Imbisse!

I will now interrupt my lack of posting to bring you a short guide to Schwizer Imbisse, or Swiss snacks.

First, of course, Toblerone. We can get this one at home. It's milk chocolate with honey, plus almond and nougat bits. It also comes in white and dark chocolate. It's shaped like a pyramidal tube. This shape is so strongly associated with Toblerone chocolate here that they have nicknamed the similarly-shaped tank barriers "Toblerones."

Another common chocolate bar is Cailler Branche. This brand was the first to build a chocolate factory in Switzerland. Mr. Cailler figured out how to make chocolate bars, and I'm pretty sure that's when Switzerland became an independent country. As Wikipedia says, Mr. Cailler's son-in-law "had the idea of combining the chocolate with his neighbor Henri Nestlé's condensed milk to make milk chocolate. The Caillers eventually merged with the operation of Charles-Amédée Kohler (the inventor of hazelnut chocolate) to form the firm of Peter, Cailler, Kohler. They were acquired by Nestlé, which had become a manufacturing giant, in 1929." The traditional Cailler bar is about the size of one Twix stick. It's hazelnut milk chocolate with tiny hazelnut bits on the outside. A bit sweet for me, but not bad.

I've actually not had any Nestlé here yet, but I couldn't resist the Lindt & Sprüngli, which we just call Lindt back home. I've received two milk chocolate bars as presents. Wonderous.

Of course, these larger companies make all kinds of chocolate. You can get it with extra milk, chunks of raspberries, super dark, almonds, hazelnuts, nougat, milk or darke chocolate mousse, marzipan, peppermint, cookies, yogurt, cornflakes, rum raisins, you name it. The chocolate aisles are small miracles of opportunity.

I also tried a Lindt & Sprüngli with orange chunks in it. It was good, but it made me wish they'd done it with bits of ginger or something. Mmm. Once you've got chewy bits in the chocolate, you might as well get crazy with it.

I know Ritter Sport is actually German chocolate, but I also tried their coconut one. These bars are square and the filled ones have a layer in the middle, like an Andes mint. Coconut and chocolate went well with skiing, as did dark chocolate and Haselnuss, as did Dunkle Vollmilch, which is some kind of half milk-, half dark-chocolate hybrid (medium chocolate?), as did one with bananas in.

I received a small truffle as a gift as well. Its origins are unknown, but it does have chocolatier Philippe Suchard's surname on its wrapping. It looked like one of those chocolates with a cherry and liquor inside, but it turned out to be the same idea with a prune. Suchard is with Milka, another Swiss chocolate company. The Milka bars are very popular around here. They just tasted like ordinary milk chocolate to me, but the milk chcolate fans swear they're special.

Minor bars are common as well, although slightly more expensive. I got a mini one when I checked out of my last hostel, in Luzern. The regular bar is also about Twix-sized, but it forms a square cylinder instead of a round one. It's one of my current favorites, despite its milk chocolate base, because it has bigger chunks of hazelnut inside.

Kägi-Fret is basically the original Kit-Kat. It's another square-Twix shape, though a bit bigger, and you get two in a pack. They're crispier than Kit-Kat, and I like them better.

Appenzeller Bärli-Biber are sort of... hmm. They're like cinnamon-apple cookies with a thin marzipan filling, only not at all. They're a traditional Swiss hiking snack, and they're quite adequate for this purpose. They are slightly sweet and squishy for my taste, though, and sort of odd.

Balisto bars are kind of like granola bars, except they aren't as sweet and they come in more flavors. They're made of muesli, which is what I have for breakfast most days, and sometimes also as a snack. These things are great for hiking. You can get plain muesli, yogurt, berry, almond honey, coconut, and a few others. We have chocolate peanut here, so that's what I eat.

There are also Choc-Ovo bars, which I think I already described (compressed and vitaminy malt powder with a milk chocolate coating), and these cute little cookies that have shortbread on top and bottom with a thin jam filling. They look like flat Dairy Queen ice-cream sandwiches, only shortbread-colored, and one cookie has two eyes and a grin cut out of it. I think I heard someone refer to them as Naughty Boys, though I'll have to check on that. [Update: they're called Spitzbüb Coquin, and we also have mini Panettone now as well.]

I've made myself hungry, so I'll head off for a mini berry tart now. I intend to catch up in here soon, though we have a full house once again and I've got lots of hikes to go on.