Tag: Europe

Posted on

Another Perspective

We are in the middle of a slow week back in Münsingen — school, work, laundry. We were thrilled to find an e-mail from Mark and Kelly, our friends who visited about a month ago. Here is what they had to say…

Alas, we have finally crafted our coveted Switzerland Blog. We apologize for the month long delay. Unfortunately, it coincides with exactly how long it has taken us (mostly Mark) to get back on a normal sleep schedule. And in all honesty we wanted the trip to soak in for a while prior to putting “pen to paper.”

Where to begin? How about the beginning. It was early September when I (Mark) booked the trip. Kelly and Joe work together, but I had only met Joe a handful of times, and Sarah even fewer. (Joe barely remembers any of them as he was lost in song – and booze – around a campfire.) Nevertheless, I broached Joe at his going away party with an idea of a winter visit. It would be surprise to Kelly for her college graduation gift….and Christmas gift…and birthday present.  Joe ate up the idea and it was revealed to Kelly in mid-December. A month a half later we arrived in Zurich.

Our first full day was full of rainy adventures.  We started with a short walk along the Aare River followed by a hike into the foothills. After a short rest at home and a Zvieri (afternoon snack — not to be confused with a Znüni or morning snack), Joe, Kelly and I commandeered Henry’s stroller and walked our ‘beer baby’ to the store for a refill. Kelly was at the wheel and received many an odd look. That evening we celebrated Kelly’s birthday with a dinner at the oldest restaurant in Switzerland (1371 A.D.!) and followed it with Quollfrisch and a fire. Joe may or may not remember.

Saturday was a fantastic day. The seven of us jumped on a train and headed to Kandersteg for a day of hiking and sledging (sledding) where each of us enjoyed a fantastic spill at a high rate of speed.  Smartly Emily and James kicked their sleds down the steep portions and walked them back up to enjoy a more reasonably sloped ride. As you can see, Kelly and I were not as smart.

Unfortunately winter weather was relentless and only shared the sun with us twice for a total of 2 hours the entire week. On Sunday, we skied Lenk in some sort of cloud/fog/haze for the entire day, sometimes only being able to see a few feet in front of us. On our last run of the day, we jumped on a chair lift and took it to the highest point on the mountain. Riding through more haze we got off the lift and skied into this! We were high above the clouds, incredible.

On Monday, we embarked on our first solo Swiss adventure. It started with a bus trip at 6:30 a.m., had us standing on the ‘Top of Europe’ by lunch and skiing down the slopes of Grindlewald in the afternoon! We managed multiple train jumps but survived the day only because a sweet English speaking teller helped us through the dizzying options presented to us in Grindewald.

That solo adventure was one of a number of firsts for us:

  • first plane ride(s) over 5 hours
  • Kelly’s first observation of a Swiss surgery
  • Mark’s first diaper change
  • paying $72.00 for two pizzas
  • Mark’s first train ride
  • losing a digital camera battery for two hours only to find it under some slush filled tire tracks – in working condition
  • and most importantly, our first trip to Switzerland. We hope it was not our last.

We cannot thank you enough, Joe and Sarah, for the opportunity provided. You were terrific hosts and made our first trip out of the country (sorry Canada) incredibly simple and easy. Your kids are wonderfully behaved and left quite an impression on us. Be proud.

Thank you, thank you, thank you and we’ll see you in a couple of months! Unless you decide to stay and then perhaps we’ll see you about this time next year?!?

We will leave you with….

The Top 10 things we learned in Switzerland:
10. We are envious that the Schwab’s get to spend an entire year there.
9. Don’t rent a car. Try the 8 day Swiss pass for endless train, bus and even a few cable car rides. Though not much of a money saver, it eliminates tricky foreign language and currency exchanges AND allowed us to enjoy the “views”, ahem.
8. The Swiss are wonderfully on time.
7. Cats are royalty.
6. Snacks are king. Hot dogs wrapped in freshly baked pretzels filled with ketchup, mustard or whatever you can imagine. Awesome. (Kelly’s mouth is watering as we type this.)
5. If you are lucky enough to visit this place, do take the train to the Top of Europe (highlighted by Matt Lauer on the Today Show).
4. Swiss chocolate gets the attention, but seriously, try the bread.
3. Raclette and/or Fondue = heaven. Yes! hot cheese is a main course in Switzerland.
2. Grüezi (hello) and Merci (thank you). Learn it, live it, and use it on everyone you encounter.
1. Henry…..he just wants.
The week went incredibly fast. Luckily we have 650+ photos to fill in the ’hazy’ gaps.

Love,
Kelly & Mark “Schwab”

[nggallery id=45]

Posted on

Henry Benry

Henry turned two the month before we left for Europe. We have always wondered whether he will remember any of this experience. While the rest of us are immersing ourselves in the language, having cultural experiences, and learning new things, Henry is pretty much oblivious. He has been to Oktoberfest in Munich, skied in the Swiss Alps, and so much more! And yet, here is a conversation I had with him the other day:

Henry loves Legoland“Henry, where do we live?”

“America!”

“Well… where do we live right now?”

“Um, Minnesota?”

“No.”

“At home.”

“Yes, but where is our home?”

(Blank stare)

“Is it in Switzerland?”

“Oh yeah! Switzerland!”

Hmmmm. So, not only will Henry not remember his year in Switzerland, he doesn’t even really understand it as it is happening. However, he has had a big year in his own two-year-old sort of way. He went from a pretty limited vocabulary, to speaking in complete sentences, repeating and incorporating everything he has heard and making us all laugh. “Hey dad, you wanna hear something? It’s super cool and funny!”

This week, Henry finally got out of his pack-n-play that he has been sleeping in for the past 6 months. We figured it was time since he could no longer lay down in it without his head being wedged in the corner. Not that he was complaining. He usually slept all curled up like a snail with his butt up in the air. But, he immediately took to his “big boy bed,” and when we checked on him the first night, he was sprawled out on his back with his legs stretched out and his arms above his head. I was so happy for him!

The second morning in his new bed I went in to get him up, but his bed was empty. The covers were bunched up on the floor, so I lifted them up expecting to see him there. But he wasn’t. I listened, and I could hear breathing. So I bent down and looked under the bed, and there he was, sleeping peacefully. And this was at 8:30am. I don’t know what we did to deserve this, but he is an awesome sleeper!

This morning was Henry’s second time at Spielgruppe. It translates as “play group,” but it is a sort of short-term, in-house day care for 2 – 4 year olds. Henry gets to go to Ursula’s apartment for 2 hours every Friday morning. Last week didn’t go so well. Of course, all the other children speak Swiss German. The teacher speaks a few words of English for Henry. But, all of a sudden he was completely on his own in unfamiliar surroundings and couldn’t understand what people were saying. I imagine he felt a lot like the rest of us felt 6 months ago, and the way a two-year-old deals with that feeling is by crying for his mommy.

But, with a little help, he did really well this week. When I picked him up at the end of Spielgruppe, he said, “Mommy, I didn’t cry!” And who knows, at his age he might still be able to absorb some of the language from this exposure. He is a fast learner.

[singlepic id=705 w=320 h=240 float=right]In fact, since our earlier conversation, he now likes to ask, “Hey dad, where do we live?” That is our cue to say, “I don’t know, Henry. Where do we live?” He gets a big smile on his face and says, “Switzerland!”

There is just one more big project for Henry this year: potty training.

We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

 

Posted on

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!)

Posted on

Jungfrau Weekend

We are addicted to the mountains. Last Thursday, we noticed that the forecast for the weekend was clear and gorgeous, so we decided to spend the weekend in the Alps. And on Friday night we were at Olle and Maria’s B&B in the beautiful town of Gimmelwald, on the Schilthorn mountain. We were directly across the valley from the Jungfrau, and the view is amazing. You really have to look at our pictures to get an idea of what it was like.

Lautebrunnen ValleyJoe and I have actually been to Gimmelwald once before when we visited Switzerland in 2010. We loved it so much, we wanted to go back with the kids and make it our home base for our Jungfrau adventure. The only way to get to Gimmelwald is on a cable car that lifts you over the impressive cliffs of the Lauterbrunnen valley. My heart still skips a beat every time the cable car goes over the edge of the cliff on the way down, and I am suddenly looking down the sheer wall of the cliff several hundred meters to the valley floor.

On Saturday morning, we woke the kids early to begin our journey to the Jungfraujoch, the “Top of Europe.” It is the highest rail station in Europe at 3,454 meters (11,332 ft). The railway and station are 100 years old (or will be next August), making the ascent even more impressive. The views are incredible as you climb up the base of the mountains. Then, shortly after you pass the last town of Kleine Scheidegg, the train enters a 9km tunnel through the Eiger and Mönch mountains. The train station at the Jungfraujoch is actually inside the mountain.

[singlepic id=568 w=320 h=240 float=left]Once you arrive, there are several ways to take in the stunning landscape. We went up the elevator to the Sphinx, the highest viewpoint. We walked out onto the snowy plateau where we slipped and slid with all the other tourists. We looked out the panorama windows of the main building. And capped off the visit with a tour of the “Ice Palace,” a labyrinth of tunnels through an ice glacier filled with ice sculptures that the kids loved. It’s hard to describe how incredible it is to be at the top of the alps. Which is why it has become an international tourist destination, marked by hundreds of Asian tourists trying to take pictures of our children.

We stopped for lunch in Kleine Scheidegg on the way back down before the kids and I returned to Gimmelwald. We bought some fresh milk, eggs, and cheese from our neighbor in the little mountain town. Then I sat outside and watched the sun set behind the tops ofthe mountains, while Joe had an adventure of his own.

Swinging in GimmelwaldWe feel so blessed to be living just a couple of hours from such a paradise. The weekend was so clear and beautiful, we never saw a cloud in the sky. One of my favorite moments was sitting outside in Gimmelwald after putting the kids to bed and looking up at the stars. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that many stars in the sky. It was just one of the many memorable moments in a magical weekend.But I’ll let him tell you about that himself…