IrishOboe

Well, it’s been taking all my energy to keep my folks entertained, but whether they need it or not is another question.  With some school assignments hanging over my head and the panic of upcoming concerts I haven’t been able to take a total vacation like I did over Christmas, but I’ve been enjoying myself none the less.  It seems like Mom and Dad are, too, and I think we’ve packed in quite a bit in these few days.

Sunday morning (Feb. 3) we took the tram to the station so they could validate their Swiss Pass.  For only $600 they got 15 days of unlimited travel in Switzerland, including local transport for both of them.  That comes to $20 a day each, which is a deal given the number of day trips we’re doing.

I find it ironic and somehow pleasing that their first time to BCF was just about a year after my first time.  Most of the church was at a retreat in Lungern this Sunday, so I introduced them to a mostly empty church.  We have new visitors introduce themselves on the first Sunday, and when I first came and introduced myself a year ago most of the folks were off at the annual Lungern retreat.

It was a good service and afterwards we had fun spontaneously singing songs in a number of languages (or rather one song in many languages) including English, German, French, Spanish, Korean, Hungarian, Malay, and Chinese.  Someone could help us with pronunciation in each of them.  I told my Mom church isn’t always this good. ;)

After a good coffee hour we had lunch with the Stuecklins (that’s Stephan’s mom and dad).  We all got along great and enjoyed the time.  It’s too bad we can’t seem to get everyone together at the same time, but something is much better than nothing.

That evening we took the train to Lauterbrunnen and found the rustic hostel I’d managed to book.

It was quite comfy and spacious and served as a good base for the few days we spent in the Berner Oberland.  The first day (Monday, Feb. 4^th) was overcast so we went for a winter hike along the ridge of the Lauterbrunnen valley.  It was a lovely walk and at midday we found a cute restaurant in Mürren and enjoyed a fondue with the appetite we’d worked up from the 5K walk.

After hot chocolates we walked on to Grimmelwald and took the gondola back to the valley and the bus back to Lauterbrunnen where we took the train to Grindelwald to see if Dad remembered anything from his stay there.  The fancy hotel right by the station hadn’t changed much, but the he didn’t recognize the touristy town at all.  The trip was made worth it by the fun playground equipment that I managed to get all of us on.  I could tell you that I handled it most gracefully of all, but Mom got a brilliant video that seems to indicate the contrary.  It was just bad timing – really.

After that we crashed into bed and I realized I hadn’t quite healed from my fall off my bike.  Maybe I can get that video off of Mom’s camera sometime to show you why . . .

The next day we made an assault on the Jungfraujoch and despite blue skies on the train ride up, by the time we made it to the “Top of Europe” the clouds had come in an obscured the top of the mountains around us.

We could see well enough below, and it was neat to see the glaciers and some of the alps.  I found the alps in Graubunden more impressive in terms of expanse, but I’d never been so close to glaciers or traveled through a mountain like that.  Dad had been up years before as a boy traveling with his family so it was fun to hear him talk about the changes that had happened – including a dramatic decrease in the size of the glacier.

Despite the fact that I’d climbed Mt. Fuji (12, 388 ft) and had no trouble with altitude sickness, after 20 minutes or so at the top of Jungfraujoch – a full 1,000 feet lower than Mt. Fuji – I began to feel dizzy.  I attributed the feelings to two things: I whacked my head quite hard on the train ride up, and we climbed in altitude much faster by train that I did by foot up Mt. Fuji.  We didn’t stay too long up there and I felt better when we returned to the base camp.  I’ve have spells of the same type of dizziness here and there afterwards, but I’m not worrying about it yet.

Wednesday (6^th) we checked out around 7:30, I think, and took the Golden Pass Panorama train toward Lausanne.  I bought a day pass since we’d be doing a lot of train travel that day but I didn’t realized it had no date on it until I was on the train.  I noticed it was the type of ticket that could be punched at a station, so I asked a conductor if I had to do something with it before getting on the train and he said yes, took my ticket back to the station and went to put it in the trash!  I almost called out in a panic but caught myself in time, laughed at his joke and thanked him when he came back having put it in the correct devise.  See, I can take a joke sometimes. ;)

The trip was cloudy, but still a nice ride and when we got to Chateau d’Oex we got off per Stephan’s recommendation.

We found a balloon museum that our passes got us into then looked at the cute church on the hill.

We just missed the next train so we had a lunch of crepes at a cute place and caught the next train which happened to be the Golden Pass Classic car, which was cooler than the panorama because the seats and cars were old-fashioned and provided great ambiance.

We disembarked at Montreux, deposited our luggage at a locker and walked along Lake Geneva to Chateau de Chillon.  We enjoyed two hours of discovery and there were a number of improvements made since I was there so it was just as interesting for me a second time.  Plus, the weather was much better, though still a bit cloudy.

We ate a nice dinner in Montreux and then passed through Lausanne deciding to head home and hit that city later.  I was never so glad to see Basel SBB station (though that record was soon to be broken) and we collapsed into bed soon after our return.

Thursday (Feb. 7) I copped out and let Mom and Dad go see Bern on their own while I stayed home and tried to get some work done.  I did manage to get my room into a much more livable state and make some arrangement alterations that make life easier.  Mom reported that Dad did a great job of getting them around Bern I had the extra treat of getting to talk to Stephan since I was home midday, which is the best time to try to connect with Japan.  I met Mom and Dad at the station and we took the 2 to the Cooper’s house for dinner.  Veronika was supposed to join us, but she stayed home with a cold.  She’s better now, but that was unfortunately.  We had a lovely time anyway, and Anita’s cooking did not fail to live up the high expectations I’d set.  I still came home exhausted and I’m not sure why I’ve been so tired and have slept so much.  Maybe I was fighting off Veronika’s cold.

Friday (Feb. 8) Mom and I sent Dad into the city to entertain himself so we could have a quite day of working and chatting.  Dad entertained himself well, but failed to get the time we wanted.  It started with a visit to Stephan’s apartment so I could water his plants and we enjoyed the sunny walk back through the park.

That meant a late start to the day and when we got back Veronika had lunch prepared for her friend even though she said she’d be in bed resting.  We accepted the invitation to join them for lunch, which was enjoyable but meant by the time the washing up was done we had 1 ½ hours before we had to prepare for the evening meal.  So much for getting work done.

I’ve never played host to a group of people before, and I can hardly say I did this time since Veronika did much of the preparations, but I’d like to get more skilled at it since I had a lovely time eating raclette with four invited guests, my folks, and Veronika.  It was difficult to limit myself to two friend from school and two from BCF, but I picked a crowed that I thought would make for interesting conversation and I was not disappointed.  Despite the late arrival of a few guests who shall remain nameless, it was a successful evening that didn’t end until around 11pm.  Mom was a dear and cleaned up afterwards so I could get to my date with a special someone who had gotten up at 6am on a Saturday to talk with me.  Now that’s love.

Saturday (Feb. 9) we took a day trip to Zurich and enjoyed a walk around the city, a view of the lake, and the Swiss National Museum, which had a great collection of medieval stuff.  We had left over raclette for dinner and continued the habit of eating more than necessary . . .

Sunday I introduced my parents again to the church crowd that was gone last week and I was also pleased to introduce Veronika since she was finally able to visit.  Mom and Dad got a taste of hanging out with the Sunday crowd, though this time we had special activities.  We all went to Diana’s for raclette (still tastes good the third day) and to see the Fasnacht parade in her German town.  We had the bests seats since the route went right passed her windows.

The ten of us then met up with a few more and went to Liestal for their famous fire festival (Chienbäse).  I spend quite a bit of time trying to pronounce that correctly, but my work was rewarded by praise from my teacher the next time we talked.  The festival is really something else.  I hope the pictures and video are not too large to upload because I think they describe the situation best.

Waiting for the action was tiresome, but the train ride home was rather miserable.  In Japan they rope off the entrance to the station so they only let the number of people who can fit on the next train in at a time.  Here it was a free for all, and the Swiss might be calm and serious people, but it wasn’t that pretty.  Despite getting to the platform before many, we missed two trains, including the direct to Basel because of bad luck in positioning.  We squeezed on the third train despite calls of “the train is full” and I think Mom and Dad were spared the tension because they couldn’t understand the talk around them.  Though the ride was long with all the stops, at least the train emptied out a bit each time.  I really was never so glad to set foot at Basel SBB.  Did I mention I hate crowds?

We got home around 10 and went to bed in our smoky clothes so we could roll out of bed at 3am to see Morgenstreich.  The tram was so packed it didn’t stop for us and being thoroughly sick of packed trains we walked into town, arriving 9 minutes before the 4am kick off.  We couldn’t get to the planned position because of the crowds, but we ended up at the perfect place anyway.  Standing at the Barfusserplatz tram 3 stop we were elevated enough to see a good stretch of the parade and it wasn’t as crowded as if we’d been along the route itself.  Despite not being on the route a few groups came by and we were able to see them well through the thinner crowd.  It’s rather neat to see all the lights go out and hear the masses of piccolos and drums strike up song with lanterns on their heads, but after half and hour or so we’d had our fill and walked home to bed.  I slept like a baby until 10:30.

After a late breakfast and a short chat with Japan we headed into town again to watch the parade floats and brass bands.  Again we scored in positioning and were able to watch a great deal of the action without much of a crowd and didn’t get a speck of confetti on us (I even braved the chance of attack by not buying the fasnacht pin of protection).

That evening we Dad took Veronika and us to the restaurant at Grün 80 and we enjoyed a fancy meal.  Having enjoyed a taste of Basel’s Fasnacht Mom and Dad will flee the chaos and use their Swiss Saver Pass to visit Lichtenstein while I try to ease my conscience by getting all my work done – well, at least a good amount of work done.  I think I’ll post this as is and then add pictures later since they might take a bit of time.