Boots in the Oven

The Fattest Duck of All.

Who set my dinner on fire?

Well, we went to the Fat Duck. The burgers were good, but the fries were a little soggy. The soda machine was broken so we just had water and WHY CAN’T I STOP LYING?!

The fries were perfectly golden brown and crispy and ok so there weren’t fries, but if there were I’m sure they would have been perfectly golden brown and crispy, it’s just that kind of place.

For those of you who don’t know, the Fat Duck is a small restaurant in Bray, England, just a few dozen kilometers outside of London. The little village is so small the restaurant doesn’t even give an address; they just say “continue past the bottleneck and The Fat Duck can be found on the right hand side.” Perfect.

The chef and owner’s name is Heston Blumenthal. He’s an amazing self taught food freak who pretty much hones the cutting edge of the modern culinary experience. His little project started out as a modest pub and now is consistently tossed around in that best-five-restaurants-in-the-world category. Go him.

Just before I left for culinary school in Italy, I decided that eating at the Fat Duck was pretty much a mandatory experience if you really want to know what haute cuisine and fine dining is all about. Turns out I do and luckily for me, so does my wonderfully understanding wife.

Sneakily, I called and got a gift certificate for the tasting menu for two and the wine pairings that go with it. I slipped it to Mme. Pants as a combination birthday present/anniversary present/graduation, Christmas and Hanukah present/in lieu of a first house/car/higher education for our future children, but hey, you only live once right?

Enough backstory. Fast forward about 13 months. We’d just had an amazing year in Florence and we were ready for dinner. We hopped a flight to England as nervous as two school girls in a room full of rocking chairs or whatever that saying is.

We killed a day or so in London doing some stuff and things, but in no time at all, our appointed eating slot was upon us. We had 8 o’clock reservations on Tuesday, May 15th.

That afternoon, we took a few hours getting into our sexy pants and grooming to a state of extreme attractiveness. This is probably a good time to mention that unlike most places of fine dining The Fat Duck has no dress code. Zero, absolutely none. (When we showed up, there was actually a young Asian man in a dirty t-shirt and shorts. Who are these people?!)

Primped and fabulous, we boarded the train from Paddington Station to Maidenhead, about a forty-five minute ride. When we disembarked we emerged into some sort of British monsoon. It was pouring. We had gotten in early because we had planned to take a leisurely stroll from Maidenhead to Bray. Since we didn’t feel like swimming, we wasted a bit of time and then took a taxi.

Five minutes later, we pulled up in front of a modest building that was unmarked except for a small metal sign hanging high over-head. It didn’t even have the name, just their patented duckified knife, fork, and spoon.

When we walked in the door, I got a bit of an Eyes Wide Shut vibe. Me: “Yes, my wife and I have reservations for tonight.” Lovely Hostess: “Good evening Mr. Cooper. So glad to have you. If you and Mrs. Cooper will come right this way…”

Spooky.

The walk from the door to the table wasn’t exactly a scene from Cheers, but every member of the service staff we passed, everyone, either smiled and nodded or smiled and said hello or smiled and waved. But nicely, not in that creepy way. We certainly felt welcomed.

Now before I start with the ass kissing and swooning praise, I would like to kick this story off with a bit of bitching. Pretty much as soon as we’re seated the sommelier wheels over a fabulous cart with about five types of champagne/sparkling beverages. He immediately and expertly gives us the run down of what he’s got and asks if we would care for a glass of any of his bubblies.

Well of course we would. The problem is that we had no idea if this was complementary or a set price or if each of the bottles had a different price etc, etc… I’m sure you’re thinking, “Come on man! Use your words. Ask how much and get it over with.”

(Aside from girlie – I felt exactly the same way! We were likely the only people this sommelier saw the whole month of May who cared how much things cost.)

That’s all well and good, but the fact of the matter was that I was already feeling a little on the Jed Clampett side and I really didn’t want the first words out of my mouth to be, “So just how much is y’all chargin’ for this here fizzy juice?” Like a possum in a flood light I froze.

Luckily, I have had the good sense to marry up, so my lovely wife stepped in seamlessly and ordered us two glasses of Taittinger Non-vintage Brut Reserve. She said she knew that it wasn’t outrageously expensive and that she had wanted to try it for a while. It was a really good choice. The nose was fresh and a little yeasty and each sip was bubbly and creamy with bright, sweet citrus flavors. Nice work girlie. (If you’re curious, they ended up charging us about 22 bucks a glass. Not enough for me to choke on it, but come on, they could at least give you a ball park number before pouncing with their irresistible cart.)

With the drinks also came an adorable little ramekin of picholine olives. They were a little nutty and a little anisey and it never hurts to start a good meal with yummy olives. Oh, and fresh butter. Lots and lots of fresh butter and homemade bread. Yeah, I knew I was going to be eating for the next four hours but that didn’t stop me from cramming several pieces of warm crusty bread into my cheek pouches. I mean, come on, they had white and wheat as well as salted and unsalted butter. As if I’m not supposed to try every combination.

After we had a few briny/buttery treats, our waiter showed up pushing a small cart. He greeted us and then explained that he was going to dunk a large dollop of lime-vodka green tea mousse into a pot of liquid nitrogen. Ok, he caught my attention. He further explained that we were to eat it immediately and in one bite. If we hesitated, or god forbid, waited long enough to take a picture, the whole effect would be totally ruined and Mr. Blumenthal would be deeply and personally wounded. I get it. No picture.

Here's one of the a la carte menu to help soothe the wounds.

He made one for Mme. Pants first and quickly followed with one for me. It was quite cool and firmer than I was imagining. The flavors were subtle but intriguing and the whole thing dissolved on your tongue practically before your mouth could close. It was a nice little amuse bouche.

Our waiter in action

The mousse was trailed by two small trays bearing two squares each; one a garnet red and one a deep yellow. The waiter explained that we would be eating orange and beet root jellies. This opening dish is the perfect example of the Fat Duck dining philosophy. Heston and his team don’t just want you to have an awesome eating experience; they want to fuck with your head.

(SPOILER ALERT! If you care about these things, you might not want to read the next paragraph.) Per the recommendation, I started with the orange jelly. The first thing I noticed was the smooth texture and the next was the strong and savory taste of beets. Huh? I moved on to the red jelly. Blood orange of course, blood orange and golden beet. That sneaky bastard.

On the heels of this came an oyster shooter with horseradish, passion fruit, lavender and sugar flakes. It was a total giggle dish. It just makes you feel good and kinda silly. It was sweet, hot, fresh, salty sea and you couldn’t help but smile.

Shortly after the oysters were dispatched, two white bowls appeared, holding pommery grain mustard ice cream and red cabbage gazpacho. Now you might think that you don’t like mustard ice cream, but you are mistaken. This stuff was mild and delicious; perfectly complimenting the aggressive cruciferous spice of the soup. And the color was totally cool.

Next in the line up came a quail jelly with asparagus, langoustine cream, and a parfait of foie gras. Besides being a touch too salty, I could have eaten several dozen bowls of the stuff. It was silky and intense. The quails had been roasted to achieve a deeply rich flavor not unlike a good beef demi glace. The foie gras was fluffy and the asparagus provided the requisite vegetable note. The langoustine cream was sweet, but really almost disappeared. It was probably a case of I wouldn’t have missed it unless it was gone though.

The last in the starters’ roster was oak moss and truffle toast. In addition to being a great idea, this dish also introduced a little more of the Fat Duck’s technological bent. Mr. Blumenthal has figured out how they make those nifty little Listerine Breath Strips and has co-opted the process to make oak moss strips. See, it turns out that while oak moss may not initially sound delicious, it actually shares several key flavor compounds with black truffles. According to Heston then, this should make them very complimentary. I’m going to go out on a limb and agree.

The fun part of this dish is he doesn’t just want you to taste things; he wants to get all of the senses involved. It starts with the moss breath strip dissolving with a light astringency on your tongue. Then warm water(?) is poured over fresh oak moss that you have previously been encouraged to touch and poke. This sets off some sort of seriously smoky reaction that bathes the whole table in eau de oak moss.

As the last of the vapor dissipated, we shoved the truffle toasts (with tiny slices of radish) into our mouths. Truffleness exploded on our tongues and mossy fragrance ran down the back of our olfactory sensors. The similarity was clear. Wow. It’s neat to be shown things that you almost certainly wouldn’t have discovered for yourself.

Wherez ma feedins?

This marked the end of the food they serve to make you hungry before they serve the real food. I was beginning to wonder if there weren’t more chefs than diners.

The first “real” dish was snail porridge with Joselito ham and shaved fennel. The snails were perfectly cooked and served on a bed of parsley garlic butter puree. The dish was enjoyable, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it tasted an awful lot like Stouffer's Stuffing or maybe Cup o’ Noodles. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it’s just how I felt. (Girlie: I agree. There was a strong flavor of boullion here (the ham maybe?), though it was still well incorporated, somehow.)

After the snails came a roast foie gras with almond gel, cherry and chamomile. This was possibly one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. The liver, cherry and almond combinations were just amazing. The chamomile powder added a great floral note but also a real richness of flavor. The chives and shaved almond really added to the texture spectrum, highlighting just how creamy smooth the foie gras and gels were. More please.

The Fat Duck is a small place and fully packed it’s a little on the loud side. It didn’t help that at this point in the meal, some very intoxicated woman a few tables away started yelling things like, “You’re mean! Shhhh! We need more champagne! Shut up!” It wasn’t totally distracting, but I found myself quickly wishing that she would take her own advice.

I’m sure it was complete coincidence, but right then the waiter came out bearing the next dish, enigmatically titled “Sound of the Sea.” It started with two large conch shells that each appeared to have a set of headphones emerging from their depths. As we donned our headphones, restaurant babble quickly faded to soothing sea sounds. Neat. It was kind of like the audile equivalent of the sorbet palette cleanser. (No the shells didn’t play the music. They had tucked a little iPod shuffle up in there somewhere. Those guys.)

Along with the shells came a long box with a glass top covering sand. On top of this was a huge mess that was unidentifiable but indescribably delicious. This is what the waiter said was in it: four types of seaweed- dulse, hijiki, wakame, and sapphire. Cockles, abalone, fried baby eels, sea beans, and a shellfish foam. All this was mixed with some kind of off white powder that melted in your mouth but was also a little crunchy. The waiter guy swore it was just tapioca, but from the taste and texture I’d bet another dinner at the Fat Duck that it was good old fashioned potato chips blended with tapioca maltodextrin. Seriously. Call Heston and ask.

Fried Baby Eel.

Regardless, it was amazing. It didn’t go with any of the other food and it really seemed out of place. But with the combination of the sound and the unusual Asian flavors – and the non-traditional sake pairing - it was more like a hiatus than a miscue in the meal’s progression.

Next up was an item that was probably the weakest of the evening. It was salmon poached in liquorice with pertuis asparagus and pink grapefruit. It also had Tuscan olive oil, coriander, and a vanilla mayonnaise. Yeah. When the waiter brought it out he “musically grated” some additional liquorice over the food. Why not?

The whole dish gave me the sense that at some point it had become an engineering feat to the guys back in the kitchen. The preparation was a tricky problem that they were sure they could solve, but along the way they forgot that it just wasn’t that tasty.

Don’t get me wrong. Individually, the components of the dish were each quite yummy. The salmon was soft, moist and buttery, a preparation that paid a true compliment to the fish. The problem was that it was encased in some sort of liquorice rubber. The texture was just all off. It’s not that the flavors of everything didn’t go together; it’s just that there were so many I felt like I was licking a Jackson Pollock painting.

Amends were made with the next offering, titled Best End of Lamb. I asked the waiter what the exact cut was. He stared back at me wide eyed and in all seriousness said, “Why it’s the best end of lamb sir.” After recovering from my many and varied blows, he went on to explain that it was a super tender cut from just behind the neck.

The lamb was served with roasted onions, an onion and thyme fluid gel, and a little napoleon made up of a fennel and potato mash, lamb sweetbreads and crispy potato rounds. Everything was doused in some sort of lamb jus and wow, it was seriously scrumptious. The meat was fork-cuttingly soft and Heston and his boys didn’t hesitate to leave on a nice encasement of succulent lamb fat. After all it is the best end of lamb, not the sissy-dieters slice.

I know I haven’t been talking about the wines that came with each dish, but this particular one deserves a special shout out. The sommelier paired the lamb plate with a 1999 Poderi Luigi Einaudi 'Nei Cannubi' Barolo. It’s big and deep and powerful, and paired with the lamb it really rocked.

It’s a yummy Barolo with rich stewed fruit and oak. Its structure and tannins did good things for the chocolate, tar, mint, and black cherry flavors. Having lived in Italy for the last year, so close to wines like this but so inhabiting another economic plane, it was a real treat to sample what the fuss is all about.

After wiping both glass and plate clean with my face, I realized that a bathroom break was not the worst of ideas. For all you die hard Fat Duck freaks out there, if you wanna see behind the scenes you’ll just have to go yourselves. Oh, I have pictures alright. I just don’t feel like sharing.

One interesting note though. While I was gone, the sommelier immediately came over to the table and started to converse with Mme. Pants. He lent her his company, insuring her non-loneliness practically until the moment of my return. Whether this is testament to the restaurant’s unimpeachable customer service or rather to girlie’s irresistible charm may forever remain unresolved. Either way, it was kinda cool.

Seconds after my return (they had been waiting patiently I’m sure) our waiter arrived bearing two small insulated glasses containing what he described as hot and cold iced tea. As he handed them to us, he explained that we must drink them instantly without delay. Any hesitation on our part may force the kitchen staff to resign en masse. Clear as a bell, gov. We each quickly downed our offerings and as promised it was both hot and cold. Quite a strange sensation.

Evidence after the fact.

I’m not sure how he did it, but I can tell you that the cold side was noticeably more viscous than the hot side. If I had to guess, I’d say he made some sort of chilled tea jelly and let it set while the glass was tilted on its side and then right before serving poured in a hot version of the same concoction minus the gelatin. Or something entirely different. (We’ve also heard that a gel sheet of some sort is used to separate the hot and the cold teas and keep them from mixing.)

After the tea came Mrs. Marshall’s Margaret Cornet. It turns out that Heston is quite a food historian. He not only seeks out the science, but also the history of gastronomy. Agnes Bertha Marshall, almost forgotten today, wrote some of the finest books on ice cream ever written. Her recipe for the ice cream cone predates the supposed first at the St. Louis World Fair of 1904 by some 16 years.

One of the last of her original machines still in existence was recently tested and turned out a liter of ice cream in an impressive 3 minutes. You’d think modern machinery could top that, but it’s still the fastest in the world by far. Apparently, she was quite the bad ass.

Homage was paid with a tiny cone filled with orange granita and topped with apple ice cream. The cone was so thin you could practically see through it. This wasn’t no 31 flavors baby. My one note would be that the crisp sugar shell had a distinct and not all together pleasant fried flavor. The filling was stellar, but the cone could have been a touch less greasy.

After ice cream time came one of the more playful dishes of the evening- the pine sherbet fountain. I don’t care what they call it, this thing was a gourmet lik-m-aid. I can’t tell you how cool it was. The flavor was sweet and tangy and packed with piney goodness. Again, a definite giggle dish, bringing great forest flavors right into dinner.

Our pine theme continued with a mango and Douglas fir puree. Accompanying that was a black current sorbet with cashews and a beet crisp. This dish was complicated and had a lot of different things going on. To start with, the sorbet was fantastic. It was tart and had a very satisfying mouth feel. The beet crisp was a great earthy compliment.

The mango and Douglas fir jiggle box was ok. It was sweet and interesting but not particularly delicious. What was awesome though, and totally made the dish for me were the little jello cubes. Those tiny guys were spicy! It was an excellent counterpoint to the agrodolce and coniferous notes. (Well, isn’t someone all fancy pants with their unique and successful flavor pairings?)

Next, Mr. Blumenthal opened up his candy store. Our waiter paraded out two adorable carrot and orange tuiles and two sugar coated little beet root jellies. The tuiles were yummy and the vivid orange color was so bright it looked almost like an ember fresh from the fire. A tasty, tasty ember that you shove into your mouth and suck on until it dissolves into a sticky, carroty orange puddle. Slurp…

The beetroot jellies were so enjoyable that I have vowed to swear off beets in any application except desserts. These little bastards were goooood! They were beety and tangy with the perfect amount of sweetness. They were amazingly soft with a light and pleasant chew. These should come in giant sacks.

The little confections pretty much wrapped up dinner, but since Heston and his boys weren’t quite finished with us we agreed to stay overnight for a bit of hanky-panky if they promised to cook us breakfast. (We’re very open minded.)

First up, individual boxes of breakfast cereal. Too cute. In typical Fat Duck style though, these weren’t your usual Kellogg’s Frosted Golden Fruity Puffs. No, these were pure parsnip flakes. Served with what else? Parsnip milk of course.

The presentation was the whole show here. The packaging and theater of it took something extremely simple and changed it into a great dish. It was so basic but it really made you think about the whole concept of fine dining. How important it is to not only draw the customer into the experience but to fiddle with their preconceptions. Very Warhol really; take a common mass produced food stuff and co-opt it for art.

For the last course, all stops were pulled out. It had a little bit of everything: performance, novelty, humor, presentation, deliciousness… you name it. It started with a lady bringing over a carton holding a half dozen eggs, each bearing the Fat Duck stamp. After we selected our egg, she prepared the anti-pot, a copper apparatus that “cooks” with cold instead of heat.

She cracked our egg into the pot and added a little liquid nitrogen while stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon. We soon discovered that the eggy insides had been replaced with a bacon flavored gelato mix. I’m also fairly certain that during the initial preparation of the base, it was taken to a higher temperature than normal so that more of the egg proteins set, giving it a distinct egg flavor.

When the gelato was done, it was carefully served on top of bruleed French toast with a paper thin slice of candied bacon that had been coated with a shellac of sucrose. On the bottom, there was a dab of tomato jam and on the side came a glass of chilled tea jelly. See, an entire breakfast!

I know I said that the foie gras was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten but it would just be wrong to not put this dish on the list too. It was sweet, salty, creamy, crispy and hilarious. The tea jelly was a perfectly complimentary tannic-sweet and herby. Playful yet masterful. These guys are rockstars.

After the last plate disappeared, girlie and I decided that a nice espresso or two was in order. The coffee was solid, but not as good as say that cup we had in Siracusa. You can’t beat the glassware though. Heston has all of his stuff custom made just for the Fat Duck and somebody in the design process has some seriously good taste.

Along with coffee, we were presented with the very, very last things that would go in our mouths. I swear. Really. Just a few more things. This was it. They didn’t bring out anything else. Hang in there.

First came a plate with whisky jellies and violet tartlets. The whisky jellies had a really good Irish whisky flavor and a nice chewy texture. Not quite as good as the beet ones, but that’s a high freakin’ bar.

The violet dealies had a runny gooey middle that was nice, but they didn’t have much violet taste. They came off mainly as sweet. Also, the shell was fried like the tiny ice cream cones and the weird oily flavor didn’t really do it for me. On the plus side, the rich deep purple color was all pretty and stuff.

Finally, they brought out a half a cocoa pod half filled with some kind of cocoa shavings. Nestled inside were two types of chocolates. The first was filled with a rich mint and dark chocolate ganache. The mint tasted like the real deal, vegetably and pungent. The center was satiny with a coating mouthfeel.

The second one was an orange honeycomb. It was light, crisp and entirely lovely. The cool gold leaf on the bottom had some sort of rainbow oil slick appearance and was a nice touch. The whole candy was surprisingly light; it almost felt like you weren’t holding anything. I’m not the biggest chocolate fan, but I could appreciate that this was one impressive sweet. Yum.

Well, that about wraps it up. We pretty much shut the restaurant down. We paid and went outside where five or six extremely expensive vehicles sat idling as drivers sat stoically awaiting their patrons’ emergence. We hopped in the cab that the hostess had called for us and made the short trip back to Maidenhead. That was it. We boarded our train and rehashed the evening as we wound our way slowly back into London.

If any of you out there have the desire to sponsor a nice young couple for a bit of continuing research we would be more than happy to entertain your proposals. Why eat it yourself when you can have a fabulous full-on virtual meal with the Pants family?

Hello from London!

So, we're in sunny London right now... and by sunny, I mean raining and 55 degrees.  We're freezing our little used-to-being-in-Italy butts off.

I'm at an Internet cafe with just a few minutes of use left, so this will just be a quick "Hey, we're alive!" kind of post.

But we've been having an amazing time!  Lots of walking, lots of eating, and the discovery of what may very well be my new favorite museum in the world - the Victoria and Albert museum, where we spent a good chunk of time today looking at clothes through the ages as well as an amazing sculpture gallery.

We had lunch today at St. John's Smithfield Market, which... oh my god, we have lots of pictures and someday I will get our laptop hooked up to the internet so I can upload them.  Suffice it to say for now that marrow salad is a great idea, and that we ate an honest-to-goodness gull egg!

Tomorrow, we're going to go check out Harrod's famous food hall, and we have reservations at the Fat Duck!  Not that this is a things we've been looking forward to for a year or anything, but we're very excited.  And cold.

We're flying out of London on Wednesday night for Hong Kong.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to post again before then, but I will be working on detailed posts with pictures so you can see some of what we've been up to.

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

Dublin, Day Two - August 18, 2006

Another full day on which to report!  (This kind of shabby writing is the type of thing up with which you shall not put, I know.)

We had another terrific day in Dublin.  I really like this town, but it doesn't feel at all out of my comfort zone, except that everyone has great accents and there are more red-heads around.  It's a very nice Northern European city, is all.  I'd really like to come back, but mostly to get out of Dublin and have a look-see at the countryside... and eat more Irish butter (and gain lots of Irish weight!).

Breakfast this morning at the hostel was an extremely chaotic affair, involving lots of bumping into each other and other hostel guests, washing and rewashing mugs, and refilling the electric kettle which for some reason only had a 3-cup capacity.  Breakfast equaled corn flakes with whole milk, white bread, and instant tea.  Eh, at least it was free?

After breakfast, we walked over to the Central Post Office.  The facade of the building was the only thing left after the Irish Republican Army used the building for their headquarters for the Easter Rising.

You can still see bullet holes in the facade.  It's amazing to think that this only took place in 1916!

Then, on to the Jameson distillery (by way of a mall, where we picked up a watch with alarm since we somehow managed to misplace both my watch and our travel alarm in the move...)

The tour, priced at E 8.75, was a little much for us, since we're not big whiskey fans anyhow... but we did decide to get a drink at the on-site bar, the Coopers Rest (apostrophe missing in original).  With a name like that, how could we pass it up?  And, by the way, their prices were very reasonable.

Husbear tried a glass of the 12-year distillery reserve, which is available only on-site, and I got an Irish coffee, available most places.

I think my coffee had as much whiskey in it as Husbear's glass, but somehow it didn't taste all that strong.  We lingered over these drinks for quite some time, though we did see a few people knocking back enormous glasses of whiskey before heading on the distillery tour.

Verdict - we're still not whiskey drinkers, though the Irish Coffee may have a place in my life...

After all this sitting (well, we did walk across town to the distillery in the first place) we were getting a bit hungry, so we started walking to the National Museum figuring we'd eat on the way.

We actually ended up finding a terrific place to eat, a colorful pub called Nancy Hands.

I had a lovely, if a bit salty, bowl of leek and bacon soup.  And a Guinness.  Look, I'm in Ireland.  I don't want to get thrown out of the country for not bowing down properly to the national drink! 

The National Museum was really fascinating - we saw a really cool exhibit on Irish coins dating back as far as 900 CE, with half-penny's that were actually pennies but in half, coins that had been restamped in an effort to raise their value, and the strange tidbit that Irish money for years was worth exactly 12/13ths of English money.  Huh.

They also had gloves made from the skin of an unborn cow.  Yew.

They were made in Limerick, and they were so delicate they were sold crammed into a walnut.  (That tool in the middle is for spreading out the fingers.)

After the National Museum closed at 5, we set our sights on the Modern Art Museum.  Unfortunately, it was closed, but we were able to wander the beautiful grounds.  For some pictures of the grounds, laid out in the classic English style, see our Flickr photostream.  (They are also in this set, if they've fallen off the front page of our flickr stream.)

After enjoying a bit of relaxation in the museum garden, we walked in the direction of the Brazen Head, Dublin's oldest pub (est. 1198!)

This place was much larger than it looks from the outside, and it was absolutely jammed with Dubliners - from office-workers just getting off for the week to entire families enjoying fish and chips and Guinness stew.  I had a really good dry cider.

A couple of funny things we've seen around Dublin, in our wanderings today:

When they say no bikes, they really mean it.

These markings are on almost all of the crosswalks, just like in London - and, let me tell you, they really come in handy to my jet-lagged self. 

No frills, just booze.  To go.  I guess in a place where almost everyone walks, they can do things like this.  (Note the opening day specials include Miller, Budweiser, and Coors Light.  In IRELAND.)

For all of you guys clamoring for a view of our hostel room, here ya go:

It's serviceable... oh, and to dear auntie, who emailed me to say "jeebus, isn't 77 euros a little excessive for a room at a hostel?" let me just say that's for two people in a shared room, at 39 eurosish each.  We could have gotten two dorm beds here in a ten-person dorm for 17 euros each, but then I would have had to kill someone.  Or nine someones.

Tomorrow afternoon, we leave Dublin for Bologna.  Our flight is in the late afternoon, so we're going to leave here after an early lunch, given the security situation.  Wish us luck, as the border guys check our visas and lack thereof tomorrow!

Well, this is almost bye, Dublin!

girlie

Dublin, Day One - August 17, 2006

We've made it!

Most of the way, anyway, and only two of our three checked bags initially made it with us... though we have them all now.

This post is going to be short, since it's already 1 in the morning and we've been up since basically 8:30 Eastern time yesterday with an approximate 1 hour nap - and did I mention that our hostel's common area is filled with Germans who are giggling shrilly at old episodes of Jackass?

Well, it is - but at least the hostel has internet access!

We've had a really really really full day.

Yesterday, midafternoon, we took of from Washington DC a little late due to traffic slowdowns into New York (not because of the security issues).

I gave Husbear the window seat, since he's never flown out of National before, and he got this great view of the Jefferson and Washington monuments.

We only had an hour and twenty minutes at JFK in New York, which sounds like a lot but was barely enough to leave the terminal, catch the stupid Airlink bus to our new terminal, and go through security again.  We made it to our gate just in time for final boarding.

We arrived in Dublin this morning at the entirely uncivilized hour of 5:30, only to find that our bag with all of our guidebooks and Husbear's shoes had failed to make it with us.  After getting forwarding information sorted out, we left the airport for our hostel.

Did you know that a bus ride from the airport into town costs the same as a one-day bus pass?  I thought that was strange marketing.  We bought the one-day bus pass and took the bus to within 4 blocks of our hostel, Litton Lane.

Though it's a little dingy, the hostel has nice rooms and a great location, along with a really reasonable price of only 77 euros a night.

After dropping our bags in the left luggage room (which comes complete with a leaking pipe... our things got more than a little damp) we made a beeline for a traditional Irish breakfast.  Our beeline ended up being a little more circular than we hoped, given our lack of sleep and lack of familiarity with Dublin, but we eventually found this bizarre restaurant on the top of a shopping arcade serving a full Irish breakfast for 8.40 E.

After this EXTREMELY filling breakfast (I was only able to finish about a third of mine, and it held me 12 hours until dinner!) we thought we'd walk over to St. Patrick's cathedral, constructed on the approximate location where St. Patrick baptized converts in the 5th century CE.

On the way, we stumbled on these really cool doors.  I read that there's a story behind all the doors in Dublin being painted different colors; apparently, late one night a drunk Dubliner, stumbling home from the bar, entered the wrong house and got into bed with the wrong wife.  When this woman's actual husband returned home, he was so incensed he killed the intruder.  Since then, the women of Dublin have been sure to paint their doors distinctive colors so their menfolk don't get killed for being stupid.

St. Patrick's was lovely, and while we were there the dean (?) offered a prayer for peace which was really nice to hear.  The same thing happened when we visited Christchurch later on, oddly.

(interior of St. Patrick's, Dublin)

Honestly, though Christchurch is the more famous of the two churches, I think we enjoyed St. Patrick's better, there being more "stuff" to look at - memorials along the walls to battles throughout the last three hundred years.

(exterior of Christchurch, Dublin)

At this point, I completely ran out of steam.  Having gotten exactly no sleep on the only 6-hour flight from New York to Dublin, I was done.

Luckily, we were at the point where Litton Lane allowed us to check in, so I took a 1.5 hour nap.  After waking, it was time to visit something a little lighter - the Guinness brewery.  Though reports pegged it as lame, our experince with the total lameness of Amsterdam's Hieneken Experience made us curious - could this brewery be as uninteresting as that one?

Surprisingly, we really enjoyed our time there.  The Guinness people have put on a great show, with lots of interesting information, including old advertising campaigns which we found really interesting.

Plus, though the entrance fee is expensive, it comes with a free pint of Guinness!  And, trust me, by the time you've made it through learning just how much time and effort goes into producing a pint of Guinness, you are really ready for a taste.

You know it takes something like 119.6 seconds to pour a perfect pint of Guinness, so the ratio of beer to head is right on?  Well, this guy knew that.

These pints look gargantuan, but I promise they're only pint-sized.

We lingered over our pints in the seventh-floor bar, which has a great panoramic view of Dublin.  Though fairly crowded, it was a nice way to while away the time and get situated in a new town.

Since this was our first day in Dublin, and we had already consumed (at least a small part of ) a traditional Irish breakfast, we really wanted to try a traditional Irish dinner as well.  You might think this would be difficult for a person who doesn't eat much meat, but he managed.

I actually saw this restaurant a few weeks ago on an episode of Passport to Europe, and it looked really interesting.  Though exposure like this is often disasterous for restaurants, we did find other good reviews, so we decided to give Gallagher's Boxty House a try.

They were jammed, so we didn't actually get seated for dinner until 10... but since my internal clock has absolutely no idea what's going on, this was fine.

Even at that late hour, they were still really busy.

I ordered a salmon and smoked cod boxty (basically like an extra-hearty crepe, with potatoes added), and Husbear got mushy peas, colcannon (mashed potatoes with kale), and a plan boxty for a make-your own platter.

It was a really hearty meal that was actually quite tasty, and I'd certainly reccommend the restaurant if any of you find yourselves in Dublin.

Then, back here for the wrangling of pictures and writing of (sorry this one's a little disjointed) posts.  I hope you guys realize how much I love y'all!

Tomorrow, we have a list of about 17 things to do, and it's going to 2 - so good night to us, and we hope you're all doing great!

girlie