Thanksgiving in the Swiss Alps

Being an ex-pat is always hard around the holidays, especially when you live in a country that doesn't celebrate that particular day. That is what it is like living in Switzerland. Nick went to work for a half day today, Coretta and Geno had school. No four day weekend as a family spending time with extended family and friends. This year we were able to find a reasonably priced turkey (8.4 pounds for 49 dollars) which was a bargain from last years 100 dollar turkeys.

We celebrated around 5:00 pm. Everything about the day was going as planned, until we tried to turn our stove top on to make the potatoes. Nick turned to me and said that the stove top wasn't working. When I went over and tried it, he was right. Just two red dashes. No power. I quickly went to read the manual, which stated that either a fuse was blown or you need to call customer service. Nick went and switched the fuse. We tried again. Nothing. At this point, I am laughing. We have a friend coming over for dinner, and our turkey is ready, but no way to cook the potatoes or heat the corn. First thing we thought of was to call one of our neighbors and ask to borrow their stove. No one was around, so we quickly moved to plan B. Plan B was to put the potatoes and water into the stove, crank the heat, and hope they will boil. As we are thinking up this master plan, our dinner guest arrives and had a good laugh at our expense. Finally realizing that it may take all night for the potatoes to boil, we made a consecutive decision to cut the turkey and go ahead with the rest of the food. We had turkey, homemade wheat bread, corn, stuffing, and apple pie. Although we couldn't make the potatoes or gravy, it still turned out well. Here are some pictures of our Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends and family that are celebrating this season around the world. We love and miss you.