Making Friends

Recently, Justin and I met a group of his work friends at Lady Hamilton’s Pub to watch the Swiss versus Argentina football (“soccer”) game. The pub was very similar to any pub you’d go to in the states and made me feel at home. It is located in Zurich near Bahnhofstrasse, a street downtown that leads to the main train station. Among those friends were Roberto, his girlfriend Hanna, Claudio, his girlfriend Ashley, and a guy named Karan. All of the guys work with Justin at PwC. There were a few other people there, but I cannot remember their names at the moment. All of them were extremely nice and welcoming. Roberto and Hanna are both from Switzerland. Claudio is also Swiss and his girlfriend is American. I had already met Ashley before and really enjoyed hanging out with her. She is from California, extremely tan and beautiful, and surprisingly down to earth. She moved here around the same time we did, so our Zurich experience is pretty similar.

The evening was spent waiting for the T.V.’s to work; the boredom inevitably steered the conversation towards American sports vs. European sports. It got heated, but at some point we agreed to disagree. They were especially being haters on basketball. Not cool. It really was just friendly conversation and led to a lot of joking, sarcasm, and excitement. In the end, Justin and I invited them all over for dinner to our new place for chimichangas. Mind you, at this point we still hadn’t found dining room chairs for the kitchen so I knew I had to work hard over the weekend to put final touches on the apartment.

We had them all over on Tuesday, March 6^th. I had spent the weekend cleaning and buying a few items at IKEA and a second-hand store called Zurcher Brockenhaus to pull the apartment together. It was finally looking up to my standards, so I was excited to have everyone over. Roberto and Hanna brought over the wine. They brought 4 bottles of a delicious 2009 Chilean wine called Santa Alicia Reserva Merlot from Maipo Valley. Claudio and Ashley brought over some yummy chocolate brownies for dessert and the tortilla chips to go with my guacamole appetizer. I made the stuffing for the chimichangas and Justin did the rolling and frying perfectly. The food was delicious and the company was wonderful. Our conversations were interesting and only got more interesting as the wine bottles were emptied. We talked about self-defense, owning a weapon, building snowmen, amusement parks, and religion. Don’t think it could get more random? Haha. But, it was a lot of fun and Hanna and Roberto are having us over tomorrow night for pizza. This time we have to bring the dessert. Can’t wait!