Knowing where the milk comes from...

One of the things that is sharply different here in Switzerland in contrast to Alaska is that you can actually know where your milk comes from. Sure, most of the time the milk that Sonja drinks is just from the local supermarket. But when we go to visit the grandparents, the milk is from that cow over there, which belongs to the uncle. When we went to visit one of Martin's sisters, the milk came from a cow over in the stable over there (we did not visit that one). At Martin's other sister's, it came from one of the ten cows or so that they have. And when we went to visit his aunt (the one who is a hairdresser), we could have bought some local milk at a farm two minute's walk from her house, had we had a bottle to put it in.

It is neat to see such a short supply chain. In alaska, with the exception of hunted or fished meat, or some produce during the summer, the supply chain is much longer (and even most hunted/fished meat is not walking distance away from the house). In fact it felt a bit funny to be showing Sonja the pictures of cows in books when she was not likely to see one until we came here. May be I will try to find a farm here in Zurich area where to get our milk - so far we just go to the supermarket if we are here in the city, but I am sure there must still be a farm in the environs like what we saw at Martin's aunt's.