East Eats West

Bollywood Summer Party in Zurich

 

Custom-made jewelry boxes

Picture: The colorful custom-made jewelry box.

Looking for an unique gift for your girlfriend, wife or mom? Look no longer, here it comes! You might remember Bea Wetli from my recent entry about her, the young Swiss book-binder based in Zurich? A few weeks ago I ordered a custom-made jewelry boxes and I must say that the result is very pleasing. The box has several compartments with drawers and I particularly like the finishing in different bold colors and the lining with velvet. Very suave! Hence, it is the perfect gift for any woman who owns jewelry (aka any girl)! 

Read about Bea Wetli in my previous blog entry here:  http://easteatswest.typepad.com/east_eats_west/2009/12/young-swiss-bookbinder.html 

And here is her website: http://www.beawet.li/ 

Shoe care made easy

Picture: My freshly polished shoes (including laces) in Srinagar, Indian Cashmere.

While having a local Zurich beer with a  friend he remarked that my leather shoes were well polished and he wondered how I take care of them. So, upon his request I shall post the ABC of good-year welted leather shoe care. 

A) First and foremost I recommend to add a small rubber sole to any leather sole. A trusted shoe-maker told me to do so as this will protect the shoe from rain and makes it cheaper to replace the sole. 

B) Probably the second most important activity when it comes to shoe care is using always a shoe tree. It is recommended to add the shoe tree right after wearing the shoe as the leather is damp from the feet. Upon drying the leather contracts and without shoe tree produces ungainly wrinkles (high-end shoes should come with their own shoe trees).

C) So you put a rubber sole on your new shoes and are using shoe trees, but you need to clean the shoes? Eventhough I was told that a true expert takes 20 minutes to clean a pair of shoes, it takes me only about 5 minutes. I first remove any dirt with a sturdy horse-hair brush. Than I add some Swiss Burgol shoe cream (based on palm-tree wax) and add it lightly with a soft cloth. I then let the cream dry for a couple of minutes. To polish the shoes I use some nylon stockings and a glass of champagne (drink it while cleaning in order to produce enough spit!). And yes it is true, using your own spit actually makes the shoes shine more! If you clean your shoes regularly you will see that they will shine more each time your polish them. Shoe shine is hard work! 

The home of Rolex

Picture: Rolex display at Basel World. 

I recently went to Basel World, one of the two annual watch fairs in Switzerland where all the big brands have their stalls (or houses). Among the most impressive is Rolex. Yes, the watches tend to look the same, year after year, but when it comes to pure luxury, Rolex is clearly up there!

Picture: The brand-new Rolex factory in Biel / Bienne, Switzerland.

Chinese Tourbillion watch

Any watch-aficionado should visit the annual watch and jewelry fair in Basel once in a life-time. Actually, the watches are almost a side-show as the brand stands and booths are just outstanding. The sheer scale and grandezza of the buildings are breath-taking, never mind the thousand of watches on display. Besides the top brands like Patek Philippe, Rolex, Omega and Breitling many smaller brands are on display. I was particularly intrigued by the Chinese-made Tourbillion watch, the Russian jewelry watches and last-but-not-least the outstandingly simple and high-tech Seiko mechanical watch made from light-weight titanium (yes, 100% made in Japan)! Here are a few impressions from this larger-than-life fair that spanned over six massive exhibition halls. 

PS: The Basel World fair is for whole-seller and therefore one cannot buy watches there (but apparently precious stones).  

 

Mexican spicy sauces

In a Mexican shop in Zurich I discovered this taste-bud-assaulting selection of chili sauces: from taste-enhancing to silly showing-off!  

 
 
 

Budget audio home system

When it comes to looks the Bang & Olufson high-end and high-price home entertainment and audio systems are hard to beat. With various active loudspeakers and control panels one can turn a house into a multi-media auditorium. But it comes at a price. The much cheaper, and much cooler alternative, is to buy an Apple laptop and an Apple Airport Express Wi-Fi station. The Airport Express simply plugs into any power socket and picks up the Wi-Fi signal transmitted by iTunes. One then simply plugs in any active loudspeaker or amplifier into the Airport Express and without further fiddling one can then beam music via Itunes to any room. Believe me, it sounds harder to do than it is! The Airport Express costs a bit more than 110 USD and the only real downside is that the MP3 format of Itunes is not really high-fidelity. But it is enough for some background music.

 

Switzerland by air

Just for heck of it: pictures from my recent helicopter flight in Switzerland, awesome!  

Invasion in Zurich of German blondes

With the upcoming elections the right-wing conservative party chose to attack the over 30 000 Germans working and living in Zurich. The party is afraid that the highly-qualified and very well-integrated will take away potential jobs in the recessions. If that really is true is hard to say, but what I can personally vouch for is that Germans take away eligible Swiss bachelors from Swiss women. At work, in the sauna or the gym or among my friends, more and more Swiss men prefer to opt for German blondes (and brunettes). I am sure in the eyes of the right-wing party this is only a thinly-disguised attempt to slowly invade Switzerland! The party better move fast as I already know quite a few Swiss men who are already married to German girls! 

Back to communal living

In March I attended an evening talk by the German philosopher and book-writer Richard David Precht. As many others he has been contemplating the effects of the current economical crisis in many people's lives. And to my big surprise, he came up with a new definition of liberalism. The starting point for his reasoning is that governments in the near future will have to cut back on spending (think Greece, Portugal and Spain). Therefore they have to cut on services. In doing so governments will not be able anymore to fulfill our dream of the successful marriage of absolute liberalism (aka egotism paired with no-hold-capitalism) and socialism (where the government takes care of everyone). As a kid Richard David had lunch with fellow kids from the neighborhood as his mom shared the cooking with other moms. Today parents want child-care provided by the government instead of asking the neighbors. Funnily just today an article in the Swiss newspaper “Tages-Anzeiger” talked about the lack of funding by the government for child-care and that many municipalities are upset about that. According to Richard David the economic crisis will force us to look after each other more than asking the government to provide all services. Liberalism in his eyes means taking over responsibilities from the government instead of delegating everything to civil servants. And in Richard David's eyes Switzerland is predestined to pioneer this approach of taking over from the government as many civil services, think the volunteer fire brigade or the army, are provided by citizens and not the government. Instead of just donating money to various charities we should get involved again, locally, with our neighbors and in our community.

I can recommend his book “Liebe: Ein unordentliches Gefühl” for everyone wanting to know more about civic action.