Dayhike in Switzerland

Tom talked me into taking a hike with him on Saturday and it wasn't quite what I expected. I was thinking that we would hike 2 (maybe 3) hours of moderately difficult terrain and eat about an hour into the hike. Boy, was I wrong!

We got to the start of our trail about 2:30 since we had slept in and then needed to go to the store for some hiking food and a map. Note: if you know anything about Tom, you know that he can't stand to be anywhere without a detailed map of his surroundings! Anyway, we started out and were immediately challenged with a rather steep climb. After awhile, we came to a gate. I didn't know this, but apparently in Switzerland, you hike all over land that belongs to others and they don't really care - as long as you securely latch the gates behind you. The ever-present yellow trail markers point all through personal property. Beyond that gate, we were in cow land. Not only did we walk by cows for the next few hours, we also hiked through the evidence of cows. Let me just say that cows must eat a lot...

After about an hour of this, Tom said - look, you can see the top (of this part)! I missed the latter part of his comment. So, that wasn't so bad...rather steep and a little messy, but I'd survived. Let's eat! Then we turned a bend and I saw what we were really trying to get to the top of - oh my. We finally made it to the top of the ridge a little after 5 and it was time for dinner. It was a really pretty place to picnic, and the food was very welcome. Now nourished and rested, we were ready for the descent. We made it back to the car in about 1.5 hours after passing through quite a few more cow pastures and one full of sheep. The moon came out on our way down and was just beautiful. All in all I got a 5.5 hour hike and learned that Swiss hikes usually come with a lot steepness and quite a few cows! We had a beautiful day for a hike though and Tom was a good encourager and patient with my slow pace. We ended up ascending (and then descending) about 2,500 ft, though, so it was a rather significant climb. It was a nice afternoon overall, but I propose we visit the chocolate factory next weekend :)

Oh, I almost forgot - my favorite part of the day was when we saw "the cows come home." This time of the year, the cows are brought down from the higher pastures in preparation for the winter. It's a big tradition and both the cows and the people herding the cows dress up for the occasion. We were driving when a guy on a motorcycle waved us to the side of the road and behind him were about 20 cows - all decked out. What fun!

Baby Kitty

After much debate and some good searching, Tom and I finally brought home a new kitty. She's a 6-week-old, long-haired calico and absolutely adorable! She and Maggie are still learning to be friends, but we have high hopes that they will be best buds someday soon. If you have any names suggestions, we're all ears. We were thinking something that sounds French would be appropriate, but are open to anything.

Tom is smitten with her :)

Our cat search story: It was much harder than we expected to get a cat here. After we decided we really wanted one, the search began. I assumed that we could just call the humane society, go visit and pick out our new cat. Wrong. After our neighbor called the SPA (the equivalent of the humane society here) for us, we went to visit Romeo - the one cat they said we could have. Though they had over 200 cats up for adoption, based on our criteria, he was the only one that matched our situation (we have a 2 year-old cat and don't let her outside). Well, Romeo was a nice cat, but he was very large - probably 20+ pounds, so 3x Maggie's size. He was also very quiet - not what we thought would fit Maggie's active inclinations. The SPA also told us that, if we adopted from them, they would come visit the animal every once in awhile until it died. After we heard that, we weren't too sad not to adopt from them! So we drove the 45 mintues back home without a cat.

Our neighbor made a few more calls for us since we are not yet fluent in French and German and found a few more leads. However, after one promising conversation, the woman never called back and then another place sounded like they had restrictions similar to the SPA. Argh! We then mentioned to some friends at church that we were looking for a cat. It just so happened that their friend's cat had just had a litter of 4 kittens. We went to visit them and, viola, we had a cat! We've had her since Thursday and are looking forward to getting to know her and see what kind of personality she has. Just let us know when you want to come meet her!

Welcome, Cambelle!

Cambelle Grace Burgess was born on August 29 in Fribourg, Switzerland!

Congratulations Dave, Lu and Big Sister Kacey!

Interlaken

Tom and I took a Saturday and ventured to Interlaken - about an hour away from where we live. There is an area near there called Lauterbrunnen known for its numerous waterfalls. We did the touristy thing and went to see lit-up waterfalls inside some caves. It was overpriced, but neat. It was really cold inside the caves since the waterfalls are made up of melted glacier water!

After the interior waterfalls, we found a place to go hiking. Having never hiked in big mountains before, I had no idea what I was in for! Going up was tough, but coming down was even harder. The views were spectacular, though and on the way down we even passed a group if hikers singing - almost like they were out doing Christmas carols. I'll have to get in better shape if I'm going to do much more hiking in the Alps - I was beat after just 2 hours.

For dinner we picnicked and then headed for Tell-Freilichtspiele - an open air theater production of the history of William Tell. It was all in German, but we still enjoyed it. The set was amazing and the cast included over a dozen horses that constantly galloped on and off stage.

This was our view while we climbed - notice the glacier in the center of the picture.

Here's a picture of the impressive stage. Click on it for a link to better pictures, including those of the cows, goats and horses that were up there!

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Bellinzona

Last Wednesday Tom had the day off, so we made the most of it and took a day trip to the Italian- speaking part of Switzerland. To get there we had to go through the longest tunnel in Switzerland - 17km long! I'm sure it's nice in the winter, but I preferred the view outside of the tunnel!

When we got there we looked up a few important phrases in Italian since we didn't know a single word! We had to figure out the number 7 so that we could pay for our gas. Fortunately it's close to Spanish and seems much easier to pronounce in French, so we did alright.

The main attractions in Bellinzona are 3 very well restored castles: Castelgrande, Castello di Montebello and Castello di Sasso Corbaro. We enjoyed poking around each of them. I loved the fact that they fit into my stereotypical picture of what a castle should look like. The weather was great - sunny and hot! After lots of rain and chilly weather, it was a welcome change. We didn't have time to eat dinner there, which really disappointed me, but there's always next time!

A view of Castello di Corbaro (at the top), Castello di Montebello and some of the wall from Castelgrande.

Castlegrande (left) and Montebello. Tom and I climbed up to the highest towers in both castles.

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Garden/Closets/Cooking

I've really enjoyed our little balcony garden, small as it is. We're growing some herbs (thyme, green and purple basil, rosemary and parsley), a cherry tomato plant, a pepper plant and cat grass. It's fun to use homegrown spices in our food and Maggie loves the cat grass!

One thing that is different over here is the lack of closets. So, when we moved here, we had no where to hang our clothes (or store random stuff). We looked around and finally decided to get our wardrobes at Ikea. Here's a picture of what they look like - a little different from what we're used to!

On the suggestion of a Swiss woman, I subscribed to a cooking magazine over here called Betty Bossi. I tried one of the recipes this weekend. It took awhile to translate it, but it seemed to turn out pretty well. It didn't look quite like the picture (when does it ever!) but tasted quite good! It's fun to try Swiss recipes and nice to have the ingredients given in metric quantities.

Le Premier Août

The first of August is Switzerland's fête nationale (national holiday) which dates back to 1291. We are living in an old country! They celebrate their "independence day" similar to how we celebrate ours: lots of flags, food, fireworks and bonfires. We celebrated by going to our neighbor's party on Tuesday evening and then going camping on Wednesday night. The party was fun, though it is very difficult to make small talk when everyone is speaking either French or German. Many people spoke English, though, so we managed to communicate to some extent.

The next day we went South to the mountains in the Valais area. A couple we met at church (Dan and Rosalie) invited us along, and we made a group of 12! We had a good time. We helped build a dam in a FREEZING cold stream (ok, I barely helped and just put my feet in), ate delicious food, sang praise songs and set off fireworks. I even got to light a few off - my first ever! We were in a valley, so we could see numerous bonfires all up the mountains around us and were surrounded by fireworks. That night it started to rain, but our tent kept us nice and dry. However, the next day was rainy, so instead of staying another wet night, we came home. It was a good time to get to know some other people in the church.

Both Dan and Rosalie's parents stayed in the bungalow to the left. It was nice to have somewhere dry to retreat to when it was raining as well as have a real kitchen (since we were cooking for 12)! And check out those pretty mountains.

Just a pretty view! I believe that the house is an actual place people lived many years ago.

The camping grounds - notice how close the tents are to one another! Our tent is the red 0ne - Tom noted that it matches our car. The rest of the group was staying in the the yellow tent.

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