Boots in the Oven

G'bye, Switzerland! 'Allo Firenze, for three days.

News News:  Husbear's restaurant simulation (otherwise known as the final for most of his classes) was on Tuesday night and went swimmingly.  He will hopefully be putting up a post about it in the near future, once he gets all of his pictures in order.

Meanwhile, time to get us out of Switzerland so I can move on to Anzio and Umbria, right?

Actually... there's not too much to tell about the last day in Switzerland.  We had a mid-day train out of Spiez, so it was just a matter of getting from Interlaken to Spiez to pick up our Cisalpino train to Milan.

Before leaving Interlaken, we saw a bank of telephone booths.  Another way Switzerland differs from Italy - these seemed to be clean, in working order, and offered Internet access.  Here, when you can find a pay phone you have at least a 50% chance of it being broken, and even if it appears to be in working order it will likely tell you the number you are dialing does not exist.

Beautiful, isn't it?  We sighed and admired the lovely phone booth for several minutes, until Husbear spotted an odd sign.  Nudging me, he said, "What's that?"

Well, yes, he knew it was a McDonald's - but he was asking about the Asian sammich being advertised on the front.  It seems to be a part of an entire Asian-themed menu... which, what?  Why would they introduce that in Switzerland, of all places?  (And, apparently, Germany?)

I like how this particular McDonald's is trying to blend into the background.  "Nothing to see here, just a local Swiss eatery serving an odd array of Asian food..."

We bought a couple of tiny souvenirs (we have to buy with eventual weight in mind, since lord knows what we're going to do when it comes time to move again in May) and got to the train station in plenty of time for our train.

So... g'bye, Interlaken!

And hello, Spiez! 

We only had a couple of hours in Spiez, long enough to get a bit of a feel for the town and put together a picnic lunch for the Milan-bound train.  So, after a bit of a jaunt around town (enough to find that all of the stores were closed...) off, again, to the supermarket!

The Migros supermarket offered many delights, including a cured meat section make up of their famed "HorseLine".  Yup, folks, more horse.

Migros also had another helpful way to bring fondue into your own home.  It's quick, it's easy, it's frozen meat!  It's also probably sliced thinner than you could easily do at home, so that's good.

We did put together a lovely picnic out of two different sausages and some cheese and dried apricots and bread.  We then carried our picnic back past all of the closed stores to the train station.

Spiez was definitely breathtaking, and I'm sure it would have been even more so had anything been open besides the supermarket.  Ah, well - that's just what we get for visiting on a Monday morning in the off-season.

The trip home to Florence was beautiful, though.  We were able to see the Swiss mountains we had passed through in the dark the previous Thursday.  Much of the snow looked fresh - I bet a lot of the Swiss ski runs opened soon after we were there.

After crossing the border into Italy, and being certain there weren't going to be any troublesome canine inspections (we had heard horror stories), we broke out our Swiss picnic spread and our Swiss Pinot Noir.  Well, back in Italy, might as well switch back to wine....

That's it for Switzerland!  Next time from me, Anzio and Lazio (Lazio being the area Rome's in).  Perhaps food from Husbear first.

girlie

All the way to Jungfraujoch, and real fondue!

(note – internet still unavailable at the house. Request for calls for important information stands.)

Well, it’s the somethingth of December and I’m blogging the 19th of November. Not too far behind, right? Eh.

The 19th was a Sunday, the Sunday we had been told by the Swiss would likely be bright and clear and a great day to top the Jungfraujoch. It’s a very expensive round trip, so you really don’t want to get up there in whiteout conditions.

Those crazy Swiss were right! It was a beautiful day. We could even see to the tops of some of the foothills around Interlaken that had been hidden by fog.

We waited for the bus to the train station in the archetypical Swiss sunlight, me thrilled to bits that I had finally replaced the sunglasses lost on the night train to Luxor. The train ride up to Kleine Scheidegg I’ve already blogged, as we made it that far on our Friday trip.  We had further difficulties taking pictures from the train, since the sunlight contrasted with the shadows of the valleys so strongly. Beautiful for the eyes, perhaps not so much for the camera.

At Kleine Scheidegg, we made the final decision to continue on to the top, since it was perhaps clearer up there than down in Interlaken.

I’ve read some complaints about the ride up from Kleine Scheidegg to the top of the Jungfrau. The train is outside for just a couple of minutes at the beginning of the ascent, and then it passes into a tunnel from which it does not emerge.

However, there are two stops at scenic overlooks in the tunnel, where you get a very quick five minutes to jump out, take a picture through the picture window, and jump back on before being left behind. It struck me as a little strange, because the stops are obviously not there for anything but the tourists – but it was a great idea, as it did give you a mental image of what these engineers had to go through to push this tunnel through to the top of the Jungfraujoch.

The view from the first station was still a little green, a panorama from which it was still possible to see small towns below. However, the second station was all ice and Alps. It took my breath away… or was that the increase in altitude?

The viewing station at the top of the Jungfraujoch is shocking in its level of amenities. There’s a complex with three full-service restaurants and a self-service bar, several gift shops, a large viewing platform (known as the Sphinx), an Ice Palace which we’ll come to later, and lots and lots of working bathrooms. (I can’t tell you how impressed we were, especially Auntie, with the quality and quantity of Swiss bathrooms… even more so given that we had come from Italy.)

The increase in altitude had left Auntie feeling pretty fragile, so we found her a place to sit near the self service bar and went to explore the immediate area. We started by the binocular table.

Then, with Auntie doing some breathing exercises, we went to the area just outside of the bar complex to see what could be seen. It was like being on top of the clouds. The white between these peaks is a large glacier – but it looked like we were sitting on the cloud layer. And it was cold, very cold. On our way out we passed a woman crying “I can’t get warm!” while a man with her briskly rubbed her hands.

During the summer up here, there are all sorts of activities; dogsledding, hole-in-one golf, alpine slides, hiking, cross-country skiing, et cetera. All closed in November. However, we saw some people outside of the roped-in area making their own hiking trails or snow angels. I just can’t believe they would ignore this scary sign!

Being outside gave us a great view of both the larger bar and restaurant area and the Sphinx viewing platform another 400 feet or so up. I can’t imagine how difficult it was to build all of this up here, especially when the only rail line up is pretty small-gauge.

With our tootsies and patooties half frozen off, we went back inside to check on Auntie and see if we couldn’t convince her out of the self-service bar. We got some gluhwein, or hot mulled wine, and a hot chocolate for Auntie to jump-start the warming process.

I was enjoying my gluhwein and the view out of the enormous picture windows when I heard Auntie behind me – “psst. PSST. Hey!” I turned around to see what she was gesturing at only to find an advertisement against big package tours. These people had probably been to 5 countries in 10 days on their odyssey across Europe, and it was leaving them decidedly worse for the wear. I especially love the guy on the far right who has just given in completely and put on his sleep mask.

Somewhat revived by the hot chocolate, Auntie became game for seeing the viewing platform, though there was a bit of a frantic search for elevators. I’ve never been anywhere near that altitude before, and I soon found out that the signs at the bottom of all of the stairways saying “Please Go Slowly!” are there for a reason. Wow, do you get dizzy fast.

We got outside, where we have a bunch of pictures proving that Auntie made it to the top of the Jungfraujoch. Can’t tell the emotion here… excited?

We were taking it very slowly, which is one of the reasons I was so surprised to see people smoking on top of the mountain. Seems like they would get such a head rush they’d fall down, but I guess not.

After only a few minutes, the cold started to set in again, so we went back inside and made for the Ice Palace. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a building made of ice before (though this one probably has concrete foundations somewhere under all that), but I’ve been wanting to go to the Ice Hotel they build every year in Sweden, so I was excited to see this.

Auntie made it about 15 feet or so down the ice-paved tunnel marking the beginning of the Ice Palace before backing out, citing double knee surgery as the reason she didn’t want to be sliding around on this particular ice. OK, makes sense.

Directly around the corner from the terminus of the long tunnel we found an icy Eskimo couple, so we corralled a passing man into taking our picture.

The Ice Palace turned out to be a fairly large area, filled with little icy tableaux, a non-functioning ice bar, and lots of small tunnels. To me, the ice animals looked a lot like bubbles – especially these penguins.

There was one area we hadn’t been to yet that we absolutely had to see. We weren’t about to miss the Sphinx viewing platform! So, over to the extra-tall elevators and up into the vaguely Space Age building for what’s billed as the highest view in Europe. And there’s no denying that it is really high up there.

We went outside to take in the view and found these very fluffy birds entertaining the children. They must live at such an altitude…

The view from the Sphinx was really pretty similar to that from the viewing area below, though here the footing was a little more certain because there was a grate to stand on. Of course, if you looked down through the grate, you might get a little dizzy again, since there was a good 100 foot drop under parts of the metal.

There was also a more close-up view of some of the nearby glaciers. It’s hard to believe that the vast majority of this never melts… or at least until recently.

This time of year, the last trains down from Jungfraujoch leave before 4, so we had to be back to catch the train. I mean, I assume they wouldn’t leave you up there overnight, but I didn’t want to test it. I was not happy to be leaving… being there was so amazing. I’ve never been anywhere like it, with the constancy of the snow and ice and the peaks reaching up out of the glaciers. It was wonderful, though I wouldn’t have minded it being a little warmer… they should work on that, don’t you think?

We shared the train ride down with this adorable Swiss dog. Don’t you love his little bandanna? He spent most of the train ride sitting in a window seat, leaning and drooling on the window.

The ride back to Interlaken felt really short, though I know it took about an hour and a half. We made it back pretty hungry, and we found out that the busses weren’t running for an hour and a taxi wanted about $12 to take us back to our hotel.

Husbear went into the open tourist information booth and got a recommendation on a good restaurant near downtown where we could really do the fondue thing right. A bus pulled up that we hoped was going in the right direction, so Husbear got on and tried to talk to the driver to see if he was going anywhere near the restaurant. Both Husbear and the driver were getting a little frustrated with the language barrier, and the driver eventually told us just to get on and he’d help us figure it out later.

Several other people got on the bus with us, and as we left and started winding through the streets of Interlaken, they got off one by one. Eventually, we were the only people on the bus, and the bus driver called Husbear up to the front with his map. This was when we found out that we were in fact on the right bus, and that we’d get within a block or so of our destination if we held tight for a bit of a circuitous route. Fine with us! We couldn’t believe it – helpful bus driver? Happy to be doing his job? With a smiling picture of him and his name right up at the front of the bus? This was a refreshing experience.

So, we did make it to Restaurant Laterne safely and soundly, and went inside with high hopes. We were a little early for dinner, around 7, but they seated us happily and brought us menus in English and Swiss German.

Though it was frightfully more expensive than we had been expecting, we ordered a beef fondue for two and a cheese fondue for one. Sorry to tell you we did pass on the option of our meat being from a horse, though the menu helpfully stated that they got all of their horsemeat directly from the good old USA.

You might not have known this, or maybe you did, but the United States exports an awful lot of horsemeat for consumption in the European Union.

Back on track – we were served brown bread, which we wolfed down with some sort of herbaceous mustardy mayonnaise. Almost all Swiss sauces seem to be based on mayo, with the exception of that ubiquitous onion gravy, which seems to be based on beef bouillon cubes. Anyway, this was yummy.

After not too many minutes, our waiter came back with an enormous rotating tray and two large pots, one with bubbling cheese and one with bubbling beef broth, and a few things that he set on fire for heat and a big sauce boat with four different sauces and a fruit plate and two big meat plates and potato croquettes and rosti, again, and another one of those scoops filled with bread for the cheese fondue.

Once we found room for everything, we realized just how happy we were to be seeing all of these vegetables and fruits, even if most of the vegetables did come out of a can. It was like the fondue was surrounded by a 1970s American relish tray. Of course, I am a big fan of 1970s style relish trays, so no problem here.

Interactive food is always fun, and we had a great time cooking this and dipping that as the restaurant slowly filled with Swiss. We were even able to turn off the radiator at our table, so we didn’t die of heat exhaustion. Great times. I’m most happy that we got fondue Bourguignonne (that’s how they spelled it on the menu… but it looks wrong to me!) instead of Chinois, because the Chinois is cooked in a pot of bubbling oil and has a lot more potential for disaster – at least in my hands.

After a great meal, we exited the restaurant to discover it was pouring, so we had a cab called to get us home. Like almost everywhere in Switzerland, the cabbie was playing American country music. No, I have no idea why the Swiss love American country music. Why not?

Once more, good night to you and to Switzerland! Only one more post about CH, and then we move on to Anzio/Lazio and the area south of Rome.

girlie

OMG PARAGLIDING!!!1!!!111 And a pretty town named Thun.

So, here’s the thing. Our apartment-based internet access has gone from unreliable to nonexistent. I suppose free internet can only get you so far. Please be patient if we take a little while to respond to emails, and if there’s something really important that we need to know immediately, call us. For now.

Back to your regularly scheduled Switzerland!

I made some allusions at the end of the last post about being around tall things on the morning of the 18th of November. But, if we were going to only be hanging out near them, then why did I need this adorable harness seat thingy? I know it’s all the rage here in fashion-conscious Europe, but still…

And why would we pick our way through cow patties on top of a foothill just outside Interlaken – certainly not for this sort of strange picture. And those things in the background?

I’m not so good at being cagey, so I’ll just cut to the chase here. OMGOMG!!!!1!!!!111 WE WENT PARAGLIDING!!!1!!!1!!1

This was a gift from Auntie, who said she was fine with us jumping off of things as long as we were attached to someone or something. (Her way of nixing solo hang-gliding.) Husbear and Auntie did some research before leaving, and discovered that another casualty of low season was the bungee jump outside of Interlaken, apparently one of the tallest in the world. But they found paragliding, and especially this outfit called Paragliding Interlaken, that seemed to have a good handle on safety and awesomeness.

After I got my harness on, I was attached to this Swiss guy. The two of us practiced our run down the hill once, since I was a little nervous that I would trip and eat face for a hundred meters or so until I hit a tree. This didn’t happen, of course – when our time to take off came, it was completely smooth.

It was just indescribable. We floated along for what simultaneously felt like two minutes and two hours. We used updrafts off of a nearby hill to get a little more air above Interlaken, where I could see the two lakes spread out on either side. The rivers looked strange, an impossible creamy green-blue that looked like a result of pollution, but was actually glacial runoff.

Husbear’s takeoff wasn’t as smooth, since he was attached to a Japanese man who was a good six inches shorter than him, but the result was the same.

He had our little camera with him, so he was actually able to take some pictures from the air. When Miky noticed him doing so, he said “Get your foot in there, so people know you were paragliding!"

Husbear obliged, which led to what I think are a couple of hilarious pictures.

(btw, that’s the hill we used for updrafts – most of the flight was a lot further from the ground.)

He also got a couple of great views of Interlaken. This one happens to include me, so I’m partial to it. See what I mean about the water? Isn’t it a strange color?

The great thing about paragliding over Interlaken was the ability to see the city from above. There’s a large park right in the middle of town (directly behind our hotel, in fact) that was our landing target, so almost the whole way was over the town. I liked the perspective this gave us on Interlaken’s location.

Unsurprisingly, all too soon we were landing, with a couple of stutter steps onto the dewy grass of Interlaken’s park. Our landings were uneventful, but just behind us we could hear the high-pitched yelps of another man circling in for his landing. He yelped until his feet were on the ground, and then let go with a couple of full-throated bellows for good measure. I feel for his pilot, if he’d been doing that since they took off.

Auntie elected to come down from the mountain in a supply car, wheels firmly attached to the earth. We reunited and Husbear and I gabbled about our ride while she checked us for missing limbs or teeth. The rolls of film taken by our pilots during the flight were collected and taken to be developed, and then there was some brief rumination over what to do next.

I mean, a day that starts with paragliding – where do you go from there? We decided on Thun, a small town around one of Interlaken’s lakes (the Thunersee). It wasn’t in any of our all-Europe guidebooks, so we didn’t really know what to expect other than hearing it was pretty.

If we were going to go in blind, we figured we better go in fed, so Husbear picked us up sausage and sauerkraut and a Rivella. I obliquely mentioned this pop in a previous post; it’s the one that’s 30% milk. Sounds bad, right? But we had to try it, seeing as it’s the drink of Switzerland.

He looks happy in this picture because he hadn’t yet tried the Rivella. We found out later that Rivella tried to break into the US market, but pulled out due to low sales – this is because it tastes kind of like slightly fizzy cough syrup. We weren’t fans.

We were fans of the train ride to Thun, a twenty-minute forty-dollar trip along the shore of the Thunersee. It was hard to get any good pictures off of the train, since it was moving so quickly. Silently, too – the contrast between Italian and Swiss trains was striking. The Swiss just didn’t talk on their trains, that we heard. A little too quiet for comfort.

We arrived in Thun to another of the differences between Switzerland and Italy – clean bathrooms. You might not be able to see this on this picture of the McClean bathrooms, but they charged 1 CHF (Swiss Franc) for the “pissoir” and 2 CHF for the WC – meaning toilet. Categorization leads to efficiency. Roight?

The area directly around Thun’s train station was disappointingly modern, but Husbear located the tourist information bureau and soon had us pointed in the right direction – towards the old part of town, which occupied an area just around a small island in the middle of Thun’s river.

We saw a great sign on the way to the island; anyone that checks this blog who has a bit of Yiddish will probably find this picture amusing. “Shmuck” is Yiddish for the part of the male anatomy the Italians slangily call “cazzo.”

Once we neared the older part of Thun, it became clear that it was beautiful as advertised. The architecture was very Northern European, a little reminiscent of Belgium and the Netherlands with the narrow homes sitting right off the water. It was probably closest to Germany and Austria, though.

We sat for a little while and watched the aquatic birdlife squabble over chunks of bread thrown by children. There were several types of ducks and some beautiful swans.

We came upon Thun’s town square, the rathskellar (town hall) sitting amongst guildhouses. The castle loomed above everything, a little creepily given the sky’s darkening towards an early night in late fall.

Actually, the castle kept popping up wherever we went. We didn’t get up to see their view, but I’m sure the inhabitants always had a pretty good idea of what was going on down in Thun.

The older shopping thoroughfares in the town were interesting. The sidewalk was at two levels, so there were shops up above at building level and then below the sidewalk at street level. Here’s a picture, since I’m not sure that sentence makes sense.

As we made our way back to the river, I took this picture of Auntie walking with Husbear that I rather like. It’s got the Swiss German, the water, and one of the ubiquitous Swiss water-breaks.

At this point, we were getting a little hungry, so Husbear and I were starting to read menus. We’ve gotten to the point in Italy where we understand the majority of what’s on the menus we see, but in Switzerland we were back almost to square one – with the exceptions of fondue and raclette. Otherwise, we were in the dark. After a few more snaps of the town, (see, kind of Dutch, right?)

we settled on a small bar on the water, with outside tables where we could people-watch and snack.

We started out ordering lots of little glasses. Usually, when you order a pitcher of beer, it’s a little bit of a deal, but not with this tiny guy – paying for the pitcher and paying for glasses of beer gave you exactly the same amount. Auntie opted for Coke Light, what she calls the life-force.

I wanted the raclette, so we knew we were ordering that, but from there we were a little stuck. When the waiter came to take our order, I settled on the Knoblauchbrot, thinking it might be something interesting. I knew “brot” = bread, but this Knoblauch sounded exotic. I explained to Auntie my philosophy of occasionally ordering randomly if you can’t understand the menu, because sometimes you get great things you wouldn’t have tried on your own.

This time, my high-falutin’ ideas led to an enormous basket of garlic bread to go with our raclette. Yeah, knoblauch is garlic. Now I know. Want an extra cheesy starchy meal?

At least it was good garlic bread. At just about every meal in Switzerland, we discovered anew the fact that the Swiss just aren’t fans of vegetables. They love starch, and they want to marry dairy and have its little creamy babies, but veg is often very hard to come by. A little later, wandering around in Thun, we found the perfect Swiss souvenir and holiday gift:

A sausage bouquet.

Until the next time I can get to an internet café that allows me to use our laptop, g’night from Switzerland (well, actually from Florence, but you know what I mean).

Actually, I’ll leave you with this picture from Interlaken of a sign Auntie felt very strongly was about the most wonderful thing she saw in Switzerland.

girlie

Here we go loop-de-loo

Let's step back into November, shall we? 

(On a sad note, Auntie has left us for the wide open spaces of the American West, though her leaving was nearly derailed by a train strike Sunday - she ended up having to split a very expensive cab with three other equally stranded folks to get from Florence to the Pisa airport.  Ah, Italy.)

Anyway.  November, remember it?  My last post was about how we made it to Switzerland and ate fondue, which happened to be fun and tasty and the complete opposite of a vegetable, at a sweltering Best Western.  The next day, we were up bright (ish... more like foggy) and early (ish... 8:30 or so) to survey the surroundings.

It was nice to have the fact that we were in Switzerland confirmed by our view, all mountainy.

Auntie and Husbear made their way downstairs, where they feasted on hard-boiled eggs and salami and sliced cheese and tomatoes and cucumbers and individually wrapped cheese wedges in six different flavors and muesli and croissants and rolls and nutella and jam and coffee and hot chocolate (the Swiss know their way around a breakfast) while I... slept for an extra half hour.  Eh.  Not always a breakfast person.

Our first stop together was the very helpful Interlaken Tourist Information Bureau, where they regretted to inform us that since we were there during the off-season, the only way we'd be getting to the top of a mountain would be the Jungfraujoch railway.  No cable cars or funiculars were functioning, and the Schilthorn revolving restaurant and bar that offers a view of the entire area?  No dice. 

We were given maps and Auntie bought us a half-price pass good for all Swiss travel, and we went off to the rail station to make our way towards the Jungfraujoch.  The helpful tourist information lady did warn us that, due to fog, we should reassess at Kleine Scheidegg before making the final part of the expensive ascent.

We missed the train to Lauterbrunnen, our first leg, by perhaps twelve seconds, so we hung around the immediate vicinity of the train station for an hour until the next train.

The ride was, of course, well worth the wait.  We were whisked through a valley, next to clear streams and mostly barren trees, for just under an hour.  Then, slowly, our passenger train began to climb up towards Lauterbrunnen.  The scenery changed a bit, from valley floor to foothills.  Small houses nestled into depressions, looking like they would be covered with that iconic Swiss snow any minute.

We arrived in Lauterbrunnen, and on discovering we had the option of a six minute or hour and six minute layover, we decided to stick around for a little while.  It's a small town, basically one street, so we walked up it towards the falls we had heard might be at the other end of the town.

I think that cliff is perhaps supposed to be the falls?  We could see a little water trickling off of the treeline, with a larger surge in one area, but overall we weren't sure whether we were in the right area.  Plus, as we were coming to discover, one of the less pleasant things about being in a place during the off season (between the skiiers and the hikers, in Switzerland) is that whole towns are closed.  Auntie and I stayed to peer in windows while Husbear made his way a bit further towards the other end of town.

He found the beautiful Swiss church you can see in the foregound of this picture, as well as a spiraling staircase up to what would probably be a spectacular view of the falls if they had been doing anything other than trickling.  By the church was this perfectly located cemetery.  I'm sure in the summer it's filled with flowers, like a similar graveyard we saw when we were in Salzburg, also picturesquely located under a cliff.

Soon came the time for making a run back to the train.  Husbear would probably describe it as a stroll, undertaken with plenty of extra time, but since I have taken it upon myself to be the worrier - it was a run.

We made it in plenty of time.  Because of our run, I'm sure.  And we got onto a small-gauge train which would take us up the side of the moutain to eenie Kleine Scheidegg... 2061 meters (6761 feet) above sea level.

This tiny train climbed quickly.  It was probably as close as a train can be to a funicular without actually being one - it worked on a gear set into teeth in the track!

We climbed past small valley towns, making a couple of stops and breezing quickly by a few others that had to be requested, they were so little.  A Swiss friend in my class told me that in towns like this, you open the telephone book and there are only two last names.  Kind of like some parts of West Virginia.

Nearing Kleine Scheidegg, we were able to see a glacier!  How cool is that?  (Cool as in, of course, interesting and neat-o, but also as in very, very COLD.)

Kleine Scheidegg was much smaller even than Lauterbrunnen.  There were a couple of small hotels and restaurants, and of course a "Top of Europe" gift shop, to capitalize on its vicinity to the Jungfraujoch, but that was about it.

Oh, and a teepee, for some inexplicable reason.  We ducked into it to find about five people getting some sort of rifle-shooting demonstration surrounded by stuffed bears and deer, and ducked out even more quickly.

It quickly became apparent that we were a little too late in the day to be thinking about the ascent up the Jungfraujoch.  Even had we arrived earlier, most everything above our altitide was fogbound.  Locals told us that it would behoove us to wait until Sunday, if possible, since the weather would probably clear.

So, after buying copious chocolate and postcards in the giftshop, we returned to the frigid outdoors (which the Swiss would probably describe as "refreshingly brisk") for a few pictures.

Then, we went into the surprisingly large train station restaurant for a warm beverage and to while away the little bit of time we had before the train back down towards Interlaken.

I was kind of shocked to find that the place served hot chocolate in a packet of powder.  It's Switzerland, for god's sake, the land of chocolate and cold!  You would think they would take their hot chocolate a little more seriously.  But no - everywhere we saw it, it was in packet form.

We decided to take the train back through Grindelwald, rather than going back the way we came through Lauterbrunnen.  Basically, the tracks form a giant loop, with a station just north of Interlaken as the bottom and Kleine Scheidegg as the top.  I thought the way we came up offered better views - the train down to Grindelwald went in what felt like an almost straight line to reach the town.

When we arrived in Grindelwald, thirsty and a bit hungry, we spotted a vending machine and rushed to it, to see what kind of sustenance it would offer and how it would be different from American and Italian snackies.

Well... anyone for cannabis tea?  With real Swiss cannabis?

Apparently, the laws in Switzerland regarding marijuana consumption are strange and uneven... it's illegal, but in some stores in certain cities in specific cantons you can buy it disguised as potpurri, or smelling sachets.  And someone is busily making it into tea.

Again, we had a little over an hour in Grindelwald before we needed to catch our train to Interlaken.  So, onto the main road.  Which was adorable.  I think Grindelwald would make a good base of operations - you aren't that far from Interlaken and the main rail lines, but you're in a great mountain hamlet with access to walking trails, too.  Unfortunately, it's also mostly closed in November.

We did walk into a grocery store to pick up snacks, and oohed and aahed at the "Cool American" flavor Doritos as well as the "Roasted Chicken" flavor chips.  But, though we consider ourselves cool americans, we went for the curry flavor.  Why not?

Plus, they were 100% chips!  How could we resist?  (Though I personally couldn't believe they were only 33% weniger fett.  How I wish I spoke a litte German.  Or Swiss German.)

As dusk started to descend on Grindelwald, we made our way back to the train station.  It was kind of eerie watching the mountains disappear into the encroaching darkness.  You know they're there, looming over the town, you just can't see them, except for maybe a few twinkling porchlights up in the distance on the inhabited foothills.

The ride back to Interlaken was pitch-black.  We got off the train back at the Ost station, in front of the Coop supermarket, where we were planning to have dinner.

I know it sounds strange, dinner in a supermarket, but you have to understand two things: 1) food, like absolutely everything in Switzerland, is very expensive... especially with the weak dollar.  (don't even ask Auntie about the price of all of these Swiss trains.  Gott in Himmel!  THANK YOU AUNTIE!) and 2) most of the larger supermarkets in Switzerland have little cafeterias attached to them somewhere, with good, sort of reasonable food and mood lighting and everything.  It's much more common to eat in a supermarket in Switzerland than it is at home.

Anyhoo.

We ordered a bunch of food, and a couple of Rugenbrau beers.

There was a large salad bar, and a steam table which Husbear and Auntie hit, while I opted for the plate of the day.  Husbear picked up a plate of veggies, with red cabbage and spaetzle (those little fried dumplings) and an eggplant/pepper mixture. 

My plate of the day was rather unattractive, though the others were quite jealous of my greens.

The sausage wasn't all that great, though perhaps it was the appearance that threw me off... it looks kind of like a coiled... oh, gross... never mind.  I did like my pickles and onions a lot, though, and this rosti was much better than the patty we had the previous night at the Best Western Chalet place.

The strangest experience was Auntie's, who picked up fish and chips from the steam table, along with some beet-stained red cabbage and a roll, doused the fries and fish with vinegar (as you do), and got back to the table to discover...

Not fish.

Chicken cordon bleu, stuffed with cheese.  I don't know that she would recommend eating your chicken cordon bleu with balsamic vinegar, but you should certainly feel free to ask her if your curiosity is getting the best of you.

After dinner, we left Auntie in the supermarket restaurant to work on postcards and reflect on what she'd done, while we left to do one of our absolute favorite things - explore a supermarket in a foreign country.  Some people like exploring neighborhoods to learn about locals - we like supermarkets.

In the gigantic dairy section, we helped a confused Chinese man find a carton of milk (he was holding a carton of cream and approached us, saying "Milk?") and we discovered the raclette section.  The Swiss are only marginally less obsessed with raclette, melted cheese on a plate with pickles and potatoes, than they are with fondue, melted cheese in a pot with bread.  They love love love their dairy there.

We passed over the starter raclette kits and looked at the enormous variety of pre-sliced raclette cheese, including this offering:

Weight Watchers is breaking into the lucrative Swiss raclette market!

(As a brief aside, you may or may not know that Switzerland has four official languages: German (Swiss German), French, Italian, and Romansch.  These are spoken in different parts of the country, and we were in the Swiss German speaking area.  Most packaging, though, is in at least three of the four languages, which made it good that we were studying Italian, as we could often read packaging, like this Weight Watchers Raclette.  Back to the supermarket.)

Perhaps more strangely, at the end of the dairy section that ate Interlaken, we found pre-dyed eggs described as "picnic eggs".  They looked pretty, but I couldn't figure out why people would be wanting to buy pre-dyed eggs in November.  (Again, note the three languages.)

After escaping the dairy area (which was, of course, separate from the cheese area, which we'll come to later), we found rosti to go with our raclette.  These are the shredded potatoes so popular in Switzerland.

The supermarket even had their own brand of shredded potatoes.  They really are very much like hash browns, but perhaps a little more shreddy? Thinner and wider than you normally see with hash browns.

Then, into the cheese section, which looked very different from what we've gotten used to here in Florence.  Here, often the cheeses will be on top of each other, all willy-nilly, and if you're looking for something specific and don't see it, chances are it's under the gorgonzola or hiding behind the ricotta salata.  The Swiss have this down - look at the squared edges on these cheeses!

Going around a corner, we discovered the tube section, filled with maybe twenty or so different types of mayonnaise.  I don't know if this is a more environmentally friendly way of packaging, but until we came to Europe the only thing I ate out of a tube was toothpaste.  (No, I didn't eat it, actually, I just like the parallel structure of that sentence.)  Now, our pantry has tomatoes in a tube and anchovies in a tube and occasionally vegetable paste in a tube.

We finished with our exploration of the grocery store and gathered Auntie to go back to the hotel.  Briefly, because we had heard there was gambling to be done at a casino in town.

Back at the hotel we laid out our chocolate on the bed for a sexy, lascivious picture.

Please don't crucify me, but I wasn't a big fan of any of this chocolate.  It just didn't have that rich mouthfeel that I've come to know and love.  Kind of thin.  The ovomaltine was probably my favorite, like a malt ball in bar form.

A-gambling we will go!

We walked the couple of blocks from the hotel over to the Casino Kursaal and paid our five Swiss Francs admission.  Then we discovered that something had gone horribly wrong.  We weren't in a casino...

We were in an industrial home show!

The indignation radiated off of Auntie in waves.  We had promised her blackjack... and had delivered composting methods!  We were fascinated by the exhibition, and after all we had paid five francs to get in! but Auntie soon shooed us out of there and into the door on the other side of the building, that did actually lead into a casino.

I wonder how much money the home show made off of confused tourists.

No pictures allowed in the casino half - though Auntie and Husbear both came out well ahead, so wooo for them!  It was too bad we couldn't take pictures, because I really wanted to of the mannequins dressed in full evening attire overseeing the gambling.

After an hour or so, when the two gamblers were up more than double and I had nearly taken all of their winnings with my two 13 franc vodka tonics, we left for the hotel.

You know, Hooters has made it to Interlaken?

Rindfleisch is probably the least palatable thing I've ever heard a burger called.  Even an $11 burger.

To bed, perchance to sleep, because the next day we had big plans involving being near tall things.  Auntie made me promise I wouldn't say what these things were until it was time to do the post... but I will write it here really really tiny for those of you who want to figure out how to read it.

paragliding.  eep eep!!!!!

Good night for now, Interlaken!

girlie

Let's look at the Alps! In the dark. Oops.

This weekend, we're going to Umbria.  Last weekend, we went to Anzio, south of Rome.  But, the weekend before that, we went to...

Switzerland!

Wow, has it been great having Auntie in town.

When Auntie first started planning her trip to visit us, she had one request.  While she was here, she wanted to take a train through the Alps.  When she actually arrived, and we started planning the trip, it became apparent that this would be an 8-hour one-way train journey, so we were able to convince her that perhaps actually staying put in the Alps would be nice, as an alternative to showing up, tossing back a cup o' coffee, and leaving.

We chose Interlaken for our base of operations, since it's got great rail connections and is right near some of the loveliest Alpine peaks.  (Auntie wants me to tell you that Interlaken was also chosen because it looks very very pretty on Google Earth.) Off we went by train.

Train travel = picnic!

Big sweet green olives, salame milano (which was ok, but I bought waaay too much), a giant hunk of cheese we bought at the truffle festival in San Miniato (unfortunately, we forgot everything about it right after buying, except that the rind was washed in red wine to give it that color), tomatoes, oranges, and a hunk of pan forte (tuscan dense fruit and nut cake) for dessert.  Ah, and vino novello to drink, since yay!  it's that time of year.

Of course, the weather northbound through Italy was awful.  Foggy, gray, rainy, yuck.  Almost magically, upon emerging from the tunnel marking the border between Italy and Switzerland, everything cleared. 

It was getting dark already, so we only were able to take a couple of blurry pictures of encroaching Alps before losing the light.

As Auntie pointed out, it was great to be arriving in Interlaken by night - we had no idea what the countryside around the town looked like on arrival.  We were able to find our hotel without much of a problem, though - oddly enough, called the Hotel Toscana.

We had an enormous triple with CNN and MTV - which was playing American Dad in German when we arrived!  I wonder how well the humor translates.

We had a nice view of an all-but empty town.  November is too late for the summertime adventure sporters and too early for the skiiers and sledders.

The hotel had an interesting way of tracking keys - the little ones with the triangular tags were for the outside door, and you used them to pick up your much heavier room key.

Interlaken is seriously touristy - since this was low season, many restaurants were closed.  Husbear did some research and found a place serving "traditional Swiss cuisine" just around the corner from where we were staying.

I was clamoring for fondue, so I gave my full support to the plan - even after we arrived to learn the restaurant was housed in the Best Western.  Yeah.

Great interior, though - even if they were keeping it at 95 degrees in there.

We got some Swiss bread for snacking, which was different from Tuscan in that it was salted.  And very thick.  The butter was yummy, though, but that is to be expected in dairy-lusting Switzerland, a country where the most popular soft drink is 30% milk. 

And local beer, since though Switzerland is supposed to have some nice wines, we really wanted to take a break from the fruit of the vine while we were out of Italy.

It was cold outside, so we started with a couple of soups.  By the time they arrived, we had gotten so hot from the radiators in the restaurant that we were all sweating.

Auntie got a very good onion soup, which wasn't half congealed cheese like most I've had.  The broth was nice and beefy.

I got a consomme with marrow, which was nice but a little bland.  I think that's pretty common with consomme, though - not the most flavorful of broths, normally.  But I could see it being really nice as a starter on a freezing day.

The Swiss kids in my Italian class this fall couldn't stop talking about how much they missed Rostï, shredded potatoes sometimes cooked with bacon or cheese and served as a side dish with nearly everything.  So, a sausage with onion sauce and Rostï for us, please.

I'm reasonably certain this wasn't the Rostï they were missing.  Kind of like Waffle House hash browns if you don't get them scattered.  The sausage didn't have a snap to the casing, either, and the onion gravy was a little flat.  Ah, well.  Because sausages were not the most important thing about this meal.

Nope, that was taken up by....

Fondue!  Cheesy, cheesy fondue!

Melty, with a bit of a wine bite, truly awesomely delicious.  Unfortunately, only served with bread for dipping - it was really calling out for fruit, or something to break up the bready cheesy monopoly.  We dipped bits of our Rostï patty into the cheese, as well as some of the sausage.

That giant pot of cheese was fondue for 2, by the way.  All of the restaurants we saw would only do fondue for two or more.  The three of us finished perhaps just over half of the cheese, and our disappointed waitress chastised us when she came to clear the table.  "Too much cheese for you, eh?"

Yup.  We were bested by the fondue.

Calvados and conversation for dessert.  And a scoop of chocolate ice cream for Auntie, which came topped with 6 (six) blueberries.  We fought over them, desperate for some fruit or vegetable to end this cheesy sausage of a meal.

So, our first day in Switzerland, and we only managed to fit in one giant pot of bubbling cheese.  More later.

Friday, we woke up to see where exactly we had signed on for five days of fun.  I'll have to continue that later.

In real chronological time, we are leaving tomorrow for Umbria - Norcia, the town so famous for its pork products that many butchers in Italy call their stores "Norcinerie"  - and we're doing it all in a Smart Car.  The forfour, so we should hypothetically be able to fit three people and one suitcase.  Blogging on that, perhaps in December?

girlie