I hope they don’t stop us at Border Control tomorrow at the airport. We owe the too-trusting Swiss 12 Swiss Francs for two separate infarctions of public transportation rules. But it’s not entirely our fault. The deal is you can travel anywhere in metro Geneva (Zone 10) for three Francs but your ticket is only good for an hour.
The first time we bought our tickets at a major terminal – Bel-Aire, right down the hill from our apartment and across the street from our now favorite breakfast café. That got us, seven stops later, to the International Red Cross Museum. No problem. Coming back three hours later there was no ticket machine at the bus stop. I offered the driver six Francs, but he shook his head and waved his hand. Didn’t matter, no one checks tickets in this country as far as I can tell.
After returning to the Bel-Aire station we decided to walk along the waterfront to see one more time the Geneva Jet d’Eau. We came to a boat landing with people standing in line to get on a yellow taxi boat. Why not? We climbed on, ticketless, again planning on fessing up to the captain, but no one seemed to care. It was in fact a taxi. It went across the mouth of the lake, turned around and came back – ten minutes total. We got off, richer for the experience but leaving Geneva poorer for their trusting attitude.
The Red Cross Museum is quite impressive. The message is that there are billions of people on this earth who, due to war, natural disasters and poverty, lead miserable lives. It’s not only physical suffering but the loss of dignity, dislocation and disconnection from family. The ICRC, working with national Red Cross and Red Crescent groups (Red Crescent in non-Christian regions), attempts to address these problems.
The founding light behind the Red Cross was Henry Dunant. He had witnessed in 1859 the carnage that resulted from the Battle of Solferino in the second Italian war of independence. That experience led him to form a “Committee of Five” who founded the Red Cross in Geneva in 1863. The organization played an important role in WWI and WWII, although it was criticized for not taking an active position regarding the Nazi holocaust.
The Geneva Conventions, adopted by 55 nations in 1949 gave the Red Cross a legal basis in international law to perform its role, especially in combat situations. The U.S. signed the 1949 convention in 1955 but has never signed Protocol I of 1972 nor Protocol II of 2005. The application of the 1949 convention to the War on Terror, including interrogation techniques and treatment of enemy combatants (e.g., Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) have been burning questions since 911.
We had a picnic lunch outside on the museum’s picnic tables, eating up the last of our cheese and crackers and a couple of oranges.
The bus ride gave us a view of Geneva outside the Old Town, which is picturesque and laden with high-end shopping is not the “real” Switzerland. The impression we get is that Geneva and the rest of “real” Switzerland we’ve seen has been neat, clean and free from homelessness and slums. Such problems may exist somewhere but not in our travels.
The other big achievement today was completion of three loads of laundry. Judy’s ensured a clean start to our 12 days in Israel. The Airbnb here, Spiez and Salzburg have had washing machines that have kept us nice to be near lo these many days.
And of course we had to make one last trip to the Longest Wooden Bench in the WORLD, if only to see who could take the best picture. We shoot; you be the judge.
So, this is our last day in Switzerland. We’ve been on the road for 28 days now and while we’ve loved the Alps and especially Switzerland, we’re ready for the move to Israel. We Have taken much of our luggage to the rental car and all that is left is to find a gas station, the rental car return spot and Terminal 1. Then it’s up to Lufthansa to do the rest.
Oh, one more task before we leave. We’re going to have our Farewell Fondu at our neighborhood restaurant. It’s our fourth go on fondu, but who, other than the scales, is counting?
We’ve put in a good, honest day’s effort out on the tourist trail here in Geneva. We were seated by the Rhone River by 10 AM, about 10 minutes downhill from our apartment, eating breakfast and waiting for our 11 AM departure for a free walking tour of Geneva. Next door to the café was one of the ubiquitous Coop grocery stores. After pantomiming brushing teeth, Judy found the Colgate, so our breath will be tolerable for Israel.
The meeting spot was at the outlet end of Lake Geneva, which forms the Rhone River. The Morteratsch Glacier that we visited with Carter contributes to the Rhone so, who knows, some of the glacial melt we saw with Carter may be the same water that we’re seeing today. The Rhone leaves Geneva and flows into the Mediterranean just below Avignon, France.
Our guide on the two-and-a-half hour-long trek, Nickolas, recently graduated with an undergraduate degree in law and is starting work on his master’s degree. He’s a native of Geneva, speaks excellent English and provided a good overview of life in Switzerland and Geneva, it’s history, culture and so on.
We’ve done these “free” walking tours before, most recently in Porto, Portugal and if you’ve got the stamina, it’s a fun way to get to know a city. Much better than a bus, that’s for sure. Our group was large, maybe 25 people, so Nickolas made out OK in tips I’ll bet. This tour shared one characteristic with all the other free walking tours we’ve been on: it was mostly carried out on the side of a mountain – lots of huffing and puffing – but we made it OK.
All males in Switzerland are required to perform service, typically in the army but other options exist. Nickolas has elected to do social service; his first assignment was an admittedly cushy job as a summer camp counselor but he could end up washing dishes in a hospital or nursing home. They will be voting soon to make service required by women, too.
Switzerland defines its uniqueness in two ways: as a direct democracy and as a neutral nation.
Citizens vote to elect representatives to the federal and canton legislatures. These bodies pass laws. In the case of the Federal legislative branch, the joint body (there are two houses) elect seven-person federal Councilors body. This body is the administrative branch. One member is elected as President each year but that role is largely ceremonial. The federal constitution dictates that the members of the Council must be balanced by political party and gender.
Laws passed by the legislature are subject to review by a supreme court but any citizens can obtain 50,000 signatures to cause any law, no matter how trivial, to be subject to a vote by the citizens.
Everything here is expensive. Swiss citizens pay a lot for health insurance policies, but they don’t cover much. Higher education is expensive, but few Swiss leave their home cantons for university, staying at home instead with Mom and Dad.
We went by a number of historic sites. The bridge on which our tour started crosses the Rhone. Julius Caesar came to Geneva in 56 BCE and ordered the bridge to be destroyed. Why? He was sick and tired of the German tribes infiltrating the lands of the Helveticas to attack his troops. Geneva was a key border town. It remains a border town today, being almost surrounded by France. So far, I haven’t missed a turn and crossed the border but I’ll have another chance on Thursday. Part of the Geneva airport is in France.
Switzerland did have a civil war, maybe 20 years before the U.S. civil war. The issue was religion: the Catholic cantons wanted to secede; the Protestants wanted them to stay. The Protestants prevailed. However, the war was fought in such a way that only about 100 people lost their lives. Reuniting the country proved to be easy.
The “neutral” part of Swiss identity revolves around a legal definition by which neutrality is defined as not participating in someone else’s war and treating combatants of a war equally in terms of arms shipments and use of Swiss territory as a path to transport goods. As long as Switzerland treats both sides equally, it’s neutral.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is testing Swiss identity as a neutral state. Can Swiss, as they have, support Russian sanctions without losing neutral status? By the strict definition, the answer is yes, but the situation is straining Swiss opinion, which is based on an understanding broader than the legal definition.
We found another of the Swiss’s famous “bigger, longer, best” landmarks. We had a lot of fun with Carter whenever our guide pointed out the longest tunnel or whatever. Today it was the longest wooden bench in the world! Not the longest in Europe, Switzerland, the Alps or the Canton of Geneva, but the longest in the world! Sixty-one sections (I counted) and 120 meters in length (I looked it up on Wikipedia). Originally built in 1767. It’s a five-minute walk from our apartment.
Speaking of famous things around here j, it turns out that Jean Jacque Rosseau, the 18th century philosopher, grew up in a house about 10 doors down from our apartment. We visited the small museum on the site and while it was mostly in French the English guide helped us get an idea of this man’s views of the world.
Another close-by neighbor was Franz Liszt, the French composer. He ran off with another man’s wife, a countess, to Geneva where he got a job teaching music. They had four kids and lived here for four years. They broke up and Franz hit the road performing to raise money to fund a statue of Beethoven in Bonn.
Think Liszt was a cad for running off with another man’s wife? Rosseau had five kids with his wife. He took them and placed them in a Paris orphanage. That was apparently common back then. As many as one-third of Paris kids ended up that way. A high percentage died in orphanages.
We’d planned an afternoon visit to the International Reformation Museum to learn about John Calvin and his buddies. However, the museum is temporarily closed for, wait for it, reformation. So, we did the Rosseau museum instead and I walked to the Liszt apartment site, marked by an easy-to-miss plaque.
Now we’re chilling in the apartment with a glass of wine. We’ll head out for dinner somewhere nearby, exact spot yet to be defined and that will be selected by wandering around. Soon, we’ll be back in the tender graces of a tour company where all such weighty decisions will be made for us. “Bags out by 7, breakfast at 8 and on the bus no later than 9.” Can’t wait.
For dinner , we had to wait until almost eight for a thunderstorm to pass by. We then ventured out and found a place not far from the apartment with a unique distinction: three times as many dessert choices as main course options. It’s a chicken joint, plain and simple. You can have a half chicken rotisseried, chicken breast or chicken tenders. That’s it. There were at least eight or nine dessert options. We did a half chicken each, drinks and crème Brule and a milk shake for about what we paid for that room service bottle of wine back at Le Mirador.
Our objective for tomorrow is to take a bus – really one of those trams with overhead electrical lines – to the International Red Cross/Red Crescent headquarters and museum. Nicolas told us it’s one of his favorite museums. So off we go.
How the mighty have fallen. I’m sitting here in our Geneva flat, in the bed/living/dining/tv/everything-but-kitchen-and-bath room, slugging down of a glass of Spiez’s finest red, unwinding from what has been the hardest drive – and the last – of the entire 600 miles in Switzerland. I’m not going to bore you with the detailed price comparison, but let’s just say that a bottle of wine delivered to our Le Mirador suite cost almost as much as one night in Geneva. Our dining room table from Le Mirador, or Spiez, for that matter, would pretty much fill up the entire living space here.
Not that I’m complaining – this was the best Old Town deal we could find several months ago and it does appear to be in the center of everything. We will fall out the front door into a sidewalk café for dinner. And the walk from the parking garage would have been OK if we didn’t have so much stuff crammed into one suitcase. We left the other one and a backpack in the car.
We left Le Mirador this morning around 11 AM (we’re still in Spiez goof-off mode when it comes to getting up in the morning). Nice breakfast overlooking Lake Geneva and a scenic drive over farm hills to the superhighway at Lausanne.
The GPS took us to CERN, home of the Large Haldron Collider. I’ll spare you the mathematical details that define how it works but suffice it to say they accelerate protons to darn near the speed of light by sending them around a circular track almost 18 miles long – some going clockwise and some counterclockwise. Magnets do the acceleration trick. The magnets are super cooled to near absolute zero and the protons travel in a vacuum. When they get going fast enough BANG, they collide. There are detectors that measure whatever results from the collision, hopefully particles that no one has ever seen before but that theory says should exist – or not – which leads to more theorizing and experimentation.
In my experience, most four- to six-year-old boys, and some older ones, get their kicks smashing things to bits to see what happens. Makes you wonder about physicists.
Our tour guide was an interesting gal – final year of her PhD in physics at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She was a great guide except that her enthusiasm for the work drew her deeper into the weeds than most of the audience was prepared to go. I asked her to tell us in 25 words or less what her thesis research was all about. Several hundred words later, it boiled down to statistical methods to separate truth from noise. You may see a pattern in the junk thrown off by the zillions of collisions you’ve observed, but how do you know it points to something real, rather than being happenstance. It’s the old problem of sitting an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters and letting them type forever. Eventually, they’ll type the collected works of Shakespeare – with no typos! Is that a sign of intelligence or just sheer chance?
The drive from CERN, on the north side of Geneva maybe 15 miles, was a killer. Lots of traffic, a lot of the traffic being motorcycles and bicycles that paid no attention to lane markers or traffic lights. But somehow we made it and even entered the parking lot on the first shot. Hence the wine.
It’s seven and Judy says we’d better do the dinner thing. I’ll report back when we’ve broken bread and hit another go on the wine bottle.
Dinner was great – just up the street – veal and chicken. Just took forever to pay the bill.
As for yesterday at Le Meridian. We each had a “relaxing” massage the afternoon of our arrival, so we awoke still in the relaxation mode. Late breakfast on the patio overlooking the lake then a leisurely stroll up the hill to the funicular station.
As I think I mentioned before, Judy and I arrived on our honeymoon via the funicular. The best I can figure, we took a train from the Geneva airport to Lausanne, transferred to a different train that took us to Vevey and the funicular. We wanted to retrace our steps.
The ride down was smooth and pleasant. The old wooden cars have been replaced with modern plastic models and everything is fully automated. We never saw a human to sell or check our tickets. Very much on the honor system.
We were reliving the experience, in English, and a man sitting across from us, as we left the train in Vevey, offered several suggestions about trains and then sights we really should see in Vevey and within an easy bicycle ride of town. The Charlie Chaplin Museum was nearby, as was the site of the Gustave Eiffel (the tower guy) summer place (there’s a plaque commemorating the spot). He was on his way to swim laps but went out of his way to show us where to go.
We ended up taking a nice stroll along the lakeshore, but I was driven to find the rail station from which we alit on our arrival 50 years ago. It took several wrong turns and more walking than Judy would put up with. She sat on a bench and watched one funicular departure after another while I did my searching thing. Turns out, the railway station is right across the street from the funicular station, in plain sight.
We ordered up a bottle of wine of the type Judy had liked at the fondu joint, had it delivered to our room, and sat on our balcony with that and some cheese and crackers left over from Spiez. Satisfying.
In the afternoon we had two competing needs: to relax, read, enjoy the scenery and take a nap and to climb Mont Pelerin. Guess who drew the short straw and climbed the mountain? Judy did fairly well with her tasks but failed to get in the nap.
My journey up the hill went OK but I took a route that lengthened the trip to a four-mile, three-hour journey. I had Google Maps, All Trails, a printed map from the hotel and a couple of ambiguous road signs. None of them agreed, but eventually I figured it out (you just climb up until you reach the top, right?). The views were magnificent and the exercise made me feel much better.
Dinner last night was at the hotel. Delicious tastes with sunset over the lake to make it even more enjoyable.
So now tomorrow we’ll see the sights of Geneva. Rain is forecast for the next few days so there may be some museum time in our future, but maybe we’ll get lucky, again, and dodge the downpours.
Due to technical difficulties beyond our control or understanding, Judy’s video about Spiez must be divided into two pieces. Here are the links. The first is mainly showing our Swiss Chalet and the second is more about what we did in Siez. We had a wonderful relaxing time there. We enjoyed living in a Swiss chalet and a Swiss town for a week.
This is the SpiezHouse Video. We had a wonderful relaxing time there.
I said I wasn’t going to blog about the second honeymoon, but the trip to Le Mirador from Spiez deserves special mention. Two reasons: the trip itself and our return after 50 years to the Chateau de Chiilon.
Google Maps offered two routes: one northbound to Bern and then southwest toward Vevey, the other a more direct route but that took 30 minutes or so longer. The slower route had lots of wiggles but avoided tolls. The Toyota’s GPS took the slow route without asking. But, hey, we’re here for the scenery, not efficiency, so why not take a little longer and smell the cow dung on the scenic route?
It proved to be a fortuitous choice. The map didn’t lie: the road had lots of wiggles and it climbed up one mountain side and down the other. We passed through numerous small towns. Rain fell periodically, sometimes heavy, but there were breaks with sunshine. At one point the mountain climb and descent was on a one-lane path with occasional cutouts so opposing cars, and especially trucks, could pass one another. We didn’t see but one other car, however.
The big payback was in a small town where a family was herding their milk cows from summer pastures high on the mountainsides to lower pastures for fall, as is the custom here in Switzerland. A man and his maybe six-year-old-son led the way. Dad would call out, urging the cows forward. The boy would imitate Dad with his own call. Mom was in the middle herding the strays out of the path of oncoming flatlanders in big black Toyotas. The last cow in the parade wore a crown of flowers, again as is traditional. This ranked right up there with being in the vineyards at the exact moment of harvest. A “road not taken” event; taking the superhighway via Bern and we’d have missed it.
We visited Chateau de Chillon when we were here fifty years ago, so it seemed appropriate to revisit the castle this time. Also, when touring Schloss Spiez two days ago, there was a reference saying, “While not of the size or grandeur of Chillon, Spiez is of interest in its own right.” So now we can compare and contrast for ourselves.
Notice too that what was a schloss in Spiez is now a chateau two hour’s drive later. Switzerland has four official languages, but one prevails in most regions (Cantons). We passed into French territory somewhere in our drive through the mountains. Same thing with religion. Lucerne was decidedly Catholic, Zurich and Spiez Reformed and I suspect we’re back in Catholic environs.
One interesting difference, other than size. The story at Spiez was the barons that ruled there but not so much the actual construction history of the building. The opposite was true at Chillon. Yes, they talked about the House of Savoy and the Bernese who occupied the place between the 11th and 18th centuries. But the big emphasis was on the construction, and reconstruction of the castle, beginning with its first occupation, probably by the Romans but most definitely as a castle as early as 1000 CE.
Extensive archeological work has been done to identify foundations and changes that were made over the years. The form of the castle that we see today was pretty much defined by the mid 1500s but, like most homeowners, each succeeding owner had to knock down a wall, add another room, repurpose rooms from dungeon to powder storage to chapel and back again.
Significant research and reconstruction were performed in the late 1880s and 1890s, continuing on through the 1930s, creating what some say is a fine example of a medieval castle’s architecture. As with Washington Irving’s visit to the Alhambra in Spain, Lord Byron and other 19th century luminaries popularized Chillon as a tourist destination. Today Chillon is the most visited castle in Switzerland if not all of Europe.
We had a hard time remembering our visit 50 years ago. For one thing, the superhighway that bypasses the main costal road is new. So is the visitor’s entrance and café. And I’m pretty sure we didn’t pay 12 CF each for iPhone-based audio guides. What we do remember is taking the funicular down from Le Mirador, then a train to Chillon and walking along the waterfront to the castle’s entrance.
After, our faithful GPS took us up another series of twisty-windy roads to our hotel. It too has changed: the size has doubled and it’s 21st century modern. Our room is a couple of cuts above what we could afford as newlyweds. But the view remains the same and being here brings back fond memories of those two twenty-four-year-old kids who had no idea what great risks they were taking traveling alone without Internet or iPhone to guide them. Such is the folly of youth who haven’t yet discovered all the pitfalls that are apparent only to those with grey hairs and years behind them thinking up things to worry about.
And one other trip down memory lane: the hotel dining room was booked so we walked up the hill to a small restaurant near the funicular station where we had fondu, just as we did in a small grotto in the hotel, now closed, 50 years ago. “No, no, no” said Judy as the waiter attempted to pour more wine into her glass. “No, no, no,” replied the waiter as he poured the wine anyway. This time the fondus were made with fresh local garlic and fresh local truffles and with white beer, which were great, and elicited fond memories.
It’s Friday, August 2 and tomorrow we leave Spiez for our honeymoon hotel in Vevey, Switzerland, on the slope of Mont Pelerin and overlooking Lake Geneva. I haven’t done any writing this past week, but Judy has. What follows is her description of each day’s activities.
Neither of us stopped taking pictures. It’s our way of remembering what it felt like to live each day and experience the things we did. So, after each day’s description you’ll find the corresponding pictures.
I’ll add one thing to what Judy has written: We are so fortunate to have chosen Spiez as our rest stop. Having visited Interlaken at one end of the lake and Thun at the other, Spiez, in the middle, has turned out to be a delight. Interlaken is thoroughly tourist driven. Thun impressed us a Germanic working town. Spiez accommodates tourists like us but not in an in-your-face sort of way. We had no idea we’d be living, literally, in the middle of a vineyard. And we had no way of guessing we’d witness the harvesting of “our” grapes firsthand. Our walks around town, through the vineyards, up and across the ridges of hills, and along the lake have been perfect. We even enjoyed learning about 16th and 17th century life as a Baron of the castle we looked at each morning as we ate our breakfast.
So on to Vevey for two days and then Geneva for three and finally Israel for our tour there. Vevey and the Le Mirador hotel was, you’ll recall, the site of our honeymoon 59 years ago. We look back and wonder how we ever did that trip. No Internet, No GPS, No cell phones. I remember thumbing through a hotel guide in a travel agent’s office (“I know nothing about Switzerland,” the agent said). Why I picked that hotel. How we figured out how to get from the Geneva airport to the train station and figure out which train to take to Vevey. I remember so well the feeling of confusion when we got off the train and couldn’t find the funicular and then dragging the suitcases from the funicular to the front door of the hotel, later learning they would have picked us up in the hotel limo at the Geneva airport. And from there another series of travel miracles as we continued on to Stuttgart and London. Babes in the woods but somehow we made it and lived to tell the tale 50 years later.
I suppose blogging on your honeymoon isn’t the thing to do, even if it’s your second honeymoon. So ,we’ll be off the air for the next two days and will pick up again when we reach Geneva on Monday.
Monday, August 29, 2022 in Spiez, Switzerland
This is our week in Spiez, Switzerland when we are relaxing and resting. The idea in my mind is that we are doing things more like with would when we are home.
First, we did not get out of bed until 9:30 AM, well that is even later than home but it sure feels good. We had breakfast of toast and Orange Juice. So far there are no toasters that we can find in Switzerland, so Jon uses the broiler, I think. After breakfast I found my way to the laundry area in the basement. While there Christine, the neighbor on the first floor, happened by and asked how we were doing. She then helped me get the washer and dryer into English mode and get the two washers going. She is very nice and does speak English. She lives here with her husband and two sons, ages 11 and 8 and a daughter.
Christine told be about the hiking trails around our house so I decided we should do one of them while the wash was going. This trail she said had views so off we went. Another thing I had learned from her was that the vineyards behind the house belong to them, Simon, who we are renting from and Elizabeth who rents out the apartment above us. There is a company that manages the vineyards and they receive bottles of wine as payment for their crop.
This trail had 12 signs along the way telling us all about the growing of the grapes for the wine making. We traveled up the hill and in a big circle reading the signs and the benches along the way. The benches were dedicated to Rebbau Speiz 1927 – 2017 and had poems which Jon translated with his google translate. They were fun poems about wine. Part of this hike took us to the other side of the point where we could see the town across Lake Thun.
We returned home around 1:30, had a little chocolate to keep us going and headed for the Coop, food store to buy some food. This morning Jon had googled Swiss recipes and made a list of the ingredients we would need to make two dinners, breakfast and some lunches. Before we left there was a group of kids, either a camp or class, who came up and Christine was with them beside the house where the chickens live. She had served them something to drink to. It just occurred to me that we are staying on another farm of sorts with the chickens and grape fields.
At the Coop we parked in a garage over the store and had to pay parking and put the coin in for the cart like we do at Aldes at home. The store was just like home and we got our food and paid around $100 francs. Jon did not find the wine he wanted, which was the local Spiez wine, so we headed to a wine store. It did not appear to be open. I decided we should stop at a cloths store we had passed on our way there. I had left me raincoat in Salzburg, Austria and we had decided to have it shipped to Melrose just in case it did not get here before we leave. I am excited to say I found a raincoat and got one for Jon too so that mission was accomplished.
Back at the apartment about 3:00 we had lunch of cheese and crackers before Jon walked down to see about buying wine at the restaurant we had eaten at the first night and he also got the boat schedule for Lake Thun. I took care of the laundry while he was gone and after he returned we both took a nap. Jon is planning to start dinner at 7:00 PM. So, this has been a normal day with laundry, grocery and cloths shopping, and a hike!
These were posted earlier, but here they are again:
Tuesday, August 30,2022 Boat Ride on Lake Thun
Well, we left Spiez at 9:26 AM and returned at 7:26 PM but we did have a fun day and it was what Jon and Judy call relaxing. Of that time 5 hours were spent on a boat which, if you know us, you know we love being on boats and find it to be very relaxing. The other 5 hours we toured Interlaken and Thun. In Interlaken we had lunch. We had a Swiss dish called Rostts. It is hashbrowns topped with melted cheese. One of them had bacon, pickle and vegetables and the other had ham, pineapple and candied cherries. We really liked them and ended up sharing them. Jon says he can make this at home so some of you may have it sometime. We also happened to pass by, well pass by is not exactly what we did, since we stopped and made a purchase at the Laderach Chocolate store. Yes, same as in Zurich. I believe there is an island in Interlaken since we walked along may canals and enjoyed seeing the Swiss houses. It was an enjoyable morning.
The other town we visited was Thun at the other end of Lake Thun. It again has lots of canals and covered bridges throughout the city. At these bridges we enjoyed watching people surfing or wake boarding in the waves that came over the dams. The first place there was a rope tied to the bridge and they would hold it like water skiing and then let go and surf for a little. Here there was a couple taking turns. I know that because when he got in the water they kissed before he headed for the waves. The second bridge they were surfing without any rope. They lined up and waited their turn. There were probably 6 people doing it.
In Thun we intended to go to the castle but it was late in the day and we had a rainstorm. We were glad we had purchased our raincoats yesterday. When it started raining, we went for a restaurant that we could sit under their umbrellas. We had already planned to have ice cream in Thun and the place we were near had not only ice cream but also crepes! I love crepes so had a strawberry and Nutella one. Jon had a crepe with two kinds of ice cream so we were both happy. Since it was raining, and we wanted to stay put I ordered a Chi Latte, and it was delicious. Jon got one too. It did stop raining before we had to return to the boat.
About the boats, we rode on three different boats. We purchased first class tickets and determined it was well worth it. We like to be up top and outside and you had to have first class tickets to be up there. Our last boat was a side paddle boat with a steam horn which I spent quite a bit of time getting a video of the horn when it blew. The final boat served a fancy dinner, but we waited and came home for leftover from last night.
While we were on the boat, I kept thinking about how beautiful everything was around us. We are staying in a beautiful spot with the lake and all the wonderful mountains. The villages are picturesque with lots of beautiful Swiss chalets and even in the cities we would find areas with these beautiful chalets. We are very blessed to be staying in one of these old Swiss chalets on a hill with the wine vineyards and hiking trail behind us.
As I mentioned before they do not have toasters and they do not have microwaves! We have become very dependent on our microwaves in the USA. We had to warm it in the oven and that took what seemed like forever.
As we ate dinner Jon said he did not feel like processing pictures tonight and just wanted to go to bed and read. That sounds good to me too, so I am going to go join him. Maybe the day did tire us out even with the boat trips. Or maybe we’re just being lazy as we were told to do.
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Well today was truly a R & R Day. We did not get out of bed until 10:00 AM. We both enjoyed reading in bed. We had a call from Rebecca, Griffin and Esme and later a call from Jeff. We ate our lunch of crackers, cheese and oranges while we talked with Jeff. Oh yes, we did have some chocolate too! I worked on a video I am making for Carter’s trip and Jon processed the pictures from yesterday. Around 3:00 I decided to take a nap before we go to the wine tasting at 5:00 PM.
The wine tasting was fun as we learned about the local grapes. They also said the picking of the grapes is supposed to happen tomorrow up on our hill. We are looking forward to watching that. Jon tasted six kinds of wines and I stopped after four. They could not produce Riesling this last year because the grapes had a fungus. We did buy one bottle of white and one of red. We will need to drink them before Israel. We both felt a little tipsy after, probably because we drank them too quickly.
We went to the fancy restaurant in town and they could not serve us until 6:30 and it was pretty pretentious . Neither of us felt good about the place so we headed down to the waterfront and found a nice café on the water where I had fish from the lake and Jon had veal wienershnitzle
We hiked back up the hill. I took several pictures of our chalet for you to see. I will include them.
Thursday, September 1, 2022
I enjoyed sleeping until at least 8:30 and then read until around 9:00 this morning. Jon made us eggs, potatoes, onions, and bacon for breakfast. It was wonderful.
We decided to take a hike up the hill to see the grape picking operation in our backyard. We took lots of pictures and I took some video. I am hoping to make a video for you to see. Fingers crossed! The pickers appeared to be volunteers and older, as we had read on one of the signs the other day. I watched one older lady as she was slowly cutting the bad grapes before she put them in the crate. Everyone had the clippers and clipped off bad grapes but most were pretty fast about it. We watched from below and then walked so we were above the pickers. A couple of the men were happy to hold up the grapes for us to take pictures. The operation reminded me of the blueberry picking in Aurora. Maine. The fruit is put in crates and then hauled off for the processing.
From there we went in the woods and climbed in the direction of the church I had wanted to visit. We were successful in finding it as we came out of the forest. The church bells were ringing and since it was noon they rang for a long time. The church is a Reformed church and very pretty in its simplicity. While we were there, we found a pamphlet about a concert tonight at 7:00 PM so that was added to our plan for the day.
We headed back to the house and had lunch before we headed for the castle, the one we have been viewing from our porch but not been to yet. It was a very interesting and beautiful castle. It has lots of carved woodwork and a beautiful ballroom, The tower stairs kept going up and up. I thought I would never get there because it was at least four flights of stairs after the third floor of the castle. On those flights there were opportunity to dress in period costumes and Jon mounted the horse with a spear.
While we were in the castle we mentioned the concert to an English speaking staff person. She said she thought it was at the Castle. She went and checked it out and it is at the Castle and not the church we had been at. Glad we mentioned it to her.
We went in the chapel which is small and all stone. The organist was practicing while we were there. After, I suggested we stop for a little something to drink in the relaxing castle garden. On our way out we discovered large metal containers with the grapes they were picking this morning. The wine is made in Spiez Castle. We saw the first press they were going to put the grapes though. It was going to be 30 minutes before they did it, so we did not wait. It has been fun today watching the grape harvest in our back yard and then seeing the grapes ready to be pressed.
Back at the house I took a nap and we made dinner with the summer squash our neighbor had put out for us to take, onions and bratwurst. Then it was down to the castle for a wonder concert.
The concert started precisely at 7:00 and ended at precisely 8:00. It was Baroque music with the organ, a violin and a soprano. They were all wonderful musicians and the acoustics in the building were fantastic. We had a wonderful time! I wished I could have recorded some of the music for you to hear.
Friday, September 2,2022
Well today is our last day in Spiez and we are both sad to leave it. It has been a lovely town and we have enjoyed our hikes, boat ride, wine tasting, the concert in the castle and touring the castle as well as watching it all week. We were most happy to be here to observe the picking of the grapes in “our vineyard”!
Today I got up early, 7:30 to work on a video about our house and time here in Spiez. The video is done but we are having trouble getting it to upload on Zenfolio. We will let you know when we are successful.
While I worked on the video and started the laundry going Jon took a hike this morning. The laundry is a slow process here. It takes at least 2 hours to do the wash and close to 3 hours to get it dry. Most people hang the laundry out to dry and I think today the lady who hung the sheets out had dry laundry before I did.
After lunch we went for a hike through the vineyards to the beach, up through the castle and around the harbor area before we continued along the water toward the next town a few miles away. Before I know it we were 2/3 of the way to the town and I decide I wanted a Coke Zero. The next town was closer than Spiez so we trudged on. The first thing was came to was the boat landing and a ferry boat was just arriving. Turns out its next stop was Spiez so we paid the price and hopped on the boat. Turned out to be a good thing as we observed the dark threatening clouds. By the time we got to Spiez the clouds were closer and there was thunder in the distance. We decided to get my Coke Zero and our ice cream and head back to the house. It was a good thing because it was a down pour by the time we hit our street. It must have been divine intervention that the boat was there, and we decided to take it.
Jon made a nice dinner from a Swiss cookbook with leaks and rice. We have clean laundry and are all packed for our trip to our honeymoon hotel. They have us scheduled for the spa at 6:00 PM tomorrow so we will be having more fun and relaxation as we remember the things we did here 50 years ago.
