Nancy's Travels: July 2007

TO ALL

No news may or may not mean good news, but the one thing it does not mean is “no traveling” – at least not with reference to the Strohms. I have fallen down on the job in regard to travelogues and have missed a bunch of opportunities to bore you all with my anecdotes. Here is the super short version of what you have missed followed by a little more detail about our most recent trip:

1. Venice

Date: Easter weekend
Participants: Mike and Nancy

Ryanair to Treviso, Italy, then to Venice by train. For two days we didn’t enter any buildings except to eat or sleep – just explored and marveled and took pictures and more pictures and more pictures. This was our maiden voyage with our new portable GPS – the real thing, not just a flakey add-on to my PDA. So far it has proved to be well worth the money – wish we had made the splurge when we first arrived in Germany. There are no streets in Venice and some of the canals and walkways are quite narrow – but our GPS knew about all of them.

In case any of you have secret aspirations of becoming a gondolier, I've included, at the end of this blog, a series of pictures entitled "Eight Habits of Highly Effective Gondoliers."

Photo challenge of the trip: How many gondoliers can Nancy get in a single picture?

2. Paris

Date: mid-April
Participants: Nancy and 5 other chaplain wives from Heidelberg

Gone 2 ½ days. Traveled by train. I have been censored from writing about this trip. You’ll have to use your imagination!

Photo challenge of the trip: How many chaplain wives can Nancy get in a single picture?

3. Ebenalp, Switzlerand

Date: late April
Participants: Mike, Nancy, and Alan

Ebenalp is a mountain about 2
hours from Zurich with a gondola to the top and incredible views. We went to Zurich to help Alan haul some furniture from IKEA (pronounced ee-KAY-ah in Europe!) to his apartment. On Sunday we went on a little excursion.

Photo challenge of the trip: How many hang gliders can Nancy get in a single picture?

4. Keukenhof Gardens and Kinderdijk, The

Netherlands

Date: early May

Participants: Mike and Nancy, John and Sara Varghese (see http://wildghese2go.
blogspot.com/ for the low down on this incredible couple with whom we’ve recently become acquainted)

The tulip season was a little past it’s prime, but the gardens were beautiful nonetheless.

Photo challenge of the trip: How many windmills can Nancy get in a single picture?

5. The Rhein and Mosel Valleys

Date: mid-May
Participants: Mike, Nancy, Alan and the Collier family, including Larry (the bestman at our wedding 28 years ago), Debbie (Larry’s wife), Justin (son) , Stephanie (daughter) and Jonathan (son-in-law as of 3 days before their arrival in Germany – and no, we don’t have a honeymoon suite in our government quarters!)

We cruised the Rhine from Bacharach to Boppard and spent the night in St. Goar (courtesy of Alan’s burgeoning German language skills applied to getting us pension rooms and also a pension owner who was willing to literally walk out into the street with a German flag and flag us down!) The
next morning we toured Rheinfels Castle, then went on to Köln (otherwise known as Cologne) to see the cathedral there and tour the chocolate factory, ending up in Beilstein on the Mosel where Mike had located rooms for us. The next morning we toured Cochem Castle before leaving the Colliers on their own again and heading back to Heidelberg.

Photo challenge of the trip: How many pictures can Nancy mess up by accidentally setting her camera for the largest pixel size possible?

6. Salzburg and Hilter’s Eagle’s Nest

Date: Memorial Day weekend
Participants:
same as #5
minus Alan

On Saturday we took the Sound of Music tour – a guide took us to the places in the Salzburg area where the Sound of Music was filmed – not necessarily where the events actually happened. The tour was pretty good, actually – not as cheesy as it sounds! On Sunday it was sunny, although not totally clear. Mike and I left the Collier’s to “do” Salzburg on their own and took a gondola up to the Eagle’s Nest -- Hilter’s mountain retreat. A scene from “Band of Brothers” was filmed in the Eagle’s Nest. Incredible views.

Photo challenge of the trip: How many pictures can Nancy miss due to dead batteries?

7. Switzerland (clockwise, beginning and ending in Zurich)

Date: First 7 days of June
Participants: Mike, Nancy, Alan, and Rose.

Photo challenge of the trip: How many waterfalls can Nancy get in a single picture?

Here are the details about this most recent trip:

First things first – Rose is a friend of Alan’s from the Seattle area. She attends his church there. Rose and Alan met (very briefly) at a Community Group Bible Study before Alan moved to Zurich. Rose was headed for Israel to work on a master’s degree in linguistics at the University of Tel Aviv. She extended an open invitation to the Bible study group to spend Passover week in Israel and see the sights with her. Alan and another gal decided to accept the offer. The three of them had a great time together and Alan and Rose decided they wanted to connect again in Zurich as Rose headed back to Seattle for the summer. Mike and I met Rose for the first time in Zurich at the start of our trip and we thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her as we toured Switzerland. Her language skills were also a real asset as we traveled through Switzerland. As you may or may not know, there is a French part of Switzerland and a German part of Switzerland and an Italian part of Switzerland. With Alan’s German skills moving right along (courtesy of Google) and Rose having some fluency in both Italian and French (as well as Hebrew, Spanish and Latin!), we had the bases covered. How convenient is that?

Alan basically planned our itinerary and he did a great job. After years and years of being the family tour guide it was a lot of fun to be able to say “OK, Alan where are we headed tomorrow?” Alan started the trip with a list of ideas about what was worth doing and in what order and then we chose from the list as we went along based on weather and what things took our fancy. His strategy worked really well. The weather wasn’t totally cooperative, but neither did it make any huge dent in our fun. A couple of potentially mind-boggling mountaintop experiences were either less awesome than they might have been or had to been abandoned altogether due to cloud cover, but several others were totally spectacular and as a whole it was a great trip.

Knowing that accommodations in Switzerland are outrageously expensive, Alan and I did our homework and made sure we were prepared to make use of the most economical options available. We came prepared to camp but never actually had to do that. We also had a list of all the “Shlaf im Stroh” in Switzerland (meaning “sleep in straw,” see http://nancystrohm.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_
archive.html for the last time we did this), but we didn’t end up using any of those either. We ended up staying in four different youth hostels, one mountain hut (accessible only by trail) and one cabin in a campground (Camping Jungfrau, a place we’ve stayed before).

Mike was only able to be with us for the first 4 days, then he had to go back to work – darn! – more about “work” later. I think that this is the third time I have put Mike on a train in Switzerland to go back to work! Work sure gets in the way of having a good time!

Here are some of the more memorable stops along our route and a sentence or two about each:

1. Bellinzona (meaning “war zone”) is in the Italian part of Switzerland. They were having “Beatle’s Days” and we stumbled onto a concert band doing Beatle’s arrangements in a picturesque courtyard. There was also a neat market going on and a castle to explore on our own – no admission charge and no tour guide -- that’s the best kind, in my opinion!

2. Lugano is near the border between Switzerland and Italy. It is situated on a long narrow winding lake with mountains all around it, reminiscent of the fjords we saw in Norway. We took a funicular (cable train) from the nearby town of Paradiso to the top of Mount San Salvatore and then hiked back down. The views from the top were incredible.

3. Santa Maria Maggiore is a picturesque little town in the mountains of Italy with an inordinately large, spectacularly situated church. If you go west from Lugano you go through a finger of Italy and then end up back in Switzerland again. The road through that finger is paved but narrow. The scenery is spectacular and it feels very remote. A large church is the last thing you’d expect to see around the next corner. But there it is. And we happened to drive through at noontime on Sunday, so people were streaming out of the church as we stopped to take pictures.

4. Simplon Pass (back in Switzerland again) is a mere 2005 meters (6578 ft.) above sea level -- not high by Colorado standards, but lots of snow and spectacular scenery, regardless.

5. Lausanne (pronounced LOH-sahn) is on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva – French is the language of choice on either side of the lake, but the other side is actually IN France. We “cruised” from Lausanne to Vevey and back again. The banks of the lake were covered with vineyards and I spent the first part of the boat ride feeling a little chagrined about that fact. We took a boat ride on Lake Geneva a couple of years ago with my dad and brother and aunt and uncle and I did NOT remember there being any vineyards! I was beginning to think that all my trips had gotten jumbled together in my memory bank and it was time to quit traveling. But then I was redeemed! We got to Vevey and the vineyards ended. And . . . . I remembered that our last excursion on Lake Geneva was from Chateau Chillion to Vevey – it was a different stretch of the lake – and a very large lake at that!

6. Avenches (uh-VAHNSH) is a small village in the French part of Switzerland. There are a bunch of Roman ruins there (an arena, an amphitheater, a small church, a gate, and part of a wall). The ruins are scattered throughout the countryside and were lots of fun to explore, especially at dusk. The village itself is also picturesque. Viewed from the ruins, it looked like something I’ve seen on the cover of some edition of Pilgrim’s Progress. I kept thinking that if I zoomed in with my camera I’d find Christian and Hopeful on the path leading to the Celestial City.

7. Obersteinberg is a mountain hut high above the Lauterbrunnen Valley (no heat, no showers, and no electricity, but incredible scenery). I have been to this area several times, but not to Obersteinberg. We took a gondola to Gimmelwald and then hiked 5 hours straight up. Rose and Alan were very gracious. They let me set the pace and stop as often as I needed to – which was A LOT! Somewhere near what appeared to be the top of the mountain, Alan got out the GPS and discovered that (1) the GPS knew about the trail we were on and (2) we were 200 meters higher in elevation than the hut we were supposed to be headed for. Hummmmmm. As it turned out, we were about to peak out on a ridge and find ourselves looking down at our hut. At the hut, we were served a delicious supper and then huddled under VERY thick down comforters and played scrabble on my PDA until sleep overtook us, whereupon we sent Alan to his room and slept like logs until morning.

8. Mount Rigi is a mountain overlooking Lake Luzern. We took a gondola to Rigi Kaltbad and then hiked up to Rigi Kulm – not as far or as steep or as remote as Obersteinberg, but spectacular nonetheless. It was a little foggy on top but not enough to completely obscure the view. Lake Luzern is a long skinny lake in central Switzerland with fingers extending in several directions.

Two odds and ends notes about Switzerland, the first about Swiss engineers, the second about Swiss cows, and then on to some family news:

Apparently, the “acceptable grade” for Swiss hiking trails is quite different than that for Swiss autobahns. The Swiss seem to think that highways have to be level. If they need to go up, they build a tunnel. If they need to go down, they build a bridge. In fact, there are so many miles of tunnel on Swiss autobahns that you have to take secondary roads if you actually want to see the sights. On the other hand Swiss trails invariably go straight up. Rarely are there any switchbacks – definitely no tunnels or bridges! Going up is positively grueling. Going down is one degree short of dangerous.

Swiss engineers need to take a lesson from Swiss cows. The cows, apparently, do know how to traverse a slope. In fact they do it so methodically as they graze, that pastures on the side of a hill invariably have ripples in them. For some time now, I have been noticing these ripples in various places in Switzerland and wondering what they were all about. It almost looks like the ground is unstable and is sliding downhill. At the start of this trip, Alan told us he thought that the cows made those ripples as they walked and grazed. Mike, Rose, and I all told him (with varying degrees of tact!) that he was nuts. He was gracious and agreed that it was a pretty crazy idea. By the end of trip, I had to admit that probably he was right. Cows and ripples consistently appear in the same places. So either the cows make the ripples over time as they graze or the farmers put them there on purpose for the benefit of the cows. As crazy as the first option sounds, it is at least slightly more believable than the second! (The Strohm family tradition is such circumstances is for me to say “You were right, Alan. I was wrong.”)

Speaking of cows, one of the things I like about hiking in Switzerland is the cowbells. The original purpose of the bells was to help the owner find his cows but probably at this point they are more for the benefit of tourists. The cows would probably rather do without them – they are typically big and, I’m sure, cumbersome, but I’m rather glad the tradition as been kept alive. Typically the cows stay in groups and each cow’s bell has a slightly different pitch. The result is a cacophony of sound that would probably be unpleasant if one were up close for an extended period of time. However, from a distance and for short periods of time -- until the trail disappears around another corner -- it is a really delightful sound. Here's a short sample of some cow bell music:

If you are really a glutton for punishment, there are more pictures for most of the above locations posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/nancy.strohm. There is also a map with each album showing where that set of pictures was taken.

So now for some family news.

Mike’s job gets crazier all the time. His boss PCS’ed back to the States in mid-May and his replacement is not yet on the job. Meanwhile Mike is holding down the fort alone – which means a double dose of that obnoxious admin junk. To top that off, about a month ago, the chaplain who was pastoring the military chapel near our house got sudden orders back to the states. There was no replacement in sight and someone decided that Mike ought to be the interim pastor. Yeah right! Give the guy who already has two jobs a third one! As it turns out the replacement will probably be on the job by September 1, so maybe this insanity will be shorter-lived than we had initially feared. Bottom line is that we are going to be a little more tied down this summer then we have been the last three years. I’m not expecting any sympathy, just reporting the news!!!!

Deanna is in Tacoma, Washington for the summer. She is living with people from our church there, driving Alan’s car (which he didn’t get sold before he moved to Zurich) and working as a cashier at a Grocery Outlet managed by another family from our church. PTL for Christian friends – especially when your kids are half a world away! Deanna just got back from Bootcamp (Precept Ministries in Chattanooga, Tennessee). This is her 5^th year there – on staff this time. She had a great year at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio and is looking forward to returning there in the fall.

Amy is in Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California. This is her 3^rd summer working for the Student Conservation Association, her 4^th summer doing some kind of work in a state or national park She’s coming up in the world – no more cleaning bathrooms, pulling weeds or counting invasive plants. This summer she’s doing wildlife monitoring. She’ll be back at Western Washington University in the fall working on her Environment Science degree.

Alan is still enjoying working for Google. He changed projects soon after he moved to Zurich. He’s doing something related to Google maps at the moment. Believe it or not Alan has managed to find an English-speaking Precept class in Zurich – a ladies group no less. He asked permission to join the class and, as you can imagine, not only was the answer “yes,” but the teacher soon announced to Alan that she and her husband were going to adopt Alan for the duration of his sojourn in Zurich.

I have been overtaken by boredom. As much as I love traveling, there is a limit to how much traveling one can do! Can you believe I said that? Anyway, as of about 10 days ago I started working at the PX as a cashier. We’ll see how long it lasts. So far I like it OK, except for working weekends. We’ll see how flexible they are about scheduling.

Mike and I bought bicycles a couple of months ago and we’ve been having a lot of fun riding through the farmlands around Heidelberg. There are miles and miles and miles of FLAT bike trails within easy access of our house. We’ve ridden as much as 20 kilometers on a Sunday afternoon. With daylight until almost 10:00PM we can even go for a ride after Mike gets home from work during the week. So far we are having a cooler summer than the last couple and it is great to be outside.

So that’s the news for now.

Nancy

Eight Habits of Highly Effective Gondoliers

1. Don't allow yourself to be intimidated by motorized craft