Interlaken, Grindelwald and Pfingstegg

Sorry this post took so long to put up, but there are a lot of pictures!

Last weekend, we bit the bullet and bought a five day Swiss Rail Pass for about $560 US. It allows Jim and I to travel on any train we like, anywhere we like, on five specific days we get to choose. We also got a Family Pass (included for free) so Jack and Lily can travel with us for free. The pass also gives us a 15% discount on most tourist activities and allows us in all museums for free.

For our first day of travel, we decided to mimic one of the package trips we saw in a brochure Jim picked up at the Swiss Embassy in New York. We got up bright and early, bought our pass, and hopped on a train to Interlaken Ost, a town at the foot of the Swiss Alps. The kids loved the train!




The train journey was about 2 hours, figuring in all of the stops in between, and we all enjoyed looking at all the sites out the windows. I think Jim got some video, but my camera doesn't capture moving scenes well, so I didn't bother to take pictures.

Interlaken Ost

We arrived at Interlaken Ost around 10 am. This is a picture of the railway station. Our first stop was a local cafe so we could get some breakfast -- it was too crazy trying to eat on the train because the choice was to eat in the dining car (and potentially lose our seats in the crowded 2d class compartment) or wait for the dining cart to come by (our choice, but the cart never came to our car). After eating, we stopped at the Coop (a chain of cooperative markets) and picked up so food and drinks for later so we wouldn't get stuck without food again.

This picture is a beautiful fountain in the square near the train station. A thin layer of water flows over the top and down the sides. Jack was fascinated by it!

Grindelwald

Our pass allows us to just get on any train without reservations or tickets, so we hopped on the next train to Grindelwald, which is at the base of the Alps. I couldn't get over how stereotypically "Swiss" everything looked there, and wondered which came first -- the look of the town or the outside world's stereotype of a Swiss mountain village. Probably a bit of both! The above picture is a view from the train station towards the Alps, which were obscured by some low clouds.

We had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the next leg of our journey, which was a cable car to an outlook point on the mountain above Grindelwald, called Pfingstegg. I took a few pictures on our walk. The above is another view as we walk towards the Alps.

And another view as we got closer.
I loved this little chalet because it had the stereotypical window boxes filled with bright flowers and a big row of Swiss cowbells hung on the porch. Lily and I ended up buying a small bell for our Christmas tree. It has nostalgic significance for me, because when my Aunt visited Switzerland when I was small, she brought a similar bell home for me.

This is the church that was our landmark -- we walked until we came to the church and then we turned right. I love the architecture.


As we got closer to the cable cars, I was able to get some better shots of the mountains.

I wish the weather had been better, but we've had a lot of cloudy days here. Jim's coworkers have told him that July is the nicest month for weather here, but that this summer has been unusually cloudy.


Here we are about to get on the cable car at Grindelwald.

The kids loved this part of the journey, too!

Pfingstegg
Once we arrived at the outlook, Pfingstegg, we took a quick bathroom break. The signs on the building and on each door were hilarious. It's hard to see in this picture, but the mens' room had a picture of a man facing away, as if he were peeing, and a woman with her skirt lifted squatting! I felt a little weird photographing it until I saw several other tourists doing the same.

The primary reason Jim wanted to go to Pfingstegg was to ride on the Rodelbahn, which is a summer bobsled. This sign and weird carved face showed us the way.

As well as a small restaurant with a terrific patio view of the valley, Pfingstegg had lots for kids to do, including a trampoline, a slide, a swingset and a sandbox. I had some other pictures to post of those, but apparently they didn't get uploaded here. There were some pigs that lived up there -- Lily loved them and was excited to see them, but Jack was a little afraid. I carried him up near the pigs and he said "Too close!"

Here are my little kid and my giant kid on the Rodelbahn. There wasn't a good vantage point to get a picture of them when they were cruising around. This is at the very beginning. Jim bought 4 rides -- two adults and 2 children. Since both of the kids wanted to go with him, I waited at the top. Jim had so much fun, he bought 4 more rides and they did it again. I was kind of relieved not to have to go!

This is Lily pretending to be Cocolino. Cocolino is a cat with a fried egg eye patch who cooks with his little brother and sister. They are apparently characters in a popular series of books called Kuchen mit Cocolino (Cooking with Cocolino) - the books present a series of simple recipes for children. They had a little Cocolino play area next to the Rodelbahn that featured a place you could play Cocolino's theme song and add percussion. The theme song part was broken....


...but that didn't stop the kids from playing percussion!

After investigating all of the activities at Pfingstegg, we took a break and had cheese, fruit and cold drinks on a little bench set up overlooking the valley. This is Lily posing in front of the view.

And here's a view of the mountaintops from our bench.

The town of Grindelwald from the bench.

And, last but not least, my feet to give you and idea of how close we were to the edge.

All in all, it was a fun trip. We have so much flexibility with the train pass that we could pick and choose when to get our next train connection. That allowed us to take our time and really look at things without worrying about a deadline. The trains between Grindelwald and Interlaken Ost, and Interlaken and Basel run fairly frequently all day long.

I did check out a yarn store in Grindelwald, but it carried a rather boring stock of Regia, Opal and Lana Grossa. So no yarn purchases for now. Jim did pick up a jack knife (Swiss Army, of course). It has an orange peeler as one of its many features. Jim commented on how handy that was, and my response was "Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've been out alone with just an orange and a regular knife and thought 'Gee, if only I had an oranger peeler and could get this orange open!"

Out and About

Eating our $50 McDonald's Meal:



They do provide a better healthy choice with the Happy Meal here -- apple slices and grapes, with NO caramel dipping sauce! The kids enjoyed smiling with apple rind teeth.

Jack Bustin' a Move:





All I wanted was to take a picture of the two kids in front of the plant. I'm not sure why Jack felt it was necessary to gangsta rap.

The Tram in Clarastrasse:





We can get just about everywhere in and around Basel by tram. All visitors to Switzerland are given free "mobility passes" to use the trams. Most of the trams are just plain green, but some have ads and other decoration painted on them. This is the "I Love You" tram. Clarastrasse is the station nearest our hotel, and we can catch several trams from there. We are also within walking distance to Claraplatz, a big shopping area (they have H & M there, for example) and a major tram hub.

The Claramatte Park:







This park was recommended to me by one of the Ravelers in the Swiss Knitting group I joined. It has a huge wooden play structure with rope ladders, slides, several different kinds of swings, and all sorts of hidey holes. The kids just love it. Iy also has a wading pool with water spouts, but I'm not sure how often that's open. It was on the first day we went to the park and hasn't been on since.

Toy Museum:















These are all photos of the Toy Museum we visited. It was a 20 minute tram ride out of the city. We saw a lot of beautiful farms and little towns on the way and the kids really enjoyed the ride. The museum shows toys from the earliest times -- made from bone, sticks and stones -- all the way up to some modern toys. It was a very nice place with two play rooms on different floors set up with toys for kids to actually play with (probably to give moms and dads a chance to actually see the exhibits). It is housed in a big manor house with stone spiral stairs and these gorgeous tiled fireplaces and painted walls.

We Now Live in an IKEA Display

Seriously. If you came in here, you would look around for staff in the blue and yellow aprons! Here are some pictures so you know what I mean:

Living Room:


The couch has a trundle bed underneath that pulls out, and combined with the seat, makes a double bed. That's where the kids sleep. There's a nice flat screen TV in the corner, but we only get two English language channels: BBC News and BBC One. The kids really like watching German language cartoons, though, especially SpongeBob SquareKopf.

Desk/Dining Area:

You can see that next to the couch there is a small desk with two chars tucked under it. It also has a small table that fits right underneath it. We pull it out into the room to eat. We use the two chairs provided with the desk and two more folding chairs kept in one of the many closets. That's one thing to be said for this apartment -- there is a lot of storage space. Kind of like IKEA...hmmmm. Also, that curvy chair behind the wall is soooo uncomfortable and such a temptation for children to climb. We'd love to have it taken out of here, but I don't think they would have anywhere to put it.

Kitchen:



Here are two views of the kitchenette. It is cunningly made for such a small space. The top photo shows the stove top, which has a storage cabinet overhead and a drawer and cabinet underneath. To the right of the stove is a refrigerator (the big gray cabinet) and an oven that works both as a microwave and a convection oven. There is also another stroage cabinet over the oven.

The lower picture shows the sink area. The garbage and compost waste is stored under the sink and there's a tiny little dishwasher next to the sink (you can't really see it here). It's the cutest little thing you've ever seen, and designed to easily fit the cooking utensils and dishes dirtied by a family of four. The cloth you see hanging on the door is hanging on one of two hooks that are there just to hang your cloths.

Bedroom:

There's not much to say about the bedroom. It's two separate beds pushed next to each other, which sounds uncomfortable but is actually kind of nice. They don't seem to move around or gap in the middle, so it's possible they are attached to each other. Since I don't have to make the beds (yay for maid service), I have no idea. The good part is that we each have our own sheets and blankets. Aside from the bed, there's not much more than two bedside tables and a closet in there.

Tub and shower area:

The separate toilet/tub and shower areas were heavily advertised as a feature of this apartment. This is the tub and shower area. The tub is really deep and the kids love bathing in there. The curvy sink is pretty but kind of impractical. The shower, which you can't really see, is tucked in the left corner. This room is quite large and a comfortable place to get changed after you bath.

Toilet area:


This room is very, very small. In fact, I don't really like being in there with the door shut all the way because it's a bit claustrophobic. The toilet has two options: small flush for when you pee and big flush for when you do something else. It also has it's own little wash basin, which is nice. You can sort of see Jack's potty on the floor in the foreground there. He's been doing great with peeing, but he had a little poop accident in his underwear this evening. Fortunately, it was Jim's turn to clean up the mess.

View across the street:

This is the view from our living room window. See all the shutters? They appear to be metal. Almost all of them have been pulled down since we arrived, but there are clearly people living on some of the floors who open theirs. I'm not sure what they're for -- they look kind of like hurricane shutters.

View down the street:


This is the view down Hammerstrasse. There's not much to say about it.

Anyway, if you want a 3-D tour of our apartment, you can check it out here. Click on the oval that says "virtueller besuch" underneath the photo on the page, and then click on "die wohnungen" to get a drop down menu. Make sure to choose the second option for 2 zimmer-wohnung -- the first one is a different style of apartment from ours. The second option gives you a 360 degree virtual tour of an apartment like ours -- you will really get an idea of how small it is!

Death March

After a nightmare 18 hour trip, we arrived in Basel yesterday afternoon. The good thing about our trip: the kids were very well behaved, considering they had very little sleep during that time. The bad things about our trip:

diarrhea
6 hour surprise layover in Heathrow, the Airport of Sweaty Doom
sleeping on a stone floor
pulling what was basically an all-nighter at the age of 42

And this isn't even a comprehensive list.

The apartment is nice but compact. VERY compact. I could take a picture of the entire kitchen, bedroom and living room while sitting on the couch. Also, they don't exactly have air conditioning in Switzerland. They call it "air freshening." So far, the difference seems to be that the room eventually gets cool, but remains very humid. So, there's a lot of sweating if anyone moves around too much. Fortunately, the dainty size of the accommodations makes it nearly impossible to move around too much.

We have no food, so I have to try and find a supermarket today. We think there's one right down the street, but I have to go inside to tell for sure. We had italian for dinner last night. The owner spoke mostly Italian, a smattering of German and very little English. We only made it a part of the way through the meal when we realized the kids had to go home and get in bed, so I took the kids and left Jim to deal with the check.

Anyway, we have internet now, I have about 30 francs in my pocket and I've got to figure out how I'm going to feed the kids today, so I'm off. I'll try to post some pictures of the apartment and our street later. If we can get rid of this jet lag thing going on....

Procrastination

I don't really feel like packing!

The kids are really excited about the upcoming trip. Jack believes that Switzerland will really like his light saber and his hair. Lily told her friend today that Switzerland is a place with really good chocolate stores. I hope they don't end up disappointed.

Jack made up a new word this week -- "slurb." He initially created it to describe a strawberry coolatta from Dunkin' Donuts. He took a sip and said "This is a really tasty slurb." He expanded the definition two nights ago while scraping up the cheese sauce from his macaroni and cheese, saying "I'm getting up all this macaroni slurb." I'm really into the word myself. It just sounds cool.

I really can't put off the rest of my work any longer. Catch you on the flip side, folks.

Half Way to 5K

So...Week 5, Day 3

I ran for 20 minutes today with no walking. I feel like superwoman. If you had told me 5 weeks ago that I would run for 20 minutes and enjoy it, I would have laughed in your face. That first day of running, 30 seconds seemed like a lot! But today, I just went out and did it! And it didn't kill me, either.

I am still trying to get over the Cold of Eternity, and had to take a 4 day break between Week 5, Day 2 and the big run on Day 3. It was well worth it.

We are busy planning for our big adventure, so I can't much for now.

20 minutes! Wooo-hoooooooo!

Week 4, Day 2

Great run this morning with no problems. I stupidly peeked ahead to next week and found out that on Week 5, Day 3, I have to do a 20 minute run. With no walking. I'm already dreading it, even though I suspect by the time I get to it, it will go just fine. Running 5 minutes at a stretch seemed very easy today.

In other news, Jack pooped on the potty...FINALLY. He got a "light saver" (light saber) as his reward, but was upset later in the day because he wished he had bought an "MP3-O" (C3PO) figure instead.

He also had his evaluation for speech at the preschool yesterday. We decided to have him checked out because of the squeaky voice thing and the weird way he talks. Some of it has been resolved by the acid reflux meds he's been on, but we thought it was worth having checked. He did just fine and nearly talked the ear off of the evaluator. Sadly, she was not a voice pathologist, which is what we needed for a proper evaluation. We'll have to get a referral from his ENT after we get back.

He told the evaluator we were going to Switzerland and she checked with me to see if he was telling a story! He also told her that when you're sick, you need to eat jello because it makes all the germs go away down into your stomach.

Things I learned from running today: It isn't that bad to go running when it's raining lightly. It's actually kind of nice.