Switzerland

Since Africa, we've already spent two weeks in Switzerland. Our main goal was to visit Philip's family and catch up. The language barrier is really hard, often leaving me guessing as to what people are talking about. About Bärndütsch ("barn-dootsh"): it's unlike any language I've heard before. Not quite German, and it sounds like lots of throat clearings all at the same time. I was hoping to have learned more when I arrived, but I was pretty overwhelmed. Hopefully I did learn some in my two weeks here.

Most of our time has been visiting family. There was the big Christmas Eve dinner with one half of the family, when we had snow falling and watched the candles on the tree. Several of Philip's cousins and aunts and uncles invited us over for dinners and lunches. Ever since it started snowing, we've had just one sunny day, all the others have been gray and near-freezing cold. The frozen ground led to Aunt Vreni breaking her ankle when she slipped on black ice - not good! Not good at all, she needed urgent surgery and can't walk on it for the next six weeks. Poor thing. Philip was also very sick when we arrived, and I've had a pesky cough for basically the entire time here. Fortunately, neither of us had malaria.

The food here, however, has been fantastic. Here's a list of our favorites:
Rösti: A kind of thick, crispy hash-brown potato dish.
Fondue: You know what it is, but no-one does it like the Swiss! We must have each eaten a half-pound of cheese each. Yum!
Raclette: A specific cheese, grilled in a specific cheese griller. Get it hot and bubbly, add some garlic and onion, and eat it over baked potatoes.
Züpfe: A rich milk-butter bread eaten with - you guessed it - cheese. Or butter, I guess, or jam, or anything. It's yummy.

Addison, a cool chick that I met working at CSU, happens to be working in Spain and was able to come over for a visit over New Year. She and I explored Bern for a day, doing a cathedral tour, a walking tour, and visiting the history museum. The next day, Philip, Addison and I hopped on a train for a loop-visit around central Switzerland. We had hoped to see the famous mountains, but were plagued by fog for most of the way. We stopped in Lucerne (a quaint town on a lake), and tried to visit a glass-blowing place but we missed the glass blowers because it was New Year's Eve. We barely got into the place at all because it closed down right after lunch. The highlight for me was the train that climbed up through the fog and opened up to sunny skies and snow-capped mountains right along the train. Wow. After just half an hour at the mountain top, we descended through the fog again, to stop at Interlaken. This is supposed to be a town where you can see the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau mountains, but we saw more fog. This was a city I was excited to see again because Sarah and I had visited 20 years ago and I had such great memories. I guess we'll have to try again in the summer. After eating lunch, we hopped back on the train and headed back to Bern.

It's hard to believe we're at the end of our trip, but tomorrow we'll be on a plane to New Zealand. The long way... We stop in Dubai, Bankok, Sydney, Christchurch, and finally, Dunedin. 36 hours later, hopefully, we'll be back in summer. We're looking forward to being in New Zealand and looking for a place to live. We've really enjoyed the road, but we're now ready to start settling down again.

 Mountains above the mist

 Swiss Mountains

Dinner with Grosi and Addison