Climb every mountain...

 

First I must start this post with an earnest apology.  I have been very remiss in not updating the blog with the numerous adventures that we have had in the last five months.  I promise I will begin again.  This adventure, however, was one I had to write about immediately. 

Now that we have returned from the States, we committed to start climbing.  That is one of the main reasons that we came here!  Tom and Nicole were signed up for a climbing camp in June, but it was cancelled due to avalanche conditions.  We found our own guide, Jonas Lambrigger, and embarked to Zermatt to climb the Breithorn this week.  Breithorn is a peak in the Alps, 4164 meters tall (that's 13,661 feet to us) which is easily reached and within the capabilities of a child with the right spirit.  All we had to do was get the right equipment, get some training, question our sanity, and we were off!

Zermatt is a perfect picturesque Swiss town, filled with tourists and people leisurely strolling the streets, shopping and dining and enjoying the sights.  We were quite a sight ourselves, schlepping bags bigger than ourselves to a ski lift to take us closer to our first day of training. 

First we had basic "walk on rocks" training, then "walk with crampons" training.  Crampons are attachments to your hard boots that have 10-12 "teeth" that bite into the ice allowing you not to kill yourselves on the glacier.  You are much more likely to kill yourself on the little knives when they slide across your pants leg as you walk!

Now on to the fun part, ice climbing.  Tom demonstrated his technique...





And I was not about to turn down the challenge....

and even Nicole got into the action! 

Now it is time for a little dinner.  I think Nicole "smells the barn" and knows they are serving beef tonight! 

We made our way back to the "Gandegghutte", a family owned house accessible only by foot where others also use the altitude to acclimatize and rest prior to a pre-dawn start for the climb. 

We were indeed served a lovely meal of beef stroganoff, and shared a bunkhouse room with eight of our closest friends, with only three of them (not counting  myself) being snorers.  We awoke before dawn, and were treated to a lovely sunrise over our mountain.

 



We hiked back down to the ski lift, and took the "Klein Matterhorn" gondola with about 50 skiers (this is where all the national teams train, no, I did not see Bode Miller) to the back side of the snow covered mountain to begin our ascent. 

We were off on our first real alpine adventure.  We hit no crevasses (cracks in the glacier), and were doing well for the first hour of the climb until two things happened.  First, the wind picked up and we got really cold, right about the time we hit the 35 degree incline.  Tom said "you want me to carry what?" 

Jonas, our guide, was great, helping the girls step by step, finding ways to keep them warm during rest breaks and segmenting the mountain into little achieveable goals.  There were some doubts if we would make it, but 2 1/2 hours later, success!



We had some celebratory hot sweet tea and trudged our way back down the mountain. I really felt sorry for the people we passed who were still going up the steep section, because you could see in their eyes that they could never turn around and quit after seeing that the two little girls had succeeded!

Here are the girls at the bottom of the climb, pretty darn proud of themselves.  I have to say, we are proud of them too. 

Notice those nasty clouds looming in the background.  Time to get off that mountain!  We are already talking about what our next adventure will be.  Who's up for the Matterhorn?

(a special thanks and acknowledgement to Jonas for providing the pictures.  I dropped my camera somewhere the first day.  It may thaw out and show up eventually!)

The Glacier Express

We embarked on a tour of Switzerland with the grandparents on the "Glacier Express" train. In it's day, it was an express train, with 91 tunnels and 291 bridges taking you across the Alps up to 2000 meters on the south side of Switzerland. It is truly a marvel of engineering for the time that it was built, including wrapping underground while turning up to 270 degrees. Now it is known as the "world's slowest express train." We were blessed with sunny weather, and spent 12 hours exploring Switzerland. We were ready, with cameras in hand, in a beautiful panorama train built so you can admire the countryside from every angle...

We saw amazing panoramas of the Alps after every bend and tunnel. The cameras got quite a workout.

There were towns seemingly in the middle of nowhere, with obligatory ski resorts.

We got a small glimpse of what it is like to live in one of these small towns. Here is a woman heading off to the market.

And hang gliding is a very popular sport with the ski resorts...

The multiple avalanche guards looming over the train did not make you feel very confident!

But the amazing views distracted you from the danger. Did I mention that two Japanese tourists were killed last year on this train when it derailed?

We were treated to a first class lunch in our cabin. Who knew childrens' chicken nuggets could be so expensive?

After about four hours, the girls had finally had it. Nicole had a fever, and she corked off. Samantha decided that Harry Potter was more interesting .

We continued to wind our way towards St. Moritz, and came across The Glacier Express going the other way. Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?

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We went through some frighteningly narrow tunnels, and saw the "Grand Canyon" of the Alps...

We emerged, blurry-eyed at St. Moritz, to spend the night and enjoy the spectacular surroundings.

Miyo and Pop Pop were here!

Switzerland schools know what is the most important thing to do. In February, all the schools take a week off for "ski week". That is the official title, and everyone heads out of town. It was the perfect opportunity for a visit from Tom's parents, affectionately known as "Miyo and Pop Pop". We did a serious tour of Swiss tourist attractions, and we were blessed with unseasonably sunny weather. First on the agenda, the Hergiswill Glass Factory.

Hergiswill is a small town off of Lake Lucerne, with the perfect sand and pure water to make hand crafted glass items. We took a small train ride and arrived in a quaint Swiss town.

We took a small tour of the history of the factory, and got straight to work blowing our own glass...

Just kidding! The real glass is heated at over 1000 degrees centigrade. We emerged from the tour to be mesmerized by men working with molten glass. You cut it with scissors!

And here they are making perfect red wine flasks...

We could have watched them for hours, but now it was our turn....

You want me to what? Put that hot air to good use, Tom!

We all made beautiful glass balls for our Christmas tree...

While the ornaments were cooling, we took a tour of the museum. They also make mirrors, Check out Tom's new basketball physique!

They even had a playground outside with a 2 story high marble maze, where the marbles clinked their way down hand-made glass artwork. Some children, however, needed to work off a little bit of energy...

All in all, it was a very successful outing, with some beautiful ornaments and memories as a souvenir.



What is that strange brightness?

We heard that the winters here could be brutal, with weeks on end of no sunshine.  Our last snow was a month ago, when the meteorologists were predicting "40% chance light snow, no accumulation."  We got 4 inches. 

Since then I have been agitating to get out on my mountain bike and explore the mountains.  For the last 3 weeks the forcast has been "37-42 degrees, partial sun" but we would never get above 27, and we never saw the sun.  That is, until the last 3 days.  It's a balmy 45 degrees!

We headed outside to play baseball.  Sleeves optional.  Our neighbors must be totally confused with the screaming, running on bases, and a bat that looks nothing like a cricket bat.  We played football (american style), football (european style), grilled hamburgers, and hung out on the back porch admiring the sunset.  You don't realize how much you miss the sun until you stop seeing it.  Tommorrow they are forcasting 50 degrees, and they better not be teasing us!

Don't even get me started about the cell phone...

Tom has now taken an assignment in Paris, and is gone most weekdays. Now we have a problem. No Tom, no cell phone, no GPS. It is not that Switzerland is hard to get around without a GPS, it is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to get around without it. Roads are not marked, highway entrances don't tell you which direction you are going, and there are traffic circles everywhere. Remember the scene from "National Lampoon's European Vacation?": "Look kids, Big Ben, Parliament". Been there, done that.

I have been dreading this day for months. I obsessed over the choice of phone, and did extensive research with the help of technical articles far and wide. I narrowed down my choices, and headed off to the local electronics store with 2 hours, ID in hand, and money. I thought I was ready.

Cell phones in Europe are not "locked", so any phone works with any plan. There were over 60 phones begging to be fiddled with at the store, with all the descriptions in German. I quickly decided which phone and thought I was through the worst of the hard sell by the vendors. Nope, we're just getting warmed up!

There are 4 main vendors of the cell service in Switzerland, with a endless buffet of plans to choose from. Do you surf, do you talk, do you SMS? Where do you travel? Where do you like to call? Now figure out exactly how many GB of memory transfer you will use, exactly how much you will talk and text each month and you can decide what plan you need. Talking can cost per total numbers of minutes that you talk, or per call not lasting more than 59 minutes. Do you ever use your phone to Skype? Uggh, I need to make an excel spread sheet to choose.

I made my decision, and the staff seemed very pleased, and off we go to ring it up. I hand over the requisite residency permit, and watch the staff work. There were phone calls, there were consultations with managers, there was visible pointing at me with wild hand gestures. Apparently, when you are a foreigner, it is not enough to give your address and the legal documents saying that you are allowed in the country, you need notarized statements stating that you really live at your given address. I looked at my watch nervously, kids will be home in 1 hour, 15 minutes. I can rush home, find the file, and return. I think I have a piece of paper that might just get the job done. I'm off.

I return short of breath, ready to close this deal. Here we go again! Calls, consultations, disparaging looks from other vendors. Do I have something in my teeth? Why is everybody staring?

The cell phone vendor does not like the fact that I only have an "L" permit, a limited residency permit granted because we arrived toward the end of a calender year, not the beginning. At first, they were talking $1,000 Swiss franc down payment. The decision came down that they only needed $300. Small problem though. This store sells the phones and the plans, but they do not take down payments. I have to go to another cell phone store, give the deposit, get a receipt, and return back to store #1 with the receipt. Ok, but I have no GPS yet to find this store.

Now I am determined. I WILL get this done, come hell or high water. I flew out of the store in the general direction of the new store, bumbled my way there (hey buddy, not necessary to honk, I'm a little lost), and arrived to give my deposit. I was assured by store #1 that someone in store #2 spoke English.

"Gruetzi! Tut mir lied, Ich sprechen kein Deutsch. Sprechen Sie Englisch?" (Hello! I'm so sorry, I speak no German, do you speak English?)

"Nein". They take my ticket number from my hand, throw it into the garbage, and call for the customer with the next ticket number.

My Yankee assertiveness training took over, I stepped between the approaching customer and the sales associate and bumble my way through an explanation of deposits, L permits, receipts, and presented the magical debit card to prove they will get a commission from working with me. Amazing how money talks in any language!

I call the girls while returning to the original store. They are fine, long multiplication is no fun, but the homework is getting done. I am overjoyed. I can visualize that phone in my hand, deftly guiding me through Europe.

Here we go again. Third set of copies of my permit, passport, heated phone conversations, and the sales associate says "I'll be right back" and he darts off to the other side of the store.

I stand there for 45 minutes. Other associates ask me what is happening. How the %$** am I supposed to know? I have to admit, I was very amused watching the older Swiss men leer at Britney Spears videos while I was waiting, but this is getting insane. My sales associate runs back, another phone call, another excuse, and I did understand "I have a migraine, I need coffee" from his phone conversation. Apparently the fax machine was broken, and in a store filled with electronics, they had no back up fax. He used a scanner and e-mail to get the paperwork sent.

Long story longer...It took 4 hours 15 minutes to get a cell phone. I am, however, surfen and skypen to my hearts content. My new friend Fiona says that I am very lucky. Women who do not have full time jobs usually are not allowed to have a cell phone in their own name. Did I mention how honored I feel?

I will never get used to some things!

My daily pilgrimage to the grocery store is filled with all sorts of new discoveries.  Who knew that $4.50 a gallon for milk was a good price?  How do you choose from 20 different types of extra virgin olive oil?   My discovery yesterday was a shocker...

Yes, that is marinated horse steak.  They also had horse "jerky" if you would prefer.  The butcher down the street advertises horse meat from the USA.  It is truly nauseating. 

Speaking of nauseating, I will never get used to all the cigarette smoke.  It is a great mystery of how the Swiss are so healthy and have a longer average life span than the USA but sometimes it seems like everybody smokes.  In the train stations, instead of there being a designated smoking area, there is a designated non-smoking area (a little glass room).  Switzerland, in general is exquistely clean, but they don't consider cigarette butts trash.  Here are the train tracks.

There are cigarettes for sale everywhere, including all the vending machines.  Speaking of vending machines, I recently saw a new addition to the merchandise:

 Yes, tucked next to your ciggies is your pregnancy test.  "Maybe baby" translates into any language!