Welcome to Rainy, Snowy, Foggy Switzerland

We’ve been busy with our first visitors from America since September! We loved playing tour guides and showing them many of our favorite spots. Unfortunately, we couldn’t control the weather. I’ll give you the quick run down, and let them tell you about the experience in their own words in a later post.

Day 1: Some good friends, Kelly and Mark, arrived last Thursday for a Swiss vacation. When they arrived, our cute Swiss town was rainy and dreary. But, it was decided that we couldn’t let the weather stop us, so we grabbed all the umbrellas in the house and walked over to the farm to get some fresh milk and potatoes and introduce them to our animal friends. Back at home, we hung out our wet clothes, started a fire and checked the weather forecast. It did not look good.

Day 2: We awoke to more rain. The kids had school, including an ice skating field trip for Emily and a morning in the woods for James. The rest of us took a wet hike across the Aare river and up the ridge to look over our valley. In the afternoon, our guests tagged along on a trip to the grocery store and other errands to see what it was like. We all went out to dinner at the oldest restaurant in Switzerland, and them walked all the way home in the drizzle because, inexplicably, the buses stop running at 6:30pm on Saturdays.

Day 3: More rain. This is getting ridiculous. But, even though it wasn’t a clear day, we all went to the mountains anyway. We took the train to the mountain town of Kandersteg (where we spent Christmas), and rode the cable car up to Sunnbüel. It is a beautiful area with hiking, cross country skiing, and some downhill skiing. It is surrounded by mountains, but it was snowing the whole time so we couldn’t see much.  I’ve been there twice now, and I still haven’t seen the mountains in the beautiful valley to the south. We brought two sleds and a picnic lunch and had a great time playing in the snow.

Favorite memory: Flying down a ski hill on sleds, even though it was way to steep for sledding. We all crashed and ended up with snow in places it doesn’t belong, but we laughed all the way — and all night when we saw the pictures!

Day 4: Cloudy and foggy. As Henry says, “Are you kidding me!?” We couldn’t wait for the weather any longer, so we took them to Lenk for their first day of skiing. There were some complicated logistics, great snow, and a few stunning moments when the fog blew off momentarily. But generally, you couldn’t see more that about 25 feet in any direction. It was very discombobulating. We caught up with our friend Lorenz, who was also there for the weekend, and he invited us all back to his house for tea, a panettone (popular pastry, like a giant muffin that originates from Italy), and a schwitz in the sauna.

Favorite memory: Watching my kids run out of the sauna and into the snow completely naked with nothing on except mittens on their feet. They loved it!

Day 5: Cloudy and foggy again. Kelly and Mark took off early for their own Swiss adventure. They made it to the Jungfraujoch – the highest point in Europe, where they were finally above the weather and were able to see mountain peaks all around. They also skied at Grindelwald, a popular Swiss ski area just below the Jungfrau, until the fog rolled in again and they called it a day.

Day 6: Kelly (a surgical assistant) joined Joe at the hospital in the morning, while I showed Mark (an architect) some of the architectural highlights of Münsingen. They all met up in Bern for lunch and a private tour of the old town with Joe as their guide.

It was so nice for us to have friends visit from America! We were able to connect in a different way than we have been able to for 6 months. We loved having an excuse to go back to some of our favorite places to show them off. We had a lot of fun, and we think they did too!

(We also took some great pictures!)