Moving abroad and being a foreigner has its difficult moments for sure, but it has many delights and pleasant surpises too. Here are a few things that I love about this place so far...

• Car-free living - Sounds a lot like carefree living, doesn't it? Well, it's close. Parking is a big, expensive hassle in Zurich and the the public transport rocks. The city is also very pedestrian-friendly, so who needs a car? There's something very freeing about living car-free. Gas prices? Who cares. Parking tickets? A thing of the past. Traffic? So sorry. The only wheels I want to own have pedals attached. Did I mention Christoph can walk to work in under 15 minutes? Or that you can reach the ski slopes by train in about an hour or two?
  
  
• Gourmet easter bunnies - The Swiss, as you may have heard, make very fine chocolate, so of course they don't mess around when it comes to Easter. The window displays at Sprungli, a big chocolate store here, litrally draw a crowd. I've never seen more tempting Easter bunnies in my life.
  
• Authentic Italian pizza - You see a theme developing here, don't you? It's all about the foooood. Some friends introduced us to a great little neighborhood pizza place our first week here called Scala. Nothing fancy about the place, but the pizza is so good it felt like I was back in Italia. We've gone back a few times and I always order the same thing, the Pizza Contadina with spicy salami, eggplant and onions. It's heaven.
  
• And that leads me to another great thing about Zurich -- a few hours on a train and you're actually in Italy. In fact, we're leaving for Italy tonight on the night train and will wake up in Florence at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow. I haven't been there since I was an exchange student in Siena 12 years ago. Christoph has never been, so I'm excited to explore it with him and practice my Italiano, which is still much better than my Deutsch.