Please forgive a complete switch of topics. As ZMG's post said, we had a fun time on Sunday, rambling through the woods on the Käferberg near our temporary apartment. During our walk, we kept hearing car horns honking in the distance - decidedly not something that we've experienced before here in Zürich. We knew that the government of Kosovo was expected to declare independence from Serbia, though they hadn't done so officially when we left. We figured the horns either meant that some sports team from Zürich or Switzerland had won a major event, or that Kosovo had declared itself independent, and our bet was the second.
Sure enough, within about three minutes of our arrival at Bucheggplatz after our walk, a car drove by with the horn honking and an Albanian flag waving out the window. When we got home and went online, we found that Kosovo had declared independence. We also checked out our favorite online forum for life in Switzerland, www.englishforum.ch, and found this thread about celebrations going on around Switzerland. On the spot, on the fly news. We also learned that there are perhaps as many as 200,000 Kosovans living in Switzerland, which explains the exuberance here.
It was really interesting and touching to hear the celebrations in Zürich, and I can barely imagine how much more intense it must have been in Kosovo itself. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, the celebrations on Sunday were quite something to experience -- I've never heard firsthand the birth of a new country before.
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