So Long, Farewell

We really did have to leave Switzerland. Although on our drive out of the country, we discussed ways to get our daughter Swiss citizenship. For instance, as soon as I go into labor, if we head for the border (we already have the road sticker, so we wouldn't even have to stop), and I give birth in Switzerland, would that do it? What exactly are the rules on that sort of thing. I don't know that a whole lot of Western Europeans are running for the Swiss border to have children, so perhaps there are no rules governing this concept. I suppose we should just stick to our original plan of going to the hospital on base. But I'm not giving up the dream of a Swiss chalet. We could spend winters on a sailboat in the Caribbean and summers in a log cabin Switzerland. Ah, the dreams of the childless. About six more weeks until reality comes home to roost.

Lucerne's Chapel Bridge, Europe's oldest wooden, covered bridge.

Leaving Grindelwald Valley, we put Lugano into the GPS (our intended lunch stop) and headed out, driving through more gorgeous vistas. At one point, we passed a suspicious road sign that listed about six different mountain passes and their status (open or closed). We were going too fast for me to read the whole thing, but I noticed only two passes were closed. Surely out of six available ones, we were on the road to an open one. Right? We drove up, up, up, waterfalls everywhere, past the snow line, and in multiple places, past road barriers that were lifted up. Good news. Until we were almost to the actual pass. And the road barrier was down. We'd been driving up this particular mountain pass road for 45 minutes. Thankfully, the views were so gorgeous that doing the same trip in reverse was not a huge hardship. And it meant we got to see Lucerne. Checking our map and considering we didn't make note of which passes were open and which were closed, the best route seemed to be for us to stick to the main freeway all the way up to Lucerne for lunch, then come down the freeway into Italy. But by the time we reached Lucerne, we were tired of being in the car...and not only were we not out of Switzerland, we were two hours out of our way in the wrong direction! We took the Lucerne picture (truly, a gorgeous city), ate lunch, and got back on the road to Verona, where we'd planned to stop for the night. Verona of Romeo and Juliet fame. Unfortunately, Verona was about 30-40 minutes out of our way, and in hindsight, we wished we were just making for home. But we had hotel reservations that could not be cancelled and the thought of driving well into the night vs a nice dinner and hotel stay meant Verona won out.

We pulled into our hotel just before dark and heard the most unearthly screeching. Just horrid. And loud. Then a peacock walked around the corner. That made the screeching almost bearable. I've never stayed at a hotel with a pet peacock. I must have taken as many pictures of it as I did the Alps. I was even able to forgive it's shrieking when it began at 6am the following morning, mainly because it's peahen was out and about, so the peacock walked around for an hour with all his feathers displayed. Giving me a good photo op was worth the shrieking wake up call.

As far as Verona goes, it's a very nice, pretty city. There is a large amphitheater, and the night we were there, some sort of pop concert was taking place inside it. We walked around the pedestrian zone, took a picture of the wall of love letters at Juliet's house (from the one in the movie "Letters to Juliet" - if you saw the movie, both the wall and the letter answering club are real), and found one of the prettiest piazzas in all of Italy (Piazza d'Erbe). We were just really ready to be at home, so I'm afraid we did not enjoy Verona as much as I'd hoped...and we were both sad to no longer be in Switzerland. And a shrieking peacock woke us up at dawn.

Did you know peacocks could fly?
I didn't, but I saw it with my own eyes.

Cow Field Blunders

Last full day. Big sigh. I did NOT want to leave Switzerland. Nathan, however, awoke with a terrible migraine. Our wonderful hotel hosts sent me up from breakfast with a tea tray for him once he awoke. The day was predicted to be sunny in the morning and storms moving in by afternoon. Since any light or movement hurt Nathan's head even more, I elected to go on a morning walk alone to give him time to recover. So far, we'd spent all our time over in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, but Grindelwald Valley, our base, had some pleasures of it's own. From our hotel, I could walk to a cable car that went only a short way up the mountain, and from there, our hotel host had informed me of a nice walk down to town. I headed off for the cable car station, finding views of a stunning glacier along the way (didn't even know we could see a glacier right from town). At the top of the cable car lift I found the two trails down to town, one quite steep and straight down, the other an obviously more meandering route. One problem. The gentler trail immediately began in a cow field...a cow field containing several large and vocal cows. I tentatively began walking along the path, but then the cows turned and seemed interested in me. So I ran (walked very fast) to a little fence built as an overlook to the luge that was also accessible from the cable car stop (I so wanted to ride that luge!). One particular cow came up to the fence I was behind, whereupon I realized the top of the fence I was using as my protective barrier reached only to her knees. The fence came to my chest, however, so I was at a distinct size disadvantage. At this point, all the cows had moved right into the path I was to walk down, so I walked back up to the cable car stop, intending to find someone I could ask about this path. The cable car attendant assured me that this path was indeed the correct one. Now I know in my head that cows do not attack. We lived on a dairy farm for a year and walked through the cow field numerous times - and I never got over the fear. They are just such massive animals, and I just think, "One bump and I'm down and trampled."

Now Nathan and I had spent the last two weeks quizzing a doctor friend of ours about various activities I could or could not do on vacation. "Can I go on a waterslide? Can I go white water rafting? Can I go horseback riding?" And so on. He continued to patiently tell us, over and over, "What we want to avoid is trauma to the abdomen." (Funny aside: Our first morning eating breakfast, our hotel host, who had already quizzed us on my due date, girl or boy, etc., suggested one particular valley where we could go base jumping. Base jumping! He walked away, and Nathan and I cracked up, saying, well, base jumping was not something we even thought to specify on our list of do and don't questions). So now, here I am in the Alps, alone in a cow field with extremely healthy cows who seem to want to approach me. This seems like a recipe for trauma to the abdomen. I didn't know whether to wish for other hikers to weather this field with me or to be thankful no one was around to see me walking along and muttering over and over, "What we want to avoid is trauma to the abdomen. If a cow bumps me, does that count? That seems like it could cause trauma, and what we want to avoid is trauma to the abdomen." I had been able to see the gate for the end of the cow field from my perch behind the "protective" fence, so I knew the path was short, or shortish. I just walked quickly and prepared my alternate route in the event the cows really began to approach me. I would know when they were coming up from behind since the cows really do wear bells. We bought one to put on Scully, but it scares him.

There are plenty of "Sound of Music" moments

Following my successful journey through the cow field, I breathed a big sigh of relief and continued on my pretty, little walk overlooking the gorgeous, green valley below. Until about 45 minutes later when I came to yet another cow field. This one had an electric fence that went ACROSS the trail. Just one fence line, so not a large fence, but in order to continue down to the valley, I would have to lay down on the ground and crawl under the electrified line, and then I would be in another darn cow field. This walking path was quickly losing it's appeal. I stood there for awhile, staring at the one, tiny little fence line, and began muttering to myself again. My alternative was to return to the cable car station, a steep walk uphill, and I'd still have to go through more cows. Crawl I did. Under the line, then, rather than staying on the path, I edged the fence line as far away from the cows as possible, made it to the other side of the pasture, and thankfully found only a similar, one line fence rather than a more insurmountable barrier. At this point, I was ready to be done with this path. It was only supposed to be about a 75 minute walk, so I knew I was really close to the end. I could only imagine what might come next. Actually, I didn't. It was a stream. A running stream across the pavement that I had to ford. It was just shallow enough to ensure slippery footing. Again with the muttering. Normally, none of these obstacles are a big deal, but at a time when my movement is a little impaired and my footing can be uneven, they were a little more challenging. Why, oh why, of all the walks we'd done in Switzerland, did this one have to be the one that Nathan was missing. The one time I really needed assistance...and cow bait.

The path finally ended, and I walked back into town. Nathan's migraine had lessened, and I, trying to be a good sport for the afternoon, suggested an afternoon bus ride reputed to be a quite scenic ride. Thankfully, the tickets were expensive, and upon further discussion, we found that we both just wanted to relax in the hotel room for the afternoon. This plan worked out because shortly after we ate lunch, the skies opened up in a cracking good thunderstorm, which we enjoyed from our covered balcony while napping and reading. While we would have enjoyed one more sunny day to enjoy some more hiking, our bodies and feet were aching, and we'd been away from home a long time.

Best Day of Hiking Ever

Our forecasted sunny day dawned, and we headed back over to the Lauterbrunnen Valley (only a 15 minute drive) to take the cable car up to Murren, another car free, mountain town, this time on the opposite side of the valley. Hikes from Murren provide the views of the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau. On our trip the previous day to Wengen, we'd actually hoped to hike a ridge line on a walk reputed to be one of the best in the region...only to find the route was still closed due to snow...in June. Not something we expected, but at an elevation of 7000 feet, we should have. We wanted to do a walk called the North Face Trail from Murren - actually, from yet another "town" (hamlet) a cable car ride up from Murren. Stopping in at Murren's Tourist Office, we found that one part of the North Face Trail was open - not the one we'd planned to hike, but we'd take what we could get. Riding the cable car up even higher, we stepped off at Alpenhubell and into glorious mountain views. The Jungrau mountain was front and center, right in our faces, the entire hike.

I'm 26 weeks along here.

Switzerland has these handy, yellow, directional signs that point your way toward towns, toward specific hikes, etc. Sometimes they just say "Wanderweg," which means walking trail. While these little signs are normally quite helpful, the North Face Trail signs gave us some confusing moments. The trail has a few split offs where you can walk to different towns, walk a different trail down, and so on. The trail we were following ended, or so we thought, at the front door of a house. We thought we'd missed the trail and gotten on a long driveway, so we backtracked, picked a different split, and that trail just petered out fairly quickly. Our only other option was to follow yet another split that headed up. We did not want to go up, so we headed back down the "driveway," and in walking on and over the front doorstep to peek around the corner, found the trail did in fact continue...along the side deck of the house, down some stairs, and then back on the real trail again.

We reached Murren in the amount of time the trail signs had listed (oh yeah, those handy walking signs also list distances and/or hiking times to the destination - so efficient!), and we were quite proud of ourselves since we've tended to become slow pokes. Although we had aching feet, we were just not ready to give up those views and call it a day, so we headed out from Murren on a family friendly trail (mostly flat and mostly paved) to the next village down the mountain, where we could catch the cable car down to the valley and our car. This second trail had views of all three of the biggies in this mountain world, and we had a slow pace with lots of stops for "photos" (i.e., rest). Even now, when I look back over our photos, I cannot get over the beauty of this region. Nathan called this his best day of hiking ever...high praise indeed.

Finding Paradise

Back to our vacation that now seems like it was eons ago, we based ourselves in the small town of Grindelwald, the next valley over from Lauterbrunnen Valley. We loved the town, and while a couple of the guidebooks I read listed it as crowded and touristy and kitschy, we found it to be a lovely, friendly town with plenty of restaurants from which to choose, some nice places to sit and enjoy the mountain views, and very friendly people staffing the hotels, restaurants, and shops. With our three day trip, we mostly planned to do hiking and hoped to do one day trip, possibly to Lucerne, as well.

This area of Switzerland is what you see on postcards and brochures. Towering, snow-covered, Alpine mountains and gorgeous, green valleys with wood chalets dotting the landscape. At this time of year (early June), waterfalls cascade down all the mountains and hills. The most famous mountains of this area are the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau, with a nice little legend to keep their order straight - The Ogre (Eiger) is kept away from the Maiden (Jungfrau) by the Monk (Monch). The Jungfraujoch at the top is heralded as the Top of Europe because it's the highest railway station in Europe, reached by railway and cable car. Servicing the valleys in this region are comprehensive, clean, scenic combinations of trains, cog rails, and cable cars. And Switzerland is EXPENSIVE! To go to Jungfraujoch costs something like $200. Some of the other, most scenic cable car routes were $100 and up per person. Since we just wanted to do some walking, we decided we'd get great views wherever we were and we could skip seeing the best of the best, i.e., heading to the tops of the mountains. And we were not disappointed.

Doesn't  the Lauterbrunnen Valley look like utter Paradise!

Our first morning dawned a bit cloudy, so we headed to Trummelbach Falls, a place where tunnels are carved out of the mountainside, and you can see various waterfalls of the glacier melt from the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau. They are beautiful and thundering and we spent an inordinate amount of time playing with the camera to capture the beauty.

Then the sun came out and we headed up a mountain via cog rail to visit the car-free, mountain town of Wengen. Sadly, we found out after our return home, when Nathan posted photos on Facebook, that some military friends from long ago were staying in Wengen that exact day! What are the odds? We did not run into our friends - instead, we took a short walk through town, then headed down to the valley and our car via a hike down rather than the railway. The hike was a bit steeper than I expected in some places (not in the below photo!), and with my center of gravity having shifted to the front a bit, I had to take more care than usual on the steeper parts. But our walk was filled with great views, and we enjoyed picking out the beautiful chalets that would work for our vacation home. The hike down from Wengen just whet our appetite for more of those views, and with a sunny day forecasted next, we were looking forward to Day 2 in the Swiss Alps.

Switzerland

The view from our hotel room is okay, I guess (!).