Sheep Guarding Llama

Today was supposed to be our easy day.  We had everything figured out ahead of time.  We had plenty of time to make everything work.  We knew exactly what to do.  Argh.

So we got up early this morning and got moving right away so that we could check out of the hotel, get downtown Zurich so that Dominica would get a chance to see it for a little bit and then get to the hauptbahnhof with plenty of time so that it would be a nice, relaxed day with our direct connection right to Munchen (Munich) with about four hours on the train.  Nice and easy.

I was pretty tired this morning after my really long, stressful day yesterday.  Dominica was not feeling well this morning either – we are guessing that it is a result of the lack of protein.

We got into Zurich without a problem.  Of course it was bright and warm again so the walk to the train station was long and hot – not the way to really start the day.  Then the S6 ride which is a little stressful just because it is full of people and we are so loaded down with luggage that even the most trivial things become really hard.  Anytime that we don’t have our luggage things are good.  Anytime that we are moving our luggage, things are stressful.

We spent some time trying to figure out how to store our luggage, as Rick Steves recommends, at the train station in the lockers there.  That took about half an hour and by the time that we found them, figured out how to get to them and figured out how they worked we had a maximum of an hour and a half to see Zurich and we needed the huge lockers that cost nine Swiss Francs which is way too much money to pay to store luggage for an hour and a half.  So we abandoned that plan.

Instead we decided to just take the luggage with us, walk the river towards the lake and get some coffee at a cafe along the way and call that our sight seeing of Zurich.  Zurich is a city to live in anyway, not a city for tourists.  Other than the beauty of the city itself, one museum that I really want to see but can’t and some Chegal church windows, there isn’t much.

Walking the city with the luggage, and the girls, is not trivial.  We are carrying a lot of stuff.  But if we didn’t do this walk this morning there would be no chance to see Zurich for Dominica at all (other than from the train windows en route to Luzern) and none for me except seeing it in the dark last night.  So we trudged on.

Of course, it was late so the breakfast options were gone already.  And it is a holiday (Pentecost) so most everything is closed.  There were a surprising number of people out on the streets though, mostly walking and bicycling.

We decided that none of the cafes that we saw really looking to be all that inviting.  The menus were lacking and none had a good view and everything looked really expensive.  So instead we found a doner stand just opening (doner stands are completely ubiquitous in western Europe) and got falafel sandwiches and a pizza for Liesl.  It turns out, and I had no idea, that Dominica had never had a falafel sandwich before!  Doner stands like these are just as common in New York City as they are here, or nearly so, and I’ve had falafel sandwiches so much that it never occurred to me that she did not eat them regularly as well.

Dominica completely loves falafel sandwiches.  We have a new travel food now.  Falafel is pretty healthy and always vegetarian so a perfect choice for us.  It is usually a really cheap meal too.  In this case, it was not, but it was probably pretty cheap compared to other options.  Our sandwiches were nine Swiss Francs each!  That’s crazy.  Basically ten dollars.  That would be two to three dollars in New York City.  They were quite good, though.

We ate our food standing in a shaded spot on the river in Zurich.  A great spot and there was hardly anyone around where we were.

Once we finished eating we walked back to the train station.  We were very tired already and had probably walked two to three kilometers hauling all of our luggage behind already today and that was wearing us out quickly.

We got back to the train station without any issue, double checked our train information and headed to the platform.  In Switzerland, Germany and France we have never, ever seen a train schedule be wrong unlike Belgium where they appear to be incorrect around half of the time.  So we tend to panic when we have no need to do so.

This is where our trouble began.  We were so early for the train that we had to wait on the platform for a while.  The first train came and went.  But when the next train came Dominica was sure that it was our train.  It sure could have been – sometimes they arrive quite early and sit on the platform for a while just because of how the schedule works out.  Sometimes you get to a platform thirty minutes early and your train is already there.  So when this train was thirty minutes early I was surprised but it was a real possibility, even if unlikely, that it was our train.  I asked her if it was our train and she said “yes” and we boarded.

Now we’ve had this discussion over and over again on this trip – we can never trust just one person’s judgement as to anything to do with the trains.  We are constantly making mistakes and need everything double checked whether it is departure times, track numbers or whatever.  Now, to be fair, I did set about immediately attempting to double check the train once we were on it.  What I failed to do was walk down the platform and read the sign telling what train it was.  When I asked Dominica if this was the train I had assumed that she had read that sign and there is no way to misread that.  But in fact she had misunderstood my question and thought that I had read the sign.

Unfortunately we have so much luggage and with the kids getting onto the train and even doing something as simple as checking the exact time is a major exercise.  So it probably took ten minutes to get the luggage stowed, Luciana out of her harness that I was carrying her in and the laptop plugged in, as it was out of juice and could not power up, so that I could see the time.  The moment that the laptop came up I looked at the time and knew that we were sixteen minutes before intended departure time.  The instant that I saw the time…. the train started to move.  Crap.

I knew what had happened instantly and looked at Dominica and said “It’s too early, this is the wrong train.”  We grabbed the first person we could find and asked where the train was going…. Basel.  Thank goodness.  This could have been the express to Milan.  In fact, that was a decently likely possibility.  Basel was very likely the case for the “wrong train”.  But even so, our low stress, easy train day just turned into a disaster.

Basel is fifty minutes away, in the wrong direction, from Munchen.  So we had to rapidly come up with alternative travel plans.  We found the Berlin run leaving Basel very shortly after when we would arrive so it would be a rush but we should be able to make it.  That would take us up the Rhine past Freiburg and get us to the east – west run to Munchen.  So instead of four hours and no transfers we are now six and a half hours and two transfers.  Sad face.

For those who have never traveled with two little children and a ton of luggage you really can’t understand how painful a transfer is.  To make a transfer we have to pack for ten minutes prior to arrival (and watch the clock carefully the entire trip to make sure that we don’t miss our prep window) and get everything off of the train very quickly before the train leaves again.  This is harder than it sounds and is physically strenuous and is a leading reason why we are in so much pain.  Every train day results in a day of not being able to move my head from side to side because of the physical strain.  Then we have to figure out in a split second how to navigate a new train station (without the aid on English signs) and about one out of four have no lifts so we are stuck running everything up and down stairs which is so hard that the easiest thing for me to do is actually to pick up the stroller with Liesl in it and run the whole thing down in one shot no matter how awkward or heavy it is.  Then find the right platform for our next train, get to it, make sure that we are getting on to the correct train (hardy har har) and load everything onto that train.  Then it takes nearly ten minutes for us to get all of the luggage stowed, release the children and settle in.  It is hard and it is stressful.  Avoiding it even once is a really big deal.  And each transfer is when we are terribly fearful that we will lose something else.  It was a day like today when we lost my fleece jacket going from Brugge to Boppard two weeks ago.

The laptop was dead this morning so we used every moment possible on the first train, an SBB line, to charge it as the DB trains often do not have power yet but SBB reliably does.  Although I have been trying to figure out if this is because we mistakenly road second class on DB for the first several times and should have been in first class and since we started using SBB we knew to always look for first class.  It might be something that simple.

The transfer at Basel was fine.  No spare time to get coffee or anything but that was okay.  We know the Basel station and it is very low stress, as stations go.  In fact, it might be our lowest stress station.

The ride up the Rhine was pretty short.  So we didn’t really have time to relax.  The rapid transfers take a toll on the girls tool.   They don’t get a chance to settle in and we don’t let them nap or get set up with their toys which is really tough.  The ride is still long and having almost nothing to do is hard for them.  But Liesl remains pretty positive and is always excited about a new place and a new train.  She is the best traveler ever.

The transfer along the Rhine also went smoothly.  We really had to rush for this one having just enough time to leap from one train, run through the station and leap onto the next but we are experts at this (not at reading the signs but at getting rapidly through the stations) and it was fine and not really a panic to any great degree.

Once we were on to our final train we knew that we had a really long time so we could settle in, unpack and relax.  We could take out the toys and sprawl out as it would be over three hours.

This train is an older DB IC train that has the traditional, old individual cabins with the closing doors.  Now this is awesome.  We managed to get one just for our family which is perfect.  It has six individual seats that you raise the armrests and it turns into two benches.  We close the door and we can talk normally, the girls can walk around and we don’t have to follow them constantly or worry about the noise level.  Now this is how to travel.  The cabin even had power.

That would all be perfect except for one little thing.  The heat.  The train had no air conditioning, the windows do not open and even the fan in our cabin was broken and only blew for a small portion of the journey.  Needless to say, it was hot.  Really hot.  Dominica was not handling it well at all.

That made for a really long ride but, overall, it really was not that bad.  Without incident we arrived in Munchen.  Far later than we had intended and far, far more tired but we are here safe and sound and everything is okay.

The Munchen Hauptbahnhof was nice and easy to navigate.  We were out the door and on our way to the hostel in which we are staying which is just less than a kilometer from the train station.  That was a moderately long walk after such a long day and, again, hauling all of our luggage with us but it was very doable and we are quite used to this.  There was no way to get lost as it was a straight shot and not very hilly and the weather in Munchen is beautiful.  The sun was low behind the buildings and the air was cool for a change.  This was much better for a long walk.

We got to our hotel and checked in.  No issues except that the baby bed was broken – or at least they could not figure it out.  So we had to do without but they gave us a free breakfast for tomorrow.

Once we were settled in Dominica immediately went and did a load of laundry.  I went down to the lobby and managed to upload one SGL post.  Lots more to get posted though and it takes forever.  Then she sent me out to go find some food.  I walked all the way back to the train station (1.6km round trip) and got cash and falafels and pizza and brought it all back to the hotel.

By the time that I was back both Liesl and Luciana were fast asleep.  It was around then thirty.  This was a very long day for all of us and we are all completely exhausted and, like we have found pretty much everywhere in Europe, our hotel room is quite warm.  We got off to bed as early as we could.

Dominica decided that tomorrow is going to be a down day.  We will be doing very little in the hopes of catching up on rest, feeling better, getting posts done, etc.  I am hopeful that I will be able to post some pictures tomorrow.  We have not been able to do that at all yet for several days.  And hopefully at breakfast I can get everything that I have for SGL posted.

Dominica was up the earliest this morning at around six thirty. She got up and showered and ready for whatever the day might bring. Then she got me up next. I got about five hours of sleep.

When Luciana got up we checked her and her fever had broken. She is acting much more normal. The antibiotics and a good night’s sleep seem to have been just what the doctor ordered (they are, in fact, what the doctor actually ordered.)

So we talked about it and decided that as this would be our one and only chance to go to see Luzern (Lucerne) and because the weather was supposed to be really nice there today that we would go for it. One of our concerns the past several days has been Luciana getting was too warm when we are out and we did not want that to happen again. But Luzern is supposed to be nice and cool today and missing a great weather day out and about would be a shame.

We had to walk back to the Regensdorf train station and managed to catch the S6 returning to the Zurish Haptbahnhof at a little after ten. We got into Zurich, which takes twenty minutes or so on the S6, and managed to get on the SBB heading south to Luzern pretty quickly.

The train heading south was a double decker SBB that was very modern. We were fortunate to find a really cool curved seating area just for us with a little round table. It was perfect for our family. European trains often have some interesting seating options.

Luzern from Zurich is a pretty short train ride. Maybe forty-five minutes. The trip out of Zurich goes south along the western shore of Lake Zurich which is so beautiful. We managed to see a lot of town from the train windows.

Luzern is a much smaller city than Zurich, Bern or Basel but is dramatically more tourist oriented than those other Swiss cities. The main train station is right in the heart of the activity with easy walks to the convention center, the lake front, the river “walk”, the old town and the city’s famous bridges. The Chapel Bridge in Luzern was the big attraction here that Dominica really, really wanted to see.

We headed out on foot and could see the Chapel Bridge immediately so went, more or less, straight for it. The Chapel Bridge is considered to be the oldest wooden bridge in all of Europe. Sadly, much of the bridge burned in a huge fire in 1993. It has been rebuilt but the bridge used to be full of amazing medieval artwork painted up in the rafters. Some of those paintings were saved but a lot of them were lost too. Very sad. There is unlikely anything like this anywhere else in the world.

So we got the “must see” bridge out of the way pretty quickly. From there we walked along one side of the river or another to see the river and the old town that comes down to it. We found another awesome ancient wooden bridge and explored that as well. Then we ventured into old town and found an amazing little bakery where we got egg tarts, coffee and Liesl got a chocolate filled brioche.

Luzern is a completely breathtaking city. So gorgeous. The lake, the river, the old buildings, the churches on the hills and… the hills. Those are the Alps! And not just mountains in the distance or foothills that suggest something larger but the real Alps. Huge mountains, white caps, ringing the city. Amazing.

We looked through the city map and guide while at the bakery and decided that what we really wanted to do was to see Mount Pilatus which is considered one of the big attractions in town and one of the things that we remember from Rick Steves (who also taught us about the bridge.)

So we walked down to the water front and inquired about the tour to Mount Pilatus. We ended up getting the “Golden Ticket” which includes a boat tour of Lake Luzern, a cog railroad ride on the mountain, a funicular ride and a gondola ride down the mountain and bus transportation back to the Luzern train station. Not a cheap tour at ~$200 but it is a really unique experience and “the” thing to do in Luzern. It would be awful to miss it and we are not planning on doing any other Alpine stuff while we are here with the girls this young so it would be great to get to do this one thing.

We bought our tickets for the tour at one o’clock and the boat was scheduled to leave at one forty so we went to pier one and got ice cream cones to eat while we waited.

We sat in the back of the boat so that it would be easier for the girls Far fewer crowds there.

The lake tour by boat took about an hour and a half. It was not so much a tour as it was a passenger boat that made about seven or eight stops at the little towns around the lake. But the views were incredible . The ride was a lot longer than I would have liked but it was quite enjoyable.

The final stop of the boat is at the farthest point of the lake from Luzern itself at a little town known only for its cog railroad – the steepest cog railway in the world. The train departing right after we arrive by boat was already full so we had to wait for the next one which went at around three fifty-five, nearly an hour after we had arrived by boat. We had no idea that this entire process would take so long. We had imagined that this would be a relatively quick process, but this is going very slowly.

While waiting in the queue to get onto the cog railroad we met a woman originally from Houston but now living in Manhattan but working for a month in Zug, which we had come through on the train earlier today. We talked for quite a while and when we embarked on the cog railroad we shared a compartment.

The cog railway ride up Mount Pilatus takes about forty minutes. The ride is pretty interesting. It is amazing climbing the mountain side like that and the views, when you can see them, are great. What really amazed me was the large number of people that we passed the entire way up who were either climbing up or down the mountain! This is a seven thousand foot Alpine peak, not a trivial walk in the park and yet there were people climbing everywhere. And the people climbing did not look like hard core mountain climbers but just serious hikers. That is even more impressive when you see the amount of snow that they are climbing through. Liesl really liked the cog railway ride. Luciana seemed to enjoy herself but only so much.

At the top of the mountain is a train station, which feels very odd. We got off of the train and in the station is a restaurant, a shop, an information booth and even the check in desk for a hotel. All very odd for an Alpine summit.

We went outside to the observation “deck” where it was forty-four degrees but felt decently warm with the unfiltered sun beating down on us. It was blindingly bright and almost impossible to see anything as I didn’t have sunglasses or a hat. Important notes for anyone looking to do this in the future. And bringing a fleece would be wise too. We took a picture of Dominica is her very short sleeve t-shit and flip flops standing in a snow bank to show how ill prepared we were for doing this. We had not thought about this in any way before leaving Zurich.

With the kids we were really unable to do much of anything on the summit since almost everything required being exposed for a long period of time and climbing stairs. Not things that we were going to do. We figure that we will do this again when the girls are much older and they can climb things on their own. We will save the extended Mount Pilatus experience for some time far in the future.

We did try to get some food on top of the mountain so that we would have an excuse to sit and enjoy the view. When I saw the prices, though, I declined to get anything. Dominica got a coffee and a slice of apple something or other. This is actually the first place in all of Europe where the food was actually bad. We ate it because we paid so much for it. But it is definitely something to be avoided. They assume that they are selling to the desperate and that no one will ever return to eat there again so zero incentive to do a good job and it shows. This is one of the truly “pure tourist” spots in Europe.

We spent no more than, I would say, twenty minutes on top of the mountain. While the whole “I’m on top of a huge Alpine mountain!” thing is pretty cool and the views really are something, the experience seems to lack something. Maybe it is the crowds, maybe it is the tacking tourist sales traps, maybe it is the surprise of it taking many hours, I’m not sure. But there is certainly a part of me that wishes we hadn’t spent most of a day doing this particular experience as cool as it is.

We actually had to skip pretty much any attempt to explore at the mountain top because the last funicular trip down from the mountain was at five thirty and as crazy as it sounds, there is only just enough time to buy a ticket at one in the afternoon, take the first boat, take the first train and look around for fifteen or twenty minutes and then get in line for the funicular. The line was incredibly long and we had to wait and wait as funiculars came to and from the mountain only every fifteen minutes.

As it was, we actually were among the last to get in to the five thirty funicular after having waited in line for a very long time. People behind us were beginning to panic about being left behind and there was a constant attempt by one group or another to line jump and I was concerned about being violently pushed away from the rest of the family when I went to go through the still. It was a concerning scene with horrible management and a complete lack of information. I was getting pretty upset with how the whole thing was handled and it was really crappy spending all that money and all that time and doing almost nothing but waiting in lines and not having been warned when they sold us the ticket that they might have sold us a ticket that could not be used because it was too late in the day. One o’clock in the afternoon should not be the final cutoff for an attraction without even a warning.

So it worked out okay and we were put onto a completely and ridiculously packed funicular where I had to carefully brace myself against the wall to ensure that Liesl and Luciana were not crushed since people were just being rude in there and people were panicking. But it worked out okay but it was neither comfortable nor fun. Not impressive at all.

To make matters worse, much worse, in fact, just as we were getting to the front of the line to get onto the funicular Liesl decided that it was an emergency and she needed to use the potty. Well that wasn’t going to happen. A bathroom run would ensure that we were buying a hotel room on top of the mountain for the night and if that was priced like the food it would likely have been between five hundred and a thousand dollars. So Liesl had to hold it which involved a lot of crying.

After the funicular ride there is a stop at a high mountain station where they have a summer luge track which Rick Steves featured in his show on Luzern. Dominica really wanted to do this but obviously we cannot do anything extra here today. Fortunately this halfway station had a restroom that Liesl was able to use while I held out place in line for the gondolas that would take us the rest of the way down the mountain.

While we were at this halfway station, one of the crazy people that I was worried about doing something rash to take my place on the funicular took his ten year old son and the two of them shared a stall in the women’s washroom. Which might have been acceptable had the child been six years younger and if the men’s room had had a single person using it, but it didn’t. So they were just crazy, creepy people. Just validating my concerns about them acting strangely back at the top of the mountain.

The gondola portion of the descent was way, way better than the funicular portion. The gondolas run continuously so it is just a matter of waiting for one and they are small, only holding about four people so we got a private one just for our family which was very nice.

Liesl thought that the gondola ride was great. It was fast and really great views and being able to do it just our family was so nice.

Partway down the mountain on the gondola there was another stop at another mountain station and our family gondola picked up a single passenger who did not speak English.

Once at the bottom of the mountain it is a bit of a walk, but all downhill, to the bus station and then a short wait for the city bus that takes us from there into downtown Luzern at the train station. It is really amazing how you take this boat ride so far to get to the start of the mountain journey and then you end up magically back in the outskirts of Luzern when you are done. That part was pretty neat.

While waiting for the train we met two families who are from Savanna, Georgia but are currently living in Basel, Switzerland. Liesl talked to some of the kids and gave out some of her Kidding Around Europe stickers. She has been getting really good about giving those out recently.

The bus ride into town only takes a few minutes. We decided to do nothing but go directly to the train and get back to Zurich. We had never intended to be away from the hotel for so long today. The Mount Pilatus tour took us roughly six hours from the time that we started (one o’clock) until we got back (seven o’clock) which was just way, way longer than we had wanted to do that. That was completely unexpected. We really had wanted to have been back around five or maybe six at the latest. Now it was seven and we were just starting to look for a train to take us home.

We ended up having about an hour to kill in the train station in Luzern so we took the opportunity to hit the Coop, the other major Swiss grocery store chain that we have not yet been in, to do some grocery shopping. Now that was an experience.

Like most of Europe, Switzerland shuts down at night, on Sundays and on holidays. Tomorrow is Pentecost and a big holiday in Switzerland. So we are guessing that this combination of factors has created a “zombie apocalypse” style food panic in Luzern’s train station where everyone knows that if they don’t get groceries tonight that they will starve tomorrow. Neither of us has ever seen anything like this. It was wall to wall people and getting to food was actually quite hard. The check out line wrapped nearly all the way around the store and you couldn’t get to most of the food because the whole place was just people attempting to check out. Crazy.

We got on the train home without a problem. We were all completely exhausted at this point. We ate our dinner on the train. We got one of the same second story round table family spots that we got this morning. Very nice. Perfect for hanging out and relaxing and having our dinner on the train back to Zurich.

The plan today had originally to hang out with my friend David, who used to work with me for the “office” and was based in Belfast. We’ve been on Facebook together for years and he has been living in Zurich for a while now. So he was going to show us around town today but ended up he was moving house today and was unavailable for the majority of the day. He fell asleep after his move and woke up right about the same time that we got back to the hotel, including the S6 trip and the half mile walk to the Movenpick from the Regensdorf train station.

David called and said that he was up for a couple of beers. Dominica said that I should go so I walked very briskly back to the train station and caught the S6 back into town hoping to get back to Zurich’s main station by ten o’clock. I was amazed by the number of people heading into town, clearly all dressed for a night on the town. Apparently going out in Zurich is the thing to do.

I got to the Zurich station and met David under the big blue angel. I wasn’t sure what to expect when he said to meet him there but once I saw it I realized that it is a huge art installation that Rick Steves has featured before. So I knew it instantly.

We took the Zurich tram a few stops away to Bellevue, the trendy district where everyone goes out for beers in the evening on the river and lakefront. This is my first real chance to see the city of Zurich itself and I must say that this is one gorgeous city. At night, the lake front all lit up is magical.

We found a little bar with outdoor seating and just sat at a table and had a few beers and caught up. It was a nice time and it was nice to get to go out like a normal Zuricher as well. Gave me a legitimate feel for this part of Zurich life. David filled me on as to his experiences in Zurich as well.

I think that my take away from being in Zurich, Bern and Luzern (and passing through Basel several times) and dealing with trains, tourists, trams, shopping, groceries, etc. in Switzerland that while I really like it here and woudn’t turn it down, Switzerland does not appear to be the place where I am really interested in living. Everyone that I’ve spoken to who is an ex-patriot working here says that it is okay but not that great. The cities are great but the working experience is not and the cost of living is insane. Now I have no experience with rural or village life in Switzerland and that is truly what we would be looking at seriously and that is sure to be far better overall, but this gives us a general taste.

The biggest issue is the “English bubble.” Everyone in Switzerland speaks English and so the moment that they realize that you are not a Swiss local they immediately switch to English for you and treat you like a tourist. They are friendly and polite – but you are forever an outsider. Even learning the language is next to impossible because no one will speak it to you. It makes working in Switzerland very easy and convenient for companies moving people in and out regularly and it is nice for people who are stuck working in Switzerland who didn’t really want to or who are not into being in Switzerland. But for someone really interested in becoming immersed and a part of the local culture it makes it a significant challenge. So, for now at least, Switzerland is effectively off of our list of consideration.

The bar that we were at closed at eleven thirty, which I think is really weird. Apparently Switzerland, or at least Zurich, has bizarre bar licensing laws like the UK which make it incredibly difficult as a bar patron to be able to figure out how to go out at night. I have no idea what logic makes this happen but it is horrible. There is no way for an outsider to find out what bar is open till when or how to go out and use the city’s resources. It is bar by bar knowledge so even the locals have no idea where to go or what to do outside of their local bars that they frequent personally. Even going to a different neighbourhood makes you as useless as a foreigner.

I had to get back to the girls and David needed some sleep after moving all day so we took off when the bar closed. He was able to work to his new apartment and I caught the number eleven tram back to the central train station. Once there I came to the horrific realization that there were no trains running back to Regensdorf tonight. None.

Oh no, this isn’t good. It is nearly ten miles back to the hotel. That’s not an easy walk and while I can do it I sure don’t want to do it in a city that I don’t know with an Android phone that never works and that is rapidly running out of battery. I could be completely lost in a matter of minutes and be heaven only knows where by morning. So that was certainly a final resort option.

I called David but he had no idea. He didn’t even know where Regensdorf was and thought that I was staying in a completely different part of the city. So he didn’t know what to do.

There was no one in the train station to help me. It was very late, and rapidly getting later, and all the tourists were gone, all the officials were gone and all of the information people were gone. As were any maps that they have out during the day. This was getting bad quickly.

I posted on Facebook what was happening so if I wasn’t back and Dominica spoke to anyone they could tell her what had happened even if they wouldn’t know where I was at the time.

I spent a bit of time running like a chicken with its head cut off around the train station trying to come up with options. I found a few trains that would take me in the general direction (I think) but that was a scary prospect. Get off of a train at an unknown third location and hope to get good enough directions to make it to the hotel. Eek.

Luckily it occurred to me to, obviously, call the hotel and ask them what to do. The guy who answered the phone had some idea of what to do because he lives local to the hotel and sometimes goes drinking in the general area where I was and had to do this same thing before.

He directed me to leave the train station, cross the river and look for a place called “Central” which is where all of the trams and the busses meet (oh boy, those are not “simple” directions.) Then look for a guy market “Troubleshooter” and ask him for help. Wow. Okay, well I’ve got nothing else to go on so I gave that a try.

It took me a bit to get out of the train station and across the river. This is confusing to an outsider as there is flowing water on both sides of the train station. Apparently only one of them is considered “the” river, though. I picked the right one, got across and after not too long found a mess of roads and tracks with a “central” sign.

There were no officials working so I wondered around for a while trying to make heads or tails of the signage but everything was in German here and very confusing. I finally found some guys in a truck who turned out to be the “troubleshooters”, explained my issue and they helped me out.

The solution turned out to be pretty easy. I had to pay around twelve Swiss Francs and take the N45 night bus and they would go to the Regensdorf Zentrum. Okay, sounds like a plan. Fingers crossed.

Catching the bus actually wasn’t bad once the troubleshooter walked me through all of the steps. The bus was fairly busy, not full, but busy. Fortunately even the Zurich buses have nice computer displays telling where we are currently and what the next several stops were and how long it would be until each one.

It worked out pretty well with the bus dropping me off right at the Movenpick. The Zentrum stop is right at the end of the Movenpick’s driveway. So by one thirty I was back home. About an hour and a half after I should have been, but at least I made it back and have a somewhat interesting story to tell.

Today was a really long day. Dominica was still awake, sort of, when I got home. The girls had given her a hard time while I was out. We are pooped.

Tomorrow we get up and get out the door to head to Munich where we will be for several days. Hopefully that will be a bit more stress free than today has been. We have an early train ride up there but it is only four hours and it is a direct train right from Zurich so it should be nice and easy. We get to relax for four hours and do some SGL catch up. Hopefully once we get to Munich we will be able to post all of the back updates so that everyone can catch up with us to this point.

At this point I am posting well over sixteen thousand words to SGL just on the past week. This has to be my one week writing record ever – and that is in over twelve years of continuous posting!

Dominica got me up at seven this morning after less than three hours of sleep to get me up and moving since we had so much to do today. At first my job was only to watch Luciana who had woken up and was not feeling well so that Dominica could continue getting everything else ready for us to depart Bartenheim. We are attempting to hit the local post office this morning as we have a rather large shipment of stuff that we either no longer need or have realized that we never needed to ship back to dad to keep us from having to lug it all over Europe with us.

At this point my back is really killing me. At first I thought that it was muscle pain but now I am convinced that from either a chair that I have been working from or from the Ergo baby carrier’s strap that I have bruised by spine. One way or another, my back really hurts.

Our goal this morning is to make the nine thirty train to Zurich. We will be taking the same local run on the TER Alsace to Basel but then taking the Zurich line rather than the Bern line. Even getting up at seven in the morning it will be quite a challenge to make it to the nine thirty train. It is never as simple as you would imagine.

Dominica took Luciana’s temperature this morning and it had climbed to one hundred and one. That is too high. She has to see a doctor. She could wait until Zurich for a doctor but we don’t know how medicine works in either Switzerland or France so to be sure that we can’t just get her an antibiotic on our own Dominica decided to go out and investigate the pharmacy situation.

Dominica was gone for a while and when she returned she had quite the story to tell. She had been at the pharmacy across the street. Of course, no one there speaks English. Europeans might universally speak English more than any other tertiary language but almost no one really speaks it. It is never heard in conversation and anytime that you find someone who speaks it you are amazed.

At the pharmacy a local who was a customer there helped everyone to translate. Dominica learned that a prescription written by a doctor would be necessary to get the antibiotic. That is not surprising but it would have been foolish not to check. The woman who was at the pharmacy with Dominica then took Dominica and made her husband drive them all to the local doctor because she realized that Dominica would not be able to find the doctor if forced to work from an address and since she was on foot they knew that she didn’t have time to go looking for them. This is something that would never happen in America. Someone translating in a store? Possible. Someone giving directions? Definitely. Someone driving you to the doctor’s to make sure that you can find it? Um, no, not going to happen.

Even more amazing, the doctor’s office said that they would see Luciana immediately. So Dominica speed walked all the way back to the Lion Rouge and got me. We left the luggage in the room and we took the girls and walked the half kilometer, if I were to guess, back to the doctor’s office.

The doctor was wonderful. No one in the office spoke English but we all made do with a couple of words on either side. Everyone has been so friendly this morning. The pharmacist, the doctor, the people in town. We are so impressed with Bartenheim.

The doctor agreed that Luciana has an infection. I impressed Dominica with my ability to make fever references in Celsius on the fly. Luciana was at 38 and we, and the doctor, expect that if untreated she would hit 39 tonight. She has sinusitis, not an ear infection, but her one ear, and maybe both, are inflamed because of it. But the real issue is her sinuses, no surprise given that she is my daughter, and it is rapidly turning into bronchitis. So he prescribed an antibiotic and a thrice daily nasal wash which she is not going to enjoy. She said that if we were not traveling they would not do the antibiotic at this stage but instead would only do the cleansing and bed rest but as we are traveling and going to Zurich today the antibiotic was necessary. That is nice, in the US it would have been straight to the medicine every time.

We were very impressed with the doctor. Then we went to pay and he said “No, you are on holiday! There is no need.” I can’t believe it. Great, fast, friend healthcare and the French healthcare system is picking up the tab as well! We are so impressed with France right now I cannot even describe. I’ve heard that France is a world leader in healthcare and I kept saying that if Luciana was going to be sick that this was the place for it to happen but never did I imagine that their healthcare was this good. Nor would we have guessed that the kindness of strangers would be so great.

We walked quickly back to town and straight to the pharmacy. Unlike an American pharmacy with a twenty minute to two hour wait on any order, it took no more than two minutes for them to fulfill our order. And, even being foreigners paying full price for everything, the antibiotic (the same one that we get in the US) plus the two nasal products, the one a wash and the other a medicine, came to just thirteen euros or less than twenty dollars.

Let me get this across… the full price for medicine in France is less than the copay amount for the same medicine in the US. The implications should be beyond obvious.

So our takeaway is that we are impressed beyond belief in France and its people and its healthcare. The Lord really watched over us to make sure that we had all of this happen here. Had this been a different country, or in a large city or any number of different factors this could have been really bad. Instead, it was dramatically better in efficiency and in cost than having the same thing happen in the US with health insurance and a car and established relationships with the doctors and pharmacy! France did better under the worst conditions than the US does under the best.

We raced back across the street to the hotel and got checked out. I keep being amazed by how low our bills are even when our food is added on to the hotel bill.

Then it was off to the post office to see it we could ship out that package, but it was obvious that they did not have the facilities there that we needed so we didn’t bother to try and instead raced on to the train station hoping to make at least the ten thirty train as we had missed the nine thirty.

We got to the train station in enough time for the train that Dominica thought was going to be there. It turned out that she had read the train schedule incorrectly and the next train would be at eleven thirty, not ten thirty. So we had an hour to kill.

We were not going to go anywhere as it was just too hot and the walk is too long. So Dominica kept the girls at the train station and I walked over to the grocery store that was not all that far away and picked up some local fruit and some baked goods for breakfast and brought them back to the train station so that we could eat them while waiting on the train.

We have ridden this train line yesterday so we know how everything works (even if we don’t know the times) and the ride into Basel and the transfer in Basel were super easy. The train from Basel to Zurich was pretty quick and easy. I napped a bit of the way. The scenery along the path was quite similar to the scenery that we saw going from Basel to Bern but a little less hilly. Still very beautiful.

We arrived in Zurich and it was a beautiful day. The main train station in Zurich is massive. This is certainly one of the main European rail aggregation points. Getting around the Zurich train station is rather a challenge due to the size, the volume of people and that things are poorly labeled. Lifts, for example, have no signs. You simply have to know where they are.

Once we were in Zurich the challenge was figuring out how to get from there to our hotel. Our hotel in Zurich is not near the train station but is in the suburb of Regensdorf which is several miles from downtown. We spent quite a while trying to get directions on how to get to Regensdorf. Seriously nothing is labeled.

We finally figured out that we could take the S-Bahn S6 line towards Baden that several stops up was Regensdorf. Getting to the S6 turned out to be a challenge as tracks 41-44 are hidden away in a basement and after looking around for as long as we could for a lift we finally had to give up, along with some other people having the same issue, and take the girls and all of our luggage down the escalators as our train was just about to pull up.

Riding the S6 wasn’t too bad but it was full and with all of our luggage it was a struggle. Fortunately the S-Bahn system has nice screens in the passenger cars that tell you where you are, the list of upcoming stops and how long until you reach each one. This makes it far less stressful to be able to get to where you are going and to be able to relax between the stops as you can constantly get an idea of how much longer you have.

We got off at the Regensdorf train station, which is very small, and from there had to figure out how to get to the zentrum. We had hoped that they would be at more or less the same spot but they were not. We checked the map and we had less than a mile to go, so we hoofed it the rest of the way.

The sun was bright and exposed so we got very hot very quickly. We were way too hot by the time that we got to the hotel, the Movenpick Regensdorf. I was completely covered in sweat by the time that we got there.

The Movenpick is awesome. This is our only luxury hotel of our entire month and a half trip. This is a four star hotel. The room was very nice and comfortable. We were so glad to get to a nice, comfortable hotel room without any questions and a twenty-four hour concierge desk and all of that. This is our “downtime” weekend, in theory, so this is perfect.

Our plans today are to do nothing. Nothing at all. Luciana especially needs as much of a day off as we can muster. So we prepared to camp out in the hotel room for a little while and I set up my laptop. The one downside, and this is a pretty big one, to this hotel is that we do not have Internet access while we are here outside of emergencies because we would have to pay ~$20 per day for it and we just are not willing to spend that much now that we are no longer working to have me do my homework and check in with the office. If the office needs me they will reach me through some other means and we will turn the Internet access on at that point.

So my job for today was to write a lot of SGL updates but not to post them until we get Internet access again. So I wrote nearly eleven thousand words this evening that you, my audience, will be reading sometime later. I got almost caught up completely today. That was my goal. That is the only form of “work” that I need to do for the next three weeks and that I can handle.

Once we had relaxed for a little bit we decided to go to the shopping center right next door to the hotel for some supplies. We hit the grocery store there, this is getting to be a normal thing for us, and stocked up on ready-made food (pret a manger) that we will eat tonight rather than going out to a restaurant or whatever. Although I’m not convinced that eating at the grocery store saves any money.

We also did some general shopping and just checked out the shopping center. I am interested in getting some new shoes because mine are killing the ball and toe of my foot when we do long walks and I need something that will cushion them a little bit better. Apparently, though, my feet are enormous by European standards as my size is not carried and the nearest size, which is very close to mine, is available but only in a horribly small selection. So we gave up there. Maybe I will try some insoles to see if they do anything for me.

We came back to the hotel room and ate our dinner and found some television for Liesl to watch. We have things like Nickelodean and Cartoon Network on our television here so Liesl is pretty happy about that. Most of the programming is actually in English but bits are German. She settled in to watch that all evening.

I stayed in with the girls while Dominica went out on her own to do some shopping. Actually she just wanted to get away from all of us. So she shopped for a while, Liesl watched her shows and Luciana and I napped for a while.

Dominica got back and we hung out in the hotel room for just a little bit and then the girls all went to bed. Liesl was the last one down but all three of them were asleep pretty early. I was awake for a few hours longer, until one in the morning or so, working on the SGL updates. I have been so far behind this past week that I really wanted to take the time to get caught up knowing that I would feel even more relaxed tomorrow if I was not worried about the updates not being written. This is a very important trip and if I get behind not only do the folks back home not know what is going on but we risk forgetting what has happened. So I am doing my best to be really, really diligent about it, especially from here on out now that we are in to the “vacation” portion of the trip.

Tomorrow we have to play things by ear. Luciana still has a fever this evening but there is every hope that she will not have it tomorrow. If she still has a fever tomorrow then the plan is to just stay in the hotel all day and do pretty much nothing. But if Luciana is doing okay we will consider going out and seeing Zurich or possibly making a trip out to the south to Luzern to see that town instead. Luzern is Dominica’s number one city to see in Switzerland and possibly in all of Europe (competing with Brugge) at least from before the start of the trip – with only our information from America before leaving. If we don’t see Luzern tomorrow then we don’t get to see it so it would be really sad if Dominica ended up missing that while we are so close.

Switzerland. Probably no country calls to be more than Switzerland. I have never been there and, outside of the last seventy-two hours have never been even relatively near to it. And yet I have always felt that I belong near there. Today I finally get to go see Switzerland for the first time. I am so excited.

Our journey this morning begin with the early morning commuter train from our tiny local country station at Bartenheim, France in the southern Alsace on the TER Alsace local run that terminates at what the French line calls Bale but is really the Basel Hauptbonhauf in Switzerland. The travel information from Bartenheim is extremely confusing because the last two station names don’t mention at all that they go to Switzerland so we were very much going by instinct more than anything but it went very smoothly.

Basel is one of Switzerland’s largest, and least touristed, cities sitting on the Rhine River and having suburbs spill south into Switzerland, northwest into France’s Alsace and north east into Germany’s Black Forest. Basel is truly an international gateway city yet one that is almost entirely unknown to Americans even though it is the second largest metropolitan area in Switzerland (after Zurich and before Geneva.) Basel is quite predominantly German speaking and very surprisingly, as it literally spills into France, its second language is Italian, not French.

Dominica used to be a consultant for Roche Pharma which is headquartered in Basel and she used to do a lot of support for people here so has always felt an affinity for the city. We really only know Basel ourselves because of her work history with the city. The city is well known as a world center for pharmaceuticals. Very much a European equivalent to Philadelphia.

One thing that I find amazing is how much you can sense the movement from one country to another through the train stations. Yes, of course the language changes make it somewhat obvious but there are so many mixes of languages in use everywhere and most countries post things bilingually at the rail stations that that isn’t the big factor that you might imagine but the look and overall feel of a station tends to give away its country of sponsorship.

Basel is a bit, impressive station that reeks of efficiency and business attitude. It is efficient and sterile yet nice and comfortable.

The first point of note as you step off of a French train into Basel is that you are greeted by the empty shell of what used to be customs and border control. It has been about two decades since France and Switzerland entered the Shengen – the European zone without internal borders – yet the border control area at Basel has not been removed, perhaps the Swiss anticipate a change in political climate in the future so likely that changing the main entrance point into the country isn’t warranted?

Basel is a massive station which makes sense since all of the major Swiss cities connect here as do the major French and German cities. This is Switzerland’s big gateway and the only point of entry, other than Geneva which sits against mostly rural France, that is a major city sitting at a border. The eastern border with Austria is pretty remote as is the southern border with Italy.

We had a little time in Basel’s hauptbahnhof so we checked out the Swiss grocery store and ready made food store in the station which was excellent. We got a selection of ready made Swiss food to take with us. We love doing that.

As we approached our platform there was, of all things, an American Café called Blueberries. We were amazed to see that. I got a picture of Dominica ordering a coffee from an American Café in Switzerland. There are signs of American around like a McDonald’s just outside Neuf-Brisach or a Starbucks here or there and that is to be expected, sadly, but having a Swiss company that touts itself as an American Café is just weird. Americans are not known for good coffee or good bread products.

From Basel we caught the SBB (Swiss National Rail) to Bern. On this train we finally got to see a large swatch of the Swiss countryside. What a beautiful country. We are only seeing northern Switzerland right now which is hilly but not mountainous. The alps are some ways away and we don’t have time to add them to this trip. We hope to do a bunch of time in the alps on a future trip when the girls are older and can appreciate them.

The train ride took us through countryside, city and little villages. All quite beautiful.

Bern’s hauptbahnhof is great. It was gorgeous and there is a ton of resources for tourists. This is a major world capital city that is prepared for business, government and tourist travel. We picked up a map and some advice from the tourist office. Two things that are really worth pointing out to people looking to come see Bern – there is special tourist Internet access available through the tourist office in association with Swisscom that may be of interest and there is an iPhone app that you can get that gives you an audio tour of the city. Check with the tourist office upon arrival.

We are doing the recommended walking tour of Bern. It is said to take two and a half hours. We came out of the train station and there is a really neat glass overhead structure that connects the main train station to the city tram system so that you can use both and feel like you are outside on a huge square but are really under glass and protected from the elements.

We walked past the cathedral, turned left and were headed down the main Marketstraβe to the middle of Old Town Bern.

Bern is, without a doubt, insanely beautiful. Bern is beautiful in all the ways that a city should be. It is clean, it is huge, it is three dimensional, it is modern and yet it is ancient, there is art yet there is commerce, there is private business and there is government and there is great public transportation everywhere. And, most importantly, it is safe.

Something about Bern makes it feel big. I mean you actually feel small in Bern. The buildings all seem to be a little oversized and out of perspective. And this part of Bern is quite old. These buildings have stood, making visitors to Bern feels as though they have fallen down the hole with Alice, for centuries.

The Market Street is not unlike Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Every expensive store that you can imagine (and a McDonald’s and a Starbucks) is represented there. Watches at every turn, jewelry, food, coffee, handbags, groceries, you name it and it is there and very expensive. Bern puts a whole new twist on expensive. One thing that is very much lacking is ice cream stands. It is hard to get ice cream in Bern.

We walked past the Bern open air market and wondered through it. Like I mentioned in an earlier post – we love the real local markets. This is where the good food is hiding. The fruit in this market just looked amazing but we only had huge bills in Swiss Franks so we needed to break them so were unable to buy any food at this time.

When we got cash from the ATM at the rail station, it only dispensed one hundred Swiss Frank notes. That seems a little crazy. The Swiss Frank is worth a little more than a dollar. So each note is worth about one hundred and six dollars. That seems excessive as the smallest form of currency that you can get from an ATM. If that doesn’t tip you off that you are in a rich, rich country, I don’t know what will. If this was the US I would have gotten a mix of ten and twenty dollar notes and nothing larger.

Liesl has been complaining that she does not have any sunglasses for a few days (two pairs came with us but they have gone missing) so we did some looking for some but everything, even for kids, was mostly around twenty Franks which is insane. We spotted a Claire’s (which felt incredibly out of place) and stopped in and found some cheap children’s sunglasses for her with butterflies (Microsoft’s dictionary tells me that the correct plural of butterfly is butterflies but that seems wrong to me, it might be butterflys but at the moment I have no Internet access so cannot confirm this) on them. Dominica, who has been needing a watch ever since we came to Europe, bought a relatively cheap finger watch (you will just have to see a picture of this) as well.

Now that our one hundred Frank note was broken we went back to the open air farmer’s market and bought a bag of fruit (I took a picture of Dominica buying fruit there) and two hundred grams of Swiss cheese from a specialty cheese vendor (I can’t tell you how awesome it is that in Europe there are cheese dealers.)

While at the market we stopped by to see the main government building of Switzerland which is quite impressive and has a great water fountain in front of it. It is one of those massive flat slab areas with a flush water fountain that surprisingly shoots water up out of the ground. It is a huge installation and very well done. Many children were out playing in it.

Liesl went out and stood on the fringes of the fountain for a while and I took a video of her there. Bern should be called the city of fountains. There seems to be a water fountain around every corner and in the middle of every street.

The foot path tourist route is a very simple one. You take the market street straight from the train station right down to the Aare River where you cross on the main bridge. No turns, nothing to miss.

Being Rick Steves fans we have seen his tour of Bern several times and were delighted to see things that we knew. Being here the city feels much different than it does on film. The highlight “touristy” thing that we wanted to see was right in the middle of the walk – the old city clock tower. We arrived at the tower at eleven thirty and Dominica decided that we needed to wait there so that we could see the tower ring at noon. This is one of the highlights of all of Europe so worth the half hour wait.

While waiting for the tower I walked to the local downtown Bern grocery store and grabbed a liter of fruit juice as we were a bit dehydrated and Dominica and the girls sat in front of the clock tower waiting and eating fresh fruit that we had just bought. Dominica got herself apples and pears. I got myself blueberries. And Liesl got, of all things, a watermelon. No one can accuse her of being conventional.

The show of the clock tower really is amazing. I don’t know the details and cannot look them up as I am writing this from Zurich two days later in the hotel when we took the night off from Internet access to save some money, but the clock tower is all mechanical clockwork and it puts on this amazing show every hour and has been doing so for hundreds of years. The entire thing is utterly amazing both in its ingenuity as well as in its longevity. We are very glad to have gotten to see it.

All of Old Town is astoundingly beautiful but way too expensive. I can’t believe that people actually shop here. Yet the place is packed with people shopping. There are a lot of tourists too, that can’t be denied.

Walking over the Aare River was completely breathtaking. I was not ready for how amazing this river would look or how high we would be over it. The views from the main bridge are just crazy both of the river and of the city all around you. Bern is a huge city and this vantage point really shows it off. The river flows an opulent turquoise colour too that shines brightly in the sun. It is something to behold. I’ve never seen a river like it.

Across the bridge is the famous bear pits (more a hillside zoo exhibit and less a bit) of Bern where bears have been in residence for hundreds of years. We got to see one bear sleeping but that was about it. Bears used to cover the European continent in the wild but they are unheard of now.

We hit the other tourist office just so that the girls could use the toilette while we are here (in Europe, toilette is a reference to the room, not the porcelain device on which you sit within the room which can be very confusing to Americans) and then set off to try our hand at the lower bridge and the loop route back to the train station.

The lower Old Town bridge, lying just north of the main bridge, also has some great views including views of the big bridge which is gorgeous in its own right, plus gets you much closer to the river and to real homes that sit along it.

The walk back into the market is a tough one because the climb is rather daunting. Liesl decided just before the bridge that she wanted to walk but didn’t even make it back at all before the climb had her worn out and in my arms for the steep incline up the hill.

The tourist route brings you back along the road just south of the market street. The first long bit of it is not touristy at all but is just local apartments and businesses in some really old buildings. Very interesting but nothing really to see. We stopped partway along here just because it was hot and we were tired and ate some more of our fruit supplies. The fruit from the market is some of the best that we have ever tasted. So good!!

Along this stretch we promised Liesl that we would find her some ice cream. We have been looking for some ice cream all morning and other than one little Movenpick stand at the market at the very beginning of our day we have not seen any ice cream whatsoever all day. Very odd. But while we were looking for ice cream we came upon a toy store and Liesl really wanted a break so we went in.

The toy store was amazing. Full of awesome Swiss and German toys that we cannot get, or cannot get easily, in the United States. Really great stuff. Liesl loved it all, as you can imagine. It was tough to pick something out but she finally decided on a really high end plastic horse and faery set that was nearly thirty dollars and a tiny little horse that was just under two Franks just to give her something to play with right away. Luciana picked out an owl finger puppet that is really cute. The people at the store were really friendly and helpful and unpackaged stuff for Liesl so that she could play with her new toys right away too.

For future reference, the toy horse that Liesl got today (the big one) needed a name later today and Liesl asked me what the horse’s name was. I looked at the colour of its mane and the glitter all over it and decided that it looked like a raspberry flavouring on a vanilla ice cream cone and named is “Raspberry Sparkles.” So someday when reading this, Liesl might be able to identify her Raspberry Sparkles horse as having come from this little shop in Bern, Switzerland today.

We came upon a massive and truly gorgeous public park that is built out on a cliff overlooking the river and the city to the south and walked around there. This is heavily used by the public and is just filled with locals on their lunch break eating sandwiches, talking, drinking coffee, etc. We walked around there for a bit. Amazing views.

We wanted more fruit so returned to the market as they were still open, hit the same fruit sellers again and stocked up on fruit for the journey back to Bartenheim. Altogether we spend about thirty dollars on fruit today! Another ten dollars on cheese.

Then we got ice cream, as we had promised Liesl. By the end of the day, Movenpick was the only ice cream that we had found all day. This one stand, near the train station, in the open air market. And it is just a tiny stand, not even an eis café with seating.

Movenpick ice cream, at least in Bern, is expensive like you have never seen ice cream. It is roughly four dollars per scoop with no discount for more scoops in one cone. So the price is basically four dollars for one scoop, eight for two and twelve for three! Wowzers. We spent about twenty dollars just getting ice cream for the three of us (Luciana does not eat ice cream yet, especially not at these prices.)

Now, to be sure, the ice cream was phenomenal. Liesl got the himberry (strawberry) and I got a mix of double crème du Gruyere and crème brulee. Both were just astoundingly good. Dominica got something that I do not remember but she did love hers as well.

From the ice cream place it was back to the station for us an on to the SBB back to Basel. The entire journey from Bern to Basel to Bartenheim is around an hour and a half, two hours at the most. We really love SBB trains. Nothing compares to them.

On the route from Bern to Basel we got to ride on the big Milan to Basel line which has the latest and greatest trains in the SBB fleet (I believe.) The train on this route had a train schedule kiosk in the “between cars” waiting area so that you could check your schedule, other options, return options and connections right from the train itself, it had several overhead televisions throughout the train showing a combination of Italian tourist ads, travel information and Google Earth “follow alongs” of our current trip as well as little informational LEDs for every seat on the train telling the status of that seat. Really slick.

SBB lines in Switzerland, from what we have seen, also have someone who comes through the cabin selling you coffee and snacks at your seat (think airline snack style with the little cart that comes through), have a minibar on the second floor of the train where you can get very basic items and have a bistro car where you can go for a serious meal and a table. The SBB is impressive beyond your wildest imagination is the quality of train travel. SBB is the best that I have ever ridden, anywhere. Although in about a week we get to ride the OBB overnight from Austria to Venice and I have high hopes that that will be amazing. The two rail lines that I have always wanted to ride are the SBB and the OBB. Chalk that up to me having grown up being a model railroader.

On the way back from Basel to Bartenheim on the TER Alsace local train we got into a conversation with several Brits who were on holiday and currently making a connection as they went from Venice, Italy to Mulhouse, France (just a few stops up the road here in the southern Alsace) before heading on to Paris and some Mulhouse locals. I just love meeting people on trains. We talked for a while and were able to recommend some food and wine for dinner for the Brits as they only had one night to enjoy the culinary delights of the Alsace, one of the finest food regions in Europe.

It was hot again this afternoon as we did the nearly one kilometer walk back from the gare to the square. Along the way we decided that an ice cream signed looked just too inviting at a restaurant called, and this is ridiculous, Le Texas. That’s right, in the southern Alsace, a culinary world center, there is a restaurant claiming to be “The Texan” – a place of culinary apathy. Why anyone would voluntarily associate a restaurant with Texas is anyone’s guess. To make matters worse, they specialize in pizza! Or all things – America has amazing pizza, on par with any in the world, but certainly not in Texas. Texas might be the low point of American pizza. And to put this into perspective – the regional food of the Alsace is… pizza! This little town, for example, has four or five pizzeries all specializing in Alsatian pizza (tarte flambee or flammenkucken) and not a single café!! So this is out of place beyond description. But it didn’t matter, as it was closed for the afternoon.

While we were checking at Le Texas, though, the owner of the pizza place across the street got our attention and called us over across the street. He didn’t have what we were looking for but we felt bad and he was exceptionally nice so we got some of the ice cream that he did have and sat on his “terrace” and ate it. It was good, even if it wasn’t anything local. He was really nice and talked to us for a bit. He speaks seven languages and taught us a little about Alsatian. His eleven year old kid already speaks four languages and his five year old speaks three!

We got back to the hotel just in time for me to get to work. We leave for Zurich tomorrow morning so tonight Dominica is busy packing up the hotel as well. Now that we are actually out and traveling the immense amount of work involved in packing and unpacking everything every other night has dawned on her and she is really regretting some of our travel plans. This week is one of two bad stretches that we have in the vacation. We tried to reschedule this one but were unable to do so so this is the middle point in a six day stretch of two nights at a time three times in a row. Our break from this comes when a longer stay in Munich (Munchen), Germany following Zurich. Then we have an even worse stretch (except that it might be better as I will not be working at the same time) as we go through Austria. The scheduling in Austria was not by choice, however, it was us taking whatever rooms we could get. In Austria we do a single night in Halstatt and then on to Vienna where we don’t get to sleep at all but instead get a full day before catching the night train and then doing a day in Venice where, again, we have nowhere to stay and have to push on to Tuscany that same day, hours away, before seeing a bed in a small hill town.

I worked and the girls played a bit. At some point in the evening I went down to the restaurant and ordered us some dinner. I went down and got a menu to take up to the room so that Dominica could look it over. I grabbed coffee while I was down there as we have none in the room (actually we do, but we have no way to heat water to make it) and a knife so that we could cut up a tomato that Dominica and I had been arguing over via Facebook.

I have been doing very well at keeping everyone apprised of our ongoing travels via Facebook on this trip. On the Android phone that we have with us, I do not have my email or my Twitter accounts. Dominica has her email set up there but I have nothing but Facebook so that is all that I use to post things in the middle of the day. At the end of each day, or while at the hotel working, I try to get Flickr and YouTube as up to date as possible with around one hundred pictures per day. We are maintaining a daily viewing of our Flickr feed at around eight to nine hundred views with about three days ago being the peak at sixteen hundred views in one day.

Dominica selected the vegetarian plate. I decided that the roasted salmon just sounded perfect. Liesl could decide so I went down and requested, in French no less, to get Spaetzel (a German dish) with cheese to which they were not surprised at all and were able to make it without a second though. The Alsace is awesome.

Dinner was delivered up to our room and was awesome. My salmon was excellent and in a tomato cream sauce with roasted potato squares and parsley quiche bites. Yum. Liesl took some convincing to try spaetzel et fromage but once she did she liked it. She also liked the tuna pate that came with our meals. In fact, she loved it, which we never would have expected.

After dinner Dominica and Liesl were almost immediately asleep. It was probably ten when they were completely out. I, on the other hand, had a very long night to get through yet.

Work for the office stretched until nearly seven in the evening back home which meant two in the morning here in France and my homework took me until just before four – so basically all night. I was not expecting to get much sleep tonight. It had to be done. No real way around it. But now work is done and my class is done. I am done. I went to bed between four and four thirty. Tomorrow we move to Zurich and no matter how little sleep I have I get to wake up knowing that I have no pressures on me other than the pressures of taking my family to exciting locations and hanging out with mein kinder.

At the end of the day today Luciana now has a mild fever. We are leaning towards an ear infection. I talked to Gwen on Facebook and she thought that it sounded like that too. We are really hoping that she is better in the morning after a good night’s rest and have discussed doctor options. Nothing is good. Going to a doctor in a foreign country is hard enough (has anyone done this before?) but doing so in a country where you do not speak the language is crazy hard and doing so under those conditions when you are constantly hopping from country to country is even moreso. We decided that since we are all to Zurch, Switzerland first thin in the morning and will be there for two days that waiting for her to see a doctor until she can see a Swiss one is likely the best choice. We will evaluate in the morning.

This morning was a very successful travel morning. We got up and out the door as planned. We caught the same 9:06 bus to Colmar that we used yesterday so we knew exactly what to do and even knew our bus driver this morning. We did not wait until the absolute last second to run out the door of our hotel so we were able to walk leisurely to the bus stop and while the girls waited I made a stop at the Cannelle patisserie and then hit the downtown boulangerie for our pain (bread) for the morning. Liesl has decided that she adores French bread and for the past two days that is all that she will eat so this morning I got her her own baguette.

The boulangerie in town has been closed whenever we happened to be walking by and the sign has been gone for what looks like decades so when I noticed smoke coming from its chimney this morning and then saw that there was someone inside and the door was opened I was really surprised. We had wondered where people got their bread in this town. It was worth a stop as the bread was excellent and oh so cheap.

On the bus ride to the Gare de Colmar (one stop past the Theater District where we stopped yesterday) we met a fellow American traveler from Tennessee who was on his way to the Unterlinden. We talked the whole way from Neuf-Brisach to Colmar. Liesl gave him one of our Kidding Around Europe stickers and he gave us his business card so that we could email him to get his blog information as he is recording his trips as well.

On a train a few days ago Luciana was walking around and I overheard someone make a comment about how cute she was and I picked up a southern accent so I stopped and asked if they were American and it turned out not only that they were American but that they were Texan and not only that they were Texan but that they were from Denton – the same county as us! Small world.

One of the things that I love about traveling in Europe is how much that every rail or bus journey is a place where people meet – everyone talks to each other here. This is even more amazing when you think about the fact that no two people speak the same language. Everyone just makes do and figures out how to communicate.

That is one of the big secrets of European communication – don’t be afraid, just do your best and everyone else tries too. I think that Americans often think that Europeans all understand each other but they don’t at all. Here in the Alsace, for example, French is almost universally understood but a small majority prefer to speak in Alsatian, a heavily varied dialect of German (for example, Guten Tag in German is Gueta Tag in Alsatian with a different pronunciation of Tag as well – tog versus tag.) But of people speak “normal” German as well. Here and there people speak English. But you never know what someone will speak until you start talking to them. It is really amazing.

While riding the buses in the Alsace I’ve noticed that the people on the bus while often speaking French to us speak to each other almost exclusively in some dialect of German. German definitely seems to remain the vernacular of choice from what I have observed although in town French certainly appears to be more common. At the restaurant at the hotel, though, German was almost exclusively in use by the patrons. When locals speak in English, which is rare, the accent seems to be a blend of German and French.

The Gare de Colmar is not very big and getting to our TER Alsace train was easy. We took the local run from Colmar to Mulhouse where we got off and transferred to the TER Alsace Mulhouse to Bale (Basel) line which took us to the very small town of Bartenheim where we are staying for the next two nights.

Bartenheim is certainly not a tourist town. It has no attractions at all and is a very small Alsatian town sitting just north of the Alsace’s southernmost airport. The town is so far off of the “beaten path” (technically it lies right along a very beaten path but is a stop that no one makes) that when we prepared to disembark from the train at Bartenheim the train conductor actually stopped us and asked us where we intended to go because as clearly not locals going to Bartenheim was pretty surprising.

Getting out at the Gare de Bartenheim reinforces that this is not intended, in any way, to be a tourist stop. The gare (trainstation) is nearly a full kilometer outside of the village and there are not even signs pointing you towards or away from town! You are dropped off at what is essential a country stop and left to fend for yourself.

The walk into Bartenheim proper was brutal with our luggage and carrying Luciana and pushing Liesl in the stroller. The entire walk is exposed to the sun and it was twenty degrees Celsius and quite humid as we walked into town. We were really looking forward to cleaning up in the hotel room by the time that we got to the center of town.

Our hotel, the Lion Rouge, is, as far as I can tell, the only hotel in Bartenheim and is located right on the central square, the Plaza of the Republic. There is a fountain in the middle of town but it was all torn up for repairs when we arrived. The walk from the gare to the square did serve as a nice introduction to town and it was clear from our walk that while Bartenheim might be unknown to tourists it is definitely a happy, affluent town.

I can’t believe it but our hotel here in Bartenheim is excellent. So far Dominica is batting a thousand on our hotels. We have not had a bad one yet and there have been some pretty crazy long shots in there like the last one and this one. Our room here has two regular adult beds so that Dominica and I can sleep separately. They provided a pack and play for Luciana and a large crib for Liesl. Even though it is meant for younger kids, Liesl thinks that it is cool as it is like a wooden cage but it is pressed up against Dominica’s bed so Liesl can easily climb in and out of it. Our bathroom here is quite nice and spacious and en suite. So far, every hotel that we have used we would recommend to others. I am so impressed with the prices and quality in Europe.

It was still on the early side when we settled into the hotel only around eleven. We are generally pretty tired and want some time to relax so today is a “no plans” day. When we booked this day originally we thought that we would ambitiously be heading straight into Switzerland for the day. Oh how foolish we were. We need a bit of a down day and Bartenheim is a perfect place to just stop and sit and do nothing as a pause in our vacation. Plus I have a ton of work that has to be completed by tomorrow night. So Bartenheim is our stop that allows me to do that.

We took a quick trip out to the children’s park right off of the square. It is tiny but has a rubberized mat, a bouncy car and a small slide and is fenced and gated. Liesl saw it on the way to the hotel and wanted to go play. It is well shaded so a perfect spot to just sit and see village life. Right next to the park is a little shack that is a sandwich and coffee shop. Just pick enough for someone to go in, order a sandwich and take it to go. So we got a cheese (fromage) sandwich, a tuna (thon) sandwich and some pastries and went to the park.

We are our “picnic” lunch which was very nice, especially the tunafish salad sandwich, and watched the girls play. Luciana mostly just walked around the rubber mat being perfect for her. She did make several attempts to climb up the stairs to the slide so I had to keep rescuing her. She is doing very well at that and made it all of the way up on her own once too! She got to come down the slide (with my help) too which is her first slide ever. Liesl mostly busied herself playing a pretend game of going to the grocery store in the bouncy car and pretending to store things in its trunk. It is so cute watching her amazing imaginative play.

While we were sitting there Dominica sent me out on a walk to discover what was around, especially looking for a market. So I walked around a bit and discovered very little. It was a nice enough walk, though, and I got to see a good portion of this small town. I was amazed to find that behind nearly all of the houses in town were ancient half-timber barns being used as massive storage sheds. These must all be four hundred years old (I confirmed that many of the houses were from around the first years after 1600.) Even in this little, “modern” feeling town it turns out that a large percentage of the houses are two to five hundred years old. That is crazy. In America this would be the biggest tourist attraction ever. Here, it is just a town no one knows.

We returned to the hotel from the park when it was time for me to work. When my lunch break rolled around Dominica sent me down to the lobby to ask how to find a market. There is no one who really speaks English here but we make do. They know way more English than we know French, that’s for sure.

It turns out that the only grocery store is outside of town, past the train station, about a kilometer away. So I set off of a decent walk.

One of my favourite things to do in a foreign country is to go to the grocery stores and markets. It is a cheap way to experience every day life. Everything is different in a foreign grocery store (even Montreal is wildly different than New York and they are next door cities to one another) and being in a foreign grocery store in a different language really makes it a fun challenge.

I picked up snacks, fruit, diapers, baby formula and other essential supplies. Two kilometers round trip. I am starting to know my way around town now.

This evening was dedicated to work and homework. That is all that I did. I made good progress, I think, on my homework and believe that I have around half of it down with tomorrow night completely dedicated to getting the other half wrapped up. Once that is done I do believe that my class at RIT will be completed with nothing more needed from me whatsoever. Originally the professor had scheduled a presentation session for tonight (read: three to five in the morning for me) but that was cancelled and moved to Sunday night (same deal, early Monday morning) but so few people were able to make it work that both have been cancelled and they are not being rescheduled. So my class will be over and done with.

Tomorrow is also my final evening of work for the office. The market closes early tomorrow so I am hopeful that work will wrap up on the early side for a Friday. Once I am done with my Friday night deployments and any Friday night system maintenance work (none scheduled, but stuff comes up) I have a normal weekend (not officially “on call” but still official available if escalations are needed) followed by Memorial Day Monday (a bank holiday so we are off but, again, I am available for escalations is necessary) followed by my stored up furlough time starting Tuesday morning and going for three full weeks! Ah, the sweet feel of vacation. So, for all intents and purposes, I am totally free and clear of all regular obligations around five in the morning tomorrow night. I can’t wait!

The only thing that I did tonight beyond my class work is one additional walking trip around town seeking out a café to get coffee from for Dominica. I walked probably another one to two kilometers and finding nothing. The only place that appears to be open is the very high end restaurant in our hotel. So, in the end, I went to the front desk and requested a carafe of coffee for Dominica and I and a basket of bread for Liesl as that is all that she wants to eat these days. The restaurant in the hotel, like the one the last two nights, looks great and appears to be the center of gastronomic delight in the local town.

Tomorrow we will be touring Bern. I am so excited. Probably no place, except perhaps Vienna, on our trip is as important to me as Bern. I have always wanted to see Switzerland so badly and Bern especially both because of the city itself and also because it is associated with the ancestral backgrounds on both sides of my family. Bern is very high on Dominica’s bucket list of European destinations as well. So we have to be up decently early tomorrow so that we can get Bern in before needed to be back in time for work.

My work schedule is really odd while doing this European vacation. I don’t need to be signed in to the office until around four thirty in the afternoon. Talk about weird. We put in a full day and then I start working and work until after midnight. It really throws me off.

Tonight, before going to bed, we felt Luciana and she felt pretty warm. We took her temperature and it is elevated but not a fever. Around ninety-nine degrees or ninety-nine and a half. She appears to be a little under the weather but it is hard to tell. We have been pushing her hard with our schedule and so often she has been unable to fall asleep and nap when she should that we are sure that she is quite run down at this point. So this could be anything. We hope that she is just teething.