Pisa, Cinque Terre, Rome

To All

Well, we are back from another adventure. We have discovered a European airlines that operates ALOT like military space A - more so than we had counted on. Thanks to Ryanair our 5 day trip to Pisa, Italy and the Cinque Terre turned into a 7 day trip with Rome tacked on at the end. Sunday evening as Deanna, Mike and I were sitting at the departure gate at the Pisa International Airport, ready to head for home, we were talking to another American Army family about the similarities between Ryanair flights and military space A flights --- small airports, check-in counters that are only open a few hours a day, walking or riding a bus across the tarmack to the plane, no assigned seats, no free drink service, etc. etc. We all agreed that there was one big difference: no stress about whether or not you were getting on the plane. Ooooops that was a big mistake. It turns out there IS reason to wonder if you're getting on the plane. In fact, we almost ended up spending a night in the terminal, too - that would have been one too many similarities.

So, the story is that it was foggy about 5:00PM on Sunday evening in Pisa, Italy and apparently the Pisa airport doesn't have any radar equipment so the plane that was supposed to take us home couldn't land. It was diverted to Genova, unloaded there and went back to Frankfurt without us. The only customer service that Ryanair offers in such situations is to book you on the "next available flight." After 6 hours of waiting in line at customer service, we discovered that the best they could offer us was a flight out of Rome on Tuesday morning - no compensation for the additional 2 nights of lodging or the train tickets to Rome. This is truly a cut-rate airline - we paid about $US240 for the 3 of us to fly to Pisa and back - and as always you get what you pay for. Our only gripe is that 6 hours is a long to wait in line with only rumors to go on as far as what is happening. Would you believe that 3 hours after our flight was canceled - while we were still standing in line at customer service - planes started taking off and landing again? Argh!!!

OK, that’s the bad news. On to the good news - the rest of the trip. We spent our first 2 nights in a hostel in the town of Lucca - about 30 minutes by train from Pisa. Lucca has a rampart all the way around it - a wall that is wide enough to drive on (though cars aren't allowed). So now I understand how the wall around Babylon could be wide enough for chariots (6 abreast?) to ride around the top. We walked all the way around the rampart the first morning, took lots of pictures, and debated the differences in Italian architecture compared to German architecture. In the afternoon we rode the train to Pisa and visited the Leaning Tower and the other buildings on the "Field of Miracles" - all of which have leaning problems just not as severe as the bell tower. Supposedly after the base and the first arcade of the tower were finished in 1173 someone turned to Pisano (the architect) and said "Is it just me, or does that look crooked?" No, duh!!! Apparently the soil underneath was unstable and over the years there have been several attempts to stabilize the tower. Depending on who you talk to, it may still be slowly falling. Nonetheless, the whole complex of buildings were pretty impressive.

Our third and fourth days we spent in a coastal area of Italy called the Cinque Terre (CHINK-weh TAY-reh) meaning "the five lands." It consists of 5 small towns located right on the ocean in spectacular settings. They are accessible by car, but the use of cars within them is extremely limited - so again (like in Gimmelwald Switzerland) the silence created by NO VEHICLE NOISE is really awesome. You can hike from one town to another or ride the train. The towns depend on wine production and tourism for their existence and the steep hillsides are covered with vineyards (so now I also have a new understanding of the "vineyard" passages and parables in the Bible! Maintaining a vineyard is clearly alot of work.). We weren't ambitious enough to actually hike from Town #1 (Riomaggiore) to town #5 (Monterosse) - one of the trail segments was actually closed and a couple of them are pretty rigorous - but we took the train to the last town and worked our way back on the train, exploring each town briefly on foot. The temperature was mild - a little cloudy but no rain. There were interesting things to see in each town - churches, statues, cemeteries, etc. I would have gotten better pictures had it been sunny and it would have been fun to swim in the Mediterranean, but there are trade offs with every thing. It was nice to have relatively few tourists and no scorching heat. It was a beautiful couple of days. I would like to think that we will go back to all these places, but I'm beginning to understand that there is so much to see in Europe that that probably isn't likely to happen - unless of course some of YOU come to visit us and want us to take you there.

Sunday evening you've already heard about. Except that we did experience two incredible blessings about midnight as we were leaving the Pisa Airport. About 5 minutes before the Italian police told us that the airport was closing and we needed to leave SOON, we sort of "happened" by phone onto a hotel that was about 5 minutes away by cab and had an empty room for a reasonable price. Then after we moved ourselves outside to wait for a taxi the same Italian policeman came out and asked if any of us had left a piece of baggage inside. It turned that Deanna had left her purse with her SLR camera inside and about $US80!!!! Italy is the one place the tours books all still warn about professional thieves. Interestingly, our experience there included a very honest Italian policeman.

We got to Rome Monday afternoon about 3:00PM and squeezed in a 2 hour bus tour around the city. It was dark and rainy toward the end of the tour (a few idiots like me who insisted on riding on the uncovered top deck of the bus got rather wet!) but it was enough of a taste of Rome to assure us that we do want to go back at some point. Thanks to Rick Steves, we found a 4^th floor hotel room about a 5 minute walk from "Roma Termini" (the train station) -- the cover of a Rick Steve's book was actually taped to the door. The next morning (Tuesday) at "O dark thirty" we managed to find our way to Rome's smaller airport - Ciampino (chahm-PEE-noh) - via the metro and a bus and this time Ryanair got us home.

So, here's some general observations about Italy. It is definitely a poorer country than Germany - almost Third World in some ways. It is cleaner than Mexico, but pretty run down and messy compared to Germany's almost fanatical tidiness. However the hotel and hostel rooms were all very clean. The people are very friendly. In Germany people don't talk on the trains and buses - in Italy they do. However the trains in Italy are less likely to be on time than in Germany. More people in Italy speak English, than in Germany. I have no idea why that would be.

Food in Italy is really interesting - lots of wonderful pizza and pasta and unusual, fresh fruits and vegetables - not alot of anything with meat in it (Amy, take note - this country is for you!). We spent a small fortune on drinks. Hopefully I have now purchased the most expensive Diet Coke I will ever purchase - it was $US 4.75 for about 20 oz - no ice, of course. Ice cream is a BIG deal in Italy - except that it's called gelato and places that sell it are gelaterias.

Before we left for Italy I asked several people if knowing a little Spanish was of any help in Italy and the answer I got was mixed but basically "yes." In retrospect I would say it was a little help, but not a lot. What is amusing to me is the way they use words that, to me, are "musical words" for totally non-musical things. A "piano" in Italy is no doubt a musical instrument, but it is also the "floor" of a building. So a "piano inferiore" is not a bad piano but a lower level. "Fermata" doesn't always mean "stop and look at the conductor." It can also mean "the bus stops here."

The next time you pass up "Delivery" and have "Di Giorno" instead, just know that "Di Giorno" is Italian for "of the day" or "daily" (and the TV has taught us all good Italian pronunciation!) "Lasagna" is another Italian word we all pronounce correctly -- "g" before "n" is silent and the "n" is pronounced as if it had a Spanish tilda. Unfortunately the same rule applies to "bologna" but we've butchered it -- should be buh-LOHN-yuh.

For those of you whom I didn't get to see on my trip to the states (inspite of my wondering all over the place!), everything there went well. Alan now has a car that he can drive -- sort of -- it's a standard! Amy is doing well in Redwood. She will leave there this Friday and do a little traveling with Greg before flying here for Christmas. It was really nice to see friends in Tacoma again. I did manage to resist the desire to just socialize long enough to benefit tremendously from my seminary class on the book of Numbers. (The title of the book of Numbers is truly a misnomer - the part dealing with "numbers" or "census-taking" is fairly minor. "In the Wilderness" would probably be a better title. It's a pretty interesting book.)

Amy, Morphy was totally unimpressed with my presence at Lisa's house, but I observed that she REALLY likes Lisa and Peter's heated waterbed - so much that she isn't very inclined to run off when anyone tries to pick her up or pet her.

Amy, Alan, and Dad, we didn't intend to totally blow you off over Thanksgiving. We just had lots of telephone problems. Apparently incoming calls on my cell phone aren't free in Italy as they are in Germany. Carl Strohm called and we naively talked until our card ran out and the phone went dead. We couldn't buy a new card because they don't sell the right kind in Italy. We couldn't use our MCI phone card because we didn't have all the country access codes with us. We couldn't use our credit card because somehow the Italian phone company didn't like the zipcode we put in for our billing address, etc etc. Anyway, we were lucky to get one phone call through to keep Mike from being AWOL when we were 2 days late getting back.

Marie, I hear that you have Amy's car AND her cell phone. Feel free to use both until Amy comes to retrieve them. The cell phone has 300 anytime minutes per month, unlimited night and week end minutes and free long distance. I have to pay for all that whether we use it or not -- so please use it.

I will try to attach a couple of pictures before I send this. We'll see how far my limited computer skills go.

Nancy

The Tirol

To All

Well, we have discovered more places that we need to go back to - hopefully some of you all will come to visit us and give us an excuse to do that!

Columbus Day weekend we took my dad and brother and headed for the Tirol - hopefully I am using that term correctly - southern Germany and Austria. The day before we left Dad and Curt and I did a daytrip to Rothenburg (long O and silent H), which is about 2 1/2 hours from us, and we were so intrigued that we went back there the next night on our way to the Tirol. Rothenburg is a well-preserved medieval walled city - lots of interesting stories / legends about how it came to survive the 30 years war between the Catholics and Protestants as well as WWII. If someone were tell me that it was the location of the filming of the 1971? version of Romeo and Juliet I would have no trouble believing them. It was a really fascinating place - touristy but very authentic and tastefully done. Apparently it was discovered by Romantic painters and writers toward the end of the 19th century and has been a tourist attraction ever since. On Thursday evening when we went back there to spend the night, we took the "Night Watchmen Tour" which was really well done (Amy, the guy doing it reminded us alot of Greg). Very educational and humorous also. Basically we all (probably 50 of us) followed the night watchman (dressed appropriately) around as he did his duties and he filled us in (in English) on life in Rothenburg during it's heyday.

Once again we stayed in a pension in Rothenburg and it was wonderful. The next 2 nights in Reutte, Austria we stayed in a hostel which was also very nice. If there is any lodging in Europe that isn't immaculately clean and well-maintained, we haven't seen it yet. And Rick Steve's books are getting close to having the same status as the Bible in our minds - he seems to have it right every time. (thank-you Ch Frederich for recommending his books!)

Anyway the next day we drove to Reutte, Austria, checked into our hostel, ate Big Macs and McFlurries at McDonalds and then went into Innsbruck for the afternoon. The weather was fairly foggy the whole weekend but somewhere along the line, we got a brief glimpse of the Zugspitz (a very high mountain) and were appropriately awed.

The next day, Saturday, we toured 2 of Mad King Ludwig's castles - the one he grew up in (Hohenschwangau) and the one he built (Neuschwanstein). "Schwan" in both of the names means "swan." Mad King Ludwig probably wasn't really mad but he was a little strange and reclusive - Rick Steves calls him the 19th century version of Michael Jackson and suggests that he might have had a gay relationship with the composer Richard Wagner. Anyway Neuschwanstein is the castle after which Disney designed the Magic Kingdom castle and it is truly spectacular as well as being in a spectacular location. King Ludwig died a mysterious death at age 41 and supposedly within 6 weeks of his death people were paying to tour his castle. The tours of it and Hohenschwangau were really informative although the tour guides' English was NOT good and that detracted significantly from that part of the experience. Their (both of them) English wasn't British English - it was just plain bad English.

That evening before it got dark, we went back north a little ways to the Weisskirche - a classic example of Baroque rococo architecture ("weiss" means white and "kirche" means church). My handy-dandy PDA dictionary says that rococo means "having excessive, asymmetrical ornamental" and I would say that's pretty accurate - with the emphasis on "excessive." There are churches everywhere in Europe and to our American eyes they are all interesting and unique, But this was something else - very high ceilings, very ornate woodwork everywhere possible and elaborate paintings over every square inch of everything.

Speaking of my PDA: life revolves around it now more than ever. I have a English-German-English dictionary on it and it is sooooo handy. One of you asked me before we left Washington if I was going to learn German while we were here and I said "Not if I can help it." I have repented of that statement. I am still terrified by the idea that I might ever be in a situation where my life depended on being able to communicate in a different language, (The beauty of learning NT Greek was that I didn't have speak it or understand it or even write it - only read it!) But here speaking Germany is encouraged but fairly optional so the pressure is off and I sort of enjoying trying to use it as far as I can make it go. I've noticed that when we go to McDonalds for example, Mike and Deanna tend to tell me what they want and let me do the ordering! And it thrills me to no end when I manage to get through all or most of the process without resorting to English (of course lots of words like "cheeseburger" are the same in German as in English so ordering at McDonalds isn't exactly tricky.)

Back to our trip. On Sunday we drove to Berchtesgaten which is near Salzberg. It is actually a national park, but Hitler's famous retreat "Eagles Nest" was also there. Apparently the American's owned it for a long time after WWII and there was a military R & R facility there but it has now been turned over to the Germans again. It was too foggy the day we were there to be worth the cost of going up to the Eagles Nest (it involves a bus ride and then a gondola) but we did do a 2 hour boat ride across the Konigsee (King's Sea/Lake) and it was really pretty. We definitely have to go back sometime when it is sunny.

On our way home on Monday we stopped in Dachau (just north of Munchen - once again we Americans for some reason have transformed this name into Munich - the "u" should have two dots over it but my computer won't do that in compuserve). We walked around the former concentration camp. The museum wasn't open - most museums in Europe are closed on Monday - but just walking around the grounds and reading the signs was pretty stirring. I was particularly intrigued by a sign I saw outside the museum that said "It is not advisable for children under 12 to tour the museum.) I guess that I've read enough WWII books (plus seen the movie "Life is Beautiful") that everything was pretty much as I would have envisioned it, but nonetheless actually being there adds a new dimension to one's understanding.

The east-west autobahn that is just south of Heidelberg, which we have been on many times already, is apparently a major trade route between Prague and Paris (and you thought trade route was a word used only in history books!). It is really intriguing driving on it - you pass trucks from a scad of different countries. Most of you know about my propensity for taking pictures of signs. Well, I'm threatening to start a new collage. Some day when I am really bored - if that ever happens - I going to drive to a rest stop on that east-west autobahn and starting taking pictures of trucks from all the different countries - France, Portugal, England, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovak, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Turkey, etc. Hopefully I will get to many of those countries and come home with "welcome to . . . . signs" to add to my collection. But probably not to all them - Turkey for example.

Well, my dad and Curt are now back safely in Estes Park and we have returned to the settling in process. Mike is resisting unpacking all his dozens of "professional" boxes. Deanna is just getting started on decorating her room (we are allowed to paint walls here as long as we return them to the original color when we leave, so Deanna is reveling in that new opportunity). I'm pretty much done with my "stuff" so I'm in a position to catch up on reading and just generally goof off and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Deanna seems a little happier with school. Her AP Literature teacher is back on board and Deanna is one of 2 students getting "B's" in a class with no "A's" so far, so I think she is encouraged and challenged by that. There are lots of chapel youth things going on but they are all pretty fluffy for someone whose mom teaches Precept. She goes to some things just to meet kids, but is hoping something better will show up eventually. She still hangs around alot with Kelly, the chaplain's daughter who lives in the next building.

This weekend, Mike is involved in some kind of a Family Life Training event in Willigen, Germany (about 3 hours from here). Some people he knows from Ft. Benning will be there teaching/training. It is in a really nice hotel and spouses are allowed to come along for the cost of their meals only, so Deanna and I are planning to go. There are several swimming pools in the hotel but supposedly this is "Sin Weekend" - a weekend where anything goes - and all the pools are "sans textiles" - someone's euphemism for nude bathing. Sooooo I guess Deanna and I won't be doing much swimming. We may have to stay locked up in our room! Fortunately, the Family Life Training event is on PTSD - post traumatized stress syndrome - so if anything really bad happens there will be plenty of trained counselors around to get us through the after-effects - that was really bad, sorry!

Our next major excursion will be Italy (Thanksgiving weekend). We plan to see Pisa (as in the Leaning Tower of Pisa) and Cinque Terre (a coastal area with 5 sleepy towns that are supposed to be really neat and spectacular). I'm working on getting some really cheap plane tickets from Ryanair - the Alaska Airlines of Europe but twice as cheap. Amy and Alan will both be here at the same time for 1 week between Christmas and New Years and we are thinking of going to England - also via Ryanair.

By now those of you who have told me you like my detailed letters are probably sorry you said that -- so I must quit.

We miss you all. Please come see us!!!!

Love,

Nancy

Berlin

To All

Well, we are about 95% settled into our house and soon life could conceivably settle into a routine. Is that good or bad? We'll see. Mike had a good week of training in Washington, DC He had no idea what the training was all about when he went, but it turned out to be quite worthwhile.

My dad and brother (Curt) arrived safely about a week ago. It's nice to have plenty of room for them and to not be tied down with obligations so I can devote time to entertaining and cooking for them.

Last Sunday the 3 of us went to Frankfurt on the train to pick Mike up from the airport. It was my first experience on the train and all the instruction I got in my FLAG (Families Learning About Germany) class proved to be quite helpful. We got a "Happy Weekend" ticket that allows up to 5 people to ride all local trains and buses for 24 hours for 28 euros. We rode a bus and a train and a couple S-bahns along the way and everything went quite smoothly. In fact my dad is convinced that I must have lived here in another life. He is recovering from a siege of arthritis and is having trouble with his knees so he was kept hopping, getting up and down the steps to various trains - which always seemed to be about to pull away as we approached. After we picked Mike up we went to Romerberg (a particular area of Frankfurt) and ate lunch in an outdoor cafe, serenaded by a woodwind quintet playing all sorts of delightful classics.

On Wednesday Dad and Curt and I went to Nurnberg (OH, NO! - Nancy has braved the autobahn now, too!!!!) We spent some time in a museum there (the Documentation Zentrum) that Mike and I didn't get to go in when we went before. It was an attempt to explain and document "how" the Nazi phenomenon came to happen in Germany. It was really well done - but too much to absorb in one sitting.

This past Friday we took off about noon for Berlin to spend the weekend. We are learning that the autobahns work quite well as long as there are 3 lanes going in each direction. If there is only 2, they are a pain. Trucks are only allowed to go a certain speed (55 miles per hour maybe?) and they have to stay in the right lane except to pass, so the right lane is REALLY slow. All the speed freaks go in the left lane. There is a speed limit some of the time on the autobahn - 40 or 50 miles per hour through construction, otherwise 75 - but sometimes there is NO speed limit at which point the speed freaks kick it up somewhere over 100 miles an hour (miles per hour, NOT kilometers) When that happens and there is only 2 lanes, normal people like us have to change lanes constantly to dodge the trucks and the speeders. We've been told that American cars aren't built to handle the high speeds allowed on the autobahn - you can wear out the transmission really fast - so we've been refraining from going much over 80 mph - who would want to go any faster anyway? It's still rather mindboggling to be going 80 mph and have cars whizzing past you like you were standing still.

Anyway, the trip to Berlin took about 8 hours and the traffic wasn't too bad after about the first couple of hours. We stayed in a "pension" in Berlin (again recommended by Rick Steves). It was on the 2nd floor of a building on Kantstrasse (as in the philosopher named Kant) in the former West Berlin. The main train track was less than a block away and Kantstrasse is a pretty lively street at night but our rooms were quit quiet (concrete walls and heavy windows) and we felt quite safe.

Alot of the cities in Germany (including Berlin) have some kind of ticket you can buy that allows 5 people to have unlimited use of the local transportation system for 24 hours. We have made good use of that several times already and it worked again in Berlin. We basically did an overview of the city - lots of things we'd love to come back to another time. We saw the Reichstag (the German Parliament building), the Brandenburg Gate (scene of all of the rejoicing when the wall came down), Checkpoint Charlie (the only way into East Berlin when the Wall was up), and various other interesting buildings. The former "route" of the wall is marked by a double row of bricks in the pavement throughout the city. There really isn't much difference between East and West Berlin in terms of economic conditions. The whole city has lots of interesting old buildings but at the same time is VERY modern. Oct 3 was German Unification Day so it there were lots of celebrations going on. We ate lunch in a "fest" area near the Brandenburg Gate - really delicious brats and burgers and fries - and again we were serenaded - this time by the Blue Buba Swing Big Band. Berlin is a really interesting city.

This coming weekend is a four day weekend for both Mike and Deanna. On Friday we are headed for the Tirol - southern Germany and Austria. We have a reservation in a hostel just over the border in Austria. There are several first rate castles in that area among other things.

I've discovered that there is some chocolate spread stuff here (sort of like peanut butter but chocolate and hazelnut flavor) that comes in some German pastries and is similar to something you can buy in the store that is called Nutella. It is really good. For those (like my mother) who are/were addicted to chocolate, it provides a good excuse to have chocolate for breakfast. It is really good. I wonder if maybe that's one of things you miss if you take a "made for Americans" tour of Europe, because Dad and I don't remember my mother ever talking about it and we sure that if she had discovered it we WOULD have heard about it.

Deanna is a little frustrated with school - pray for her as you think of us. She has a couple of teachers that are just real losers. One in particular that is more interested in doing self-esteem exercises than in teaching the content of the course. Also - her AP Language teacher showed up for class the first time last Thursday. Apparently her father died suddenly a few days before school started and she spent a month in the states before she came back to school - no lesson plans for the sub while she was gone and no communication with the school as to when she would be back. The rumors are that she is "really hard" and Deanna didn't really find her very likable either when she showed up in class for the first time on Thursday. Deanna is a really good writer and she's never had a teacher who didn't like her so I think the whole situation is still potentially positive, but right now Deanna is feeling pretty discouraged. She wishes she was back at Covenant High School even if the junior year there is known to be a hard one! She moved out of AP Calc into the next lower math which is theoretically a repeat of last year but that seems to be a good move.

Alan has decided to scale back his course load for his senior year to essentials only in order to take a second part-time job with a software development company in Pasadena. He is still working a few hours a week for the CS department at Harvey Mudd. He and a friend compute to Pasadena on Fridays. He thinks he has a job at Expedia in Seattle (where he worked this summer) when he graduates but in case that doesn't work out, the job in Pasadena will supposedly led to something after graduation

Amy is still in Redwood NP working for the Student Conservation Association. She will be finished there the end of November and probably will head over here sometime after that for a visit.

Laura Carlson, let me know if you get this - I'm still not sure why you sometimes get my notes and other times don't. I'm not going to ask how things are going - I know you're still in honeymoon bliss!!! -- but I'd love to hear from you when you can pry yourself away from your beloved! Thanks for your last note that you wrote from the Frederich's house.

Debbie Haynes, I still can't get any of your e-mail addresses to work, but maybe Sandy can pass this on to you. I just want you to know that there are things to drink in Germany other than beer, but it is sometimes questionable as to whether water is any cheaper than beer. It is generally impossible to get ice in your soda or your water. And it is often hard to get water that doesn't come in a bottle with a huge price. I've learned that the word for "tap water" is "leitung wasser," But I've only tried it once and the answer I got was "I can get you some but you won't like it." Something is wrong with the formula for Diet Pepsi over here and it doesn't taste good - I've had to switch to Diet Coke/Coke Lite - such are the sacrifices one has to make to be in the Army and see the world!!!! We gave in to having water delivered to our house. The tap water here really isn't good - although I'd be happy to drink it in a restaurant to avoid paying $2 for a bottle of water!!!!

Ana, is anything new on your job search? How is Seth doing at Master's College? I was reminded of you many times during the week I took FLAG - our teacher was a 90 lb version of you - same sense of humor and ability to imitate people. Maybe you should learn German and come here and teach FLAG! Or maybe they need a FLAG instructor in Rota, Spain!

Laura Morris, do you happen to have an e-mail address for the Hartmans? I'm curious as to how things are going in Hawaii and if they are happy with Hawaii Baptist Academy. If you are in touch with them maybe you could forward this on to them.

Laura Hartman, in case you do get this, can you repeat again your advice to Cassie that day that she was so bored with school that she didn't think she could stand it another day?? Deanna and I were discussing that the other day and it seemed fairly apropos to Deanna's situation.

Alan, it turns out that Grandpa has a picture of a Harvey Mudd sign that I can use for my Washington collage. It doesn't have YOU standing in front of it, but I can possibly be satisfied with it and let you off the hook on that job if you want me to.

Howard, Deanna still hasn't quite recovered from your recommendation that she drop both AP classes. That wasn't exactly what she expected to hear from a high school principal. Guess she doesn't know you very well, huh?

On that note I must quit.

Love,

Nancy

Gimmewald, Switzerland

TO ALL

Well, we survived our first major excursion on the autobahn. Mike says 5 hours on the autobahn is rather intense. He'd rather take the train. I suspect/hope he will mellow on that eventually. Switzerland was absolutely spectacular. I have to say that it beats either Rocky Mountain National Park or Mount Rainier for scenery.

We spent 2 nights and parts of 3 days in and around the little town of Gimmelwald. We really did sleep on hay in a barn. It was very comfortable. The animal smell was fairly mild and we got so that we didn't notice it much. The prices in Switzerland are as high as the mountains. Switzerland isn't part of the European Union so the currency is Swiss Francs which are worth slightly less than the American dollar. The quoted price on everything is typically about twice what it would be in the US and the difference in currency only moderates that slightly. I paid the equivalent of $US14 at a self-service restaurant for a pizza that was slightly larger than a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. It was good and the view from my table was incredible -- but still that's a little pricey in my book. We paid the equivalent of $US19 PER PERSON to sleep in the barn -- and NO I am not joking!!! The only mitiging factor is that we did get breakfast with our stall - people food, not just hay. And they did provide an abundance of blankets for bedding, so we didn't have to haul our sleeping bags up on the gondola with us. The next best "bargain" on lodging in the area was $US19 per person at the hostel, no breakfast and a dorm room full of other travelers. At least in the barn we had our own private stall!!!! Ironically enough, the first night there were 16 of us in the barn and all except one spoke English - 6 Americans from Chicago plus another American family who were living temporarily in Denmark, 2 Australians and us.

I don't know what to say about the scenery other than that it was spectacular - rugged snow and glacier capped mountains and really green valleys, with picturesque little villages in them. The economy (at least in the more remote areas) is based on dairy farming (the old fashioned way) and tourism. Apparently the government subsidizes the small dairy farmers because they attract tourism. Gimmelwald could easily have been the village that Heidi's grandfather lived near. Everything about it reminded me of that book. There are several other little towns besides Gimmelwald in the Lauterbrunnen Valley (several you can walk to from Gimmelwald) and most of them are accessible only by gondola. There are a few vehicles in each town for hauling grass around, etc, but for the most part you don't see or hear vehicles. The silence is amazing. You are much more likely to hear cow bells than vehicle noise. In the summer the farmers send their cows to the "high country" to be milked and tended by summer laborers. The farmers then spend the summer mowing grass (by hand - no riding lawn mowers!) and gathering it into barns for winter feed. They do this on steep hills, raking it all up by hand. The milk the cows produce is what makes the chocolate that Switzerland is famous for - Toblerone, etc.

Anyway we had a really nice weekend. The weather was perfect. Mike and I went on a rather strenuous hike on Sunday (Deanna opted out) and Mike went to a local church in the evening for a service in German. We did alot of just putzing around and sitting in various places enjoying the view.

Deanna started school on Tuesday and everything seems to be going fairly well. She didn't make the volleyball team and she is pretty surprised and disappointed about that. She is in 2 AP classes (English and Calculus) and she's feeling a little overwhelmed with both of them and is debating whether to transfer out. Deanna is a really good student and I'm sure she could do both if she was really determined but she's not sure she wants to spend her year sweating over either of them. Coming from a private school is a complicator in making a decision. Its hard for her to judge just how she fits into the picture. The is Deanna's first public school experience since kindergarten. Fortunately the American high school isn't really big (750 students, grades 9-12) so that helps the transition. There is another girl who lives near us whose dad is a chaplain. She had been really friendly to Deanna, so that helps, too. They walk to school together and eat lunch together.

Mike started work on Tuesday and discovered immediately that there were all kinds of things already on his calendar. He's having to fend off other chaplains who have counselees that they want him to see. Fortunately his boss has decreed "No counseling for the next 60 days" so that makes it easier to say "no." One of the things on his calendar is a week in Washington D.C. For some kind of training beginning the 19th of Sept.

Dad, you don't know this yet, but that means I am going to have to pick you and Curt up at the airport in Frankfurt on my own because Mike won't be back until the Sunday after you arrive. So far it looks like the next 2 weekends after that are free to do some sightseeing. And Deanna not being on the volleyball team will make it easier to get away. What do you think about Berlin for one of those weekends?

Mary T, I think you can expect to see Mike at some point during that week that he is in D.C. He isn't authorized a rent car but the per diem may be generous enough to rent one anyway. I'm sure sorry to hear about your hold baggage getting lost. Of all things to lose - the important stuff that you wanted to arrive first! Having to go to the library to do e-mail is a real pain even if the library is convenient. We are still having to do that, too. Our DSL was supposed to be hooked up Tuesday, but somehow it hasn't happened.

Yesterday was a red letter day for us. Mike mailed some camping gear to Germany from the Ft. Benning post office on the day that we flew to Germany. We didn't have room for it in our luggage and we didn't want to send it with Mike's household goods and risk not seeing it until November. Somehow Mike didn't think to insure it. It was a pretty large box. I was expecting it to show up here in a week or 2 and when it didn't come I thought for sure it was gone - a several hundred dollar loss. It showed up yesterday - I am pretty excited.

Time to quit. I've rattled on long enough!

Nancy