Adding on Luzern

On the way home from the cow parade we had to switch trains in Luzern, so we decided it might be nice to spend a couple of hours there. We walked around old town, pretty much following the tourist bureau's suggested walking tour. I think I will do another post this week with just some of Susie's pictures. She notices everything!

First we saw the lion monument. Sort of sad, and bigger than I expected it to be.

Then E took the littles into the center of old town for a snack while the girls and I walked along the top of what is left of the medieval city wall and climbed the clock tower.

R on the wall. 

Here is S and action, and her picture taken
 from that spot looking down on the wall
where we walked 

We walked along the wall as far as we could and then ended up on the wrong side of it. On one side is the old town. On the other is a running track, and a field with shaggy cows and alpacas surrounded by an electric fence. We followed the wall to the end and back toward old town. We came across a couple of teenage girls doing some impressive parkour moves. I stopped to ask them if it's also called parkour in Swiss German. When I turned around again, R and S were halfway down the street, wanting nothing to do with my embarrassing ways. I reminded them that I had the chocolate money.

Schüpfheim Alpabzug!

It's time for the cows to come down from the mountains for the winter, which means dressing them up and parading them through town! It's all very noisy, which you know if your computer volume is on and you watched the video. We went to Schüpfheim for their Alpabzug.

We got there early to make sure that we had a good position. (I even went online to find a good video from last year and then scouted the position on google maps.)  We were in front of a small hotel with a porch on the second level from which some elderly locals were watching. Sometimes if a friend went by or some other special thing happened they would let loose with a loud yodelling call. Kind of a Swiss "yee-haw!" We also had a couple of nuns and some local kids around us, so it must have been a prime spot

The parade wasn't just cows. There were also folk singers, kids groups, some other animals, and alphorn preformances. I've put an alphorn video at the end of this post.

Conclusion

Once we got to the mountain hut, our rescue saga was pretty much over. We had expected to arrive earlier, of course, eat dinner, relax on the patio, and enjoy the view and stars. It didn't happen that way. They had saved dinner for us, but the kids refused to eat various parts of it. There was a delicious vegetable broth. The main course was polenta and "meat." The kids can't stand polenta for some reason. As for the meat, it was some sort of ground meat done in gravy. We don't know what kind of meat it was - no one could or would elaborate in any language. But it did remind me of the gristle stew served at pow wow feeds. Dessert was awesome! Perfect meringue cookies and whipped cream. The kids also ate some food which we had brought with us.

Then we were shown to our room - which was unheated. There were two shelves of bunks and we were given the bottom. There were already some people asleep in the top. The bottom shelf had four mattresses, five pillows, and six blankets, so we had to do some adjusting in the dark as quietly as we could. Luckily, I had the flashlight my Dad gave me for our trip! Changing was also an issue. The only bathroom was a double outhouse down the hill a bit. So we organized ourselves in the hall and changed on our shelf.

E and R enjoyed the stars but the rest of us were just too tired and cold.  It was about 30 degrees. We all did see them briefly, though, and they were beautiful. It wasn't a great dark skies display like I was hoping for, but it was more than the kids had ever seen before. And there was a bonus - a nearly full moon at the end of the valley, which made the river below shine like silver. Also, there were colored lights shining here and there from the hotels and huts on the facing mountains. As you can see, E braved the cold and took lots of pictures so S and I wouldn't miss anything.

That is the moon. The pictures look light because they were taken 

with a thirty second exposure. It really was very dark!

It was a restless night. The unheated room somehow became unbearably hot. I was sore. And the kids woke up with nightmares. First L, who just howled and howled, causing a domino effect of people waking up and moving around through the hut which lasted quite a while after she'd fallen asleep again. T woke up but fell right back asleep. S didn't wake up at all. She just yelled in her sleep, "Not another mountain! You said there wouldn't be any more!" That made me feel bad, considering we had to get down from the hut again somehow.

We were mountain rescued! Part 2

Our goal. See the hut up there?

We began having trouble when we reached a split in the path which was completely unmarked. Hikers coming down from the left assured us that was the way to go to our hut. We started steeply up, but soon saw that far below and to the right was a dam which we were supposed to cross. So we went down again and headed that way. It was not easy going. There were no signs, no blazes, no markings of any kind. It looked like we were following a stream bed. The only things that made us think we might be on the path were that it had started as a clearly marked path and it was going in the right direction.

This is the path leading to the gravel slope.
There is no hint of trouble ahead.

We were right. (We looked at a map later and we think the hikers came from a different hut.) Soon enough we reached a small restaurant which was on the trail map and we made our way to the dam. That is where our real troubles began. There were signs again, just none mentioning our hut. We went exactly as our directions said and found a path. But what a path! It was very steep and gravelly. We could barely get footholds and would slip dangerously down. We met some Americans inching their way down. We asked them if the path continued that way for very long. They said that it only got worse, and that there was nothing up there except the hotel they came from. One woman was sliding down on her butt since she was too afraid to walk.

The picture turned out a little dark. 

Behind the trees in the middle is the steep gravel path which we were too scared to take. 

It's very hard to make out, even when you are on it.

We figured that had to be wrong. The hut people had said nothing about the hike being treacherous, so we went back down to the dam and followed a road that we thought must lead to the hiking path. On the road we were lucky enough to meet a father and son who had just come from our hut. They said to just follow the road to the end and we would see the path to the hut, no problem. We were about an hour and a half away.

We went to the end of the road and found ourselves on a sandy peninsula with clifflike sides twenty to thirty feet high. We did not see a path, or even a safe way down from the peninsula. E called the hut to tell them we were running late and to ask for directions and they told him that if we were on the plateau the path to the hut should be easy to see. I still didn't see anything.  E thought he did and started to look for a way down. It was obvious, though, that if we went down (which seemed impossible anyway) we would never get up again. Meanwhile, the temperature fell about ten degrees and the sun was getting low. I was starting to worry that we wouldn't make it. We backtracked a little  and E called again. The man at the hut thought he could see us, but asked us to backtrack even more so he could be sure. We did and signalled him with our mirror. It turned out that we should have gone to the end of the road, but where we were wasn't the road. The road had taken a steep turn up the mountain. The man at the hut told us to start walking and that he would come pick us up in the car.

The rescue vehicle.

So we did. And finally he came in a red van that reminded me of an old truck my Dad used to have which inspired my lifelong fear of bridges.* There were no seats in the back, just junk, and a piece of rotten plywood  covering a hole in the floor. R even asked if this is what Grandpa's truck was like. At that point we had been hiking for more than six hours.  A donkey cart would have felt like a limo. We all piled in and felt like our troubles were over.

We were mountain rescued! Part 1

The view from Zermatt

I don't think I was tempting fate with all my talk about insurance and mountain rescues. It might just have been inevitable. I hope someone in my family was smart enough to start a betting pool on when it would happen.


First things first - no one was hurt. There was no helicopter or evacuation involved. Our insurance didn't kick in. We just got a little lost and had to call for help.

It felt like a saga, but I could probably easily fit it into one post. I won't though for a couple of reasons. First, the girls were in charge of the cameras and went absolutely nuts taking pictures of the beautiful scenery around Zermatt, including the Matterhorn. The second reason - I have no desire to leave the house this week and need to have something to fill the blog. I have horrible callouses on my toes and can't quite walk straight due to sore knees and a pulled muscle. The whole thing was physically and mentally exhausting.

Lists

I'm editing this post to add a picture. It's kind of boring without one. What I should have done today is set up a flickr account so the family can see pictures of us, too, and not just stuff. It is getting harder and harder to resist including pictures of the kids. I'll make myself feel okay about it because L is obscured by sugar.

I'll be surprised if the title of this post doesn't get my Dad's attention. The only thing he likes better than making a list is crossing things off his list.

I am feeling a little frustrated today because this is one of those days when my plans didn't work out. I wanted to get an early start and go for a hike. But instead of being beautifully sunny it was rainy and cloudy this morning. Again! Since the whole point of this hike is the view, and because the littles were tired, sluggish, and stuffed up, I decided not to go. I have a rainy day back up plan, but it was a bust, too. I wasn't able to leave early enough.  One person wasn't unhappy about my change in plans: S came home from school and was surprised with a hot lunch. Also, I have been able to plan and pack for the weekend.

So what does this have to do with lists? A few things. First, I am going to spend some of my down time today re-doing my master list of things to do and see so that it is more realistic. We do not move as quickly as I expected, and the littles need days off sometimes to rest. I am starting to feel bad when I'm not able to cross things off my original less realistic list, even when they are things that weren't very important to me. So I am going to prioritize and make a better list that I can feel good about.

Also, I might try to reconcile our finances so far and think about what we will do over October vacation. I had been thinking we would go to Italy and see as much as we could. Now I am thinking it would be better to go to Rome for a few days and maybe see some inconvenient parts of southern Switzerland on the way home.

Finally, I want to start some fun lists that I can add to while we're here. Here they are:

Uetliberg

Read the entire post to see something weird!

Today was another iffy forecast, so I decided to hike on Uetliberg, which is Zurich's local mountain. There is a trail a few kilometers long along the ridge of the mountain which is also a scale model of how far the planets are from the sun. However, it turned out the weather really was iffy. On the twenty five minute ride from Zurich main station to the summit it was sunny and then pouring three times. We were lucky. When we got to the summit station and walked up to the overlook it was beautiful.

Uetliberg seems to have a deer theme, based on the street lamps and benches.

The weather started to turn bad, so we decided to take the train back to town rather than hike. It started to rain as we walked to the station, but by the time we got there it stopped.

It all cleared up again (for a little while, then it poured on us), and the kids played at the playground while we waited for the train. There was an awesome mini-chair ride! It was like something from Fisher Price Little People. I put in a franc, and away they went. Playgrounds here are so much better than at home! It's official! 

Okay here is the WEIRD THING! In Switzerland the warning signs telling people not to do things (like don't walk on the grass, don't smoke) are just a red circle with no slash line through it. That makes sense. That way the slash doesn't obscure the picture depicting what you shouldn't do. Well, this is the sign I saw today telling me what not to do on a train:

Enjoying Zurich

 We were fooled by the weather forecast again today, so we stayed close to home. It was cloudy but there was no rain. From now on I will only trust the precipitation report from meteo.search.ch. They have been right a few weekends in a row now. The weather is starting to change. Notice the sweaters and changing leaves.

First we went to the Zurich Zoo, which completes the zoo tour. The elephants were being washed and fed. The girls loved the fact that the elephant was having a pedicure. And R noticed that one of the elephants was stretching as far as he could on his chain to steal food from his neighbor.

L got to pet an alpaca, and found a long slide - her favorite thing!

For S, this was the star of the day. We didn't see any lions at the other zoos (her picture).

Quiet Wednesday

On Wednesdays the girls have a half day of school. They are both home by about 12:30. When I first heard about this I imagined that we would do all sorts of things on Wednesday afternoons.  So far, though, we haven't. Since we try to go somewhere every weekend day, the girls really like having Wednesdays to relax a little or catch up on school work. I suppose we will go places on some Wednesdays, but not anywhere as far off as I had hoped. To go anywhere we pretty much have to go through Zurich. The train is about ten minutes away. It goes every half hour and takes about twenty minutes to the center of the city. Then we go from there. If we want to go somewhere on a Wednesday I would first feed the kids lunch. That means our earliest possible train would be at 1:26 getting in around 1:50. So we could spend a few hours at a museum in Zurich, for example. But if we wanted to go to Bern or Basel we wouldn't be there until three at the earliest and would have an hour and a half ride home. It's not really worth it when the girls really want to relax.  So we will just get to know Zurich and the local hikes well.

Today's shopping, including the fig walnut bread and some fish (thinking of you, Dad!)

Notice the pumpkin slice.

I have decided that on days when we don't go anywhere I will try to get to the Oerlikon market. It's a good market, it's the easiest to get to, and the bread vendor who sells addictive fig walnut bread is there. Also, the kids get a kick out of having a market lunch buffet. 

T all bundled up and enjoying his carrot bribe.

I like an elephant

(Basel Zoo. All pictures by T, dictated by T.)

I like my pig

I went a zoo today and I saw some animals. And the animals are friendly. And I'm silly. I like the zoo and I want to put the animals on the website. I took all the pictures. It was a beautiful day today and we saw some giraffes. I ate an apple, yogurt, and roll. I think I'm done right now. That's all I want to say.

L wants to ride the goat or something.

I love you

This is the duck what bit R and R is looking at L

Puffy butts I want to keep on my desk.

Zurich

Note: R posted about her school trip. I'm not sure everyone saw it because the Adventure??? post went up so soon afterwards. Doesn't that hike look a little crazy with sections so steep they put ladder rungs in the rock, and others so narrow they had to add the steps and handles? On top of that everything was wet from the fog/clouds. I'm glad R was back before I knew about any of it!

The weather was supposed to be awful today, so we all decided to sleep in late. E wanted to ride the electric bike with the littles to the cheap grocery store in the next town over.  The girls and I went into Zurich. The plan had been to go to the flea market and then the design museum, but the weather was beautiful so we walked around a bit instead and relaxed at a cafe. We'll go to the museum another time.

View from Grossmunster tower. The church on the left has Marc Chagall stained glass windows.

The flea market was a bust. There was absolutely nothing there that interested us other than a pair of overpriced shoes R liked and these tin eggs:

Then we walked around old town for a while, stopping in at a few of the small chocolate shops where the girls each chose one thing so they could compare and contrast. There was no winner, but S did like the window decorations and packaging best at Teuscher. Their window was incredibly colorful with a sort of jungle theme and huge parrots. We couldn't get a picture because of glare. But we did take this picture of their door which forbids dachshunds in the store. Sorry, Bella!

Also, I thought the sign below it was a no smoking sign, but it really has no element of "no." And was it really necessary to specify no cigarettes or cigars or pipes or even lit matches? If someone comes up with something else to smoke will they be allowed?

Adventure???

Not a bad view.

It's R again!

The Sunday after paragliding wasn't quite as interesting as the Saturday (at all), but it did grant a beautiful view. After a strange breakfast, (where you bust into the hostel's kitchen and find that there is some cereal and toast awaiting you), the family took the cable car up to Mürren. Those cable cars and stations were really big on having "007" on them, because they go up to Shilthorn (where a James Bond movie was shot)  From there we hiked the CHILDREN'S ADVENTURE TRAIL! We start, and almost immediately run into a playground. Naturally (with the littles), we stop and play for a while, and then pack up shop with some moaning and "I wanna keep playing"s. But all is good again. We assume that it will be more small playgrounds along the way and small adventure activities (hence the name), but we are wrong. The next stop consists of a small wooden lookout dock (that gave poor T a splinter) and possibly one of the best parts of the trip: a mini zipline. You sit on it and go down the line. T absolutely LOVED it, and I have to say that it was very fun.

zipline!

An odd school trip...

Saas-Grund

I'm back! It's R, and this is my first blog post! Hooray!

So last week was my class's Arbeitswoche (work week). Surprisingly to me (nobody else though) it was only the second week, and it was a very long trip down to Saas-Grund a few hours away, and was kind of like camp.

The first thing to mention was the place we stayed at. The outside was cute, and it was a hotel with the family in charge living on the bottom floor and a beautiful veiw. The inside, though, was horrifying. Keep in mind that I know just the floor with the girls rooms and hallways with badly knit spiders, rugs, and things. The rooms were the worst. Next to me in the first room was a creepy fat panda rug with pink eyes, a photo-shopped sled dog photo with big eyes that stared at you constantly, and a dusty old rug on the wall that the girls sleeping there were afraid would rain dust on them as they slept. My room had ugly yellow tiles behind the sink that clashed with the wood, another knit item, and 3 clown tiles. The third room has a nicely knit rug of Donald Duck's grandfather sitting on the toilet and watching TV. Then the last room was the grand finale, with a racist black clown holding some balloons on the wall. Need I say more?

So the teachers (german/gym and art teachers) didn't seem to care about our safety much. We hiked most days, alot. Wednesday they brought us on possibly the most dangerous hike possible. With two hugely long and high suspension bridges with max 3 people, just two wood planks as a bottom, and  the mere steps of people making them sway back and forth, it scared us alot. Then after that, we went down an entire mountain on some scooter-bikes with fat wheels in groups by ourselves, and with only two teachers nowhere near us, I flipped over the handlebar of mine and fell on my face. The food was scarce too, especially for me and my friend, who are both vegetarians. Every main course in lunch and dinner was some gross meat, breakfast was cereal and bread, and there was nothing for the day except for apples, but only if we were hiking during lunch. We would always be hungry and tired, considering that they kept us up until 9pm in class...

The pictures say it all.

The trip also had a mysterious problem that resulted in the police almost coming, and the teachers in charge getting pretty mad at us. So as far as I know, all of the girls are hanging out, minding there own business, when the teachers call everyone into a meeting. They say that things are messed up, the police almost came, and that everyone had to stay in their own rooms until dinner, and quietly. No one that I talked to knew anything about anything that caused this, but the teachers were steamed. We're pretty sure that that night was the reason that WE had to clean the rooms and hallways on the last day...

Mini rock-climbing course

Contrary to the first three paragraphs, however, the trip was fun. We saw beautiful views in Saas-Fee and Saas-Grund, We had fun on most nights, and we had some nice conversations over meals. Also, we had a wild animal encounter, on a mountain, with a marmot. We put some carrots and peanuts in  front of his hole, and he came up and just stayed, even with 5 girls constantly snapping pictures of him! We did some mini rock climbing course with harnesses and all, and I was one of the few who chose to be hooked up to a pulley and dangled off of a high rock afterwards, and that was exciting and very fun.  After that week, I am VERY tired, and hungry, and I'll have to say that arbeitswoche was the oddest school trip I've ever been on.

Marmot!

After we finished the most dangerous hike.