A Day in Leysin

We decided to sleep in today.  We are exhausted from yesterday and really need a day to recoup from all of the traveling and last minute hotel hunting and eating sandwiches out of the back of the car.  After a late breakfast/early lunch watching the clouds roll in, I decided to go down to the lobby where the internet was pretty good and load up pictures to Shutterfly.  Kirk went to check out the tire, hoping it wasn't flat.  It wasn't.  Kyle took off to explore Leysin, and the girls found a cozy spot to do some summer reading.

Clouds rolling in

The girls found a cozy place to do summer reading for school

Later in the day, we decided to walk around Leysin as well, with plans to meet up with Kyle at a little church in town.

Looking up the hill in Leysin

Looking down on the rest of the village

We went to an antique store that I had wanted to visit, and I was just thrilled when the girls discovered a small springerle mold!  I had to have it to add to my springerle mold collection.  Then we found a table of cow bells.  Of course I had to buy that too in honor of the many cows we heard tinkling cheerfully in the Alps yesterday.

Some of the best souvineers I've ever bought!

The girls were looking for some souvineers for their friends, so we went into a souvineer shop.  I was able to communicate in my very bad French with the lady running the store.  She was quite cheerful and very patient with my lack of command of the language.  They purchased some candy for themselves and their friends.  Claire bought a single sour strip, and the lady got a kick out of it.  "Un?" she asked.  "Oui," I replied, "juste un."  We paid and then headed off to meet Kyle.

The church was nice.  Small and unadorned, but it was a good place to sit and rest.  Lavender burst out over the sidewalk, and I was so tempted to pick a bouquet to bring home!

We decided to get a pastry from a cute little shop and then we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

On the way down, we visited a local playground for a few minutes.

We had decided on this one restaurant that served beef goulash for the guys and pizza for the girls, so we went in.  I spoke in French and asked for a table for 5 people, please and placed our orders in French as well.  I am feeling pretty proud of my ability to make myself understood!

When the waiter came back with our food, he put it down in front of us, said something I didn't understand, smiled and left.  Kyle looked at us and whispered, "Do you know what he just said?"  We didn't.  I barely heard him.

Kyle said, "He said 'fressen' when he put our food down.  'Fressen' means to eat like an animal.  He was basically saying we ate like pigs!"

We were like, no, he wouldn't say that!  But Kyle replied, "Mom, you spoke to him in French, but he knows we are Americans, so he probably doesn't think we understand German."

Wow.  If this is really what he said, why would someone be like that?  We weren't being loud or obnoxious.  We didn't order a lot of food.  We were trying to speak in his language.  I hope Kyle was wrong.

During dinner Tate called Claire from New Mexico.  They had a plan that on Saturday, sometime between 12-2 EDT, he would call her.  You should have seen her face light up when I handed her the phone!  She went outside to talk, and we watched her through the glass.  She was beaming and her arms and hands were gesturing as she spoke.  They talked for about 10 minutes.  She couldn't quit smiling when she came back in.  She said he told her he missed her and that all week he was counting the days until he could talk to her.  It is sweet to watch.

As we got ready to leave, I saw the lady from the souvineer shop in the restaurant.  She was talking to  a waiter but not ordering or anything.  I said, "Bonsoir Madame!" and then (in French) "We were in your story this afternoon." She just looked at me without smiling and said, "Oui?" Thinking she might not remember us, I said, "My daughter bought 1 piece of candy."  She kept up her unsmiling look, "Oui?" Um. How do you say, "I just wanted to say hello," in French?  I felt like a fool and I was flustered now and couldn't think of any words.  "Um, au revoir, " I replied.

That was not a fun place to eat dinner.  Kirk and Kyle said their goulash tasted like it came from a can.  I thought it looked like it did.  The meat and potatoes were all cut in those uniform squares, and the broth was kind of processed looking.  Kyle said, "I've eaten enough canned soup this past year, that I promise you, this came from a can!"  The pizza was pretty good, but it just sat there after the waiter and the souvineer lady.

We walked back to the room and the kids decided to go to the pool.  Kirk and I sat in the lobby and had a drink and found a place to stay tomorrow.  We did.  It's in a little town outside of Heidelberg.  Looks really nice.

Tomorrow we are leaving early so we have time to stop by the Rheinfalls outside of Zurich.  It's the biggest waterfalls in Europe.  Then we are driving to Liechtenstein to visit the castle and the town.  Looking forward to our next adventure!

Les Alpes...Oh. My. Gosh.

Today we planned to go to Jungfrauhoch, which is one of the highest mountains in the Alps and has the highest train station in Europe.  It also has a living glacier on the top with an ice palace carved into it full of ice sculptures.  We were psyched and dressed for a day of cold weather.  (It's supposed to snow up there tomorrow!)

We took a different route, which was curvy but not nearly as scary, thank God, and arrived at the train station around 11.  I went in to buy the tickets only to be told that they were all sold out and had been since 10 a.m. that day.  Who knew you had to buy a ticket to go to the top of a mountain in advance? I knew there was no way we were going to make a second trip on Friday, so I asked for alternatives.  The lady recommended going to First, which is another mountain right by Grindelwald, and we could take the cable car up and stay as long as we wanted.  It was disappointing, but the kids had wanted to do the zipline on First, and we were not going to be able to do that AND go to Jungfrauhoch, so I figured it was a decent option to make up for missing out on the ice palace.

We had another PB&J lunch in the car (I swear, I don't think the kids are going to eat another PB&J sandwich for a long time!), and then went to the cable cars.  We rode in one all the way to the top station, and it was HOT!  I felt like I was in a terrarium.  First was NOT cold like Jungfrauhoch was, and we were in jeans and long-sleeved shirts.  When we got off the car, we rolled our pants up and made the best of it.  Kirk said to mention that he was in zip-off pants, so he was able to wear shorts while the rest of us suffered.

I have to say, that the view from the top of First was stunning.  We could not stop staring into the distance, trying to take it all in.  It is just so big and so high and so magnificent that you can't even imagine it unless you are there, and even then, it doesn't look real.

We saw a sign for a glacier-fed lake about an hour's walk away and decided to go see it.  I was not thrilled, but I went along because how could I not?  The air was thin, and I am out of shape and wearing blue jeans, but it was a must-do.  We stopped occasionally to take pictures and look at and listen to the cows grazing on the land below us.  Where do they come from? we wondered.  How in the heck do cows get way up here?  We didn't see any nearby farms or barns or anything, but there they were tinkling around a couple of thousand feet below.

If you look closely, you can see some cows at the bottom of the picture.

The walk was beautiful.  There were all kinds of alpine flowers growing everywhere, and colors splashed across the treeless landscape.  There were streams and rock outcroppings, and the path was fairly easy with hardly any scary parts.

This is looking back towards where we started.  Notice the guy walking on the left of the picture.

The lake is at the far end of this trail down by the mountain with the snow on it.

We spent the better part of an hour making our way to the lake, and when we got there, we just sat and took it all in.

After a while, we headed back.  Some clouds were beginning to roll in, and the temperature had begun to drop a tad.  We all were going to take the zipline down to the second cable car station (as far as it goes), so we got in line and waited.

There are 4 seats for the zipline, and the entire process takes about 5-7 minutes.  We were behind about 25-30 people, so we knew we had a bit of a wait.  The longer we stood there, the more the clouds began piling up.  They were getting dark behind us, and we began to get a little chilled.  One of the springs at the bottom malfunctioned, so then there were only 3 seats going down, which slowed things even more.  After about a 45 minute wait, the clouds had enveloped the zipline stand, but it was our turn to go.

The clouds beginning to form

Getting closer

Totally enveloped in a cloud

Two swings were back, so Kirk and Kyle went first.  As soon as they left, it began to rain a little, and the ride operator said they were suspending the rides down.  Another operator knew that we were all together, so she got the girls and me set up to ride down before it really started raining.

Now those of you who know me, and if you have just started reading this blog, you may know that I am terrified of heights, so you might be surprised that I was willing to zipline down a mountain.  The thing with this ride is that we sat in a swing and it didn't drop.  It just sort of started.  However, the clouds were a good thing for me because since I couldn't see the ground, I wasn't as scared as I would have been.

I told the operator I was terrified of heights and closed my eyes to wait for the gate to open.  She said, "Open your eyes, dear.  You will love it!"

The girls and me coming down the mountain

Emily

Claire

Me!

I did, and I did!

It was so much fun!  I loved riding down and when we got lower, the clouds thinned, and we could see the landscape around us.  It was fantastic! One of the coolest things I've ever done.

When we got to the bottom, we learned that we were some of the last people to ride the zipline before the rain shut it down completely.  Another lucky event!

It rained on us on the way down, but we were thankfully enclosed in the cable car.  We went back to our car and left for Interlaken. Our friends had been here last year and recommended a particular restaurant, so we wanted to try it out.

After dinner, which was nice, we started back to our hotel.  I had wanted to get there before dark, but that wasn't going to happen after the long dinner.  We drove and drove, and two hours later, the clouds that had rolled across Jungfrauhoch and First had turned into a thunderstorm.

In the dark and the rain, we were having trouble reading the GPS.  We missed a couple of turns and got mixed up and ended up on a different road than we thought.  Then the "Check tire pressure" light came on, and we started hearing a thump-thump-thump like the tire was low/flat.  We worried that we had run over something when we pulled off to let one of the Speed Racers pass us by.

Lightning at 9,000 feet is a sight to see---from your room in your hotel---not from the car on a winding road in a rain storm with the "Check tire pressure" light on.  It was flashing like a strobe light in front of us, and I had visions of Kirk changing a flat tire and getting struck by lightning.

We crept higher and higher up the mountain, into the clouds and rain.  The GPS was taking us by unfamiliar landmarks (I have a really good sense of direction, so I knew we weren't where we were supposed to be.)  The little arrow told us to turn right, and we could see the hotel up up up, but I didn't remember this road at all.  There was no town, no buildings, nothing that we had passed through before.  It was dark, except for the flashes of lightning, and I knew we were not where we were supposed to be.

The road narrowed from two lanes to one.  It got rougher and rougher, and I was nearing hysterics.  I kept thinking about the people who died in snow storms because they kept going and then the road got so narrow they couldn't turn around.  I was envisioning us careening off a cliff that we couldn't see and into the alpine forest below.

I yelled, "STOP!  WE ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY!"

Kirk tried to assure me we were fine, but I said, "No we are not!  There is no town!  There are no buildings.  This is not the way we should be going!  Please turn around!!!"

So we backed up, carefully, carefully, and went back to the two-lane road.  We restarted the GPS and found our mistake and successfully drove the rest of the way to the hotel with the "Check tire pressure" light on, lightning flashing, and a driving rain, but we made it.

It took me a long time to fall asleep.

Some Thoughts on Driving Through Europe

Before I go any further in my story, I want to share some observations about what it is like to drive in Europe as the Family Hilbrecht.

Let me begin by saying that we are a minivan family.  Our kids are fast out-growing the need for a minivan, but I love the room and the versatility a minivan provides.  They are far from cool, but they are practical, and I love mine.

The only minivans we saw while driving through Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland either belonged to a business as a delivery vehicle or, most probably, an American family stationed overseas.

Anything bigger than a Camry is impractical.  Gas is CRAZY expensive, like 1.64 euros a liter.  A liter.  You can't be driving a car that gets 20 miles to the gallon while living in Europe.  It was quite a challenge for the 3 kids to live peacefully in the backseat of the car we rented, but they did.  They just wouldn't want to do it for longer than a couple of days.

Leaving Mullheim for Switzerland

As far as riding in the car together, there is nothing that warms a parent's heart like hearing your 19, 16, and 13 year old children singing together in the backseat of the car while cruising through Germany.  They belted out songs from Newsies and Fiddler on the Roof, and songs from Girl Scout camp.  They sang along to the English tunes that came on the radio.  With no way to text their friends while we drove for 2-3 hours at a time, they took to amusing each other, and it was awesome.  They also napped, and the good thing about being so squished is that you hold each other up.

There really are a lot of English songs on European radio.  Kirk and I recalled that when we were kids, the only foreign language songs we ever heard played here were 99 Luftballons and Rock Me, Amedeus.  Seriously, about 1 out of every 3 songs we heard on the radio in every country we were in was in English.

Next, the people over there drive REALLY FAST.  And really, really close.  And if you are not driving really fast and really close, they get really mad and start blinking their high beams at you to get the hell out of the way.  It is very unnerving to those of us who are not aggressive drivers, especially when traversing mountain ranges with no guard rails.  These people must be experts at any one of the race car video games, because they do not slow down, even on the curves.

Driving on the sidewalk is totally cool if there is something blocking your way.  Just go around.  People will move.

Saarbruken from our hotel window

You can get your car into places way tinier than you ever imagined possible.  And if you are unfortunate enough to be driving a minivan, you are SOL.

Where you want to go may be further than you would normally walk if you were back home, but driving and parking is such a pain, that you would actually rather add 2 walking miles to your excursion than to try and drive and park in a different spot.

Walking down to Leysin from our hotel

You really need to know how to drive a stick-shift before you go to Europe if you plan to rent a car.

There are a lot of tunnels in central Europe.  A lot.  And they are really, really long.  I have never driven through as many tunnels in my entire life as I did on this one trip.  They can get kind of claustrophobic.

Round-abouts are tricky, but once you get the hang of them, they are pretty awesome.  We should have more of them here in the US.

Cars and streetcars can share the same road space, but it is VERY nerve-wracking when you look in your rearview mirror and see a street car right on your bumper.

Motorcyclists who drive between lanes while going 100 kph are a hazard.  And freaking scary!

We did not see a lot of teenage drivers there.  It seems most kids ride bikes or take public transportation.

For all of our traffic here, I'll take driving in the US any day.  Just sayin'.

Switzerland

We left Mullheim early this morning for Lucerne, Switzerland.  My ancestors on my mom's side, the Portmans, were from Lucerne, and I've heard it is a gorgeous city, so we are going.  Along the way, we saw a semi truck with the family name on it (plus one "n").  I thought it was fortuitous!  

We got to the border and didn't have a permit to drive there.  We also didn't have any Swiss francs to purchase a permit with.  Conveniently for us, the Swiss, in their ever efficient ways, had spots set up at the border crossings, where for a mere 50 Euros (plus exchange) can purchase a 40 franc driving permit.  What could we do.  It was our first clue that Switzerland is not cheap.

Our first stop was in Lucerne.  We arrived around lunch time, and knowing how expensive it is, we decided to have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches...in the car...in the parking garage.  The kids were not thrilled.  We have been eating pb&j, fruit, and pretzels for lunch since we got here.  It really cuts down on food costs, but it gets old.  Especially when you are eating in a parking garage in Switzerland!  

After lunch, we struck out on foot to see the city.  We walked down the street towards Lake Lucerne and stopped in the cathedral there.  Some Asian couple were having what appeared to be wedding photos made, although the woman's dress was several shades of pastel colors, so it might not have been wedding, but it was fun to watch them.

Cathedral of St. Leodegar

Notice the carving in the pew.

Emily and Claire taking in the view from the church steps.

Along the lake, vendors had set up booths with tchotchkes for sale...sunglasses, scarves, jewelry, leather goods, etc.  The kids were looking for interesting souvenirs, so we browsed.  Claire bought some things, as did Kyle.  It was all from Africa and the Middle East, which I found amusing, considering we were in Switzerland!

We went to the kapellbrücke, or covered bridge, that was originally built in 1333.  1333!  Can you imagine?  It was lovely, exploding with flowers the length of it.  We took some wonderful shots and got some great views of the old city.

That is not a backdrop!

We walked back across a different bridge and strolled through old town Lucerne.  It is the epitome of a European city.  

Back in the car, we headed to our hotel in Leysin.  We had planned to go to Lucerne one day, the Alps another day, and my ancestors' village on the last day.  I wanted to stay in Lucerne or Interlaken, but the hotels that could host 5 people were running $350-500 euros a night, and I just wasn't paying that.  I found a resort in Leysin, which was a couple of hours from all of the places we wanted to see for just $148 euros a night, which I thought was a great deal for Switzerland.  We needed a place to park for a couple of days to catch our breath, and this place was a resort, complete with indoor pool, sauna, hot tub, and views of the Alps from every balcony.  It got great reviews on booking.com from most everyone who had stayed there.  So that's where we planned to stay.

Had I known it was at the top of a mountain in the alps and the only way to get to it was on a very narrow road of switchbacks and log and wire guardrails, we may not have rented a room there.  As it was, I didn't know, and we did rent a room, and the drive to the top of the mountain was one of the scariest things I've ever done in my entire life.

The road hugs the side of the mountain, cut into the granite just wide enough for two cars.  The drop offs are steep, straight down.  At some points along the road, it looked like one of the ribbon candies you get at Christmas.  The guardrails were either non-existent or made out of logs and cables, clinging precariously to the sides of the cliffs.  There are no shoulders for any margin of error.  At one point, the road was covered with a roof to prevent falling rocks from crashing onto your car.  At another point, the guardrails were just gone.  Drivers were flying up and down the hill, and I made Kirk go so slowly that we had to pull over onto the scenic view pull offs to let lines of cars pass by.  Motorcyclists and bicyclists trekked up and down the mountain like it was the freeway.  

I could hardly breathe.  I had a death grip on the car door and was leaning away from the cliff's edge as if the shift in my weight would make a difference if we got too close and started to slide off.  Next to snakes, heights are my biggest fear, and this drive was torture.  I found myself clenching my stomach like I do when I ride a roller coaster.  I had to close my eyes at some points.

Well, we made it, obviously, and the hotel is fantastic.  It is a little dated, but it reminds me of a Great Wolf Lodge or something similar.  It sits above the town of Leysin.  The workers speak French, German, and English, and probably many more languages.  It is full of people from all over the world.  There are a ton of teenagers here on school trips, I guess.

Our room.  Kyle has a roll-away bed.

We had dinner at the restaurant.  I was not going back down the hill, and the kids wanted something besides pb&j!  It was a buffet and so, so good.  There was a salad bar with all kinds of Swiss-type salads (like beet salad, some kind of cucumber salad, etc.).  The hot vegetable bar had au gratin potatoes, zucchini tart, a leek dish that tasted like hot artichoke dip, grilled veggies, and green beans.  There was meat as well, but I don't know what the guys got.  For dessert, there was mousse, pound cake, pear tart, apricot tart, a flan-type dish, and a meringue dish.  Our waiter was a guy from France who had lived in Great Britain for so long that he spoke English with a French-Cockney accent.  He was very funny.

After dinner, we washed out our clothes and laid them on the balcony to dry.  Kirk purchased little Tide soap papers for doing laundry.  I laughed at them, but they are really handy!

The towns below are lit up, and from our balcony, it is quite beautiful.  

Tomorrow we head to Jungfrauhoch to ride the train to the highest train station in Europe and go into an ice museum carved into a glacier.  

All this is well and good, except that it means that I have to go down and up the hill again!  OY!