July 1- Sleepy in Switzerland

Well it’s been a grueling day, as we knew it would be, but we’ve made it through, and except for a few isolated grumpy spots by all of us, we generally made it through and had fun.

We landed in Zurich on time and had a really easy time getting through passports checks and customs. They didn’t ask us any questions at all. We wish it was that easy and quick to cross the border at the Peace Bridge. As Mom got the rent-a-car from Hertz, Emma was dancing around and playing I-Spy. When Daddy commented that she seemed to be in a good mood, she said, “That’s because I got some sleep. That’s what mommy said.”

Frustration levels rose after we drove out of the airport. Scott found the map unusually hard to read. Maybe its because of lack of sleep, and maybe it’s because he’s 40 now, but he had to keep switching between not wearing his glasses for the map and wearing his glasses for the road signs. Even so, the lack of numbers for the roads and the unfamiliar signage systems had us going around Zurich blindly for a short while. When we finally got our bearings we were well south of the city. Still construction and closed roads kept the going far slower than we expected. The plan was to stop for picnic items (including swiss cheese for sandwiches and Toblerone), but the place we stopped was a weird sort of co-op/factory outlet place, and didn’t have what we wanted and we had brought Euros in from the car instead of Swiss Francs. We gave in to our frustration and had lunch at McDonalds.

Soon, though, the Alps came into view. Anna said that there were lots of houses that she’d like to live in. The Alpine styles here seem to appeal to her.

Our first real stop was Meiringen (pronounced My- ring-gan). The town is a really cute little corner that is probably often overlooked. It was big in the Victorian Era, as English tourists came to enjoy the mountains, and the architecture of the town reflects that. The town shuts almost completely down from noon to 1:00, and we arrived just as the doors were closing. Our slow going travels seemed to grind to a halt, but at least it was an idyllic spot for it. We passed time playing with a giant chess board and a nine-man morris game (a game that Scott knew from Fort Niagara). We had sorbets to beat the heat (and to be able to use the restroom).

The town’s big claim to fame is that it is the place where Sherlock Holmes allegedly faked his death. Sir Arhur Conan Doyle set the climax of the story “The Final Problem” at the now famous Reichenbach Falls, which is the most impressive of several alpine waterfalls that overlooked the town. In this story, Holmes apparently died while fighting his arch enemy, Moriarty, as they both tumbled into the “dreadful cauldron.” The author intended that episode to be the end of his detective, but the public made such an outcry that he brought him back again and explained his death was faked.

Holmes fans love to believe that the stories are true and that he and Watson and all the rest really walked the streets of London and solved crimes just the way the stories say that they do. There is a little museum in the town of Meiringen that plays up this fantasy splendidly. It shows many of the “artifacts” that Holmes and Watson used, including the Alpenstock walking stick, the cigarette case, and the letter to Watson that were found when he “died” at Reichenbach Falls. Their living room at 221B Baker Street is recreated in detail.

After the Holmes museum, we went to the falls themselves. They are reached by a ride on a funicular (inclined) railroad, that takes you up the steep Alpine slopes. The trip up is safe but a little scary, but the view is spectacular.

We were way behind in our plans now, and our schedule suggested that we might now stop at Interlaken to see about going up to the peak of the Jungfrau, one of the most famous glacier covered peaks in Switzerland. We could see thunderstorms rolling around the valleys since our trip up to the falls (and had they started in that area, we would have had to wait them out at the falls). The skies were overcasts and the tops of the highest peaks were beshrouded. (Is that a word? It is now.) So we drove quickly through Interlaken without a peek at the famous peaks and pushed onward.

There are tunnels everywhere in Switzerland, and we’ve gone through a lot of them today, short ones and long ones, but the one that we’ll remember the most is the one between Kandersteg and Goppenstein. For that one, Julie had to drive our car onto a train and it ferried us through the longest tunnel we had seen today. It made Julie very nervous because she’s still getting used to the controls on our car. It’s supposed to be an automatic, because neither of us can drive a standard. Even so, it tends to roll when it’s parked, unless you put the parking brake on. There is no “D”, we have to put it in “E”, and when we start, it can either roll backwards or leap forward with a bit of a lurch. None of this is good when you’re bumper to bumper on the ferry-train. Julie was a nervous wreck, but the girls were rocked to sleep.

We made it through the beautiful valley to Täsch, where we had to park our car and board a train for Zermatt. No cars (except those electrical cars with special permits) are allowed in the town. The town’s soul reason for existence is its view of the famous Matterhorn. Naturally, the evening we arrived, it was covered in clouds, though most of the peaks around the valley were not. We found our hotel and checked in, after which we went to dinner and window shopped.

Zermatt is a very touristy town, and seems to be full of people that have lots of money, making the prices very expensive. We paid way too much for a fondue dinner tonight, but since Scott had his heart set on Swiss fondue, and since we had wimped out at McDonald’s earlier, we had it. We thought the prices listed were for a pot to serve three, but the charges actually were per person. Anyway, we shopped afterwards, and explored the very beautiful, if very touristy, town which seemed packed with revelers. The girls each bought an animal- Emma a cow and Anna a St. Bernard. Dad got a pin for his hat, and Mom started a collection of patches from our trip for a jacket she plans to make.

July 1st- 37,000 feet, southeast of Ireland.

So far the plane rides have been relatively uneventful and as expected, with about an hour and a half left of the flight.

The plane from Buffalo to Dulles was a little late, so we spent a while waiting in Buffalo. A guy wrote a poem for Anna and Emma while we were waiting (and yeah, that seemed a little creepy). It was a short flight to Dulles, and we just had time to get a quick bite to eat and then we boarded.

Here’s the math. The plane took off at roughly 6:00 PM, Eastern time. We’re expected to arrive in Zurich at about 8:00 AM. There’s a 6 hour time difference, so that means it’ll feel like 2:00 AM for us. We’ve got a full day of driving and touring in Switzerland to get us started. That should help us adjust to Swiss time. If we can finally settle down about 8 or 9:00 PM, then it’ll be like the adults were up until about 2 or 3:00 PM Eastern time. That’s rough, but not undoable.

The real trick, of course, is getting the girls through the “day.” When we first got on the plane, Anna, Emma and Daddy all made puppets using markers and the “barf bags” from the seats. We watched a little TV, and then the sun was going down, so Julie and Anna tried to nap. Scott says it’s hopeless for him to sleep on the plane, and, although he tried, it didn’t seem like it was going to happen. Emma said she was a bat, and didn’t sleep for the first four hours of the flight. She did nap a little though. We’ll see how this plays out as the day goes on.

We saw the islands of the southwest corner of Ireland as we passed a short while ago. Britain and the Channel are approaching soon. The little maps on the screens take much of the mystery out of the time element and make the claustrophobia somewhat more tolerable.

So much for now.

June 30, 2009 The Innocents Abroad

And we’re off! It’s been almost 2 years of planning (and even more of dreaming), but today we leave for Europe!

We’re writing this first part of the blog from the Buffalo-Niagara airport. We were just dropped off by Julie’s dad. The check-in and the security screening went quickly, so now we’re waiting.

This morning was our typical pre-trip nervousness. We tried second guessing the packing lists that we have been making for months. We re-packed the bags that we’d started packing days ago. We double checked the things we’ve bought over the last few months (and even the last few days) in preparation for the trip. We’ve got our two official Rick Steves travel bags stuffed and ready to go, with another backpack for the girls, and a fourth with the computer and all of the electronics. We tore apart Rick Steves’s Best of Europe 2009 book this morning and put the chapters we needed into a little notebook, leaving the rest behind. (It was Rick’s suggestion. You’d think he’d make his books easier to disassemble!) We made sure all of what we wanted was in our bags or on the computer. Julie e-mailed her cousin in Germany on the off-chance that we’ll be able to meet her. Now that we’re at the airport, all the ooginess has melted away, and we’re in the moment. Whatever we’ve left behind us now, we’ll get there, or we’ll just find a way to do without.

One of Scott’s favorite books since he first read it in high school is Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad. We’ll be checking on his views as we travel across Europe, to be sure. Certainly, Scott is reminded of it as we begin this chronicle of our own trip. In one of the early chapters, Mr. Twain wrote of how he and his traveling companions had begun journals of their own, and even though they started out writing voluminously, and had the best of intentions of keeping them up, they invariably petered out long before their pilgrimage had really even begun. He wrote, "...If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year. “

Well, we’re going to inflict that punishment on both ourselves and our young people. We have blank journals ready for Anna and Emma, and we will have them write about their “highs” and “lows” at the very least. And of course, Scott and Julie will write daily for our blog, though actually posting the entries may be more sporadic. Still, we’ve learned the lasting value of saving our memories, and intend to keep them up. If you’re reading this on-line, you can follow our adventures in Europe. When we’re done, we’ll print out the pages of the blog for our scrapbook and use them for the introduction for each day. On our best days, maybe we’ll be as eloquent as Mark Twain or as informative as Rick Steves. On our worst, maybe we’ll be as entertaining as the Griswolds. In any case, we are certainly on our way.