Grindelwald and Alpine Procession

Hi Folks. Today is Sunday, September 30. Can you believe that tomorrow it's going to be October? Crazy. Anyways, here's what's been happening with us lately.

Last weekend we had our friends, Matt and Brandi, in visiting from London. We have been to see them and travel with them, so we knew this was going to be another fun weekend (refer back to the "London Calling", November 2005 and "Czech, please!", June 2006 blogs). They arrived late Friday evening at the Zurich airport and we picked them up and came back to our apartment. We had some wine, beer, snacks, rubbery cheese, etc. (We had a few cheese selections laid out and one cheese tasted like sweaty socks and felt like rubber to me...Ag and Brandi enjoyed it though!)

Saturday morning we got up early and drove to the small ski town about 2 hours away from our apartment, just outside of Interlaken. The town is called Grindelwald, and it was awesome (and not just because it sort of sounds like Lindenwald, either!). It was a really small, quaint mountain town....brown houses with the huge overhanging roofs and flower boxes on the window sills, situated all over the mountains and the landscape. Cows and sheep were grazing here and there...it was beautiful.

We went right to where our tour guide, Ms. Aggie T. Marcum, said we needed to be in order to begin our hike. We took a 6-seater cable car up from Grindelwald to the top of First Mountain (that's actually it's name, not just the order in which we climbed it). From there we took a path that leads between two lakes, then climbs up and across two more mountain peaks.

Matt, the navigator, just got a new GPS running watch that offers you the longitude, latitude, temperature, altitude, etc, of wherever you are on the planet. Well, of course we were informed of our "location" (Longitude N 46 degrees 39.743; Latitude E 008 degrees 03.086, Elevation 7242 ft) at the start of our hike and the distance we had walked from that point (a total of 6.35 miles) at several points throughout the journey!

The views from up above were pretty awesome as we looked down on Grindelwald and across to the glaciers of the Bernese Alps and their 7 peaks, including the Jungfrau. The lakes were beautiful and the cows were in full force just roaming around everywhere. We finally descended and grabbed a beer at a little restaurant near the end of the path. Then we returned to the valley (and the comforts of our hotel) by bus.

We headed back to our car and went to our hotel, checked in, showered and then went out for fondue. It was delicious! Despite the fact that we were as full as could be, we decided that we just couldn't go on without a good night-cap. So, we went to another restaurant for ice cream, apple strudel and coffee with Bailey's.

The next day we had breakfast at the hotel and headed back to Zurich. We walked Matt and Brandi around the city, went to Hooters for a late lunch (they were craving wings since you can't really get the "good kind" in London, and I love the Hooters chicken sandwich, so...) and went to an Irish pub to watch soccer and rugby. Our visitors took off around 6:30pm and we headed back to the apartment to get ready for the work week.

Speaking of work, congrats are in order for Aggie!! She just got a job at a kindergarten/pre-school in the city. The teachers speak and teach the lessons in English and German so she is learning German right along with the kids which is really funny (yet really helpful!). It's a part-time job, so she does that a few days a week now and continues to babysit for the family with 4 girls who live down the street. She also babysits me, so her hands are very full!!

And now it's Sunday (as mentioned above), which leads us to the extremely random day we had yesterday. One thing the Swiss do here is "rotate" their cows between the lower plains and the mountains. Basically, when all the snow melts in the late spring/summer, they put the cows up in the mountains to graze on the lush, fresh grass. In the fall, before it really starts to snow again, they bring them down from the mountains to the lower elevations to graze for the winter.

In bringing them down, the Swiss throw parties and ceremonies galore. We have heard about this and found a festival about 45 minutes from here in Weggis (pronounced "Vegas", but that's about all the two cities have in common!). Weggis is a really small village/town on the Lake of Luzern. The town was really nice and the views of the lake and mountains were amazing.

As you will see from the pictures and videos, there were definitely a lot of cows! Basically, each farmer had a group of 8-12 cows "present" in the center. Each farmer would take a turn to put hats, flowers, large bells, flags, etc on their cows (bovine beauty!). Then, the farmer and a few others would put a temporary pen (e.g., a flimsy rope) around the cows and start leading them down the street. They would then walk the cows home to their farm!

Cars were stopped, the cows walked down major roads, crowds cheered, patties were left in a few too many places...at one point, a stray cow ran into the crowd, but was quickly corralled by one of the farmers' helpers. It was interesting to say the least! We stayed for a few "rounds" of the procession and then decided to head to Luzern for dinner.

We had gone to Luzern with big Ferd and Andrea back in September of 2006 and, while there, saw a restaurant we thought would be really cool to go to. Unfortunately, at the time they didn't have any openings (you needed reservations to be seated for dinner and, sadly, we didn't have any). So, Aggie and I thought we would see if we could find that restaurant again and make reservations.

Well, we got to Luzern with no problems, parked and walked around. We walked across the famous covered bridge and at the end was a mini-firemen's convention that was open to the public. They had old and new fire trucks on display, along with other fireman paraphernalia. More importantly, they had beer stands and brats grilling! We walked through that area and then wondered across another bridge and onto the cobblestone pedestrian roads to find a place for dinner.

We ended up finding our restaurant, the Stadtkeller! We went in and they had a few openings...dinner was to start at 7pm and live entertainment at 8pm. Perfect! It was almost 6pm, so we decided to head to a pub for a pint and watch some rugby to pass the time (the rugby World Cup is going on, so we have been keeping up with the tourney). After watching Fiji pull a huge upset on Wales, we headed out for our "real Swiss" dinner.

We were seated at the Statdtkeller with no problems, got our drinks and started eating our fondue, etc. The place started to get really crowded around 7:30pm when basically an entire tour bus full of US retirees exploded into the restaurant! The passengers were, literally, all American travelers aged 60+. We just looked at each other, realizing what we were in for. The rest of the seats around us filled up and everyone was speaking English. It was tourist land! (Not that this is a bad thing, but since we live here, we kind of feel like we should avoid these types of places)

Then, the music and entertainment began. We enjoyed alphorns, yodeling, cowbells, and other folk music. It was interesting and actually it wasn't that bad. It was kind of fun but after one too many yodels, we were ready to go! Oh, and I do have to say the food was delicious!

Now it's the end of the weekend and we are just getting ready for another busy week.

Some things going on:

- I'm heading to Oktoberfest next weekend with a few guys from work. We have reservations for a tent so I'm pretty pumped. All I have to do is go buy some lederhosen and I'll be all set. Aggie opted not to go so that we could have a "boy's weekend". What kind of woman did I marry…opting out of the biggest beer festival in the world?? This situation is currently under review…

- I have to go back to Luxembourg in a week or two for work. The plan is for Ag to meet me there and then we are going to head to Reims (the capital of the champagne region) for a weekend trip.

- Josh is coming to visit for Christmas! He gets in on Christmas morning (what a present!) and leaves on New Year's Day. We are busy bouncing around ideas on where we should go and what we should do.