You will hate living here if you hate the Winter. And you will really hate the Winter if you don't ski. We don't ski, mostly because the inertia of getting so many kids moved early enough to go skiing is nearly impossible. Also, skiing for so many kids is also a very expensive proposition.
In January, while I was in Northern Virginia on a business trip, Stacy took the kids skiing at the local hill here, called Gürten. They have a very small ski lift (more like a T bar), that is just right for kids. Along with a very affordable ski rental, the younger 3 kids got a day with a very gentle sloping bunny hill, quite appropriate for the beginner. Since I wasn't there, I can't really give a lot of details, outside of the following bullet items:
Joey was not interested in skiing at first
Cecilia did very well
Josh did all-right
Joey finally got the courage to put back on the skis after watching his brother and sister successfully getting down the hill
Jake stayed at home, since the age limit on this hill is 8. (and technically Cecilia wasn't allowed to ski here either, but she got away with it)
For more details, you'll have to discern them from the slideshow, or you'll have to ask Stacy.
Every year in Bern, there is a festival called Zibelemärit (Onion Market (ENDE)). Last November, I managed to drag the family out. The prior year, I had guests in from America (Hi mom!), and we spent the day in Fribourg, wandering around instead. Since this was likely the last opportunity for me to experience this unique festival in Bern, I had to take part in it. The warnings from everybody else who has been there before is usually "Get out by noon!" Of course, we did not follow this advice, instead; getting in just before noon.
This is a festival unlike anything else I have ever seen. Just about anybody who has a booth in Bern, sets up one along the streets; so street after street has store vendors selling their stuff; anywhere from the traditional kitsch trap of any touristy place, to food, to just about anything having to do something with onions. The city is quite crowded as the streets hold just about as many people as can get crammed in.
The Swiss, usually a rather "reserved" type of people, let loose on this day. They carry confetti, and throw it at passers-by in the street. The curlier the hair on the target, the better. The ammunition for the confetti assaults are sold by the bag-full by many street vendors on this day. Also popular with the kids, are plastic hammers that make an adorable squeak sound when you hit somebody on the head with them.
Me? I'm busy finding the Glühwein (Mulled Wine), a very thick, red, citrusey wine that is served undrinkably hot at first. As the cold November day wears on, the wine cools to a more drinkable temperature.
The kids all got armed with bags of confetti, and start throwing handfuls at the strangers in the street. This is OK, as the strangers in the street throw back their own bags of confetti in retaliation. By noon, the streets are covered in a thin paste of rained-on-smooshed-up yucky muddy confetti, that sticks to your feet.
Every once in a while, Joey would get a face-full of confetti thrown in under the rain shield on the jog stroller he was riding in, and would get very upset. He did not enjoy the day so much, as his view was not much more than lots of butts, and an occasional blast of confetti to the face. I don't think he enjoyed his day until the tram ride home.
At our lunch break, the rain came. The good news about the rain, is that it chased away a lot of the people on the street, giving me that window of opportunity to get food from the street vendors, without having to wait in a long line. I got a bowl of Rösti, which Stacy took a taste of, and immediately decided she needed a bowl of her own. Jake had a similar reaction, and actually ended up eating two bowls for himself.
We managed to escape the city center around 2 PM, where I understand a huge confetti fight takes place at 4PM with all the kids who have confetti left to throw. We were finding confetti in our pockets for weeks, and still, in February, find an occasional small unexpected bit of confetti.
Many people in Virginia ask me, "What's it like in Switzerland?"
That is a huge question to answer. So I can break it out into small chunks. How about I describe my commute? Yes? Ok.
Northern Virginians can talk long and passionately about traffic. In Northern Virginia, the population has exploded in the past 2 decades, and the roads have not expanded to meet the challenges of the increased population. The state government in Richmond gladly takes the increased revenue from the growing economy of Northern Virginia, and promptly redistributes this wealth immediately to the impoverished back-water sections of Virginia. Thus, the life of a Northern Virginian can be described as "brief periods of life separated by long hours in traffic. "
There are days when I feel like my life in Switzerland could be described as "memorable periods of life separated by long hours on the train." This is mostly because I live in Bern, and work in Fribourg, and I hardly ever get the joy of driving to work. This would be a commute that most Northern Virginians would reply, "Your commute is 36 minutes by car with no traffic? That's pretty good! I wish I could do that."
Depending on the day and my mood, my commute could consist of many combinations of walk, tram, train, bus, walk; in that order. I can be enthusiastic about this daily ritual, but after too many days of doing it, it starts to wear thin on me. I really would like to live 10 minutes from the office for once in my life. I haven't had such convenience since I lived in South Riding and worked in Chantilly.
One day in the middle of September, I took along my camera, and documented all the steps along the way. This was a day when I got out on time, but spent too much time goofing off and taking pictures for your benefit, so my timing on all the connections got messed up. Let's start.
I recommend you read through the timeline, then watch the slide show in full screen mode. There is also a map showing where I took all my pictures along the way, if that can help you visualize.
7:55. I have to promptly leave the house at 7:55. If I leave just a minute later, I jeopadize making the train in Gümligen. One cool thing about the trains being nearly always on time, is I learn how to cut it close. If I leave any later, I have to bike to work, or take the tram. I prefer to have the 30 minute walk along the top of the hill, it is much more scenic, and I get a good bit of exercise, a little time to clear my mind and prepare for the day ahead. My office has a competition where we track the number of miles we walk, and I have logged over 250 miles since we started in August.
The trip starts out in a small patch of forest, and has me head uphill past a horse farm. At the horse farm, there is this big black German Shepard that always comes out and barks at me. I have yelled at it at the top of my lungs, and that usually stops him from barking at me. When the mean dog is not around, usually there are two early 20's or teen-aged girls helping out on the farm, and they always say good morning. Since nobody else is manly enough to do a hike up this hill every morning, I guess I have become sort of a regular thing for them.
The path takes a steep turn up a gravelly rocky road where cars and motorcycles are not permitted. There is evidence of regular horse riding, as there are many "road apples" along the way. Some mornings the hill is more forboding than others, but as I do this commute up the hill more, the hill gets easier. The hill is steep enough that one could not dream of riding a bike up it, and just simply walking up this hill with a bicycle in hand is also a dreadful thought. Maybe the Swiss don't think it's so bad; maybe I'm just out of shape, or maybe I am just not used to the hills any more.
By the time I get to the top of the hill, the gravelly path has joined a small one-lane road which has very little traffic. Usually I see only one or two cars every morning. The rest of this part of the journey is a gentle downhill slope which makes the walk to work easier. Biking back up this hill going the other way is terrible. I have biked this way home only once, to get home a sloppy sweaty mess, out of breath for a good 10 minutes after arrival.
8:20. I get to the Schützenhaus der Gemeinde Müri, which has a very nice water fountain for me to get my hydration levels back up. This is where the forest breaks, and there is either a grey sky above me (the usual scenario), or on this day, the sky turned into a brilliant blue. There are more cars along here, but not so many that I fear for my life. The Schützenhaus is where the Swiss, who own guns, do shooting practice. There is a target range that you can walk under the live fire when they are shooting. I have never been here when the shooting range is active.
8:33. If I make a good enough walking pace, I can grab the S1 line that takes me directly to Fribourg. The train ride on the S1 is exactly 55 minutes long, and this is the fastest way to get from Gümligen to my office, bar none. It also is one of the more uncomfortable rides. The S1 is packed, so I don't get to sit until we get to the main train station, and most of the people get off. I usually don't take this train. I really have to walk quickly and not slow down for anything to make the S1 in 38 minutes from my front door.
8:38. The S2 that goes to Schwarzenburg arrives at Gümligen. I usually take this train to the Bern main station, where I then take the intercity to Fribourg. This gets me to Fribourg 8 minutes later than if I was to take the S1. So if I miss the S1, it is not a tragedy. I have a back-up plan.
8:40. If I manage to miss the S1 and the S2, there is a third fall-back. There is a tram that leaves Gümligen and shows up in downtown. A very brisk walk after the "G" tram makes it into Bern Zytglogge can get me to the 9:04 train at the main train station.
This morning, I was so busy taking pictures for you, that I blew it, and missed all three connections. This almost never happens. i got distracted by taking some pictures of cows and mountains, and sights along the way, that I didn't realize that I had fallen so far behind schedule. Oh well. This gives me an opportunity to show you what standing around the tram stop in Gümligen looks like, so you can get a glimpse of my everyday life. Since I missed all three of the above connections, I also missed the intercity train to Fribourg that leaves at 9:04. So the commute will take even longer now.
Most of the Swiss spend their time on public transportation reading the free newspapers. They are not the paragon of journalistic integrity, but they pass the time. The articles are written in simple enough German for me to read (I have a really hard time reading the real newspapers, that use lots of words I never learned, and I would spend all my time reading the dictionary to get the meaning of the articles.) Here, this day's newspaper describes the Stock Market meltdown, and also describes the new uniforms of the Swiss Ski team.
The tram trip is pretty slow going, and is only a few minutes faster than it would be to drive downtown. I get off at Bern Zytglogge, where the "G" tram ends. In order to make the inter city train, I have to walk to the train station, about 8 minutes walk away. Sometimes, I grab the #3, the #5 or the #9 tram, which all take me straight to the train station. Since I have a lot of time to get to my 9:34 train, I decide to walk it and show you some of the pictures along the way. For those who don't know the rules of pronouncing Swiss words, "Zytglogge" is pronounced kind of like "TSEET-glock-kah" Along the walk from Zytglogge to the Bahnhof (train station), there are many shops along the way. A few clothing stores, like H&M, Vögeli, and a butcher/deli. I never do any shopping, so I don't have much idea what is actually in these shops.
9:16. I arrive at the main train station. I have no idea what Bern looked like before the great construction of 2007. In 2007 through May of 2008, all of this area around the train station was a huge mess of construction and blocked roads, pedestrian paths re-routed, trams stopped. They managed to finish all the work for the revamped train station just about a week before the UEFA soccer tournament began.
A part of the massive construction that was done includes a new wing of the underground mall, where they now show some of the old city walls, enclosed in a glass display, showered with pink light. There is no escaping the worldly influence of McDonald's, as there is one that is never empty right inside the train station. I get to the train station meeting area, where there is a big blue display showing all of the trains that arrive and depart from Bern. I already know what train I am taking, as do most of the people here this morning. There are occasionally tourists studying the departure board carefully, or asking for directions. There are also the locals waiting around for a friend to arrive; they use this area as a meeting point.
My train to Fribourg is the nice train. This train comes once an hour, at the bottom of the hour, instead of the top of the hour. This is the double decker train, with a very nice restaurant on board. At 9:04, the train that goes to Fribourg is not nearly as nice, but still much more comfortable than the S1 that stops about a dozen times between Gümligen to Fribourg. On the adjacent track is the Cisalpino train to Milan. I have not had an opportunity to take this train yet, but will probably sometime in the next few weeks for a business trip to Turino.
When the train arrives, there is an orderly shuffle without proper queueing to get into the train. Many of the Swiss stand too closely to the door, as crowded passengers coming in from Zürich attempt to get off. Since this is such a late train, it is not nearly as crowded as if I had gotten on this train an hour earlier. I usually get on the car close to the restaurant, there are usually more seats further up the train, but it is never a problem trying to find a seat toward Fribourg.
The double-decker train InterCity Express is incredibly quiet and smooth. There is one car named "the quiet car", which is so quiet you can often only hear the rustling of newspapers. There are usually tourists who get into the quiet car and inconsiderately start talking. I seem to be more Swiss every day, as I usually give these rude talkers a very dirty look, but say nothing.
The train arrives in Fribourg 27 minutes later, but this day, there was a seven minute delay. In August 2007, there was some sort of landslide that caused the rails between Wünnewil and Flamatt to be unusable. There has been construction on this line ever since. In one small place on the line, there is only one track for both directions, which will require us to wait for a service in the opposite direction to pass. The train I took on this day had to wait, and it caused a seven minute delay. The delay in this direction does not bother me much; especially since I have had so many other delays this morning, what is another seven minutes?
I exit the train with nearly everybody else. A sea of people exit the train, and walk at an average walking pace down the ramp to the rest of the train station. At the exit of the station, I hang around at the bus stop. It is usually only a 2 minute wait, but since we were seven minutes late from the rail construction, I waited longer than usual.
The rest of the commute is not that interesting. I take an empty bus to the edge of town, and walk another ten minutes to our office. The morning is started by a fresh cup of coffee, as delivered from our Nespresso machine, which I adore. This machine is great, especially as it does not give my coworkers the opportunity to be rude and finish off all the coffee in the coffee pot without refilling it. Insert a capsule, put a cup in place, and press the button, and a great cup of coffee comes out.
The amount of time I put into the daily commute does start to drain on me. Emotionally, it has taken a serious toll in me, especially in this past week. Time can be shaved off here and there; if I take my bicycle from the house to Gümligen, I can do the trip in 7 or 8 minutes. I have to be walking out the front door by 8:25 at the absolute latest to bike to Gümligen and make the 8:33 S1 train. In any event, I probably will remember the commute when I think back on my time in Switzerland. I might even look upon it favorably. However, I will never look back memorably on my Virginia commute by car.
Moving is a serious pain. You would think that moving once every 5 years would be enough. You might even think that moving once in the last six months would prevent any plans for moving any time in the near future.
Apparently the pain of cramming all of our family in that tiny apartment in Bern was too much to handle for my wife and kids. There was no place for the kids to retreat. Any time they walked down the hall any louder than a tip-toe, and I would yell at them to walk more quietly. I am sure that the neighbor below appreciated this. Eventually, everybody realized they were miserable, my wife included. She even was toying around with taking the kids back to the US without me, until my contract to stay here finished out. What a revoltin' development!
My wife set out to find some place new. She found several places, all of which made my daily commute even worse than we already had. There was one in Oberscherli, which wasn't that far from our apartment in Bern. After a review of the public transportation, I found out that I would have to get a Post bus that comes twice an hour, and then take another bus to the Bern Bahnhof train station. Total projected commute time, one way: one hour 56 minutes. Up from one hour, 10 minutes. Amazing, considering that this place was only a few km away from the first apartment.
Oberdiessbach, even further away. The house was awesome, the view stunning, the commute beyond dreadful. Apparently Stacy was taking this this "One man's quiet suffering" idea to the morbid extreme.
Finally she found this cute little cottage two tram stops from the International School of Berne, within a short walk of Joey's baby sitter. A short tram ride from the Gümlingen train station, which takes me straight to Fribourg. The same rent as the apartment in Bern, more space, a yard to play in, a parking space, and a most spectacular view of the Alps from the dining room table.
Faced with the very uncomfortable prospect of paying double-rent for another 8 months, Stacy set out to find some renters for the apartment in Bern, so that we could break the lease with, as the Swiss call it "ein Nachmieter" (an after-renter). We set up an ad in the local newspapers, and on-line to find a renter right away. During the whole month of December, we had two visitors. (This is really not the best time of year to rent out an apartment). Things were looking pretty desperate, and we had no prospects to assume the rental of the apartment when we finally moved in January.
With so few prospects, this was an increasingly morerevoltin' development!
Anybody who expressed a vague interest in the apartment was met with great enthusiasm on our part. We met everybody who wanted to see the apartment. There were a few guys who got out of medical school and were looking to find a place after their landlord decided he wanted his apartment back since he was coming back from an extended relocation to Ireland. They were desperate to find a place to live, they need it now! And I have just the place!
We showed them the place in the first few weeks of January, and they indicated their interest, eventually signing the lease two weeks ago, to take residence in the middle of February. Stacy had the protocol inspection with the tenants, a real estate agent, and a representative for the cleaning crew just yesterday, and as of last evening, we are finally free of that apartment! I should have a drink to celebrate.
We've been here for 6 weeks as of today, and have been settled in quite well. The kids seem happy -- something we certainly haven't seen in them during the crowded months at Somazzistrasse. We have met the two neighbors who share the house, a very nice lady above us, who was originally from Muri, lived in Berlin for 20-some years, and has recently moved back to Switzerland. The other neighbors have lived in this shared dwelling for a very long time. He first moved into this dwelling in 1945, when he was 8 years old. Retired, and terribly nice.
We have also gotten the "yellin' at" from the locals too. Not by the neighbors mentioned in the above paragraph, but by the neighbor who got angry at us for some cardboard we left out on the sidewalk, that wasn't picked up by the local trash company. As many of you Americans may think that the trash company is at fault for not picking up the trash, please understand that in this case, "the customer is not always right." Here, the trash company is usually right. We didn't follow the protocol for the recycling of cardboard and newspaper -- all cardboard has to be neatly tied up. We just chucked the cardboard -- neatly stacked -- into a big cardboard box and hoped for the best. We got away with this sort of behavior in Bern, but not here in the Worb Gemeinde.
Not good enough. They didn't pick it up, I didn't notice. A day went by. It rained. The angry neighbor shuffled through the papers, and found our address and left an anger-o-gram on the outside of the box. We didn't notice the cardboard or the anger-o-gram. Another day goes by. The neighbor visits Stacy during the day and gives Stacy a good yellin'-at -- in Bärndutsch. Well, in Switzerland, I guess it's not home until you get yelled at by a local about some critical trash or noise violation. The Swiss are sensitive to trash, and especially sensitive to noise.
Starting the day before Thanksgiving, my mother, my sister, and my nephew arrived in Bern to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. This is the first time since we left the US that we have seen any family members; so their visit was incredibly welcome and well-received.
I was so excited by the visit, that I took the days off work to spend time with them. I was also maxed out on Paid Time Off, so this was perfect timing for them to show up.
Thanksgiving Dinner Thursday was pretty much lost to recovering from jet lag for the travellers, so we elected not to have the celebration on the actual Thursday night. The dinner was scheduled for Friday night, and we invited all of the other co-workers in-exile from my office. Chris, Maria and Chris's wife, Miz K. Chris and Miz K. brought the beer, a honey-glazed ham, some sort of cranberry cherry thing, and some delicious glaze for the ham. Maria brought home-made Mac and Cheese from her mom's recipe book.
Usually, I don't really like the turkey, and will enjoy all of the side fixing instead of the actual Turkey. In fact, my opinion is that Thanksgiving would be perfectly acceptable if we just forgot the turkey, and ate only the side dishes. The ideal Thanksgiving dinner would contain these items, and not bother with the turkey:
So, thankfully, we had all of these items. Some smuggled into Switzerland from the US, others found here, and some made from scratch. I think the only items we really had to smuggle in were the fried onion bits for the Green Bean Casserole. Hmm. Maybe some other items; I'm not sure.
Like every Thanksgiving, I ate too much. I should have worn my "stretchy-pants" to accommodate for the increased storage capacity. After the dinner, I was overcome with the urge to sleep, a side-effect doubtless caused by the Tryptophan. I made this remark at the dinner table, and Chris responded, "That sure is a long way to say the word Heineken", as he pointed at my glass of beer.
Jake sat next to Chris, and took pleasure at annoying Chris. He poked an increasingly annoyed Chris on the shoulder, saying 'poke, poke'. I guess he was trying to get attention, or just be funny.
"Jake, leave him alone. He knows Brazilian Jiu-jutsu, and probably could pummel you. And he has my permission. " I pointed out to Jake.
Chris's wife remarked, "Yeah, he only doesn't hit people with glasses, and doesn't hit girls." Jake got up from the table to go get his glasses; likely to don them as if they were some impenetrable shield. As Jake was walking back to the bedrooms, Miz K shouted, "Don't you go putting on your sister's clothes!" Well, it was funny at the time.
Fun With Foil Sitting after dinner, we had a sheet of aluminum foil sitting idle. Conversation and fiddling fingers eventually started making funny things with folded aluminum. I think it started with Josh wanting me to make a paper airplane for him, made of Aluminum foil. I crafted one, threw it, and it flew beautifully. Chris started making Origami, making an unflyable airplane. Somehow, it turned into personal adornments. Earrings, nose rings, glasses.
My sister Deborah made glasses for Jake. I borrowed the glasses for a minute and crafted them to mimic Deborah's first pair of glasses -- a subject of mythic family folklore. Deborah's first pair of glasses were worn in the first grade. The glasses salesman pointed out the first pair of glasses, "These are so beautiful. I think you will really like these." They were turquoise, with blue sparkles, and had the typical harlequin cats-eyes shape that was so prevalent in the late 1960s. I have never seen these glasses. But their legend has lived on within family folklore for decades. As to why Deborah chose these glasses, the first pair that was offered to her, and why she accepted them so readily and eagerly, her response was, "Well I didn't want to hurt the salesman's feelings!" I understand the glasses were later broken in a tragic schoolyard incident, but I'm not fully aware of the details.
Here is my artistic impression, with aluminum foil, of those original glasses, as worn by my sister:
And worn by Jake, along with a pig's snout of foil:
What would foil be without wearing Hip-Hop's best ornament? The Dental Grillz! Chris (right) and I show off our dental fashion, with a mean look to go with it.
We had a really great time. Everybody did. Each foil creation was met with howling laughter. Each creation met with the next, more outrageous foil creation until we got to the dental grillz, when the joke finally got kind of old.
Miz K's local friend, living in Switzerland, originally from Poland, when told of our Thanksgiving adventures had many questions. Among the questions and incredulity of the quantity and quality of the food, finally asked: "Is this the way Americans celebrate this holiday? With Aluminum foil?"
Miz K responded:"The eating part, yes. The foil part? No, it hasn't been, but we had so much fun it will be from now on."
Jake decided to stay home with an upset stomach. So Stacy, Josh, Joey, Cecilia and I all got on the S2 to The main Bern Central Station. While at the central station, Stacy bought a Libero card, which allowed her to ride anywhere on the S-Bahn or bus without any sort of fare. This is limited to the general area around Bern. For the kids, she got them a "Zone 10-11" card, which allows the kids to ride (without us) anywhere in the immediate zone around downtown Bern (within zones 10 and 11, naturally), which includes our station, and the Gümlingen station. So hopefully, we will eventually be able to drop the kids at the train station and say "bye!"; have them go to school without having to drive them or accompany them.
We investigated getting a SBB General Abonnement card for me, exchanging what I currently have, the Halbtax-Abo. The GA-Abo, as it's called -- would permit me unlimited travel within any Swiss bus or train for a year. Unfortunately, I had not yet received my permanent Halbtax-Abo card in the mail, and only had my temporary card. Since the Halbtax-Abo card cost us 150 CHF, I wasn't about to waste that money.
We grabbed some quick lunch at the Migro take-away in the station, and hopped onto the 1302 S3 to Belp train. Only three stops, and we got off at Wabern bei Bern. The Gurtenbahn is right next to the train station, and it is hard to miss the very obvious signs pointing uphill. At the office for the Gurten bahn, Stacy got to ride free with her Libero card. The kids got to ride free with their Junior Karte, and I had to pay half-fare on the train up the hill.
This train is specifically designed to climb hills. Even to get on-board, one must climb stairs to get to the top of the train. After a short while, we were on our way.
Of course the view up the hill was spectacular, with a very good view of the downtown portion of Bern, and a nice look at the Aare river, on its way through Bern. This was exactly the opposite view of town as when we went to see the fireworks on Swiss National Day on the first of August. Jake and I saw the fireworks from the bridge that you can see over the Aare.
At the top of the hill, there is a nice restaurant, and a Ski jump. Since this is August and not February, the ski jump was of course, offline. The kids got immediately excited about the first thing they saw: A kid-sized train. The line to get on it was long, and Joey screamed with tortuous anger as we denied him travel on the train. The source for this anguish was because there were other people in front of us in the line.
Eventually, the three kids and Stacy settled onto the train for the ride. Stacy eventually was kicked off for lack of room, and the three kids went alone. The ride wasn't far, just around the park, and long enough so that the little kids on for the ride would not think of mommy and want to jump off.
Also at the park at the top of the hill is a nice little pond for the kids to play in, complete with a toad the kids managed to get out from under one of the play equipment in the pond. The pond also had this cool raft that was on rails. To get across, one had to pull along the rope. Josh was the first to get totally wet when Cecilia pulled the raft forward while Josh wasn't watching, and while he was boarding, he landed butt-first in the water.
We made our way to the viewing tower, made all of wood and steel cabling. It was a beautiful piece of architecture. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of it. :( I did, however, get some pictures from the top of the hill. The hill isn't far from our apartment, and the tower could easily see our apartment next to the soccer fields. The journey up the tower was difficult, as I had a heavy Joey on my shoulders, and we had already been walking all day. But once at the top of the tower, the view was fantastic. The winds were blowing, and we could feel the whole tower sway in the wind. Since the tower was made mostly of wood, this might have made Stacy feel uneasy, but I found it pleasant. I could also feel the wind blowing upward, and thought it would probably be a good source of lift if I was flying a glider there.
Eventually, we dragged the kids away from the park and got back down the hill to the Wabern Bei Bern train station. We had 3 minutes to get from the bottom of the hill-climber train to the train station, and a long flight of stairs with a stroller to do it. The train came promptly, and I was at the automat paying for my tickets. Stacy and the kids, with the freedom of Libero, boarded the train.
I quickly punched in the fare for Liebefeld Station. I quickly noted 1/2 fare, and one way and second class. The machine got to the screen of "Please to be entering your money." I had a 5 CHF coin ready to insert. I threw it in. The machine unpleasantly spat the coin out.
"Piet! Are you coming!?"
I re-entered the 5CHF piece. Spat again. Once more time, the third is the charm! I threw in the coin, and it was accepted. The machine started printing my ticket. The automat was on slow-dial that day. My ticket was released, and the 2 CHF or so in change. I grabbed. I ran toward the train. The doors closed about 2 meters in front of me, and the train started its journey without me.
I was a few cars in front of Stacy, and saw the wife and kids zing by at about 20 kph by the time their car went by. I looked at the train schedule and noticed, as usual, the next one comes in the next 30 minutes. I contemplated waiting for about 30 seconds, and then realized that it really wasn't that long of a walk home, so I started my journey by foot.
Drama and Trauma at the Qualipet Stacy extended her journey to Köniz, and went to the Migros by that train station. I was about half-way home, walking up a nice little foot path called Frischingingweg, which was the way from our old Hotel Ambassador and our apartment. By the time I got to Hessstrasse, Stacy called me and informed me that I must immediately make my way to Köniz to see the two new baby bunnies that were in the Qualipet. The Qualipet is the pet store where we bought the rabbits' new cage (which is on the balcony), and where we buy most of our food supplies for the rabbits.
We really didn't have any more room in this apartment for the two new creatures that the wife and kids had their hearts set on. I was recalled to Qualipet to play "Bad Cop" and say no to the kids. I walked all the way to Schwarzenburgstrasse to get home. But I was forced to Köniz, and hopped on another bus ride to go south.
I arrive at the Qualipet and find two kids in tears, with bloodshot eyes, and what looked to be three rounds of tears dried up, and re-established. Joshie especially was the melodramatic one falling on the floor as if he had just been lanced by a spear. Cecilia sobbing, rushed up to me and grabbed my hand, "Quick! you HAVE to see these bunnies!" she insisted.
Yes, they were cute. And the kids had fallen in love with these new rabbits. They had even come up with names for them. "We named them Doh Doh and Kilo" How original. That was the name of our old two rabbits, who died last year. Kilo fell victim to some unknown plague, taking him out in his prime, at a young three years of age in the middle of the night without any warning to us.
Doh Doh was older than the hills and made it to thirteen years old before he finally gave out. When he died, he was completely blind, and couldn't even sit up straight any more; clearly the victim of arthritis in his hips. Poor guy. The kids surely hadn't forgotten these to fellows, and the new arrivals at the Qualipet were soon renamed to honor the fallen pets from the past.
Here are the photos of "Kilo mk2", left, and "Doh Doh mk2" to the right.
Yes they are cute. And our current rabbits aren't exactly proving themselves as useful. Look at this web site in Denmark, where somebody has trained Buck Bunny's identical twin to be useful and actually do cool tricks! These rabbits jump. Mine just run away when you try to pet them.
I stood my ground. Later, Joshie sulked around the living room. His usual habit is to just stop whatever he's doing and say, "Daddy I love you." This evening was no different. "Daddy, I lo-" He stopped mid-breath. "Daddy, I hate you. Why didn't you let us have the bunnies? They were so cute!" Usually, Stacy plays "bad cop" and I play the comic-relief role in parenting. I guess now I see what it's like on the other side.
Car Rentals (August 17th) Somehow, I have managed to have a zero-carbon footprint since I came here to Switzerland. I don't mean a zero I live on candlelight and firewood zero-carbon lifestyle, but no driving around for me, like the typical American. I've made it my point to take the bus or the train as long as possible. It appears that this lifestyle has made it very difficult on the wife, especially, when it comes time to take home a very large batch of groceries, or taking home things like the new rabbit cage from the Qualipet (for the original two bunnies, not the new ones. I did stand my ground, you know).
Time had run out. We need to go to Ikea and buy some of the furniture that we did not ship here. The furniture that we currently are renting, and is soon to be taken away by the same furniture rental company, not to be replaced. There were no other affordable furniture places that we knew of here in Bern, and upon advice from Stacy's new American in Switzerland friend, Peggy, we were best off by going to Ikea.
The first part of this agenda is finding a rental car. And finding a rental car on short notice with the quality of seating this large family of mine is usually no small task. Earlier in this journey, I managed to find my way to Hertz, only to get rejected on the ludicrous request for a 6 person van without a reservation. I really had been putting this day off for as long as I could, but it seems my rope ran out.
We found a place called "Europcar" in downtown bern, on Laupenstrasse, about 2 blocks from the train station. I took the number 10 bus to Hirschengraben. At the office, I managed to get the car that Stacy had reserved the night before, and I promptly got the keys. Actually, the key. This is a Mercedes 7 person van; not a mini-van by any means. The key is an oddly shaped device, not looking like any key I've seen before. The van is a stick-shift; the first time I had ever seen a vehicle of that size with a stick shift on the console. Also, it's a diesel.
I should have really prepared a better way of getting home, as I didn't really know the ways around the town so well if it's not on a train or on a bus. I found myself going to the hospital (not as a patient, just driving by it). I also found myself going north of the train station, into a tunnel with a large parking garage. I kept making random left and right turns, trying to find an appropriate place to make a U-Turn. Eventually, I found myself trying to turn around in a small apartment complex, and finding that I couldn't figure out how to get the damned van into reverse!
After about 4 of 5 minutes of swearing and fidgeting with the gear shift, I managed to get the van into reverse, and back my way out of the apartment complex I had wedged myself into. Thankfully, there were no people waiting around behind me, thinking I'm a retard for not knowing how to drive. They would have been correct, of course.
I finally got home after even more swearing and cussing, and no telling how many driving violations I had. When I got home, I picked up Stacy, Josh, Cecilia, and Joey, and we were off to the Ikea. Somehow Jake managed to talk his way into staying home for the day. Stacy had gotten directions from Peggy, and we were off to a small town called "Lyssach" northeast of Bern.
This was by far the biggest Ikea I had ever seen. To put it into an American perspective, it's like three stories of CostCo. We got into the parking garage, and were led to the front of the store. This Ikea has a restaurant in the front, and you are taken on a course through the store, with arrows on the floor marking which way you have to go. If you walk against the arrows, you bump into all sorts of people-traffic -- all looking at you and wondering why you're going the wrong way.
We found a desk that I liked, all in black, and a desk that Stacy liked, with lots of places for her papers and knick-knacks and things she does to keep us all organized. We found a bed for us (we really like the rental furniture bed, and really wished we left our bed behind in the US trash heap). and a nice place to let the kids play on the spare laptop, so they can stay off of my and Stacy's computers.
Stacy placed an order to have the beds delivered, and found that, to our horror, the Ikea delivery guys won't show up for 3 to 4 weeks. Remember, the rental furniture guys are taking away our stuff on Wednesday, so this isn't going to do.
We left the Ikea with just a few shopping bags of stuff, to return on the next day.
Rite of Passage: Caravan to Ikea Doing a trip to Ikea on a Saturday in Switzerland can be described as insane. Maybe it should be described as "something you avoid under all circumstances." But we have a deadline here! Stacy managed to sweet-talk her new (and extremely nice friend) Peggy into watching our kids early on Saturday morning. Her husband, whom we had not yet met, had somehow been roped into this.
The plan is for Stacy and me to gut the van's chairs out, to make the Monster-Mercedes into a shipping truck. Nick will ride along to the Ikea in his van, in case we can't load our vehicle any more. And he, as a native Swiss German, can help translate when my withered "Da ist der Tisch" German won't do.
Mercedes gets high marks for its vehicles, but certainly not on this day. The removal of the seats involved almost as much swearing and sweating as was involved on my initial ride home from the EuropCar dealer on Friday. Eventually, after Stacy gave up and went back upstairs, I managed to unload all of the seats from the van, and park the extra chairs in our parking space.
The trip to Ikea started with Nick and me getting a cup of coffee at the front restaurant, while Stacy went and got some of the numbers for the bed she likes figured out with an Ikea representative. We eventually had too many cups of coffee, and came to find Stacy speaking to an Ikea employee who didn't have the flag of the UK on her name label (meaning that she didn't think herself qualified to speak English to customers, but did it anyway). The discussion was getting sticky when Stacy was trying to order some sort of wardrobe with sliding doors, when Nick came to the rescue, and Sweetza-Dootched everything over smoothly. (I think I could have Hock-Doytched my way out of that mess, but he did a better job than me).
This Ikea had three sections. The first section was the show room. This is where the furniture you like is assembled and really pretty. The second part is the self-help section, where you put stuff into your shopping cart. This is where some of the plants, the boxes, the kitchen-ware, the knives, plates, cups, lights, and those sorts of things are sold. The third section is the warehouse section. This is where you take your labels that you wrote down in the first section, and find the appropriate boxes to put onto your obscenely-large cart.
Nick and I got the equipment/parts list from Stacy and started running down the aisles fetching various boxes with easy-to-remember names such as "Galant 100.568.88" Nick and I found a pattern to these boxes. We would look on the sheet to find the row and rack of the item we were looking for. As we went down the row, and came near the shelf where the item was stored, we would look for the biggest package available. Then, once we found the largest box, we would verify that the number on the box was the same as was on the sheet. Most of the time, we were served well with this strategy.
We filled five of these carts with an obscene amount of boxes, of various shapes and sizes; and made our way to the check-out. Several thousand Francs later, we were the proud owners of a zillion big boxes, ready to be shipped in our Monster-Mercedes. The Monster-Mercedes had plenty of room to store all the boxes, but with each box weighing at least 35 kilos, we started to wonder if we were reaching the maximum load of the van. We also made the mistake of loading the left side of the van first, and the right side of the van second. Apparently, the load was much heavier on the left than the right, as we could visibly see the van lean harder on its left wheels.
We set out in caravan mode, Nick leading the way. He started with the window open, driving next to us, saying "I'll go slowly." It's a good thing too. On the first part of the journey, apparently, I shifted from first gear to second too early, and the van really didn't like that.
No mater what I did, I couldn't get the van to go faster than 30 kph. Some light on the dashboard named "Lim" lit up. I could put the van back into first gear, and we would be revving 5000 rpms, near red-line, and shift it back into second gear to hear the engine laboring. "It's going to be a long ride home at this speed" Stacy noted. I had visions of us puttering along in the right lane, pissing off all of Switzerland with our can't get past 30kph -- clearly overloaded van. We already were creating a traffic jam behind us, leading out of the Ikea.
Not good.
We limped along the one-lane road leading up to the motorway. Thankfully, there was a little downhill leading up to the ramp onto the motorway. This allowed the vehicle to gain enough speed to get it out of the low-torque/low-rpm mode, and we got enough oomph to get up the hill. Instead of driving conservatively, now I'm gunning the engine like a race car driver, trying to get way more rev out of each gear than I would normally. It was a strategy that served me well, and we made it home uneventfully.
Unloading the piles of boxes into the apartment was even more of an adventure. With the small elevator, big boxes, big van, and small parking space, I'm just getting tired thinking about it. Jake and Peggy came down to help carry the lighter boxes, Joey was clingey-boy, and would only be held by Mommy. Nick and I would take the 35 kilo boxes out of the van, and Stacy would direct us, depending on the name of the box, whether we were to put it in the "goes upstairs" pile, or "goes into storage" pile.
After the van was unloaded, getting the seats back into the van was even more time for me to say "Mercedes engineers, you suck." The Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager vans we had previously did a MUCH better engineering job of seat removal and replacement. The Mercedes van engineers get a D- for their engineering effort in ease-of-use for seat removal and replacement. Thankfully, now I'm an expert at the installation and removal of these seats, just in time for me to give the van back to Europcar.
I've had several people ask me why I haven't been updating this enough. To get this question, it is clear that i didn't complain enough about the spotty connectivity we have here until we get our DSL line set up. Let me begin:
There is no DSL in the house
There is no phone in the house
There are no Starbucks in the area (Well, there is one downtown in Bern)
There are no stupid neighbors who have left their wireless LAN open.
There is one network that we can dip into wirelessly.
But there's a few catches
Köniz, the neighboring... uh... County (to put it in an American term), has a free wireless Internet. For a little while. And since we live right on the border between Bern and Liebefeld-Köniz, we are just barely in the wireless LAN's region. So this means, in order to get connectivity, one must get closer to the network. This also means that there's not enough oomph to get through the thick brick walls we have here. So in short, this means that the laptop must be on the balcony, or the wireless connection must be outside somehow.
Even if on the balcony, the signal drops out on all the laptops but Stacy's. The City wireless LAN isn't infinitely available. They have an hour-long duration per login. If after that one hour expires, you have to log in again. This can make web surfing sucky. It makes doing work for my office even harder; as each time the signal drops to zero, or each time the login expires, the VPN tunnel collapses, and I have to go through the tedious process of re-logging in through the wireless LAN, and re-constructing the VPN Tunnel.
Don't get me wrong, it's been really great having this wireless LAN to leech off of. But I would rather have had my own network, instead of having to leech. Soon this will be over.
The embarrassing photo the upper right shows the USB connection to the wireless adapter I had (good thing it was sitting around in my packed luggage), connecting my Linux laptop to the City WLAN.
The saga of getting the phones set up has required multiple calls to Swisscom, and several visits from an electrician. I'm not exactly sure what the difficulties were, but it appears that getting phones set up in a new building is quite a chore.
Now for something different: I have been asked why my blog has so many religious advertisements. If you know me, I would never go into a church unless there is a funeral, wedding (and only for somebody I would really like. ) Please make sure to type the URL correctly. pietbarber.BLOGSPOT.COM, not pietbarber.LOGSPOT.COM. The guy on that site is a kook.
The Great Toe Episode On 4 August, around midnight local time, Jake closed the balcony door over his right foot. This resulted in some sharp knife-like object slicing his baby toe pretty seriously. Seriously enough, that Stacy (the Registered Nurse), decided that he needed to go to the hospital. -- But we don't have a car!
So we had to call for an ambulance. The equivalent of 911 in Switzerland is not universal. You have a special emergency code for each Gemeinde (think of a Gemind like a county). In the case of Bern, that number is "144"
It's a good thing I speak German, because the guy on the phone at 144 didn't speak English. I've never been trained in German, how to order an ambulance to your residence, so it was winging it all the way. I didn't know the words for hospital or ambulance or even "toe" (so the word for foot had to suffice. (Actually, I did end up knowing the word for toe, but wasn't sure enough to say it in the conversation, so I didn't want him to think that Jake cut off his earlobe)).
An ambulance came about 7 or 8 minutes later. By that time, I had carried Jake downstairs on my back. The elevator was just a few inches shorter than the width of his knees extended on each side, and as I entered the elevator, both knees banged into the side of the elevator doors. Upon exit, the same slapstick was repeated. One of the ambulance technicians, (a very attractive woman), approached, and spoke perfect English. After a call to downtown headquarters, the two EMTs, Stacy and Jake got into the ambulance and rushed away.
I stayed home with the sleeping children.
Jake ended up getting three stitches, and has no signs of infection 6 days later. We visited a Pediatrician's office on Monday, who said all looks good. Other Adventures in Health Care At the same time we had Jake taken to the doctor for the follow-up visit, we had to take Joey to see a doctor, due to what was clearly a case of conjunctivitis. What wasn't clear, was if it was viral or bacterial. We met the English speaking pediatrician who had excellent bedside manner, and determined that Joey was just suffering a viral infection. Good news, no drama of the forcing antibiotics onto the kid for 10 days. There's Jake's ambulance to the right. Yes, it was dark, remember.
Still no Car Somehow we're making it without a car. Getting the groceries home is a chore, and it looks like the trip to Ikea isn't going to be possible without a car. But outside of that, if we rented a car, it would site idle for 400 CHF a day. (yikes)
Furniture On Saturday, Stacy dragged me out of bed to go to Otto's, (...kind of like a Target back home, but with lots of furniture upstairs) she was sure that it was to close at 12:00. (It didn't, it closes at 16:00). There, I looked at desk furniture that I didn't like. (sigh) I guess my pickyness is going to force me to go to Ikea, after all.
Speaking of Pickiness We are making huge strides in getting Cecilia to eat something other than the four food groups: Chocolate, noodles, Macaroni, and Chicken Nuggets. On Monday evening, we decided to go out to dinner at Eigerplatz, at a new restaurant. We all enjoyed the dinner; I especially enjoyed the Paulaner Hefeweissbier. Stacy had some sort of Spaetzle dish, Jake enjoyed a 250g steak. Cecilia did eat just a plate of noodles, and some chicken, but at least it was chicken that didn't come in the form of a nugget.
Internet and Phone Saga Finally, after many phone calls, several trips to the house by a registered electrician, and getting to know the girl at Swisscom's front office by first-name basis (Melanie), we have gotten the house set up with Internet access. All of the laptops in the house can talk to the printer, and Jake no longer has to sit out on the balcony to play on the Internet.
Walking the Town Like Tourists On Wednesday, there were no appointments, everybody was reasonably healthy, we set out to downtown Bern to see the sights of the city. Also on our agenda was to climb Gurten, the local high hill. We started with a short train ride into town, and started walking the streets. We made our way all the way down to the American Embassy. The orange line shows our path. The trip began at the main train station at the top-left of the map.
Along the way, we found two nice playgrounds, one with the biggest slide I have ever seen (near the bridge) the other with a great little man-made creek running through it.
"I can not imagine all that is involved with moving a family to Switzerland!", I keep hearing.
You're right! You can't imagine!
I wish I could say "it all started with..." but that would be difficult to figure out where all this difficulty started, without going all the way back to when Stacy and I decided that this "would be a fun adventure." So I'll skip lots of details that I couldn't possibly cram in to 1.5 hours of typing, and start with the adventure of packing all the 62 million things we have into 24 pieces of luggage.
Our strategy of divvying up stuff takes one of eight paths:
Stuff we won't need and was trashed at the old house
Stuff we didn't want and was donated
Stuff we needed, but not for two years, and was stored
Stuff in my office, that I wouldn't need until I got to my new office in Switzerland, shipped from my office, by my company
Stuff we needed, but not immediately, was shipped by sea
Stuff we needed, and quickly, was shipped by air
Stuff we needed upon arrival, but not during the flight, in checked luggage
Stuff we needed on the flight, or while travelling, in carry-on baggage.
After many many hours of thankless calculation and preparation, Stacy decided that our journey would be accompanied by 24 bags. These are not the simple travel suitcases of years past. These were honkin' large huge suitcases. The airlines charge for overweight bags. We blew the weight limit on four of them, and paid the $200 for the privilege of not being able to pack light. We also paid the privilege of paying the sky cab $40 in handsome tips to put up with our mountain of luggage.
My mother visited us at the airport to send us off. The airport was surprisingly empty, and we zipped through security. We donated a bag of shampoo and toiletries to the TSA, who graciously accepted the donation. Apparently, that bag of shampoo was supposed to get put into a different piece of luggage, but somehow made it into the carry-ons.
At the gate, there was a helpful employee who insisted that the semi-mountain of carry-on luggage could be reduced, and gate-checked the luggage. This actually was a huge favor for us, and now Piet did not have to play the role of "beast of burden." I don't think Stacy was as thankful as I was.
On the flight, Joseph decided that he did not want a seatbelt, and fought gallantly against the oppression of being restrained. Joe is usually a very well-behaved child, but today, he would have none of it. We had one of those wonderful parenting experiences where everybody in earshot had a large dose of second-guessing our parenting skills. Originally, the seating was all along a long row of seats; four in the center section, two along the window, from left to right: Cecilia, Joey, Stacy, Josh, Then the two seats next to the window: Piet, Jake.
It probably was a mistake for Joey to sit between Cecilia and Stacy, since he is a daddy's boy after all. The fight for being seated didn't end until Joey ran out of energy to fight. Cecilia was quickly re-assigned to sit next to Jake, and Joe was to get the full attention of flying between Stacy and me. He managed to find several ways to escape from the belts, his most favorite being to slouch over, and slip out from under the seatbelt. This was remedied with my arm being planted firmly between his legs, as a sort of third strap, to keep him from sliding down to the floor. It was a pretty awful experience, and I wish the FDA would come out with some sort of "toddler chloroform" over the counter. We would be first in line to purchase that product.
The children were determined to not sleep on this flight. The flight departed out of Dulles at 8:05, and was to arrive in Munich at 10am the next morning, Munich time. I don't think the kids fell asleep until about 1 or 2:00 AM EDT. Jake got the most sleep. Stacy got a grand total of zero minutes of sleep. (If you thought she was grouchy before!)
We arrived in Munich on-time, and found our way to the Bern connection rather easily. There's nothing particularly interesting to note about that part of the trip.
The flight from Munich to Bern was in a Dash 8 the seatbelt saga was about to be replayed with Joey. I sat on the aisle, next to Joe, who was at the window. We were right inside the engine's mount and could clearly see the propeller. I waited until the last minute to hook up the seat belt. I got the straps long enough to get around him, but not too long as they wouldn't be any use; short enough to just get to him, and not fuss with the tightening.
"Look! Joey! A propeller! " The engines were starting up. I slipped the seatbelt around Joey's waist -- "click" Victory!
The flight was a lovely journey over mountains unlike which the children had never seen before. The in-flight snack was a bunch of cookies that Joey never ate, but found endless entertainment by stacking them into a tower.
We arrived in Bern, and there was no discussion between the Customs agent and me, but a mere hand-over of the passports, and we were on our way.
We counted up the luggage, and had a 100% success rate on luggage delivery. That is an incredible feat, as I have the absolute worst luck with luggage that you could imagine. I could wax eloquently on the dozen stories of lost luggage, shredded luggage, returned luggage; but this is about our relocation, and I wouldn't want to bore you with that! :)
We got a ride to the Ambassador Hotel by a shuttle, which cost us $65 USD, (quite a bargain, considering how many bags we were talking about). The kids immediately took to the stairs in the hotel lobby, and within a few minutes there was an injury. Joe fell down one step and got a blood blister on his right thumb, which Stacy managed to repair with hugs and wiped tears.
We checked in at about 2 PM, and had to find something to do to keep us awake for the next 5 or 6 hours. I found the hotel pool and gym.
The gym and pool were greeted with the sign, "Der Fitnessraum und das Schwimmbad sind keine Nacktzone!" Well that's too bad. "The fitness room and swim (bath) are not naked zones!" I guess the reason that sign was erected was because there were some nakedness incidents in the past. I can only wonder and imagine!
The whole family went to the pool, which was unlike any other pool I had seen before. This indoor pool was designed to have just the perfect water level, to be the same level as the floor surrounding it. The pool, when calm, looks as if it is a part of the flooring in the room. The design is quite well done, and I'll have to get a picture so you can see what I'm describing.
This tired and exhausted family of six really enjoyed the swim. Joey clung to me, and didn't want to have anything to do with Mommy. Jake splashed the two younger kids, who cried with each drop. We were unprepared for the drying with an inappropriate number of towels. By 1510, we were ready to get out and start searching for food.
We got a map, and set out for the center-city. We probably should have gotten better directions. We had a goal of getting to the city center in-mind, but started really going the wrong way. We headed toward the Titanic building, and missed our turn there. We should have gone right and headed across the bridge. Instead we headed down another block, and tried to connect with the bridge across the river. Unfortunately, we discovered that the bridge was about 100' higher than the banks of the river, and we had to double back.
The already-tired kids were pretty irritated with this walking. We took a short break at the COOP store nearby, and got some drinks. We headed across the bridge (past the Swiss version of the IRS building), and stopped along the bridge to watch the swimmers below.
In Bern, the raging river, the Aare, is flowing extremely rapidly. But there are no really dangerous things in this river that we would expect in our American rivers, like... obscene amounts of pollution, logs, bridge abutments, etc. The locals all jump into the river up-stream, and float down at what looks to be 10 or 15 mph, until they exit before the dams. It all looks quite fun, I have to admit. We peered down from the bridge to the swimmers below.
Actually, swimmer would imply that they were paddling, which they weren't. They were merely floating along a very fast racing river, fed by glaciers, so it had that blue hue to it that we don't see in Virginia.
The famished family started now really begging to go back to the Hotel. Stacy, with no sleep yet, very irritated at my inept navigation (we weren't lost, just not around anything we could identify as food). We headed down Jubilee street (Don't remember the actual name of the street), which was guarded by soldiers and police, and wasn't available for your average citizen to drive without being first confronted by a guard. We didn't know what this was about, so we just looked like we knew where we were going, and weren't accosted by the local guards.
We walked to the entrance of the "Tierpark" (which means zoo), and found an excellent pedestrian bridge that crossed the river. From the bridge, swimmers leaped into the water, or observers watched the swimmers zip along underneath, headed downriver (to the bridge where we first viewed the swimmers).
We found a restaurant, the Schoenau, which was on a street named the same. It was an Italian restaurant which was empty. It was empty because we were early, not because the restaurant didn't get any business. We sat, and they spoke no English. It's a good thing I can speak German! I relayed the pickyness of the children, and ordered boring kid-sized spaghetti for Josh and Cecilia. Jake was brave and tried the Wienerschnitzel mit Pomme Fritte. Stacy stuck with the adult sized Spaghetti. I also had the Wienerschnitzel.
Jake, as I had predicted, liked -- maybe loved the Wienerschnitzel. Cecilia refused to try any. Stacy stole some of mine. Josh later tried Jake's and decided he wanted a plate of his own. Joey slept in the baby-stoller the whole time. We ran out of our ability to stay awake, and headed back to the hotel after 200 CHF of dinner.
I remember getting back to the hotel, but not much after that. I put my head on the pillow and fell asleep shortly thereafter.
I have safely arrived at Amsterdam. I am currently working on about 3 or 4 hours sleep. I'm all messed up! I'm doing pretty well, though, all things considered.
The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel costs too much, and I didn't have enough spare change to contact the hotel. I started with 3.00€. I used the stupid pay phone, and ate up 3€ with about 90 seconds of phone time, including two wrong numbers to a law firm in Amsterdam. What a rip off. I tried to use the credit card, but the telephone didn't like any of the ones i presented. (didn't give it my Exxon Mobil card. :) )
The Stupid American Does Not Know How To Use Phones If you're not familiar with phones in Europe, let me give you some advice. Learn how to interpret a phone number written down. The string of digits that somebody writes down is not necessarily the string of digits that you need to use to get to that destination. The Europeans are tricky and will assume you know when to leave off a country code, or when to add the secret "0" to the beginning of the number. I have not deciphered this secret code yet, so I can not share the secrets yet.
I do know that the number written on my itinerary for the hotel says: "31-206-075555" I do know that if you pick up a phone here in the airport, and dial those numbers, you don't get anything. I also know that if you leave off the '31', then you get this law firm, with a very nice lady who, after I called her back the second time, took the effort of finding the phone number of the hotel, and she gave it to me. 020 607 5555. Uh. But that's not the number on my itinerary. D'oh. The random extra zero gets me every time.
In 2003, I once had a Swede explain it to me (when i was in Sweden and suffered similarly) but it made about as much sense as describing colors to a blind person, I guess.
I looked around and decided that maybe the laptop would be the best attempt -- found a wireless for 10.-€ for a full day's. Now that I'm paying for a full day's, (and I got what I needed), I felt the need to "get my money's worth" and send some e-mail. The cell phone doesn't work here, either. I think I needed to ask for some sort of "super-secret-International calling code" for my phone.
Using the Internet, found a bus station route that costs 3.50€ instead.
I guess I should have done a little research about this last night, but last night I was reserved to use cash to pay for a taxi. I converted 150 dollars in traveller's checks to Euros and only got just over a hundred. With a trip to the airport and back at 45.00€ each, that doesn't leave much left! I know the company would reimburse me, but it's the principle of the thing. Now using Taxis in New York is much easier on the pocketbook. Taxis everywhere else seem to be way too much.
I got up earlier than I was supposed to. I set my alarm for 0600, but woke up at 0515 instead. Found myself lounging around the bedroom looking for ways to kill time. I had everything packed, and wasted time. Unfortunately, breakfast didn't get started until 0700, and my train out of Fribourg left at 0704. :( I really enjoyed the breakfasts there. The hotel was very cheap. I paid like 600 chf for a week there, including two meals. I think I will spend approximately the same at this hotel in Amsterdam for only two days. (!)
The guy who sat next to me on the train from Fribourg to Bern wore WAY too much cologne. I guess that's better than the WAY too much body odor that I was sporting earlier in the week, when I realized that all of the stores were closed, and I didn' t pack any. the train station from Fribourg to Bern was very busy. I don't have any idea what it is like going the other way.
I guess I'm going to have to get used to that train station, eh? I will most certainly be stopping in Villars sur glane, as the train is a direct route from Bern to Fribourg, without any intervening stops. I guess I'll have to get myself a nice little scooter. Maybe there is a bus that will connect me to a point close enough to my new office.
On the way to Bern, the train car I chose was a "quiet please" car, and it was more quiet in that train car, than it would be in the desert. The only noise I heard was the occasional shuffle of the newspapers around. No talking was permitted, and they even had a little diagram that asked you to not use your IPOD, as that would be considered too loud. The trains are very well protected against the noise, and they are amazingly quiet.
The train ride from Basel (north of Bern, right on the French border) was delightful. I switched trains in Bern, and spent a nice quiet ride looking at the scenery, and reading my book that the people from Network Relocation gave me.
The airport at Basel is considerably larger than the airport at Bern. The Bern airport is about the same size as Champaign-Urbana. Just big enough to start pretending to be a real airport, but bigger than an airport without any scheduled commercial services. The airport at Basel would be ... I guess on par with Norfolk or Richmond International.
The flight over was nice, I spilled my orange juice all over myself, and the bulk of it ended up in the seat-back pocket -- which was surprisingly water proof! The orange juice sat in the pocket and slowly leaked out the corners. I felt awful about the mess. It happened as I was reading a duty free magazine (Boy that's boredom), and knocked over my orange juice with the magazine.The flight attendant was very nice about it.
For snack, Swiss Air served a very nice sandwich consisting of a pickle, some mayo, and some swiss cheese. I know my wife wouldn't like it, but I sure liked it. And it was surprisingly filling.
The announcements for landing -- this is weird -- I can't remember if it was English or German. I'm getting that comfortable with German again, and now I'm spending most of my time thinking in German, instead of thinking in English. I knew it wouldn't take me long to re-adjust. I was just surprised it would take only a week. there are a lot of words I don't remember. Like the word for "spill", and the word for "slap", take, become, include, guess. I bought two full sized dictionaries, I figured my wife might need one every now and then.
At the Duty Free airport, I purchased some chocolate. I realized that the chocolates I really wanted were all chock-full of nuts. So I put a lot of them back. I searched for some nut-free chocolates, and then I realized that nearly all of the chocolates have nuts in them. The M&Ms seemed safe, but there's not much point in buying those in Switzerland.
I had to do a very detailed search to find some that didn't have any nuts at all. I found some finally. I got a value pack, too, which had a variety of them, so hopefully the family enjoy the different flavors. I guess it's a good thing that these people like their nuts in their chocolate! It will make that bakery next door not so terribly tragic about the amount of chocolate I would otherwise be destined to eat.
I awoke at 0730 to the breakfast at the hotel. I received a note from the hotel management that I was to meet the relocation coordinators at 10:30. I lounged around my hotel room for a few hours, waiting for the appropriate time. For the first time, I turned on the TV, and watched some of the local programming.
The first 25 channels or so were all French. the next 15 or so were German. I didn't have much of a hard time figuring out the German TV, and the French had enough going on for me to figure out what was being said, although not every word was understood. I watched Cartoon Network, and enjoyed seeing the cartoons in French. There was one cartoon where they went back in time, and met George Washington, who spoke perfect French, and if not for the white curly hair, he would have looked like Napoleon. He sure sounded like Napoleon.
I was expecting to meet Michael, but was met by a lovely English woman named Claire, who was Robert's wife. We set out to the car, where I met Heidi, a local Swiss German from Bern, who was to be the relocation consultant who drove.
They had a busy agenda for me, and at the beginning of the day, I was quite gung-ho about living in Villars-Sur-Glane, or Moncor, or Fribourg; a comfortable bike from home to work. However, the International school is in Bern, 25 km away. I might be comfortable, but the kids and wife would be forced to commute.
We visited two apartments in the neighborhood around the place of work. One was a very nice apartment that had lots of space, and was located on the third floor. It had no stairs, which would suck on grocery time. It had a nice big basement room to store bikes. It had a laundry room, but also a schedule attached to the laundry room.
This is actually quite normal in Europe. Say for instance, you have 6 families living in an apartment building. Family 1 gets Monday, family 2 gets Tuesday, etc. You don't get to just waltz downstairs and use the laundry room if it's not your day. (Unless you arrange it with your neighbor). The clothes dryers were weird, but seemed to be kinda cool. of a your normal machine, where you insert clothes (and maybe money), turn it on, spins around, dry clothes come out. Instead of that, there is a big room with clothes lines. you hang up your clothes, and turn on the heater, which blows hot dry air onto the clothes. I guess this is more energy efficient.
We went to a second apartment that was on the 1st floor. It had a very small elevator, and much more convenient stairs. The apartment hadn't been occupied for a year. It had a large living room with a wonderful view of the valley, and the Alps in the distance. It would be a perfectly nice apartment.
We travelled to Bern, to see another apartment. This apartment we were visiting is owned by an American couple, who are going back to the states for a few years. The apartment is on the north-western side of Bern, and not very far from the International School of Bern. Not far from the glider-port, either. in fact, I think I may have seen the neighborhood from the air, when I was flying on Saturday.
So why would I change my mind so quickly to move to Bern, which increases my grumpy drive? I figure that one man's quiet misery is much less awful than 1 wife's misery and four children's misery. Sacrifices must be made!
I was roused from my deep slumber with the most annoying noise ever.
BEEP BOOP BEEP BOOP.
My stupid laptop! Apparently, I managed to fall asleep without plugging in my laptop. I darted over and plugged it in to my make-shift universal plug to stop the noise. 2:21 AM. Dangit. I'm wide awake now. I immediately went back to bed and stared at the ceiling for a while.
I eventually got back to sleep, but was awoken at about 0430 by a bar-fight that broke out below my hotel room. Or maybe it was just an argument. Since I don't know French, maybe it was just a heated discussion about the best football team. I wished I knew French so I could hear what they were arguing about. The volume made me regret that my window was wide open. I tried to get back to sleep, but it didn't happen.
I showered and got dressed, and started catching up on e-mail. It was just past bed-time for the US, so I just missed Stacy. I decided to do some mundane work for the flying club -- getting all of the flights for the past 6 months inserted into the flight log database. That should have gotten me to sleep for sure, but -- No.
It was 6:30, and tummy started telling me that it's time for food. I wandered around downstairs to find that nothing's open yet. I returned to my room to pout. At 0700, promptly I went to the complimentary breakfast.
Oh was this wonderful! I never have had Frosted Flakes that were so tasty. It's not that the Frosted Flakes were especially delicious, but because i put the only sort of white liquid that was available, and it wasn't the typical soy milk that I'm used to. I was confronted with a blast of sweet creaminess, the soft delicious taste of full cream. A typical European thing is to also have cold-cuts for breakfast. I was rather suspicious about the four different varieties of things from which my kids would surely flee in terror. With each of these strange meats, I was same with the same fatty deliciousness that I experienced with the dairy cream on the Frosted Flakes.
I tried some of the local cheeses for breakfast (another European thing), and found myself really enjoying the croissant. I experimented with one of the small yogurts, enticed by the beautiful peach on the packaging. As I savored each spoon-full, I read through the ingredients, only to be horrified that there were hazelnuts in this yogurt. Hazelnuts?!? Barbarians!
I enjoyed the very strong coffee, and prepared for my journey to Bern. I did not eat much more than a usual, but I was certainly satisfied.
Yesterday, as you know, I flew into Bern Flughafen. So now I am quite familiar with the procedure for how to use the trains to get to the airport. I am also familiar that the Belp Bahnhof is not directly next to the Belp Flughafen (The train station, and airport, respectively). Upon arrival at Belp Bahnhof, I realized that the bus schedule showed the next bus arriving 45 minutes from my arrival. I look at the map, decide it can't be that bad of a walk, and head off on foot.
As I'm walking, I was wishing I had a bike. I was "turbo-walking" as I usually do, and passed some slow natives strolling the sidewalks. I stopped at a grocery store to buy a liter bottle of water. The fellow at the cash register was speaking to me, but not in a language that I understood. (more on this in a moment).
I found my way to the glider operation, and followed somebody onto the airport grounds. I immediately found the duty officers, and promptly introduced myself, (In German). Their ears perked up when I noted that I was a flight instructor in America, and relocating to Fribourg, and I was immediately introduced to the club president, Ed.
Ed bragged that he didn't speak English, so we continued our conversation in German. He has a very thick Swiss accent, but he managed to use only Hochdeutsch when speaking with me. I think I comprehended about 70% of what he was talking about. This isn't bad, especially considering that I have not spoken German for more than 3 sentences at a time for almost 17 years. (ya, really). Also not bad considering that I never knew any German airspace or aviation terms when I was originally learning German.
After explaining to me the recent changes in the airspace around the airport, and how the glider operation now had to contact the control tower for landing and takeoff permissions, I asked to see an airspace map of Switzerland. Given that there are so many chunks of airspace that are un-flyable by gliders, I remarked that the airspace looked like "Swiss Cheese"
He did not get the joke. Maybe it was my delivery. Maybe the Swiss are tired of all the cheese jokes (and along with it, all the jokes about trains running on time, pocket knives and watches). Maybe they don't call it Swiss Cheese. I don't know. But I'm making a mental note that the Swiss don't get Swiss Cheese jokes. I will certainly reserve the pocket knife jokes for maximum comedic effect, i.e. when some fellow Americans are around.
I was introduced to the other Ex-pat in the club, Sandra, a Canadian who has been living in Bern for 19 years. I spoke, and Sandra spoke, and Ed remarked, "Well, they sound exactly alike!" making fun of mine and Sandra's North American accents. To be honest, Sandra had vastly superior German speaking skills, especially when speaking the local dialect.
I was warned that Swiss German was difficult to understand. "Yeah, yeah" I always thought. "It'll be like listening to somebody with a really thick Scottish or Texan accent. I'll be able to manage."
Wrong.
It is really not fair to describe Swiss German as German at all. I'm not sure why they call it German. Here is the scenario: I'm talking with one of the natives about any random subject. My comprehension rate is hovering somewhere between 80 and 90%. The conversation now includes a third person, a local, who does not yet know about my American-ness, or my unable-to-understand-Swytszedootch-ness. The local with whom I'm speaking, turns his head to speak to the third party who just joined the conversation. He begins making German-like sounds. My comprehension level drops to 3 or 4% immediately.
I really was not prepared for this. I was warned, but I doubted. Now I believe. If you don't know German, the only way I can describe it is like this: Pretend you are watching a bunch of kids playing guns in the back yard. They are re-enacting WWII, just like all the war movies they've seen. The kids who play the German side make German-like noises. A native German speaker would come into this observation, and realize the children were making German-like sounds, but they had no meaning, and were nothing more than gibberish.
Never before have I been faced with such simultaneous disappointment and triumph at my German speaking skills. I fared terribly when listening in on the locals talking to each other, and I think I did a really good job in the one-on-one conversations. I also realized that I should have read the sailplane terms in German pages first.
Today had a special flight operation going on. Annually, they get a bunch of kids glider flights for a modest fee, hoping to rope them into a new hobby. So this meant that there were lots of 14 and 15 year olds who were using up the gliders and instructors. So I ended up waiting all day to fly. In the time that I waited, I talked to a lot of the people in the club, which is as important a part in the gliding experience, as manipulating stick and rudder.
I met Ruth, who was a relocation consultant, located in the city of Basel. She spoke English to me the whole time (and I didn't mind people speaking to me in German). She gave me lots of advice that would normally be charged at a hundred Francs per hour. I asked her lots of questions, and she gave me lots of stories about subjects that I would never expect. I asked her questions like, "What are these signs on all the buildings, with a big capital "T" diagram?" She had no idea what I was talking about. (See picture to the right. Do you know?!)
I finally got to fly with Kurt, and we went to 1000 meters (about 3000') in the Duo Discus. Flying the Discus is quite easy, I had no problems staying behind the towplane. The bank is a little slower than the ASK that I'm used to, but I didn't seem to have much problem. This Duo Discus was equipped with a FLARM -- a device used to make sailplane-to-sailplane collisions alerted in the cockpit. There was also a Cambridge navigation device.
We flew over the very large hill near the airport. The glider group has this special airspace carved out for them, called "Lima Bravo", which allows them great freedom to roam within the class uh.. I guess it's class "D" airspace next to the airport. It's quite convenient, because the hill is just about the altitude where a glider pilot is reminded that it's time for him to go home. Once the trees start to brush up on the underside of the aircraft's fuselage, they know it's time to make their way to the pattern. In such a circumstance, it is important to call the airport first and get permission to land.
The terrain around the area can not accurately be described by Google Maps, so I will ask you to take a look at an oblique view of the area with Google Earth. (click to get a better view). the landing area, quite small, shown in red. The takeoff runway is quite long in purple. The approximate ground track for our aerotow is shown as the long purple line. The yellow line is the ground track for the landing that Kurt did.
I recorded a video while Kurt did the landing, but it is too big, and this inferior operating system of Windows makes it very hard to convert into a different, less huge format. Currently, the video is 152 megs, and Youtube only allows 100 megs maximum.
The flight was very late in the day, but quite enjoyable. In order to solo here, I'll have to get my license set up with the Swiss FAA (called BAZL), and I'll have to get really comfortable with the procedures at this airport.
I feel that the language barrier -- me not knowing their local dialect, is really going to be a burden.
They have some different procedures in their club. At the beginning of the day's operations, they have a 5 minute meeting in their clubhouse -- mandatory. At lunchtime, they have another mandatory lunch meeting. At the close of operations, they have a final meeting to ensure that all items are wrapped up. Of course, the meeting was all in the local dialect, so I had no idea what they were saying. I think I picked up 7 or 8 words in the whole briefing. :(
Here's the slide show of my flying for that day (Make sure to click on it)
