we are currently looking for a new apartment to be closer to the mountains. our target area is the rüschlikon–thalwil–wädenswil area which is quite conveniently located: quite a bit closer to our favourite walking grounds than adliswil.

two weeks ago we did find a rather nice looking place, a group of new apartment buildings “coming online” over the course of the next year. i went and had a look at one of the show apartments: quite nicely done, good materials, the one i was interested in seemed to be in a reasonably quiet position — rent was CHF 2′300 (yep, but that’s switzerland, zurich area). i applied for a contract…we apparently checked out OK and the real estate agent did send us the contract for the apartment we were interested in. yes!

…well, not really. i had a chance to look at the contract last night when i came back from the spirituality weekend at the community casteller ring: at first glance it looked OK — except for one little clause:

…the contract comprises a rent reserve of 25%…

bummer! that essentially means that, yes, we have this contract for an apartment, and, yes, the rent is CHF 2′300 — however, if the landlord feels so inclined he can raise the rent by 25% at the next opportunity, bringing the rent up to a wooping CHF 2′875! we’d be signing a contract that could basically change under our feet at any moment — hmm, don’t think so…interesting concept of a contract, though. oh, and a colleague suggested that we could have proposed a reserve from our side: we’d reserve the right to not pay the rent every four month or so…lol

back to looking for an apartment now.

the other day i came across a new golf club, very conveniently located, easy to reach within minutes from work and home! lifetime membership is relatively cheap at 3500. they have a nice driving range, and two 9 hole courses. all located close to the sea, which makes for a rather nice environment (leaving those balls that head straight for the water aside for the moment).

also, it seems that i’m much better at hitting long shots here than with my previous attempts — on the other hand, my putting is so far too powerful and i’ve yet to get a ball in…

oh, in case you wondered, the club is called holly kai golf club. yep, it’s in secondlife — how else could i aford a golf club membership??

amused.

our plan today was to do a snow shoe tour from the wägital dam to schrähoger, then up through the schräh forest to bärlaui and then follow the terrain (a bit of freestyle snow shoeing) to nüssen. from nüssen we intended to go rosenhöchi, chli mutzenstein and fläschlihöchi back to lake wägital.

…well that was the plan. plan’s sometimes have a tendency to change direction. our plan did as well: the ascent from schrähoger through the schräh forest was at first a bit tedious, but then turned out to be winter wonderland at its finest nice powdery snow, everything adorned with a with cap. unfortunately, up at bärlaui the snow seemed to have had engagements elsewhere — very little was left and we make only slow progress. what should have been a matter of two hours takes 4 — and, yet, the higher we up we got the more snow we regained. when reaching the trail coming down from gross aubrig we have about 30-40cm of snow the last ascent up to nüssen is strenuous but fun!

we have our lunch break up at nüssen, leaning against a tree stump, enjoying the landscape and recovering from the exhausting climb up. while we are having our break the weather deteriorates: black clouds are coming in from the south west, more and more of the summits to the east (schieberg, bockmattli, zindelspitz, and friends) have their tops covered in gray–darkish cloth. considering the amount of time it took us to get here, adding in the weather which is looking anything but improving, we decide not to continue with our planned route but instead descend back via eggstofel.

we get back to innerthal at 15:00 and have a break at the gasthof stausee pub (nice, good grub, recommendable).

despite the long ascent it was a nice snow shoe tour!