Hoi Zäma,
Well, it's Winter, and I've been really slack at showing you anything of Winterthur, where I live in Switzerland. So I will start trying to make up for it now. Though I don't really have any pics of the town or house or housemates, here are a couple that I do have...
Starting with Winter in Winterthur and the Christmas Market, which the Europeans do really well: row after row of stands selling christmas decorations, general handicrafts, oils, candles, toys, cakes, jewellery. And of course hot food and hot wine (and also hot beer and hot caipirinhas - in fact you can put the word "Glüh-" in front of anything in Germany, heat it up and sell it at a christmas market! After a while though you see the same stuff for sale all over the place, also with very non-christmasy stuff that you see at every market at any time of the year in any city. Tie-died T-shirts, cheap silver jewellery, and dream-catchers anyone?
Last year was an unusually snowy year, leading to a white Christmas and beautiful snowscapes reminding me of Sweden. This year there's only been a couple of days of snow in the town which didn't stay around for very long. After the driest November since records began the headlines are like they were in Aus a couple of years ago - drought, increasing fruit and veg prices, cracked and dry fields, lakes without water, delayed start to the ski season... things arent looking good. But last year it was glorious! 
The view from the telecommunications tower in Winterthur - with the Alps in the background
