switzerland

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Tell me about the camels. The

What do you admire about the Swiss people? I admire their beautiful country and their icy sports because I like ice. I admire that people have to learn a lot of languages because they speak so many. I like their food a lot. I like it that they make clocks and that they have clocks all over the place. My favorite one is a huge outdoor clock made out of plants that they have in Geneva.

Tell me about feudal times in Switzerland. In 800 there was the feudal system where some people are owners of an area of land and they have lots of slaves called serfs. The serfs work for the owners in their fields and farms and have to give most of the food they grow and the goods they make to the owners. The owners also have private armies for defending their land and for keeping their serfs at work. A feudal area is like a kingdom controlled by one family. Today a big feudal country is Saudi Arabia controlled by the Saud family.
Tell me how Switzerland became a country. By 1291 the serfs started escaping and buying their freedom from their feudal lords, the Haps-burgs. They settled three areas called Schwyz, Unterwalden, and Uri. The ex-serfs from these areas agreed to form a confederation. The Swiss Confederation began when the they decided to fight for each other. They became a voting democracy where each man gets to vote for his town's representative who has an annual meeting with all the representatives to run the country. That government is alot like ours. They formed the Swiss Confederation out of the Hapsburg Empire. The Swiss defeated the Hapsburgs in 1315 and in 1481. They fought the Hapsburgs for 190 years. The freed slaves formed a country out their master's land.
Tell me about William Tell me about William Tell. William Tell was a ex-serf in the 1300s whose ruler was named Gessler. Gessler was a Hapsburg from Austria. He put his hat on top of a pole and told everyone to bow down before the pole or go to prison. He wanted to make them feel like they couldn't fight him. But William Tell didn't bow down. This is like the story in the Bible of Daniel in the lion's den when he wouldn't pray to the King Nebuchadnezzar. Gessler made William Tell, who was a good archer, shoot an apple off his son's head. Gessler hoped William would kill his son. But the arrow hit right in the apple. He had a second arrow for Gessler if his son died. Later he killed Gessler. They're not sure if this really happed. The result of William Tell and Gessler caused a revolt among the Swiss.

Tell me about the favorite sports in Switzerland. The favorite sports are curling, hockey, and skiing. Curling is where you are on ice and you push a stone with a stick and it slides on the ice and another person hits the ice with a broom to change the way the rock goes. The rock is supposed to end up in a target. It wouldn't be very much fun to watch curl-ing since it is only pushing a rock on ice. All of these sports use ice. I think these sports would be hard because it would be hard to be on ice and not slip.

Tell me about the Protestant Reformation. That was when the Roman Catholic church started having some trouble, like people were buying church offices with money. The church was getting too con-cerned with money and power. There was a man named Martin Luther who nailed up a big list of 95 things that were wrong on the church door. The two leaders of Protestant reformation in Switzerland were Zwingli and John Calvin. After the reformation there was lots of fighting between Catholics and Protestants and in that fighting Zwingli was killed. The Protestants said that the life of the Christian should be based on the Bible.
Tell me about the history of the Swiss people before feudal times. In 500BC the Celts or Helvetians settled in Switzer-land. In 58BC the Romans conquered the land. In 300AD the Alemanni Germans con-quered the Romans. Then the Burgundian Germans and the Frank Germans came. The all of western Europe became one empire called the Holy Roman Empire ruled by King Charlamagne in 800AD.

Tell me about neutrality. That is when a country says it will not fight anyone outside of its borders. The Swiss have a big army for keeping others out of their country. Neutrality doesn't mean that they do not fight. A good thing about it is that there is not too much fighting in their country. A bad thing about it is that the neutral people help evil by not taking sides and still selling to the evil people. In World War II the evil people were the Nazis.

Switzerland

Tell me about Switzerland. It is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. It is a little country in Europe between Germany, France, Italy, and Austria. Another little country on the eastern border is called Liechtenstein, which is only 10 miles long and 4 miles wide. The City of Oakland is the same size as the country of Liechtenstein. The capital city of Switzerland is called Bern. The other big cities are Lucerne, Basel, Zurich, and Geneva. The weather is kind of like United States weather. On the southern side, there are two ranges of high mountains, called the Swiss Alps. The Swiss Alps sometimes have avalanches. No trees grow in the Swiss Alps becauce it's too high and cold for them. The line where trees stop growing is called the alpine line. Some of the butterflies that live in the high mountains are called alpines. On the northern side, there are more mountains not as high as the Swiss Alps, called the Jura Mountains. Glaciers cut deep valleys through the mountains and now rivers run through those valleys. The three main rivers are the Ticino, Rhone, Rhine, and the Aare.
Tell me about the people of Switzerland. They are some of the richest people in the world. They make $36,000 per year per person. Switzerland is the richest country in Europe. Switzerland is a Christian country. Forty-six percent of the people are Roman Catholic Christians, 40% are Protestant Christians, 5% are other religions like Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. In the last 30 years, half of the Swiss Christians have stopped going to church because some missionaries say "comfort, wealth, indifference, and vague religiosity". I think that means people are just going to church because they think a good person should go to church. I go to church because I want to hear about God, meet my church friends, praise God, and pray. People not going to church anymore is not happening in just Switzerland but in all of Western Europe.

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Tell me about some unique birds, butterflies and animals. They have mostly mountain butterflies, like alpines which are brown with spots that look like eyes, and par-nassians which are white with red and black markings, and coppers which are usually orange and black, and fritil-laries which black with cream or orange marks. Parnassians and fritillaries both fly in the cold. Both of them can fly when it is freezing. It usually has to be 65 degrees F for butterflies to fly. Their national bird is the nut- cracker who breaks open pine cones and nuts.

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Learning how to love anyone

Country of the Month         Restaurant

Jan 2003 - Armenia            La Mediterranee, Berkeley
Feb 2003 - Poland              Old Krakow, San Francisco
Mar 2003 - Ireland             Kells, San Francisco
Apr 2003 - Jamaica            Jamaica Station, Oakland
May 2003 - El Salvador      Balompie, San Francisco
Jun 2003 - Nepal                Kathmandu, Albany
Aug 2003 - Turkey             Bosphorus, Berkeley
Oct 2003 - Cambodia         Angkor Wat, San Francisco
Dec 2003 - Philippines        Aroma Cafe, Concord
Jan 2004 - Saudi Arabia      Rihab's Bakery, Belmont
Feb 2004 - Mexico             El Huarache Azteca, Oakland
Mar 2004 - Mongolia          Col. Lee's Mongolian BBQ, Mtn View
May 2004 - Switzerland      Fondue Fred's, Berkeley
Jul 2004 - Afghanistan        Da Afghanan Kabob House, Fremont

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What do you pray to Jesus for about Switzerland. I pray that anybody that is not Christian will ask God to come into their life and change them to be believers in Jesus. I pray that the people will start going to church again. I thank God for them and their beautiful country and for the beatiful creatures that live there. I thank God that the Swiss are a very blessed people.

Country of the Month by Noah Arthur

Tell me about the food. The place we ate is called Fondue Fred's. We had three kinds of fondue, cheese fondue, chocolate fondue, and beef fondue. Fondue is where you have bread or fruit or marshmal-lows and you dip it different kinds of sauces. There is a special kind of fork called a fondue fork that has only two tines. The food was really good. My favorite thing they had was the chocolate fondue. They also eat omelettes and lumpy bread. I like omelettes and lumpy bread. I've had Swiss cheese and it is very good as long as it hasn't been sitting out too long. Swiss cheese has holes in it. The holes in the cheese are made by gas bubbles from the bacteria that helps make the cheese. Some
of the favorite things the Swiss eat around Christ-mastime are cookies, cookies, cookies, cookies, and cookies.

What are the Swiss world-famous for. They are world famous for big mountains like the Matterhorn. They are also world famous for watches, banks, cheese, skiing, Swiss army knives, chocolate, neu-trality, and folk tales. The funniest one that I read was "Pig Music" where a man made an organ with pigs that he would pull their tales.

Tell me about the languages they speak in Switzerland. They speak German, French, Italian, and Romansh, which is a lot like Latin. The percentage who speak German is 65%, French 18%, Italian 10%, and Romansh 7%. The German is called Swiss German.

Tell me about making cheese. The first step is inoculating, where you warm milk up and add plain yogurt because the yogurt has bac-teria that breaks down the milk over night. The second step is adding rennet where you heat up the milk and the rennet forms curds which are pieces of jellied milk over two hours. Cheese making involves a lot of waiting. The third step is cutting the curds with a knife. The fourth step is setting the curds where you heat up the curds and break them up with your hand. The fifth step is separating the whey from the curds by straining out the curds so all the

lauterbrunnen valley (big bear)

zurich

avalanche on the matterhorn

sonja nef - skiier

swiss watch

alpinehorn

skiing

curling

hockey

alpine

parnassian

copper

ducks on ice

chocolate

cheese fondue

mountain ibex

marmots

nutcracker

woodpecker

gruyere cheese factory

clock in geneva

swiss guards at the vatican

tell's birth place

the zeitglockenturm

william tell

whey comes out and then adding salt so that the curds will be pre-served. The sixth step is pressing the curds by squishing out the rest of the whey. The seventh step is aging the cheese by putting in the refrigerator for a month because we want it to be hard sharp tasting cheese. You can recook the whey and make a creamy cheese called ricotta (which means recooked). Surprisingly our cheese turned out really, really excellent.

aare river at bern

fritillary

great blue heron