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