Reichels Get Busy Livin

A small Croatian pony bit Julie in the leg today. Julie punched the pony in some wild reflexive move. The kids have since named it Crazy Horse. This is a true story.

Taylor

PS Julie will have a rebuttal, no doubt.

Observation #1:  Travelling through Europe with four kids can be challenging.  Doing it while half of the crowd (including yours truly) has an evil gastrointestinal virus is more challenging.

Lying in a hostel in Split, Croatia recovering and rehydrating.  The shame of being the only member of the family who has not contributed to the family blog has gotten to be too much.  This is particularity true given the effort that Julie is putting into making this a treasure for the family.  It is important for anyone to know who reads this that Julie is typing all of her posts on her phone……. No voice dictation, no cut & paste, no short cuts.  Just a woman devoted to her craft holding her phone up while lying supine in a series of uncomfortable hotel, hostel, and Airbnb beds typing on that tiny screen.  Nuff said.

We have nearly reached the half way point in our journey and it has quite frankly been everything that I hoped it would be.  The kids are like sponges taking things in constantly and on their way to becoming world citizens.  Julie, to no one’s surprise, is an endless source of optimism and wonder always keeping the kids heads in the right place.  As for me this is the coolest thing I have ever done.  I wrote to a friend the other day that in one day I flew from Belgrade to Dubrovnik and then swam in the Adriatic with my 8 year old on his birthday.  It doesn’t get more exotic or cool than that for me.

Other than that I have just been working on my goals of reading Infinite Jest (500 pages in) and attaining the state of bodhisattva (getting there)…….more observations to come.

Hello, people of the internet. I’m Aidan Reichel and I have a smashing good post you should all read.

Currently, I am in beautiful Croatia. We had a great time on our tour yesterday. We went all over Dubrovnik with our two tour guides, Nicolas and Ivona. They were extremely kind and extremely funny! Nicolas and I talked about the war in Croatia that lasted from 1991 to 1995. He talked about how his oldest child was only 9 months old when she and his wife were forced to move into a basement. They stayed there for 4 months. He told me that the school his children went to made them learn 5 languages and also they had to do piano and ballet lessons after school as well. They still got all their homework done. This school was then ranked the best school in Croatia this year!

He also talked to me about a small water polo pitch. This pitch has had 5 gold Olympic medalists play on it when they were younger. Nicolas told me, “It doesn’t matter what equipment you have, it matters what you strive to be.” Nicolas was one of my favorite tour guides on our trip so far.

The old town is fascinating! It is a small part of the city of Dubrovnik. This small part of the city is surrounded by a huge wall, because back then enemies from the north, the Serbians, would constantly attack Dubrovnik and try to take Croatia for its own.

Speaking of war, Nicolas also talked to me what would happen if Serbia declared war on Croatia or any of the surrounding countries. Croatia is part of NATO and the United Nations. If this would happen, literally, every single country in North America and Europe, would be fighting each other, and the war would be in Croatia. Scary thought, right?! World war over night.

On a happier subject, the sea is amazing! Fish are in the water everywhere! All their ports have sea urchins, which means their harbors and ports are extreamly clean. No trash is in the water at all but we found loads of sea glass.

I have also seen a lot of yellow smart cars. For those who don’t get the importance of this, it is ok.

Where we are staying there are about 23 turtles that are all owned by are host Jimmy. Jimmy has met General Schwartzkauf and Dean Martin. He is very good friends with both of them.

Nicolas, our tour guide, also told me a joke the locals have. It goes like this, “Your house is 200 years old? Wow! Brand new!” The youngest house in the old city of Dubrovnik is about 200 years old.

We are now in Komiza on the island of Vis. The water around Komiza has something called the blue flag, which means that the water is extreamly clean. There are also many urchins in the water, this also means the water is extreamly clean because the urchins can only live in clean waters because, you know, science and other stuff.

I also bought a fishing spear to go spear fishing. I actually caught a fish, and it was big enough to clean and eat.

We have eaten the best food ever!!! The food here is all local. All of the food is cooked perfectly! There are no words to describe how good the food is. Many of the beaches here are all rocks, they are very hard to walk around on and about 10 feet out from the shore line. I slipped many times trying to get into the water. It is extremely cold at first, but it eventually warms up fast. There are many different creatures in the water, eels and octopi are crawling everywhere. I was at least 5 feet away at one point. Thanks for reading my post!

June 29 – July 2

Dubrovnik captivated us!

Not sure what we were expecting exactly but Dubrovnik exceeded all expectations. Our first stop in Croatia, we were wide-eyed.

We employed a mix of pragmatism and inspiration, I think, when planning this trip; we weren’t just blindly poking the map. This culture drew us in – we had to know more, connect with the place, know what it means to be a local. We were excited for Croatia for good reason. Beauty, simple but strong cultural identity, Dalmatian coast, intriguing history, but beyond that we just came curious and open.

And enthusiastic.

From this stance we accept whatever Croatia and Dubrovnik have/had to offer; the natural state of things could just unfold.

That’s the best way to have a travel expectation, I believe; to not be aware you have framed a picture in the first place because you are diffusely focused on seeing things as they are, the broad landscape of it all, rather than as things should be from my own, lame mono-lingual perspective.

Must be one of the most alluring aspects of travel. It’s a time when I can be my most openly accepting of what is. Present moment richly saturated.

It also means you can be surprised.

It never occurred to me that our itinerary included somewhere where milk wasn’t. Milk is not that important to me. I noticed it wasn’t around. It’s not really in the market, which means that cheese (gasp!) and butter isn’t really part of the culture either. That was a surprise. We are in olive oil country, people. Not much of an issue. We were distracted with newness. It was young love. You don’t notice certain things in the early days of the relationship.  That changed.

Once we got to little Komiza we settled in to being still. It wasn’t until our 7th day that we realized there weren’t any milk-making things (animals) anywhere on the little island. We are not counting the lactating stray cats.

Milk is brought in for the cafes who probably go through a ton of it trading in the cappuccino and gelato street markets but no one drinks it. No cows, no goats, no milk. The people of Komiza anyway, eat food like octopus and scorpionfish right out of the water in front of their house. We saw on occasion, men walking with a live octopus on a hook, like carrying a small prisoner, home to eat it fresh. Olive oil and a little bread, fresh veggies from someone’s little garden if not your own, that’s it! Gelato and lattes are for tourists.

Also surprising after 10 straight days of swimming in the Adriatic every single day, loving its crystal clear water and its deep and penetrating blues, was realizing on the 10th day that there are no waves. No waves. It’s not like any ocean swimming I’ve ever experienced. It’s the sea. Suddenly I get it. It’s more like a lake in that way. That’s how these houses could be built just feet from the water line. No jetties. No breakwalls. The world is full of surprises.

Dubrovnik has a quality that is hard to identify. It’s hard to get away from the mob of tourists for very long but it’s deeper. There is something of a fairytale feeling with the walled city perched on the edge of the sea, but there is also a gravity with their history of war. Dubrovnik itself was a fiercely independent republic for centuries, buying its sovereignty from surrounding entities. It could afford to do this due to its centuries-old strong trade industry and productive shipbuilding. It rivaled Venice. Those seeking to avoid or compete with Venice could do so in Dubrovnik. To this day there is a great sense of pride for the people of Dubrovnik around this historical certainty.

Libertas is carved in stone throughout the structures of old Dubrovnik. Another source of pride for the people of this city is their centuries-long attachment to the principle of liberty, freedom. Our AirBnB host, Jimmy, was eager to share that the Republic of Dubrovnik was the first foreign entity to recognize the newly formed United States in the late 1770s, celebrating the shared commitment to libertas.

Taylor and I keep processing the bits and pieces of 18th, 19th and twentieth century history of Croatia we are picking up. We are way under caffeinated these days to be really sharp about history 101. It’s all so complicated and heavily influenced by many wars. Fascinating influences of shifting powers, shifting markets as Dubrovnik lost some of its edge, invasions, WWI, the formation of Yugoslavia, WWII, a puppet state of the Nazis, the Yugoslav War, the dissolution of Yugoslavia…to its now EU membership status.

The Yugoslav war in the early 90’s made a ferocious hit on Dubrovnik, smacking down the audacity and pride, its ancient identity. Stone walls everywhere have bullet holes and tank blasts. Bright orange colored tile roofs indicate the areas of postwar rebuilding/reconstruction, nearly the entire city. Now driving through rural Croatia we see bombedout churches, barns and houses that have never been rebuilt, the former homes of Serbs who fled.

Everyone born in the early 90s or earlier has a story of how they lived through the war. Men we spoke with of our age were young officers who left young wives and small children in hiding. Given the atrocities of war, they felt nowhere would be safer for their wives and babies than their home city, even given the substantial bombardments.

Every Dubrovnik-an has some part of their cultural or national identity in that war, second only to their deeper and older identity of being from Dubrovnik. People growing up in the next nearest big city, Split, had relatively little direct war experience over the four years. Very different senses of identity in the different parts of Croatia.

Today, tourism is the nations only industry and it is starkly seasonal.

Cruise ships flood the old city of Dubrovnik daily. The city is attempting to manage the volume after years of allowing the cruise industry to dictate when thousands of tourists stream into an historically sensitive and limited-resource community.

Many Croatians recognize they owe a debt of gratitude to the cruise industry inspite of the infrastructure fatigue they feel. Celebrity Cruise was the first to make Dubrovnik a stop in 2001 when it was scrambling to rebuild after the Yugoslav war of the 90’s. In 2001, no hotels existed to accommodate the hoards from June to September so it worked out for 8 yrs; sleep on the ship, play in Dubrovnik. This brought desperately needed revenue in for the city and made possible their renewal. If 3 ships stop in one day, the usual is two, thousands of people  flood Dubrovnik’s Old City and surrounding area for tours, beaches and restaurants. From 8am to 8pm, it’s show time.

Being a tour guide in Dubrovnik is taken very seriously. (I don’t think there are any tour guides in Komiza) There is a polish, a professionalism and sophistication that seemed to be the norm. Which, guess what that means – their English is almost as good as the Danes.

Because of their big ancient walls and business integrity (this seems to be an ancient attribute to this little republic) major movie industries have sought to do business here, utilizing their great tour guides and hospitality.

A few seasons of Game of Thrones have been filmed here so an entire niche of their tourism has evolved around that. You can take a Game of Thrones tour that walks you to the exact spots where scenes were filmed, places actors stayed during filming and cafes and restaurants the crew favored. Croatians loved being extras or filming support. Next to the yachting themed shops you can find specific shops with glossy posters, mugs, hats, t-shirts all with the Game of Thrones theme.

We met a man from Atlanta who was at a leadership conference in Serbia and made a special sidetrip with some colleagues to Dubrovnik for a Game of Thrones experience. Junkies exist everywhere.

Star Wars 8 was also filmed here (currently in editing) so once the movie is released a whole new facet of touring options with glossy brochures, t-shirts-mugs- and-hats and decaled minivans will erupt.

Croatians value good education but more Croatians are leaving, taking their good education and staunch work ethic with them, to make a living elsewhere. Leaves a country of old people and those that work in the tour and service industry. It will be interesting to see how the culture evolves from this point. The ever-important, wholesome, family-centric nature of this country will surely strain.

Croatia is catholic (part of the problem with Yugoslavia and a contributing factor for the war – Protestant, Muslim, Catholic). In fact, within the walled old city there were/are three diff catholic orders, Franciscan (pharmaceuticals), Jesuits (education) and Dominican (something Dubrovnik valued or they wouldn’t have been allowed in the city). There are archeological findings of 7th century cathedrals underneath the 3 existing churches inside the old city!

Unlike Bosnia, Serbia and Slovenia with their Muslim or Protestant faiths, Croatia reads more like an Italian country than a communist/eastern/ Slavic country. This is especially true in Dubrovnik and the north where Italy has the greatest impact. The years as a part of Yugoslavia and for most of the 20th century was spent as a communist country but there is little feel of that today – except for the fact that it seems under-developed and under-exploited. This is a warm, passionate and family-centric culture. That’s why it fought for its independence from Yugoslavia and why it doesn’t seem to have ever been permanently communist- their passion and warmth pervade.

They proport to have no crime.

We saw a few underemployed older individuals, very few. A few cafes turn in to bars at night but there is no thumpin, gyrating, oversexed pick up scene even though there are a lot of 20- and 30-somethings. Someone explained that no one wants to marry someone they meet in a bar. There is little draw to the bar scene unless it’s just to spend time connecting with friends. And that’s the vibe, friends connecting, not a sexual tension of flaunting and strutting. That still stuns me. I think it is what I am coming to see that I love about Croatia – it’s wholesome. For example, I cannot tell you how many grandFATHERS I have noticed with little toddlers. (Probably because everyone else in the family is working in the tourist industry!)

Kindness and a relaxed affability meet us everywhere we go (still trying to not raise our American voices). No trash to speak of, like you would expect for a Disneyland-like volume of tourists. Not very forward on recycling but very proud of its certified clean water (AND THIS IS NO JOKE! It will be an indelible part of our memories of Croatia!) and immaculate beaches (except for the fact that their beaches are stone…serious stone beach business, not for pansies). Not sure about the trash dump on the Island of Vis, however, but I guess they are allowed to have some growing pains.

We still have more time planned in Croatia, moving north and inland in a rental car to a National park and then over to the coast in the north. Before taking a ferry over to Venice, our last Croatian stop is Rovinj in the region/state of Istria which is known for its “atmospheric ” community, which we are taking to mean cool.

I’m formulating something around this proud history that is akin to Texas. I heard someone once say that Texans are Texans first, Americans second. Having been in other Croatian cities since leaving Dubrovnik I see that there is a similar dynamic with Dubrovnik’s national pride. Dubrovniks go to Zagreb (such as for training or university) or they leave the country, but they never stop being a Dubrovnik-an. Other Croatians do not move to Dubrovnik readily, even given the draw of the tourist industry.

 

These narrow alleys are commonly used for cafes and restaurants. The floors up above are homes. Location of your home in ancient Dubrovnik was based on your livelihood. That’s not uncommon in European cities. None of us can remember this exactly but it went something like bankers and blacksmiths (and other shipbuilder jobs?) had to live closest to the city center for quick access by the powers that be.

Walled city from the sea. Totally impressive and the views of the city from up there were just as amazing as those out to sea. Tiny ants on top are tourists. It takes 2 hours to walk the 8′ wide pathway (lots of ancient stairs that were not made to ergonomic standards), and of course some money. We paid the equivalent of $80US to be able to sweat and whine… and live like a local, walking along the top of that wall for 2hours.

 

Continue reading Dubrovnik, Croatia

July 5

We missed you all on the 4th!

Thinking of you.

love to you all,

julie and taylor, aidan, piper, ian, and graham

Italy marked a sharp improvement in caffeine and an explosive increase in second hand smoke. Have to take the good with the bad, right? I choke as we tell the kids, yes! when they ask if their lungs will ever recover from the secondhand cigarettes they are smoking. We will drink our heavenly coffees quickly, anticipating the next question will be when can we leave this ashtray? Too many weeks of dysfunctional caffeine intake has made us a bit cavalier, what cigarettes?

We left Switzerland by way of a high alpine scenic train, the Bernina Express. The thinking was that it would help offset the fact that we had forgone a hiking hut-to-hut experience. It efficiently moved us out of the alps and got us over the Italian border. Just like that, we stepped off the train into Tirano, Italy.

+ The Bernina Express runs through gorgeous territory and has a Unesco world heritage designation for following the exact ancient route (from the bronze era) that early man used in traversing the alps from the lowlands and the Adriatic and Mediterranean into the northern lands of what is now Chur, Switzerland, and ancient Europe. The highest point of the journey stops at a (quickly receding) glacier for photos. We passed slowly through unbelievably tiny villages with scattered ruins and had a nice relaxing time without harrowing transfers and connections. Two out of six Reichels surveyed loved it. Not a ringing endorsement but too small of a sample size.

– It was the same scenery we’d been living amongst for the previous week in Switzerland. Saturation is possible, it turns out. The kids were unimpressed by now. It was long and slow moving, hot and sunny and pathetically boring for four point five tedious hours.

All true statements.

Tirano, Italy, is a tiny town seemingly formed around the Bernina Express train station although Tirano was there first. The kiosks on the sidewalks closest to the station selling miniature maroon Bernina Express train magnets give an impression of Disneyland. Like which came first, Anaheim or the Magic Kingdom? isn’t a question that’s even asked anymore.

Like everyone else on the streets of Tirano, we are passing through. Streets swollen with tourists on their way to somewhere else. I feel a little guilty about that. We try to be extra non-American.

We had made plans to collect a minivan at this point in order to drive through northern Italy to Venice, flying out from there to Croatia. This Hertz minivan was arranged for us by our wonderful Spokane travel guru. We were prepared that it required a little 20-30 min bus ride to a neighboring town. No worries.

Famous last words.

After over three hours of “worry,” in varying degrees, we were all reunited, all members of the VonReichels, with a vehicle. I will name this little chapter “Fiasco” in The VonReichel Family’s Summer Travels. Fiasco is Italian for cluster$?&@. It was a lowlight. Low as in the opposite of a high, but anything but dim and boring. It was a scene twisted out over an afternoon with always the question of our welfare a little hazy. I will scale it for you: much lower pleasure rating than the Nuisance Bernina Express with occasional shades of will-I-ever-see-all-my-children-again.

Not one phone number for Hertz seemed to work. We were 30 minutes from our bags back in Tirano, had an address that didn’t exist (not in this town anyway), were kindly aided (?) by a young Morrocan named Nadim (newly arrived and hating Italy for its lack of hospitality), for close to two hours until he suddenly asked me and two of the kids to “wait here,” directing Taylor and the two other kids off with him. Separated the herd. Just like that. So formulaic. Why didn’t I see this coming? This is the moment where it all turns south. How badly do we want a minivan, anyway? But he really really seems so sincere. Heck, I have totally thought the same thing at times, thin the herd, yes, Nadim, it’s too much to carry! Can’t it be possible that his intentions are pure, that it’s all just about to sort itself out? that he’s helped us so earnestly, not slowly lost us walking around town and back streets. We were in the edge of suspicion.

The twentieth person Nadim asked for address help (was he really asking them or were they discussing the weather?) provided him with a polite way to exit our suffocating Hertz vortex. We were frequently trying to let him off, we would figure this out, but he persisted. Nadim, you’re too kind, thank you for your help. He discovered a bored man sitting in a car with time on his hands (or was this part of the scheme?). Nadim suddenly says his hasty goodbye and puts Taylor and the two kids in the hands of this rough-looking, heavily tattooed young Italian guy driving a brand new, fully loaded Rover. There are NO car like this in Tirano. Taylor observed that in spite of a few of those tattoos being in English, and the two of them even discussed this, he spoke not one word of it. I’ll call him Guido.

During this fiasco we lost one of our daypacks twice, two times setting it down and walking away. Recovered it both times. It was hot with zero breeze and both mine and Taylor’s cellphones were nearly out of juice. We were out of water.

We were starting to feel the fraying of sensibilities. Do not raise your voice, stay cool. Kids need the big people to stay cool. I tried to play 20 Questions with Ian to kill time but couldn’t concentrate and was afraid he could sense it. Just then, a tall, tan, Roman-looking woman and her two children came by on bikes where Ian, Piper and I were waiting (on a random corner in Sondrio, Italy, for the hopeful return of the other half of our family). We jumped as she suddenly and loudly eviscerated her son for beginning to ride his bike across the crosswalk ahead of her. This seemed to go on a long time, more loudly, and seemed to have covered topics beyond his intelligence, bikehandling skills and manhood at what looked to be 7years of age. Although I wanted to scoop him up and protect him from this, they rode off peacably, in organized formation. We were in a new land where contradictions compete with one another. This woman gave me a little shake. It was going to be whatever it was going to be, this minivan story, and then we would ride off peacably.

The “Hertz agency” existed and miraculously so did our reservation – in a neighboring town not far away. Just like that, the kindness of others was just that, no more, no less. Guido refused any offer of gratuity or gas money, leaving us stunned by his generosity. What might have looked like impending disaster was merely a slowly teased-out, unconventional adventure that was no one’s fault, the kind you know you’ll laugh about later, peacably.

The van was anything but mini and ultimately did not fit through the castle gate the next night at Castle Pergine but we didn’t care. We walked up the hill to our beds that night, in awe of the castle (or totally creeped out, depending on who you ask).

 

Air Serbia, from Venice to Belgrade, Serbia first. A layover in the Belgrade airport then on to Dubrovnik, Croatia. Sound like an adventure? Felt like one but the Turkish coffee midflight seemed so right.

We saw a mother cat lying in a scrapyard with a few little kittens nursing.

The tabby in front is an older kitten that I named Pumpkin Spice because of his coloring. You can see some kitten ears poking up from the mother cat, although the picture is a little blurry.

 

Now we will move on to the birds!

 

There are a ton of pidgeons and sparrows around Dubrovnik. This morning, Graham and I went to the scrapyard with bread to find the kittens, but all we could see was their little feets hiding under some hollow scrap. We had bread, so we sat down in front of Oldtown to feed the pidgeons.

We got generally swarmed as pidgeons and sparrows alike competed for some bread. Birds in Croatia are really pushy.

In Oldtown, there is a lady who lets people hold birds that she grew up with. It’s entirely free and really cool.

In that picture I was pulling my necklace away because Cheeky was trying to eat it. (We know his name is Cheeky because he kept saying it when he was on the perch or on other people’s shoulders).

I also got to hold an African Gray Parrot, which was cool. He seemed to really like me and wouldn’t get off me, no matter how much people tried to remove him.

I was super excited to hold all the birds. Birds are my spirits animal.

Other than cats and birds, there is this one really fluffy stray dog that we have seen every day that we’ve been here so far. We talked to a family that’s been in Dubrovnik a week after the dog ran past us, and they said they’ve seen him every day. We were warned by locals not to touch him, as he is supposedly “bad news.”

 

Although it’s blurry and you can’t see his face, you can tell he is ADORABLE. He patrols all of Dubrovnik, and we are always seeing him giving the stink eye to people who get too close.

 

By Piper, The Most Amazing and Coolest Person Ever.

 

Switzerland! Oh, my

Taken by your intense peaks

Your beauty fills us

A little haiku for your traveling sensibilities.

We know we are moving along and have dates to keep with other beauties but we could have stayed in the grip of the Swiss Alps. I offer some visual aids, cultivated to convey the spirit of it all, but they will be inadequate.

First, a confession. We are humbled, probably better to say ashamed, to be single-languaged, mono-lingual, lame (also known as American). This has been true throughout our journey but especially here in Switzerland.

Our travel day from the sweet little town of Garmisch, in southern Germany, to Interlaken was jarring. It was long, first of all, but we have stamina for that. It was hot, less stamina and less tolerance  but still we accept it’s just the weather. What so jarred us was the nature of the travel day. More specifically it wasn’t the traveling or the 5 trains and 1 huge double decker bus (coolest thing ever!), it was the impossible connection times between each of them, in stations we had never been. We had a talk the night before, Taylor and I, to just calibrate our solidarity. Not the end of the world if we missed one of these connections so we’d go for it and see how it all went.

It was like a cruel obstacle course for a dumb sorority challenge. Ok, teams, the alphabetabeta yells from the bullhorn. You can’t loose your backpacks. You must all cross the finish line together. 15, 11, 6 minute connections, that’ll be exciting. And you won’t know where the buses come and go in the train stations or what tracks your trains are coming and going from, part of the mystery, right? This is so exciting! Have fun, GO!

We started the day on the wrong train. Right track, right time… why are there TWO TRAINS ON THE SAME TRACK?! Just to mess with us. Our gear had been stowed, kids in seats starting to play, when the discovery was made. OFFFOFFFOFFFOFFFQUICKQUICKQUICK!

The kids dutifully sprinted. Graham, feeling there were too many bags left for Taylor and I, jumped back on to the burning train to help. Taylor and I will never forget first his shocking appearance back on the train and second the straining-to-save -his-life trying lift my unbudging pack. (After this Ian named my pack Thor’s Hammer, unliftable by all but Thor, which I secretly love.)

It was 90 degrees that day. We were running through stations, drawing stares on the civilized Swiss trains, trying desperately to not raise our voices. Not one of the spectators was drenched in sweat. How are these people not sweating? Once we didn’t know that we had lost Graham for about twenty seconds between trains. He miraculously found us through a crowd before we  noticed (the asshole sorority travel challenge supervisor would have DQ’d us for sure) and boy was he angry. So angry in fact, that it took him a couple trains to get over it. That and he had serious doubts about our competence. He was quite unforgiving for the rest of the day. Poor guy. Poor us; he can be a tough customer.

We survived the day, drained and dehydrated; more savvy for the next (we had a shitshow of a time getting our rental car in rural Italy, which involved the kindness of a Moroccan immigrant, a drug lord and hitchhiking before finally securing the damn thing which makes the Swiss train fiasco, as we’ve come to know it, easy).

We expected certain things of Switzerland. The alps, clean trains, punctuality, a fluidity of languages, fondue and altitude, all accounted for. Unexpected things were the heat and mugginess, the off-the-charts fondue (with so few ingredients how could it be much better than it is everywhere? Oh, it’s WAY better, and no cheese hangover). We also expected the inflated prices, mediocre beer, and taylor notes the shocking lack of Swiss cheese. The streets were clean. The people were more of a melting pot mix and looked less like a Ricola coughdrop yodeling marketing campaign. (We were however in the area during the summer yodeling, umm, symposium? Still no Heidi.)

The cows really do wear, at the minimum, door-knocker sized cowbells around their necks. I should say castle-door-knocker size. Long before you approach them in the mountains you hear them. It sounds like a short-bus band practice; no one on the same beat and all bell ringers swinging away to save their lives. That’s what it sounds like. But when you actually see them it’s a surprise. All that racket coming from seemingly perfectly still beasts, lots of them laying down. They chew with a rhythm apparently; all kinds of different rhythms. I adore this. The kids think I’m weird.

Another unexpected thing, these cows dominate the summertime ski runs, the high mountain meadows are theirs. We were told that Swiss chocolate is unparalleled because of their cows’ diet. Edelweiss, the chief sweetener, and wildflowers of every color blanket the meadows. Wonder how happy Reichels would be, meadows full of every chocolate? I’d swing that bell.

The landscape is intense, no denying it. Sheer cliffs, chiseled peaks, wild wooded landscapes between velvet patches of ag lands, bucolic rivers and charming architecture – if this does not affect you then you must be dead inside (or 14, which is not the same thing).

We see that Switzerland is complicated and hard to truly know. We’d love to understand more; like what’s really with all this neutrality? What’s the real story? They certainly are asking that about the US. Nice to leave conversations to return to.

We took care of some random business while in Interlaken.

Taking in Interlaken for 24 hours; we are using her but she is using us as well. It’s a town that has evolved to shake your money tree. We strolled the main drag from the train station after dropping our bags. Then after cheese and bread (aka dinner) in our room we went back out. Looking back, we couldn’t quite get past the souvenir shop feeling in Interlaken. We tried to find her natural self.  Curious if any of you have spent much time here?

We decided to linger the next morning and so with the beauty of Harder Kulm and a curious chocolate school we saw a bit deeper into Interlaken. We would have loved to stay longer, off the beaten path, for a different perspective.

1. 

 

Wengen

From Interlaken it’s a short jaunt to Lauterbrunnen, which feels far enough into the alps to be surreal, but we’ve got a bed in the next village up, so on we go. A cog train takes you further into the mountains to Wengen. The ride there and around to the various neighbor villages for hikes and adventures was the prettiest by far.

Thank you, Switzerland.

Wow! How is it that you are 8 today?!!!

We love you Graham!!

You continue to surprise us and are such a joy to be with. Even when you are mischievous or sweet and spicy, we love having you in our life!!

Here’s to 8 trips around the sun and so much more ahead!

Graham has many personas that come out with us but not in many other settings. Always watching and taking in his environment but he can be the clown, the trickster, the instigator, the challenger… he is creative and insightful and much more. Did I say spicy?

Amsterdam airport

• Waiting for laundry we found a sweet, enchanting garden behind a cafe. Graham curled up to read his book with sis. Tender moment.

So proud to be your Mom and Dad!!

XXXOOO, we love you

 

Happy Birthday, Ian!!

June 25, 2006

Thank you for making life so wonderful to share with you!
We sure do love you!

Big ELEVEN!!

Here are a few shots, a day in the life, with our guy, Ian. In case you feel you don’t know him well, this may give you a bit more information. He’s a hoot.

These hats are everywhere in Copenhagen, waiting for the Americans to come by no doubt; I cannot imagine anyone else buying them. But trying them on, well, that’s a free market thing! (Possibly also an American oddity!)

At first glance I thought he was holding this guy’s hand… even though he probably wanted to he was too cool. During this jaunt through Copenhagen’s lego store, he probably ran across a set he would have picked out for YOU; he was feeling so alive and fulfilled, so generous and expansive. Legos for everyone!

Takes a while to get a viable photograph.

Feeling his roots, hearing the drums.

What the heck?! What’d ya do to my hair, mom?

Ferry ride to Hven Island, Sweden – whooeee! Love that smile! He has since said that he didn’t think anything could beat that day on Hven.

I think Graham may have had it coming to him, not sure. Letting off a little steam in a park.

That actually is for Norma Jean. He quietly loves his piano lessons with her and wanted her to see this piece of chocolate with gold musical notes, as in take it home to her. Thoughtful. But also a pragmatic guy. Promptly ate it when he figured that wasn’t practical.

A trooper carrying his own gear (that I have added a few community items to).

Ian is a tireless trivia fanatic; a lot of it is really interesting. Random, but where’d ya learn THAT? The train rides are the place for sharing his special trove of oddities and encyclopedic highlights.

Keep it up, we love it – we always learn something!

Bowling at 7,000 feet.

Happy Hiker. Thank you for being a great hiking companion, Ian!

This is on top of Jungfrau peak. There’s a glacier over there, I’m in shorts and my Shakespeare tshirt. You whimpy tourists want to wrestle?

Very happy on birthday eve to have a special outdoor fondue dinner on an open fire up in the alps. A few minutes after this photo the servers came to sing Happy Birthday, a Swiss and a Spaniard!

Awesome Italian dinner in Chur, Switzerland, for the actual birthday celebration and again, a Swiss and a Spaniard singing Happy Birthday!! (I like the statue over his shoulder-so appropriate for his sweet 11-year old tushie!)

We love you, Ian!

Have a great Birthday! And an awesome 11th trip around the sun!!

Love,

Dad, Mom, Aidan, Piper & Graham