”
“Exactly Miss Tamara, but you see I am not just a guard, but a guardian of my country's secrets and our country does not like people that sell these secrets.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Of course you do. Do you think your little excursions to the jetty at the lake have gone unnoticed. We are completely in the picture and have been observing you for some time now. One of our divers was waiting for you this time and observed your movements under water. He was able to render you unconscious with a quick injection and removed the memory stick containing the secrets you are selling from your necklace. At this moment we are having it processed on our computer.”

The door opened and the first secretary to the embassy made his entrance, Gregor.
“Boris, I think we have made a big mistake. The memory stick shows no top secrets.”
“This cannot be, I myself am sure that she has been smuggling valuable information to the other side by memory stick. She translates our documents and deposits them at the jetty on her swimming excursions.”
“Rubbish” said Tamara, who had now regained her senses. “I don’t know what you are talking about. I put the memory stick on my necklace just before leaving. I went for a swim and was ambushed by one of your like-to-be James Bond types. That is all I know. I was given the memory stick by Natasha, my neighbour, just before I was leaving home and did not have time to put them away in my flat. It contains important information that I need myself.“
“Excuses, excuses” said Boris “we are not so stupid as you think. There is no better way of transferring our secrets to the enemy.

Gregory listened to them both and turned to Boris.
“Boris, you might be good at your job, but the memory stick contained no government secrets. The only blueprints to be found were knitting patterns and rescuing those from the other side is not exactly a heroic deed. This is the problem when people are stationed in foreign countries. They see spies behind every door. Boris, I think we both owe an apology to Tamara. She was just taking an afternoon swim at the lake.”

************

“Fred, put your bathing trunks and towel into the washing and afterwards you can watch the cowboy film on the television.”
Fred did has he was told. He knew that his mum and dad wanted him out of the way when they got home from an excursion. Something about taking it easy before dinner, although Joe and his wife had other matters to speak about.
“Did you get it, Joe?” asked his wife.
“No problem” he answered. “As she walked past on her way to the jetty, she dropped it onto my newspaper. Nothing like a memory stick for transferring information today. Will load it up at the foreign office on Monday and see what she has delivered this time. That girl is a real professional.”

************

Boris was deported back to his homeland and was employed at the Hotel Moskva as doorman. Gregory had his eye on Tamara for some time, but as we all know love is blind and so he kept Tamara in the embassy as a valuable employee and even promoted her to the assistant of the first secretary.

Tamara was overjoyed with her new job. Her customers would be so grateful for the information she was delivering, Her Joe and his wife were people to be met in all walks of life. She did not really care what nationality they were or where they were employed, after all money was money. And of course Gregory was the answer to her dreams . The secrets he told her in their love nest, that was worth its weight in gold.

Summer has arrived - A conversation with the Cats

At last the summer has arrived. Everyone is suffering from the heat (at least at my age) and is longing for a couple of dismal days where it cools down and you can sit around in the shade and read a book, a newspaper or take a walk somewhere. The time when I somehow wish I could be with my blog colleagues in downunder enjoying their winter, which I have heard it not as cold as ours. However, just make the most of it.

“Mrs. Human”
Oh dear, my cat Nera has appeared from under a bush in the garden. “Something you want to say Nera?”
“Definitely, I always have something to say. Think of us cats in this weather. You are sitting outside, just dressed in cool clothes. Just try and take your skin off.”
“I don’t think that is possible Nera”
“Well, imagine being a long haired silky furred cat like my beautiful self”.
“Overdoing it again with self esteem Nera?”
“Mrs. Human you know what I mean. The predicament that me and my furry friends find ourselves in in Summer. We are not able to take our fur coats off, so we just have to do our best to cool down.”
“Which means Nera?”
“Well I just curl up under the bushes which is not always the best place to be.”
“At least you can keep cool.”
“Yes, super – under those bushes I provide a home for a couple of hundred homeless ants, you know how that can be annoying in the fur”.
“Nera, there is another problem with your home for ants. You transport them inside and that is not funny. Mr. Human and I eventually got rid of them, but had to deposit at least 4 anti ant tins in the kitchen. They were everywhere.”
“That’s a people problem, not a cat problem. None of my business.” And she walked off with a swipe of the tail.”

“Just ignore her” said Tabby, the short haired tabby cat. “You know how she gets all full of self importance from time to time. If she had any sound intelligence like me she would go out in the evening and come back early in the morning. The night air is nice and cool and other creeping things have the same idea. I tell you, Mrs. Human, the place is a cat’s delight at night.”
“Ok Tabby, but don’t get too enthusiastic about that. Two days ago you disappeared in the early evening and we didn’t see you until the next morning. Mr. Human and I got worried and thought something might have happened.”
“Just a minute, you don’t expect me to report back from time to time do you? I mean I am a cat, and not a dog. They do silly things like that. They even go for walks on leads and do tricks. Next thing will be you want me begging on my hind legs for food. Forget it.”
“Well, Nera does that sometimes.”
“That’s different, she is still after the leading part in the next Garfield film. She thinks that tricks like that will get her chosen. Now you have brought me out of the concept. Where was I. Oh, yes, as I was saying if you are intelligent like me you find a nice cool place indoors during the day. At the moment a favourable place is in your oldest kittens room. He is not here during the day and it is nice and cool.”
“He is not my oldest kitten, but my son.”
“One way or the other, he has a nice cool room, or Mr. Human’s cupboard in the bedroom. Some nice comfortable pullovers there. You can really snuggle to the back of the cupboard. My motto – see but not be seen. And while I am discussing the thing about cupboards, would you please not shut them during the day. It can be most annoying to be locked in a cupboard for a few hours.”
“Well, sorry Tabby, but you know we always come looking for you when we notice you are missing.”
“If you kept the cupboards open it wouldn’t happen, would it?” And off she went muttering something about no respect for the feline race.

“Good afternoon Mrs. Human, just woke up, what’s all the fuss. I heard Nera and Tabby showing off again.”
My youngest cat, Fluffy, was up and about. He is the man in the house (well he was a couple of years ago) but does not stand a big chance against the emancipated female cats I have.
“Hello Fluffy, Tabby and Nera were telling me what they do in this hot weather. So what’s your solution.”
“Don’t need one really. I just puff up my fur and have a good lick, roll up, or stretch out according to how I feel and sleep. Although it seems to me that I seem to lose more fur in this hot weather, falls out a bit more.”
“Yes I noticed Fluffy, it is usually deposited all over the carpet, but nothing that a cat-and-dog vacuum cleaner does not remove.”
“Don’t mention that word, makes me shiver when I hear it. You mean the air sucking and fur eating monster that makes noises to shake my ear tips. We cats have much better methods for removing superfluous hair. A nice meal of grass does wonders.”
“Fluffy I do not want to go into the unpleasant details as there are people here that might be reading what I am writing, but your grass eating is combined with a cleaning up process afterwards, where I am glad when you can dispose of your hairballs combined with the grass remains on the stone floor and not on the carpet.”
“It’s nature, Mrs. Human. I don’t like it when you put aluminium foil in front of the television cupboard to stop me entering either, life is just a matter of give and take.”
I was still pondering the logic in that answer and he curled up and went back to sleep again.

So that was a summary of hot days somewhere in Switzerland where the cats and cats do as they please.