Tag: James

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Climb Every Mountain

“Love is looking at the same mountains from different angles.”
– Paulo Coehlo

We are in love with Toggenburg. After a week of looking at these mountains morning and night, on skis and by foot, from the valleys and from the peaks, we are sad to be leaving. To be honest, we were already familiar with the grandeur of the Berner Oberland and the Wallis, the Alpine regions nearest to our home. When we first arrived in Eastern Switzerland, we were skeptical of how it would compare. We admit it. We had become mountain snobs.

But it turns out this is yet another beautiful corner of Switzerland. Toggenburg is a string of towns in a valley not far from the border with Lichtenstein and Austria. We have spent the past few days enjoying much of what the region has to offer. For starters, we took advantage of our location and visited the tiny country of Lichtenstein. We took the relatively short and scenic bus ride to Vaduz, the capital of Lichtenstein. We walked around the town, enjoying its beautiful vinyards, cobblestone streets, cliffside castle, and views of the surrounding mountians. Not suprisingly, Lichtenstein feels liks a combination of Switzerland, southern Germany, and Austria. There isn’t much in the way of tourist attractions, so the highlight of our visit was our picnic lunch on a small grassy knoll where the kids had a chance to run around and play before we headed back home.

We are staying at a Swiss holiday village that is specifically for families (Reka Feriendorf). It has a few nice benefits including a pool, playrooms for kids, and a children’s program where you can drop your kids off for supervised activities (Rekalino). It makes for a great vacation that everyone can enjoy. Our kids had dinner at the Rekalino on Wednesday night, so Joe and I had a night out, or rather a night in, all to ourselves. We did plenty of swimming and playing between our other adventures.

Speaking of adventures, Thursday and Friday were our skiing days. We rented our equipment and took the whole family up the first chairlift. Joe and I took turns skiing with the older kids and hanging around with Henry and the sled. It was yet another beautiful day. So beautiful that the snow was pretty wet, and the snow levels were getting dangerously low in some places. Emily and James have really become quite good considering they’ve only skied a handful of times. They are working on keeping their skis straight sometimes (“french fries”) and spreading them out (“pizza slice”) to turn and break. They are handling medium runs like champs.

Friday morning, the kids went to Rekalino again so Joe and I could have a chance to ski together. We made it all the way back up to the Top of Toggenburg above the town of Unterwasser. Then we skied an unforgettable run all the way back down to the town of Wildhaus. It had incredible views and lots of different terrain including wide snowy slopes and narrow trails along the side of a cliff. Whatever you do, stay between the orange poles! In the afternoon, I took Emily and James skiing again while Joe stayed back with Henry. Emily loved to ski back and forth down the slopes singing the Abba song, “I Had a Dream.”

In a way, this whole week was like a dream.

Check out our Sport week pictures here.

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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!)

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How Sweet it is

Switzerland is the land of chocolate. Did you know that the average Swiss person consumes over 26 pounds of chocolate every year?! We always have a few bars of wonderful chocolate in the kitchen. I’m on a mission to try every kind of chocolate in the amazing aisle at the grocery store. But this week, we had a chance to go a little deeper into Swiss chocolate culture.

On Wednesday afternoon, when the kids are not in school, I took them to the Kambly factory. Kambly is a Swiss company that is best known for their cookies. At their factory, they have a special program for kids to make a cookie creation. I had registered Emily and James, so when we arrived they received an apron and got to work. I was expecting them to churn out a batch of cookies, but no. They made a work of eatable art, complete with a cookie base, cake ball snowman, chocolate tree, and marzipan decorations. At the end, after over two hours of hard work, they didn’t want to eat it! (You can see their finished creations in our gallery). Fortunately, there were plenty of Kambly cookies laid out to sample, so we all spoiled our supper before returning home.

The next day was my birthday, and I had another treat for my sweet tooth. Recently, I discovered a great blog called “My Kugelhopf” written by an American living in Zurich who loves sweets, chocolate and traveling. It’s perfect for me! She gives a tour called “Sweet Zurich,” so I signed up. Joe’s gift to me was staying home with the kids for the day (he worked late a couple of nights to make up for it). So, I grabbed my book and my camera and hopped on the train.

This tour was deliciously sophisticated, like a chocolate appreciation class. We walked around the beautiful old town neighborhoods of Zurich visiting small, boutique chocolate and pastry shops. We learned about the different tropical regions the cocoa beans come from, the ingredients and process involved with making chocolate, and how different decisions affect the taste and quality of the final product. I tasted a dark chocolate with ginger and orange, a white chocolate with lime, an unconched chocolate with raisins (and learned what “conching” is!), among many other things. At a specialty cupcake shop, they even had a candle in a cupcake for my birthday.

Before I knew it, I was back on the train, but there was one more sweet treat on my list. After reading the blog and meeting the author, I wanted to try a Kugelhopf. I stopped at the store on the way home and picked one out. I opted for the less traditional chocolate kugelhopf (or gougelhof in this area.) At home we had a little celebration with the cake and a few cards and presents. I feel very blessed, and very full. I think I need to eat salads for the next week!

See all the sweet pictures here.

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Small Christmas Miracles

James has been having a bit of a difficult Christmas. He’s admitted to being pretty homesick, and I think that the holidays coming on were making him think more of home. More than that, though, James became convinced this year that Santa wasn’t real. And this wasn’t just a fleeting thought. He would argue about it. He would yell at his sister about it. He would get upset when anyone suggested otherwise.

So Sarah and I talked to him. We pulled him aside and said we thought it was fine if he didn’t want to believe in Santa Claus. He told us that he thought we were the ones who brought presents on Christmas. We told him that was true. But we also told him that it was important to his younger brother and older sister that Santa really existed. So we said that, for now, we would not discuss whether Santa existed in front of Emily and Henry, unless they wanted to talk about it too. He was OK with that.

Then we went on our Christmas Vacation in the Alps and a few small things happened. First, while enjoying our presents on Christmas Eve, a small bell rang from the next room, when the kids went in they found a few more presents and evidence that the Christkind had been there.

Santa's note on our tree
Santa's note on our tree

That night, at dinner, the Weihnachtsmann visited. The kids were suspicious of this man, but he pulled me aside, and asked me if I knew an Emily and James. I told him I did. He handed me two packages and told me that they contained a very special Swiss treat only for boys and girls who were ready to accept them. The Weihnachtsmann had singled out Emily and James.

Finally, when we arrived home in Münsingen, we found our fireplace open. There were bootprints and ashes around our tree. James detected hoof prints in the backyard. Most importantly, there were presents under our well-cared for and watered Christmas tree. There was also a note on the tree that read:

Dear Emily, James, and Henry,

I hope you had a great Christmas in the mountains. I told my friend Christkind to visit you there. But I couldn’t leave out any of my American children around the world, so I brought a few things to your home in Switzerland.

See you next year back in Milwaukee!

Love,
Santa

P.S. I hope you don’t mind – the reindeer were very thirsty from the long trip, so they took a drink from your pond.

The Kids can't believe that Santa came!
The Kids can't believe that Santa came!

James, Emily, and Henry all jumped around the room yelling that they couldn’t believe it! Santa had come to visit them in Switzerland. James told Sarah and I that he couldn’t believe that he was wrong about Santa. Then he told us he couldn’t believe that we were wrong about Santa, too.

We agree. How amazing it can be to believe again.

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Winter Wonderland

Our real Alpine vacation started after all the Christmas festivities were over. We had spent most of the weekend celebrating indoors, so when we awoke on Monday to a beautiful blue sky day, we had to take advantage of it. There are a lot of winter sports in this area, including downhill skiing, cross country skiing, snow shoeing, ice skating, and sledding. We decided to start slow, so we bundled everyone up, rented an additional sled and headed to the nearby gondola.

A the top of the mountain, we had to hike over to the top of the sled run, darting across ski slopes with downhill skiers rushing past. When we came to a section with a downward slope, we crammed 5 people onto 2 sleds and rode down to the chalet by the Öschinensee, a beautiful alpine lake nestled among the mountains at 5177 feet. It was at this point that we realized we still had a long ways to go to the bottom of the mountain, and that sledding in the Alps is not really a slower choice after all.

The next section of the sled run is incredibly steep and follows a ravine which is not blocked by any kind of fencing. We flew down, jamming our heels into the snow as hard as we could, which only slowed us down to 50 mph from 60 mph. Joe and Emily, who had a significant lead, tanked first. And just as they were brushing themselves off and getting back on the sled, I flew by with the boys screaming at the top of their lungs. Seconds later, we also wiped out, mostly becuase it was the only way I could find to stop the sled before crashing into a tree or going over the edge. Just ahead of us was a 120 degree turn onto a narrow bridge over a mountain stream. But, after a few more harrowing turns, the trail calmed down a bit, so that we could at least look up occasionally and enjoy the scenery as we were whizzing past it.

We decided it wouldn’t be prudent to bring Henry on that run again, but the other kids were willing to give it another go. So, we took turns doing it again, with a little more success on the second round.

That night, we slowed way down, and walked over to the lighted toboggan run (Schlittenbahn) in town, which is a fairly straight and well groomed run with lights strung above it. We went down it a couple of times, and then walked back to the hotel under the stars for a dinner of traditional Fondue and Raclette.

Tuesday morning started our skiing adventure. Joe took the older kids up the mountain for their first ski lesson while Henry and I stayed back and hiked and sledded in the valley. Emily and James struggled quite a bit to keep their skis from crossing, they fell down a lot, they worked hard getting across flat areas, and they came back sweaty and exhausted. When I asked them how it was they said, “Great!”

With their first lesson under their belts, we figured we could take them out the next morning on our own. So we got up early and took the whole family up to a quieter, easier mountain on the other side of town. It turns out, this was not a good idea. Although the scenery was beautiful and we snapped a couple of cute pictures, do not be decieved. It was an unmitigated disaster. I could write a whole post about the next three hours of skiing (if you can call it that), but I don’t really want to remember it. Let’s just say that skiing with young beginners is extremely hard work. There was a lot of yelling and whining, though no crying, which puts us ahead of most of the other beginner families we saw. But, technically, we can all say that we have skied in the Swiss Alps.

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Christmas is in the Air

My gift packages have been sent, our Christmas picture has been taken, and we’ve watched several Christmas specials on TV. Our decorations are up, minimal though they may be. But, this year we are adding some new experiences to our Christmas season.

First, I have seen my first real holly tree. They are very common here for landscaping. I even snipped a few sprigs for my advent wreath and decorations. Did you know that holly leaves are extremely sharp? The prickers on each point of the leaves are like needles. Ouch! You can see a whole holly tree in our Christmas season photo gallery.

On Sunday, our town of Münsingen had a Weihnachtsmarkt or Christmas market. The streets were filled with with stands selling homemade trinkets, baked goods, and other seasonal items. I finally had my first glass of glühwein. Samichlaus (the Swiss Santa Claus) and his sidekick Schmutzli were walking the streets handing out the traditional gifts of nuts, clementines, and chocolates to any children who do a little song or poem for him. Unaware of this requirement, Emily and James approached him in hopes of free loot, but found themselves singing “Jingle Bells” in front of a crowd of onlookers.

Yesterday, December 6th, was St. Nicholas Day, which is an important part of the Christmas season in Switzerland. As usual, we did it wrong. I grew up with St. Nicholas coming on the night of December 5th and filling our stockings. We don’t have stockings, so the kids left out their shoes (actually they left their rain boots, reasoning that they are bigger and would fit more stuff!). They woke up on the morning of the 6th to find them filled with little treats. But, in Switzerland, St. Nick doesn’t come until the evening of the 6th. Oops. During the day, he visited the schools where both Emily and James received a bag of nuts, chocolates, and clementines. Then, he visits family celebrations in the evening.

I went to choir practice that night, and we sang a beautiful arrangement of “Stille Nacht” as well as other pieces we are preparing for the Christmas service. I was surprised to see tables of – that’s right – clementines, nuts and chocolates, as well as tea, wine, and home made treats. We ended our practice a little early and sat down to share some holiday gemütlichkeit.

The Christmas spirit is definitely in the unseasonably warm air. Now, if only the rain outside would turn to snow…

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It’s the Little Things – Calendars and Garbage

Today was just another normal day for us in Switzerland. In many ways, our life here is similar to what it was in America – kids go to school, Joe goes to work, there is housework, playdates, homework, shopping. And yet, there are so many little ways in which it is different. And when all the little differences are added up, it gives a picture of what it means to live in another culture and country. So, this is the first of an occasional series I call “It’s the Little Things” that will highlight some of the ways things are different here.

Advent Calendars – I’ve seen Advent calendars in America. In fact, we have one that has 24 felt characters that go onto a manger scene. But, here, Advent calendars are everywhere. Counting down from December 1st to the 24th is an important part of the Christmas season. The Brumanns, our friends from Basel, sent each of our kids an Advent calendar with paper doors that open to reveal pictures. They said their children used to have them every year and always looked forward to opening the doors. I didn’t think opening little one-inch square doors to see a picture would be that exciting, but my kids love them! They can hardly wait to open the next door. James also made another one at school with his own pictures behind each of the doors. Since today was December 1st, the kids finally got to open the first doors, and for the next 23 days, they will giddily open four doors on our Advent calendars, just like Swiss children have done for generations.

At school, the kids also have a form of an Advent calendar. There are small gifts for every school day between now and Christmas, and every day they pick the name of a student out of a bag. The lucky child gets to select a gift to open and keep.

Garbage – I know, I know… who wants to read about garbage?! But, I actually think the handling of garbage is a window into cultural values.

There are 7 categories of garbage here: plastic recyclables, paper recyclables, other recyclables, yard waste, compostable garbage, bread, and everything else. Regular garbage goes into specific mandatory municipal garbage bags that are available at the store, and are priced not just for the bags themselves, but for the volume of garbage they hold. Since garbage collection is not paid for entirely by taxes here, this is one of the ways they cover the costs while encouraging people to limit their waste.

Limiting waste is important here, and there are many ways people do this, but my favorite involves old bread. We’ve mentioned before that nearly all the bread is fresh bakery bread that only lasts for about 36 hours, which not only means that we have to buy bread just about every day, but it also means there can be a lot of rock hard bread crusts and end pieces left over. Interestingly, the bread does not mold, it just gets hard. Our landlady gave us specific instructions about what to do with all of our bread scraps: “feed them to the ducks.” So, about once a week, we go on an expedition looking for ducks on one of the creeks near our house. And today we hit the jackpot! While Emily was at school in the afternoon, James and Henry and I found about 40 ducks eager to eat our bread crumbs. So eager they were even jumping up on the steps where we were sitting. A couple times, they snatched pieces right out of James’s hands. It was the highlight of our afternoon. (Meanwhile, I gave Emily 4 Swiss Francs, and on her way home from school, she stopped in the local family-run butcher shop/market and bought a loaf of bread to bring home. I love that my 7-year-old can do that!)

There are no garbage disposals here, but throwing biodegradable food waste in the garbage is not ideal. Many people, including us, put food waste into a compost bin. Ours is outside next to our garden. Any outdoor waste that is too big for the compost bin goes in the green plastic garbage container for industrial compost that gets picked up occasionally, though I haven’t figured out exactly when. My goal has always been to fill the green container every time, as there is a lot of pruning and weeding that goes on to maintain the extensive gardens here.

In order to recycle things like glass, metal, batteries, etc. we have to haul it (by bike, of course) to a recycling station about 4 blocks from our house and sort it into the appropriate materials and colors. Plastic bottles go to a different recycling station by the grocery store. Paper must be tied up with string or put in paper bags and put out at the curb every other Monday.

Joe tells me that the the Inselspital where he works burns all of its garbage in a special
incinerator that generates power back to the hospital. No waste there!

The fact that these systems work so well here, especially the recycling and required garbage bags, is a testament to Swiss reliability, morality, and environmental consciousness. When they are told to do something, they do it. And for now, so do we.

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The Infamous Onion Market

The Bern Onion Market or Zwiebelmarkt is infamous, at least in this area of Switzerland. Of course, we had never heard of it, but we had been told we had to check it out. I wasn’t exactly sure what could be so great about an onion market that takes place on a Monday from 6am – 6pm. But, I packed up the boys, picked Emily up at school and headed to the train station.

As the kids and I got off the train in Bern, we noticed confetti all over the floor of the platform, and throughout the train station. When we stepped off the escalator into the streets of Bern, they were covered with confetti as far as I could see. I was still taking it in and trying to figure out which way to go when a total stranger came up and threw confetti all over us. Once we were covered, we started to join in the fun, scooping confetti off the street and throwing it at each other, and anyone else who seemed willing. (Though we later learned that using street confetti is frowned upon, and we bought a bag of fresh confetti).

The market itself consists of thousands of stands throughout the streets of Bern’s old town. The majority of them sell — you guessed it — onions. But not just any old onions. Perfectly proportioned yellow and red onions that have been tied together with dried flowers into hanging decorations. They come in any size you could want, from tiny ones made with the smallest bulbs to huge ones hanging over 5 feet tall. Some were made into wreaths. The kids even got little onion pins.

Besides onions, you could also buy necklaces made out of breath mints wrapped in colorful plastic wrap, festival items like confetti and squeaky hammers, seasonal baked goods like magenbrot, and food stands selling onion cakes and glühwein (Swiss mulled wine), among many other things. Emily opted for a blue mint necklace, while James chose a confetti gun, and of course I had to buy a small bunch of onions.

The streets were crammed with people, and we walked around getting bonked with toy hammers and covered in confetti. It is said that this is the one day when Bern, a city that is thought of as reserved and a little uptight, lets off some steam and goes a little crazy. I realized it would be too difficult to try to eat downtown with all the crowds and three young kids, so we made our way back to the train station and headed home for dinner.

When it was time for bed, and I was getting Henry into his pajamas, I took off his diaper and it was filled with confetti! We did our best to shake off as much as we could, but it keeps turning up in pockets, purses, hoods. We can now say that we have experienced the phenomenon that is the Berner Zwiebelmarkt.

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Into the Woods

Woods in MünsingenFriday morning, James’s entire kindergarten class walked from their school to the woods for their outing called “Morgen im Wald” or morning in the woods. They do this on a Friday morning every 2 to 4 weeks. They walk about a mile to the woods and then play amongst the trees and have an outdoor snack before walking back to the school just in time to walk home again.

We have also started a new family routine in the evenings. Since the sun is going down earlier and the weather is getting cooler, it is easy to stay inside the house a lot. But, since Henry and I are home most of the day and Emily and James are often home starting at noon, we are all a little stir crazy by late afternoon. So, we instituted a nightly family walk. We actually call it our “puppy walk” because we told the kids it would show that they are able to take on the responsibility of caring for a dog, should we ever decide to get one. But, the first night we went out, everyone had so much fun, we no longer have to convince them. Even Henry has walked the entire thing every night Sarah and Emily(usually about a mile). It has been a great family bonding time, holding hands, talking about life, and growing to appreciate all the nooks and crannies in our town.

On Friday, the kids and I did our walk a little early since Joe was planning to go out after work with some colleagues. We went to a path that leads into the woods which is normally too dark for us to take. James recognized it immediately as the same path his class took for Morgen im Wald. He excitedly took the lead and we walked through a beautiful, fall-colored woods until we came to a clearing. James showed us the little structures he and his classmates had built, and the area where they ate their snack. We made music by banging on logs and rocks. We played a little hide-and-seek. It was a magical moment, and we decided to call it our “Abend im Wald” or evening in the woods.

Henry in the woodsWe decided to go back yet again today so we could share it with Joe and take our time in the light of day. It feels a bit like a magic forest. When the kids go there, they completely forget about television and toys, and revert to an earlier time, running and playing with sticks. Of course, as I write this, they are watching Spongebob Schwamkopf. Nothing lasts forever.

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Cats and Dogs

There are a lot of animals in our neighborhood. Within a few blocks of our house there are a lot of cats, some dogs, horses, cows, goats, chickens, and even a couple of pigs. We see several of these on a daily basis, and it has become part of our life here. What I find interesting is how differently the Swiss treat different animals.

Those who have dogs seem to always have their dogs with them. They bring dogs to the grocery store, where there is a “doggie hotel” [singlepic id=608 w=320 h=240 float=right]right outside the main doors with little open cubbies for the dogs to rest in while they wait for their owners to complete their shopping. Dogs seem to be allowed just about everywhere, including in cafes and on the trains. It is also impossible to miss all the “Robidog” stations along the sidewalks and paths in town. These are green metal boxes with a hilarious picture on them that have rolls of plastic bags so dog owners can easily dispose of their dogs’ business when they are out on a walk. There are also signs in many areas requesting that dogs stay on their leashes.

Meanwhile, cats seem to run completely wild. There are tons of cats wandering our neighborhood. We saw three of them on our nightly family walk today. There is one the kids have nicknamed “Blackster” who follows James to school almost daily. I have to chase several of them out of our yard regularly so they don’t attack the two terrified fish in our little pond. There was even one that was bold enough to walk into our house. [singlepic id=609 w=320 h=240 float=left]All of these cats belong to families in the area, but they wander around at all hours of the day and night. There is no one cleaning up after the cats either, no “Robicat” stations to be found. And they leave their business wherever they please, including in my yard. One of Henry’s favorite things to ask me outside is, “Mama, did you step in cat poop?”

And the horses are even more blatant about it. There are a couple of horses that people ride around here. I often hear the clippity-clop of their daily rounds. And when a horse leaves its business in the middle of the road, it is no joke. So I can’t help but wonder as I pass Robidog stations while swerving around horse poop and tiptoeing around cat poop, isn’t this a double standard?