Viareggio

Tuesday May 31^st

Today we made our way to the Italian coastline.  We visited Viareggio, which is about an hour and 20 minutes via train from Florence.   We walked from the train station directly to the beach, about 10 blocks away.  All of the beach access points seemed to be for private beach clubs, and we didn’t really want to pay for access to the beach today.  So we took a break and had lunch while we tried to figure out how the beach access worked.

Along the beachfront was a pedestrian only street, lined with restaurants, gelato shops and other beach type stores.  We opted for some thick Sicilian type pizza sold by the weight.  We just pointed to the type that we wanted, and the counter man cut off a slice and weighed it.  Katie had a slice with hot dog like pieces on it, and I had a sausage one.  We sat on a nearby bench to eat it.  It was simply outstanding.  Every bite was more delicious than the one before.  Compared to the pizza we had in Florence the day before, it was light years ahead.  Of course, here in Viareggio, there were no American or other tourists to be found, just Italians at the seaside.   This was no tourist pizza, but the real thing.  Plus it was cheap. I paid only 4.50 euros for our lunch, compared to 26 euros in Florence!

After lunch, I decided that our best bet to find an English speaker to explain the beach access was in a nice hotel.  We headed into the Hotel President, and indeed found an English speaking clerk at reception.  He explained that the only public beach access was at the end of the promenade and it was small.  So we set out and found a VERY narrow strip of beach set aside for free access. It was only about 15 wide and made a narrow stripe down to the seas from the promenade.  The fishing pier was on one side, and the other side was marked by a large wire mesh fence that separated us from the paying clients at the adjacent beach club.  The sand was full of cigarette butts, but we found a cleanish section and spread out our towels.

We walked down to the Mediterranean Sea and walked in the water.  It turns out that the 5 meters of beach from the waves up onto the shore are also public access, although you can’t spread a towel there.  The area is for walking and swimming.  So we were not limited to the small section in front of the public beach, but could walk down a bit.  We waded into the water and played for a while – it was not warm, but not cool either, just sort of an in-between temperature.  Katie was perfectly happy splashing in the shallow water.  It was no more than mid-thigh for deep as far as we cared to walk out. 

There were plenty of people in the water, all in our region near the public access.  There was a huge group of 20something girls in tiny bikinis and some boys the same age flirting shamelessly with them.  There were old men in tiny speedos dragging nets through the water and the first layer of sand scooping up some kind of shellfish, and there were several families with small children playing in the water.  A little girl of about 3 was swimming naked, and building sand castles.  Katie was sure she was getting sand in places that it would not be nice to have all sandy.

After swimming for awhile, Katie built some sand castles and then watched the water wash them away.  The waves were very small, and the tide moved in only about 6 inches in the two hours that we were there.  After a while the wind off the sea cooled us enough to get up and go.  We washed off all the sand in the water and went up to the warm towels to lie and dry off.  Once dry we were able to dust off most of the remaining sand, and pull our clothes on over our suits. Not perfectly clean, but good enough for the train ride home. We got some gelato for a snack and caught the train back to Florence.

Tomorrow Paul arrives to send the last 10 days or our trip with us.  I can’t believe that the trip is drawing to a close, yet it is such a long time since we were in Stockholm.  Katie and I have had some amazing adventures and learned a lot about ourselves and each other.  This trip has really strengthened the bonds between us, and although we are both really looking forward to heading home, we will both miss the fun times that we have had together.  We have been incredibly lucky to have this opportunity and we will both cherish it forever.

Pizza and Gelato

Monday May 30^th

Well, much to our disappointment, the curator of our villa checked us into the wrong apartment. We were supposed to be upstairs, and not supposed to have the backyard. I had thought that originally, but figured that Ms. Rita knew what she was doing.  Well, she came and moved us upstairs this morning, to Katie’s bitter disappointment.  There is a family coming in tomorrow for the downstairs apartment. Oh well, at least we had one great night in the awesome downstairs villa. I felt and still feel very badly for Katie as she was so excited at the place.  The new one is “suckish” according to her.

My goal for this morning was to figure out the bus system and get us passes.  I was able to get us apsses with no problem after a quick internet search turned up the Florence bus website with plenty of information in English. I bought multi-ride passes for us at a newstand, and with the info online, I got settled with the lines and stops.

I also solved the basil problem from yesterday.  I couldn’t get my own scanning gun at the supermarket because you need to have a customer loyalty card, which is just too much for me to set up for a week. But there was a street market across from our villa this morning and I bought a basil plant! It was only 2 euros, and is a nice healthy size.  The bunch of basil was 1.5 euros, so I come out ahead this way – more than enough basil for the week!

Katie and I took the bus into town and did a walking tour of the major sights. The Duomo is the main sight in town, a church with the very first Renaissance dome – the one all other church domes are based on.  It was really interesting to see, and the façade of the church was extremely impressive, all gingerbread cakey with tons of intricate lace looking details. The façade was added in the 1870s, so it is not original, and has many detractors, but I liked it.

It was blistering heat – about 86 and bright sun – so we had gelato as we walked through the many outdoor markets.  Katie had two kinds of chocolate and I had coconut and mixed berries.  I really like the fruit gelato flavors, which really make your tongue come alive and leap with joy.  The flavors are so intense! The outdoor markets were fun to walk through – lots of leather stalls (is leather Florentine?) with belts, jackets and wallets, plus the standard tourist fare. Plenty of small replica of Michelangelo’s David, and lot of Pinocchio puppets.

We continued our tour past the old city hall where a replica of Michelangelo’s David stands outside, in the same spot where it stood for 350 years, before concerns about erosion moved it indoors to the Accademia gallery (we go there on Saturday).  It is much bigger than I expected! I thought it was life size, but it is 17 feet tall.  The replica was impressive, so I’m sure we’ll like the real thing.

We saw the Medici family’s palace, and an outdoor sculpture area adjacent to city hall that has housed sculptures since the Renaissance.  Now it houses both sculptures and lots of tourists eating gelato!  There is a gelato stand on average about every 15 feet, and the place is packed with tourists – we haven’t heard this much English in months!!!

We stopped in a shady pizzeria for lunch, and the pizza was good, but not excellent. It’s so hard to tell which restaurants are going to be good or not, so I am emailing some contacts for recommendations. I’m sure we’ll find excellent pizza. It was too hot to eat pasta, but we will at least once or twice, maybe we can find a restaurant with air conditioning.

Tomorrow we are heading to the Italian seaside for the day, we got recommendations for a beach with nice sand and swimming from some locals, so we are really looking forward to it. this time we will use lots of sunscreen!

Ciao from Firenze!

Sunday May 29^th

We arrived in Florence this afternoon after taking the train from Lausanne through the alps to Milan and then from Milan to Florence.  Of course here the town is called Firenze.  Why in the world do we call it Florence if its residents call it Firenze? That doesn’t make any sense at all. I think everyone in the world should refer to the city using its given name. Do people elsewhere in the world call Philadelphia by a different name? or New York City?

We had pizza for lunch in the train station in Milan.  Granted it was train station pizza, but still it was better than most train station pizzas. I look forward to a good sit down meal.

We are staying in an actual villa here in Firenze.  It is nothing to look at form the front – it kind of looks like a standard row home, but on the inside it is all redone, and we even have a patio and a backyard. Katie is so excited!  We both also have our own bedrooms. 

Despite the advantages of having our own nice big place, the main disadvantage is that it forces you to quickly come to terms with navigating in a new culture.  This place is way out in the residential section section of Florence, away from the tourist bustle, which is nice, but again has it disadvantages.  I had to grill our landylady, Ms. Rita on finding the bus stops, buying bus passes, finding the grocery, finding a pizzeria and most importantly, finding a gelateria.

We arrived on a Sunday, and Ms. Rita cheerfully informed us that the grocery store, the biggest one around is just across the street. “But it’s closed on Sunday. There is one in the tourist section that is open on Sunday though.”    Ok, so then, we’ll need to take the bus to the tourist region.

“Where is the bus stop?”

“Just around the corner, very easy.”

“Is there a ticket machine there.”

“No but you can buy your ticket at a Tabac shop.  However, they are closed on Sunday.”

“Does the bus run on Sunday?”

“Yes, just not so very often as the week.”

Ok – so the grocery is closed, and I can’t buy a bus ticket.  Maybe the restaurants are open?

“Is the nearby restaurant open on Sunday?”

“Maybe, I’m not sure. Maybe the gelataria is open”

So, we can’t get groceries, we can’t get a bus pass, and the restaurant may or may not be open.  We can probably get gelato though and I have four big chocolate bars from Broc, Switzerland in my bag. We might get a stomachache, but we won’t starve.

Once Ms. Rita left us, we set out for the gelateria, and walked past the big grocery store, which was very obviously open. So after all, we were able to get perfectly fine and nutricious groceries. We picked up a pizza, some fresh pasta, some tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, but no basil.  The fruit and vegetable section was  bt confusing to me, and I have to abandon the basil! 

You weigh your fruits or veggies on a scale right in the produce section, and then print out a label for it.  But I couldn’t find a code for the basil. So I laid in wait until someone else tried to buy basil so I could copy what she did. I figured this is Italy, someone is going to buy basil soon.  And up someone came, she pulled out a hand scanner, scanned in the bar code on the sign and walked off.  Arrgh!  I ran up to her and asked if she spoke English. Of course she didn’t.  So I pointed to the scale, to the basil in her hand, and the basil in mine, then shrugged.  She showed me the scanned and pointed me up to the front.  I walked up front but still didn’t find a hand scanner, so gave up on the basil.

Katie talked me into a huge tub of gelato and some interesting looking saucer shaped cakes with bright green shiny frosting. I helped myself to a nice bottle of wine.  I hope I can find my wine opener from Paris.

After taking the groceries home, we re-set out for the geletaria.  We saw plenty f people eating gelato so we knew we were close. It was across the street from the grocery store.  For just 1.70 euros, you could get a huge cone with two different flavors.  Katie was in heaven to find out there is nutella gelato. She paired the sweet nutella with a tart lemon.  I had pistachio and asked for melona to go with it, but instead got melagra, due to my poor pronounciation, but was fine with it. it turned out to be run raisin.  Both flavors were excellent.

 We plan to spend the afternoon and evening resting in our garden after the trip and the disorientation of easing into a new culture. Katie pointed out to me that in the grocery store that I kept trying to talk n French to the cashier, who understood neither French nor English and just wanted to see my ID to verify my credit card. Hopefully our pasta dinner will be tasty, but it will certainly be relaxing.

Lake Geneva

Saturday May 28^th

Today we did the de rigueur tourist activity in Lausanne – we took a boat ride on Lake Geneva.  It’s just the thing to do here, so we did it.  Lake Geneva is kind of shaped like a crescent moon, and Lausanne is near the middle.  Straight across the lake is Evian, France.  To the right is Geneva, Switzerland and to the left is Montreux, Switzerland.  Montreux was the home of Freddie Mercury, and there is a big statue of him at the harbor.  We took the boat to Montreux instead of Evian or Geneva, not because of Freddie Mercury, but because the views of the Alps are nicest in that direction.

The ride was nice, it took about 90 minutes to get to Montreux and the sun was nice and warm.  We rode 2^nd class, which meant we have to stay on the lower deck, but honestly, it was nicer than the upper deck, which was set back. I guess they were 10 feet closer to the Alps than we were, but since I had a seat on the deck in the sun and my view was unobstructed, all was good.

When we got to Montreux we disembarked, looked at the Freddie Mercury statue, and wandered along the lake. Katie was entranced with some swanlings. There are so many swans here on the lake – more than I have ever seen in one place before, and Katie just loves looking at the swanlings.  We thought about some lunch, but couldn’t find any cheap options.  We even stopped in McDonalds, and converted to US dollars a quarter pounder was $12 and 6 chicken nuggets were $10.  NOT EVEN A VALUE MEAL -JUST THE SANDWICHES!  We decided against $10 chicken nuggets and decided just to catch the train back to Lausanne and get sandwiches at the deli next to our hotel where you can get a $5 ham and cheese sandwich.  The train ride back was only 15 minutes and we were soon eating our cheap sandwiches beside the lake.

After lunch we took a nice walk along the lake, up to the next town and back, about 90 minutes round –trip. It was a nice day for a walk, and there was really not much else to do.  We watched all the sailboats go up and down the lake and Katie walked on the rocks. We even found a quiet park where she could practice her karate for a few minutes.

After the walk we sat by the lake again. Katie read and I dozed.  Later we had more cheese based dishes for dinner. Rösti again for me and Crouté with an oeuf for Katie ,which is a baked cheese layer on thick white bread and a fried egg on top.  

We head for Florence in the morning!  Our one hope is that our neighborhood is quiet, because with the boats blowing their horns in the morning, the churches chiming the hours all day long and the loud bands playing the in plaza across the street from the hotel each night until midnight it has been difficult to sleep!

Yummy Yummy Day

Friday May 27^th

Yesterday we stopped at the train station to try to book passage on a specialty trip called “The Chocolate Train”.  On this trip you take the train to Gruyeres up in the mountains above Lake Geneva and tour a cheese factory, then transfer to a bus to go to a neighboring village to tour a chocolate factory, and then come home. It was pretty pricey, but we thought it might be fun.  However, too bad for us it was sold out.  We thought about what we should do instead, and since when we got up this morning it was grey and rainy it wasn’t a good day for the lake.  So we decided to see if we could at least get ourselves to Gruyeres on the train to tour the cheese factory. 

It turned out to be pretty easy – we went on a train to a nearby town about 15 minutes away and transferred there to a small trolley that went up through alpine meadows and many small regional villages before stopping in Gruyeres.    Katie and I have been trying to read literature that matches with our destinations, and as the small trolley wound itself up the alpine pass we both read Heidi.  How relaxing to see the wildflowers through the windows in the shadow of the Alps as we read about Heidi frolicking with her goats on the slopes of her mountain!

We read Anne Frank’s Diary and the Da Vinci Code in Paris, Swiss Family Robinson in Germany (yes – I know it is Swiss, but the family feels kind of German), Heidi in Switzerland and we plan to read Pinocchio in Italy. If any of you have suggestions on other location appropriate books for us, let me know.

We when arrived in Gruyeres we saw the cheese making house (La Maison Du Gruyere) right outside the train station. Literally 20 steps away.  Pretty convenient for tourists who don’t like to walk!  We decided to go into the town of Gruyeres first since the rest of the trolley was disgorging into la Maison du Gruyere.  The town of Gruyeres is very touristy, but is a nice example of an intact walled city.  You walk about 15 minutes up a nice hiking trail ( covered with snails and slugs to Katie’s delight) from the train station and enter through the wall into the cobblestoned center of town. It is very small as would be common in medieval times, and is fortified by a large castle at one end, which you can tour.  Otherwise, inside the walls are two small museums and a bunch of restaurants and souvenir shops.  Nothing else.  We skipped the museums and the castle, but the museums are odd enough to mention.  One is a museum dedicated to the artist who designed the aliens for the iconic Alien movie.  The other is a museum that displays a collection of Tibetan art.  All in all, both vey odd for the walled cheese making town of Gruyeres.

We decided instead to hike on a small path that circled the castle.  We got some great views of the castle and the Alps. As the path ended, we saw what looked like a set of street signs pointing in all different directions. Upon closer inspection, it was a hiking signpost.  Switzerland is covered in hiking and walking trails and marks them very well.  You could see the way to about 10 different villages with the estimated walking time to each.  I noticed that the town of Broc was on the signpost, with a walking time of one hour. As that is the town with the chocolate factory, I began to think that perhaps we could do both the cheese factory and the chocolate factory, and work in a hike in the Swiss Alps between the villages!

We returned to the town of Gruyeres and went immediately to the TI (Tourist information – there’s one in every town). We spoke with the lady there who confirmed it was easy to walk to Broc and she even printed out an official hiking topographical map for us with the trail marked.  So we now had a great plan – see the cheese making, eat a big lunch and hike to the chocolate factory, then return on the train from Broc instead of Gruyeres.

We went back down to La Maison du Gruyeres and took the cheese making tour.  It was actually kind of disappointing and I was glad we now had additional plans. The entire tour took about 30 minutes and had self guided audio head sets. The premise was that a cow talked you through the cheese making process.  I did learn a lot about how cheese was made, but again, it wasn’t necessarily worth an entire trip to Gruyere just for this.  I liked seeing the cheese cave where the big wheels of cheese are aged for 12 months.  The newer cheese wheels are almost white, while the older ones are a nice deep yellow. It looked like a wine aging room but with racks of cheese wheels instead of wine bottles. Plus a cool robot went up and down the rows filling the big wheels over to improve quality.  We got samples of cheese aged 6, 8 and 10 months. Since we were heading now to lunch, I put the cheese away for later.

We walked back up into the walled town of Gruyeres, and we treated to an incredibly touristy site, but yet we were intrigued.  Two old men and an old women were dressed in traditional costumes and blowing those big horns.  It sounded much prettier than you would expect, but looked just like a Riccola cough drop ad.

We went into a restaurant which served all kinds of cheese food. We had fondue the night before and disappointingly learned that we didn’t really like it.  It starts out good, but tastes weird the longer you eat it.  Of course I wasn’t swirling the cheese properly with my fondue fork and was corrected by our waiter, but still, it was weird.  So for lunch today Katie had cheese pasta with ham. It came with an extra pot of shredded gruyere to put on top, and a small Swiss flag on top of the mountain of shredded cheese.  She said it was excellent.  I had rösti, which is awesome! If you like hash browns, rösti is for you.  This was rösti with cheese, so it was a big warm iron skillet with nice greasy hash browns covered in a thick layer of bubbling gruyere, which was crusty around the edges. Oh so GOOD! Of course it also had a miniature Swiss flag on top. We also had a basket of bread on the table, which we didn’t need, so I put it all in my bag to eat with the cheese from La Maison du Gruyeres for dinner. Katie was embarrassed, but later ate the bread and cheese with relish for her dinner.

After lunch we did a little souvenir shopping, and one of the shops is attached to a restaurant and they make their own Gruyere to sell in the shop and use in the restaurant. Just as we were in the shop it was time to pull the curds out of the whey and we got to see the process.   The curds then get put into a mold and pressed to become the Gruyere.

We then set out with bellies full for Broc.  Unfortunately it had been raining off and on all day, but we had planned for rain and had our rain jackets with us.  With our hoods up to protect against a light drizzle, the hike took us first down the hill from which the castle towered over the valley.  Steps were carved into the hill, and the path was well marked.  We went down into the valley, across an alpine stream on using a covered bridge, and the hugged the side of the mountain as we headed to the next village.  Broc was not far, and the pleasant part of the hike through the woods was over too soon. Once in Broc we got a little turned around and missed the turnoff for the chocolate factory. Unfortunately at this point it started to rain pretty hard.  We paused and got our bearings and then headed down to the chocolate factory in the rain. All told it took about 90 minutes, but felt longer just because the last 15 were miserable.

It was a little disconcerting arriving at the chocolate factory because we had been alone in the woods and Gruyere was not that crowded, but the chocolate factory was PACKED.  There were a lot of big bus tours and people everywhere.  It was the world headquarters of Cailler, which has been making chocolate in Switzerland for 200 years.  The grandson of the founder of Callier teamed up with the founder of Nestle in the 1920s and it has been a Nestle business ever since. 

We signed up for a tour, and waited just about 20 minutes for an English tour. Tours were going off every five minutes in many different languages including German, French, English and Spanish.  We were joined by about 15 other English speakers and set off on the tour. 

It was really quite strange.  We descended in an elevator which opened up into an Aztec temple, like a Disney ride!  We were treated to a history of the development of chocolate beginning with the Aztecs.  The tour went from the Aztecs to the coming of Cortes.  The booming narration informed us that the Aztecs presented Cortes with a Cacao tree and he repaid them by “DESTROYING THE AZTEC EMPIRE”.  Then a door opened and we walked t the next room which was made to make you feel like you were on Cortés’s ship back to Spain loaded with Cacao beans. The tour continued this way, leading us through other high points in the history of chocolate including the Spanish Inquisition, Versailles and the French Revolution, where Marie Antoinette apparently had a glass of hot chocolate as her last meal.  It was VERY ODD and not at all what I had expected.

At the conclusion of the guided tour we had a self-guided tour through the process of making chocolate and saw an actual line in production and received fresh chocolates at the end of the process.  We then went into a tasting room, where they had UNLIMITED TASTING!  Samples of every Callier product were laid out n silver platters and you could work your way around the room trying everything.  I ran out steam mid-way around the room and surreptitiously began putting a sample of each candy into my jacket pocket.

After the tasting room, the tour was over and we headed to the train station to head back home. While we waited for the train to depart a couple from California engaged us in conversation and all I could think was , Please stop talking and look away from me as I need to empty my pockets of this candy before it all melts.  Once I could get it out of my pockets it turned out I had about 15 pieces of chocolate. Katie and I rode home in peace on four different trains – Broc to Bulle, Bulle to Palezieux, Palezieux to Lausanne, and Lausanne to Ouchy. We made all the connections with ease and enjoyed our dinner of cheese samples, fresh bread, and chocolate samples with gusto. We had been able to complete our own chocolate train tour, as well as throw in an alpine hike for half the price and got a free dinner to boot!

I love the olympics!

Thursday May 26^th

Today was a really fun day.  We went to the Musee Olympics.  The headquarters of the IOC is here in Lausanne and there is a nice Olympic museum and Park. I didn’t think it would take long to do the museum as it was pretty small, but we ended up spending almost four hours there.  The park and museum are right on Lake Geneva with the park rising up from the shores and the museum looking out from the top of the park over the lake.   The park is full of statues that represent different Olympic ideals, or specific host cities, like a totem from Vancouver.  There is also an Olympic cauldron with the flame always lit. I really enjoyed seeing the Olympic flame up close. I absolutely love the Olympics and always have, and Katie loves them too, so this was a great museum for us.

The first floor had exhibits on the games themselves.  Things like learning the process to become a host city, information on the founder of the modern Olympics, a lot of excellent ancient Greek pottery with sports themes in the etchings and a short movie on the games.  While we were looking at a basketball signed by the Dream Team, a group of Swiss boys in about 8^th grade were nearby.  They heard me talking to Katie and one of the boys got very excited. “You are Americain?”  He asked in a heavy French accent.   I confirmed that we were and he and his friends talked excitedly among themselves, while staring at us.

“Are you from Lausanne?” I asked him. 

“Yes!” he replied and his friends burst out in laughter. “I mean no,” he clarified. “We are on a trip with school.”  His friends kept laughing at him, but I thought it was great that he was trying out his English on us.  They wandered off to talk to a bunch of girls from his school.  Apparently he and his friends told them how he talked to the Americans, and the girls were like “We have to see this!”  Next thing we know we were surrounded by about 15 kids, 1 trying to talk, and 14 listening.  When he opened his mouth to talk, the girls burst out laughing. So I told him his English was very good, and to keep it up.  They soon dispersed and we continued on in the museum.

My favorite display on the first floor was one with a torch from the torch relay of every single modern Olympic torch relay, along with several TVs showing iconic images from the relays and the torch lightings.  Scenes like the archer lighting the cauldron in Lillehammer, Muhammad Ali lighting the flame in Atlanta, and Cathy Freeman lighting it in a pool of water in Sydney.  I’m such a softie for the Olympics that these scenes made me tear up.

We also saw scenes of the Olympic flame being lit.  It is a huge ceremony with women in Greek goddess costumes lighting the flame using the sun in an ancient Greek temple in Olympus.  They do this for each Olympics to start the torch relays.  Really cool!

Upstairs the displays were more about the athletes, with a lot of signed sports equipment, and tons of touch screen computers with info on famous athletes from many different countries and videos of their performances.  We watched clips of weightlifters from Poland, Tae Kwan Doe experts from France, Jesse Owens in the 1936 Berlin games, Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner Kersee, white water kayakers, and on and on and on.  It was so great to show Katie the iconic athletes and their performances. Half of the displays upstairs were winter and half were summer and we got to see a 20 minute movie with top Olympic performances.

There were several special exhibits on how the Olympics bring people together and promote peace, and some on how the Olympics promote gender and racial equality.  There was an entire room with every stamp with an Olympic theme that has been issued worldwide and all the Olympic posters.  On the lower level was a display on overcoming prejudice, which we skipped, a big library and two theaters. In one we saw a 20 minute set winter Olympic clips which had been filmed in 3D at the Salt Lake City games.  The other was a set of individual TVs and computer monitors loaded with TV clips from every broadcast Olympics.  With your admission you got two clips, but you could buy more if you wanted.  Each clip was about 10 minutes long.  The museum was great - you get to sit and watch sports on TV!  I picked the women’s gymnastics finals at the 1976 Olympics where Nadia Comaneci scored the perfect 10s.  It was the first time Katie saw her performances.  For my second clip I decided on Mary Lou Retton in the 1984 games – again the first time Katie saw the performances.  Katie wanted me to pick a good set of ice skating for her, so we did the 1996 winter games with Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. She wanted volleyball for her second clip so we watched the Beijing Olympics Women’s beach volleyball final between the US and China. 

We finished with the gift shop which a lot of London 2012 gear, and finally dragged ourselves away to have lunch along Lake Geneva.  After lunch we switched into our swim suits and rented a great paddleboat with a slide on it!  It was a little cool and windy today and for most of the time we were the only paddleboat on the lake.  The lake was cool, but not cold, and we each did the slide a number of times.  It was really pretty fun, although the slide was higher and steeper sitting at the top than you would expect!

Back to Work (for a day)

Wednesday May 25^th

Today was a work day, one of the few on this trip.  We came to Lausanne just so I could meet with Prof. John Thome at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.  In fact, after some email exchanges, I was lucky enough to be invited to give a seminar, and am the guest of the lab for a few days here in Lausanne.   John had to teach a class from 10 -12 this morning so I wasn’t going to meet him until a little past noon.  Katie and I had a nice breakfast at the hotel and walked along the lake in the morning.  The lakefront area is very nice and perfectly safe, so Katie opted to stay at the hotel for the day rather than tagging along to the university.

I caught the metro to the university and arrived at noon.  After a few false turns around the campus I found my way to the correct building and met Prof. Thome for the first time.  He is extremely well-known in the fluids and heat transfer research community and actually wrote the book that is used to each the graduate courses in boiling.  We headed off to a nice lunch at a University owned restaurant. This was a white-tablecloth restaurant that served liquor.  We don’t have anything like that at Villanova.  We both opted for the lake perch, which is a regional specialty here.  The perch is cut into small strips and then rolled. Each little roll is about ½” thick and 2” long. This strips are sautéed and then covered in some sort of delicious cream based sauce.  You get perhaps 20 of these on your plate.  SO GOOD!

After lunch it was time for my seminar. John has 14 Ph.D. students and 5 post-docs and they made up the audience for the seminar which was held in a conference room just inside his extensive labs.  I have given similar seminars before and this one went quite smoothly.  The students were more or less engaged and even asked a few good questions. After the seminar I got a tour of his labs and saw his extensive set of experiments in both macro and micro scale condensation and boiling. 

As the day drew to a close, he offered to take Katie and I to dinner.  As he is an engaging person to talk with, a dinner sounded very nice.  Plus, since food in Switzerland is incredibly expensive, it was nice to be treated.  The Swiss franc is a strong currency and the exchange with the dollar is very poor for us.  It was a bit early for dinner, so after collecting Katie from the hotel room the three of us walked along the lake about 45 minutes down and then 45 minutes back.  John is an American ex-pat who has lived in Europe for 27 years, 15 in Rome and 12 in Lausanne.  His wife is Italian and they met when he did graduate work at Oxford.  He is incredibly interesting and engaging, and even held Katie’s attention, and she usually hates business dinners.   As we are heading to Rome in a week, he had lots of suggestions for what to see, and what to eat.  We now have the name f the best gelato shop in Rome and a list of the best flavors to try – local ones (walnut, pistachio and wild berry).  He also had ideas for Florence, and we may now try to fit in a trip to the Italian beaches early in the week before Paul joins us. 

We all had different salads for dinner, I had one with fresh seafood, Katie has a hot goat cheese salad and John had a Greek salad, plus John and I shared a bottle of Swiss wine from the vinyards that ring Lake Geneva.   Then we finished with a very Swiss dessert- Crème Brulee, which was excellent.  It was really a very nice day and I ended up with a wonderful new research colleague. It really pays to put yourself out there sometimes and make these email connections.

Arrival in Switzerland

Tuesday May 24^th

We left Germany this morning and headed to Lausanne, Switzerland.  Lausanne is on Lake Geneva in the French speaking region of Switzerland.  Switzerland has four distinct regions each with their own language, German, French, Italian and Romansch.  Almost 75% of the country speaks german, 21% French, 3% Italian and less than 1% Romansch.  The French region is obviously along the swiss-French border, and that is where Lausanne is located.  Yu can look from our hotel window out across lake Geneva to Evian, France.

We took three trains this morning, one from Mannheim, Germany to Basel, Switzerland, then Basel to Biel and Biel to Lausanne.  We didn’t really know about changing in Biel, so that was a surprise to us. We had open tickets from Basel to Lausanne and just asked at the info booth when we arrived for the next train to Lausanne.  The agent printed out a slip that showed it left on track 14 is six minutes so we hustled there, laoded out luggage and sat down.  I was concerned because Lausanne was not on the list of stops, but figured I’d ask the conductor. He confirmed this train was not going to Launsanne and showed me that the slip the agent gave me showed a change in Biel.  But that was easy enough, we got off an hour later in Biel, waited five minutes and got the train to Lausanne. Easy as can be.  Traveling so much through unfamiliar regions is teaching me to be patient and not to panic. We were much better off than the young lady behind us who found out that her eurail pass did not work in Switzerland and her Austrialian credit card was not valid on the train. She had to get off at the next station and figure out what to do.

We got to our hotel right on Lake Geneva around 2pm, and took a nap.  I was simply exhausted.  I slpet until 4 and then we walked along the lake for a while. We found the headquarters of the International Olympic Organizing Committee and plan to go to the park and museum there later this week.  We watched a water skier, and some kdis playing in a fountain.  I spoke with a paddleboat rental shop and again we plan to do that, as the paddle boat have a slide off the back and you can slide right into the lake and swim.  It looks like  a lot of fun.

The town is built on the side of a hill and the old town is up the hill, so we then took the new metro up the hill and walked around the old cobblestone historical section a bit  before settling down at a small Italian place for dinner.   I told Katie that “you know your trip is getting a bit long when you look around in Switzerland and say…ok , more of the same, cobblestone streets, an old church, a historical museum, OK nothing really to see here…..” I think we will stick o the lake district, which is just beautiful and a bit more quiet than the town, as well as something different from yet another old town.

Our last day in Germany

Monday May 22^nd

Today was a very quiet day for me, but not so much for Katie.  The alarm rang at 6:30 this morning and after a quick breakfast of rolls, Katie and Luzie were off to the Gymnasium. It was a long day today, as each day ends at a different time. Today school lasted until 3:15, but they had some fun tuff built into the day.  There was a double period of gym, which they call “sport” and the lesson plan for today was ripstick riding!  Then later in the afternoon was a team-building activity with the “classroom”teachers and the activity for today was bowling at the new local community center which is in the same complex as the gymnasium.

Karin and I had a long breakfast after the girls left and compared school systems and other aspect s of life.  Our plan for the day was to drive into Mannheim and pick up a piece of art that Karin had at the framers.  The framer is a certified artisan who went through three years of apprenticeship and then got a masters in the art from the Chamber of craftsmen. This apprenticeship is available in many crafts an also in businesses and is an alternative to college for the kids who don’t go to the gymnasium.  This is a well-respected career path, and taken by many people.  The framework was absolutely beautiful and complemented the artwork perfectly.

We also walked around Mannheim a bit.  It is much larger than Heidelburg at about 500,000 residents.  Heidelburg has only about 150,000 people.  The main difference through is that heidlelbrg was protected during the war and no bombs fell on it at all. However, Mannheim was full of industry and was bombed heavily. So while Heidelburg is old and beautiful, Mannheim is mainly rebuilt and looks much more like a city.  At one point we saw two old buildings with a new building in between. Karin said matter of factly that the middle building was probably bombed and the new building just filled in the gap.

We spoke some of her new job in which she works to improve productivity in the mental health facilities of the University of Heidelburg health system. Mental health issues are stil very much hidden in Germany and not discussed, even depression is not acknowledged.  This is one area in which she really wishes that Germany could catch up. One of her nephews is autistic and when the childs mother visited Karin in the US, she was in awe of all the Autism awareness stickers on people’s cars. That would NEVER be acknowledged in Germany, much less so publicly.  They think it is much better in the US.

We arrived home and welcomed the girls back from the gymnasium. They were both completely exhausted! However, the day went well and Katie survived. She has lots of tales of how things are different and how they are the same from her school, but overall she seemed to enjoy it.

This evening we planned to have a traditional German meatloaf type food that is very characteristic of Bavaria, to celebrate Roland and Karin’s heritage.  However, by the time we got Vreni to and from swim practice and picked the meat up at the butcher, it was way too late to actually cook it up for tonight! As the butcher handed it to Karin, he said “So just cook it for an hour.” She looked down at her watch and up again in horror as it was already past 6pm.  Oh well – the Schmids will have to eat it later in the week!  We quick whipped up a spaghetti dinner instead with creamy basil sauce.  Luzie and Vreni prefer their noodles without sauce leading to a funny  exchange. Katie and Luzie se the table and were already sitting when the noodles were brought to the table, “Oh Mom, no!” said Luzie, “Couldn’t you make some without sauce?”  At that point Vreni showed up to the table, looked down, got a disappointed look on her face, and said “Oh Maman, Nein!!!” But with admonishments from their parents they ended up eating anyway. We had rolls with the dinner and they were fresh pretzel roll from the bakery. Pretzel rolls are a very common and tasty roll here.

After dinner Roland headed out to play a team sport which is kind of similar to volleyball, but you hit the ball down onto the floor to bounce it instead of up in the air. The net is only about a foot off the ground.  It’s a interesting mix of volleyball and some aspect of large-scale ping-pong! It is an older game, and not really popular anymore, so there aren’t too many places to play it.  There is a place nearby though and Roland plays every Monday night.

Karin, the girls and I headed into town one last time to get ice-cream.  I got the spaghetti ice this time as I really wanted it try it before leaving town. Luzie joined me in spaghetti ice, and Katie and Vreni got banana splits. Karin just had a sundae. Katie rode the waveboard all the way into town and back and has gotten really good at it, accident not withstanding.  She is begging for one when we get home.

Later in the evening Karin and I made a picnic lunch for Katie and I to take on the train tomorrow.  It’s a really good german feast. Sandwiches made from pretzel rolls, pfeffer salami and cream cheese.  Mine has horseradish cream cheese!  We also have pretzel rods, and lots of German candies.  Katie and Luzie split up the candy form the sugar shack, plus we have lots of German Haribu gummy candies.

Vern went to bed, but the rest of us stayed up late into the night talking and looking at old photos of the girls when the Schmids lived near us.  This was such a great opportunity to spend some time with old friends and learn about life in Germany.  Katie and Luzie were so small when they moved away, and although Karin and I had nominally stayed in touch, this will make us closer again.  We hope to be able to come back sometime and hope the Schmids visit us again sometime.  Katie and Luzie plan to stay in touch now via email and see each other again before too long.  It was a bit stressful for all of us to get reaquainted again after so long, but it was really worth it and I am glad that we took the opportunity to do so!

A relaxing day

Sunday May 22^nd

Today was a nice relaxing kind of day.  We all slept late and had a nice German breakfast of different types of fresh rolls with butter and jelly and cold cuts.  We were planning to go hiking in a forest about an hour away, but it was just going to be too hot for extended hiking.  So we hung around the house for a while in the morning.  The girls played on the iPad and Karin and I just sat and had an extended coffee time.  We eventually decided to get moving, but Luzie had a lot of homework to do, so she had to stay home to do homework, including studying for an English vocabulary quiz! 

The rest of us headed off to Schloss Schwetzingen which is in a town very near to Walldorf (just about 15 minutes away).  Vreni has become very attached to Katie, probably because it is like having a big sister who actually pays attention to you, so she was happy to have Katie to herself for this activity.  She will speak in English to Katie and no one else. The palace is not a castle like we saw up the river from Heidelburg, and is not ancient, but is more a contemporary of Versailles.  We walked through the gardens for a couple of hours and marveled at the expense that was poured into the gardens and all the structures within the gardens. It was really clear that the royalty just had too much money and no idea how to spend it usefully. 

These gardens are laid out to mimic gardens from many other traditions, like a French garden and an English garden region.  It is strange to walk from one to the next and see what is there.  In one rgion there is a Turkish garden with a fake mosque in the middle of it. The English gardens had a “fabricated ruin” of a Temple of Mercury.  There was a Temple to Juno in the French garden and a Temple to Apollo on top of a fake Roman ruin with even a fabricated cave!  There was a Romanseque bath house and fountains with squirting bird statues.  Katie hates it when they mix Greek and Roman gods in the same garden- “Just pick one and stick with it!” she shouts.

Katie and Vreni had fun together in the gardens and enjoyed posing as statues, taking their won photos and looking for animals.  Katie thought even the carp in the pond were cute! After we fnished with the gardens we had ice cream  Katie had peppermint and I had pineapple – very delicious!

In the afternoon we returned home, had a lunch of sausages and rolls, and then went to the pool together. The pool is a community pool financed by all the tax money that Walldorf receives from SAP.  There is a huge outdoor region with a big baby pool region and playground, a mini-golf and two big pools. One is shallower and had a slide.  The other is a 50 meter pool and had diving blocks that we could play on.  The entire 50 m pool was too deep to stand, but had a small ledge around the edge on which you could stand.  We played a lot in the deep end, all of us in turn diving off the blocks to see how far we could go underwater, and all jumping off in a big cannonball contest.  Te girls went off with Roland to try the slide, but pronounced it too slow.  The pools have just been redone, and the new slide is much slower than the old slide.  Karin told Luzie to write to the Burgermeister in the Rathous to complain!

Once all the pool renovations are done there will also be a nice lake in which you can swim and lots of green areas with trees and shade around the pools.  The inside area is also being redone with a brand new indoor pool with slides that curve around outside the building and then back into the indoor pool. There will also be wonderful new saunas, some with a view of the lake so you can look out on the frozen lake in the winter from the nice warm sauna.

When we finished swimming we all showered and headed out for a dinner in the big town of Walldorf.  There was quite a decision process on which restaurant we wanted to ea in, but we finalized on a nice heavy German meal at a restaurant where we could sit outside.  We walked into town, which is only a ten minute walk from here.  The girls went on the bikes and ripstick and just met us at the restaurant.  They could park their vehicles right next to the outdoor seating, order and then pop back up to ride during the wait for the meal.

Four of us opted for currywurst and pommes, which is a big red sausage with a heavy skin served in a mildly spicy red sauce.  Pommes is French fries.  Karin remembers trying to order pommes at McDonalds when she first came to the US and getting frustrated when they didn’t understand her. No one ever told her that it was called “French fries” in English.  Vreni opted for “chicken nuggets mit pommes” and Roland had a schnitzel cordon bleu.  It was all excellent.

Once the girls ate, they were free to leave the table again to walk around town and they went to get ice cream together while we remained at the table talking. We were talking sports and comparing other national interests.  Soccer is king by far in German with Formula One racing in distant second place in spectator sports, followed by team handball.  Roland and Karin both root for FC Bayern, which is based out of Munich as they both grew up in that region.

The girls came back with tales of their ice cream. Katie had Spaghetti Ice in which vanilla ice cream is extruded into spaghetti like shapes and topped with strawberry sauce and coconut flakes! After all this excitement all that remained was for the girls to ride home and get ready for bed since they all go to school tomorrow!

Heidelburg

Saturday May 21^st

Today had its ups and downs!   The Schmid girls had some activities this morning, as is common for most kids on Saturday, so while Luzie went to swim practice and Vreni went to golf lesson, Katie played with the ripstick or waveboard as they call it here.  She was doing great and riding up and down the street in this quiet German neighborhood.  I went upstairs to get the Flip video camera and next thing I knew Katie was sprawled in the street clutching her arm.

Her elbow was totally covered in road rash and her arm “felt funny” and was tingling very badly.  I had visions of spending the day really getting familiar with the German health care system.  We cleaned it up, put ice on it and it started feeling better. Luckily it is not broken, and with all the ice it did not even bruise badly.  She did hit her funny bone straight on so it tingled for quite a while, but no lasting damage!

We picked Luzie up from swim practice and noon and Karin, Luzie, Katie and I bought tickets for a boat tour up the Neckar river from Heidelburg.  We had a little time before the boat left so we walked along the river, watched a crew regatta and walked into Heidelburg. 

There is one main main street in town that is a real tourist street – with lots of souviener stands and fancy shops side by side, and plenty of little cafes to get a coffee.  However, just back one street, parallel to the tourist street you find a street where the actual Germans do their shopping.  We saw a fabric store, a picture framing studio, a dry cleaner and most important to Luzie and Katie the “Sugar Store”.

 This is a very strange candy store, kind of dark and spooky.  You crowd into a small narrow passage lined with candy barrels. But you can’t pick yourself and then take to to the counter, you have to wait in line and tell the helper what you want to have. She will put what you pick into a paper cone for you. Or you can pick a pre-packaged assortment of sweets, many of which are made to look like cakes or cupcakes or other foods even though they are just layers of different  gummy candies.  Katie and Luzie waited in line for their candy (a prepackaged assortment) while Karin and I went to a local bakery to pick up sandwiches for the boat ride. In the time it took us to in a bakery, pick out the food, package it up and walk back the girls almost made it to the front of the line at the sugar store. When they did make it to the front of the line, the proprieter, a funny old man with white hair played a game with them. They had to roll a dice and land a number higher than the man’s number.  But the game worked that if they won, they got extra candy and if they lost they got extra candy – so either way it worked out for them. As Katie put it, “I don’t really know what happened, but we got more candy, so it all worked out.”

Candy and sandwiches in hand, we headed to the boat.  We got seats right up front on the second deck so that we could put our feet on the prow.  It was a bright sunny day and quite hot, and unfortunately the boat did not move fast enough up the river to really make much of a breeze.  The boat made its way slowly upstream, giving us a great view of the Heidelburg castle.  We went through two sets of locks both raising our level as we moved upstream and along the stunningly beautiful German countryside. 

We saw people riding their bike on paths along the river, and plenty of people in canoes (they have to portage around the locks).  We saw fields and hills leading away from the river and the mountains in the background. We stopped in two small towns with half timbered houses and local brewpubs. At one point we could see four different castles from our location – two in ruins and two still actually occupied by private owners!  The round-trip was three hours, and while Karin and I really enjoyed it, the girls got hot and bored and we had to bribe them with ice cream.

 

Upon returning to Heidelburg, we gave the girls some money and sent them off shopping together. Karin and I settled into a coffee shop on the main tourist street to people watch and chat.  While the girls shopped and shopped, we talked about navigating the teenage girl years, with the inherent issues of clothes, cellphones, and on-line chatting, not to mention boys,  that can occur in any culture. The girls turned up about 90 minutes later laden with bags and the four of us walked around a bit together.  We found a new build-a-bear shop and the girls begged and begged for animals but we resisted their pleas. Luzie got a snack at Subway, and Katie bought a Christmas ornament and a German flag at a tourist shop. The tourists had died out by this time, all the bus tours having moved on.  The streets were now full of groups out on bachelor and bachelorette parties, doing their walking around before hitting the beer halls apparently.  The bachelorette arties were very obvious as most of them wore matching shirts or even costumes.  We saw one group where the bride to be was snow white and her friends were the dwarves in overalls.  We saw a group of guys where the groom was Mario and his friends were all Luigi. It was very interesting and very strange.

 It was now getting towards 9pm so we headed back to Waldorff and got some pizza for a very late dinner!

A Medieval Village

Friday May 20^th

Today Luzie and Vrenni went off to school and Katie, Karin and I went to the nearby town of Speyer. Speyer is the home to a magnificent cathedral that was built in beginning in 1030 (and we think our colonial buildings are old). It is built out of yellow and red sandstone in a striped pattern that is carried out both outside and inside the cathedral.  The walls are up to 24 feet thick in places (7 meters) to support the high walls and arches.  It is laid out in the pattern of a Latin cross, and has a very interesting crypt with 8 former kings of the German area: Conrad II (1039), Henry III (1056), Henry IV (1106), Henry V (1125) Philip of Swabia (1208), Frederick Barbarossa (the Red Beard – 1190), Albert of Austria (1308) and Adolph of Nassau (1298).  The church and the crypt are perfectly symmetrical in every aspect, and there were a lot of not only Christian, but also what looked like Celtic influences in the grave markings.

After touring the cathedral (Dom du Speyer), we walked through the town which was a medieval walled village. You could still see the influence of the walls in the curving layout of the old roads as the traced the path of the walls!  We were able to climb on old watchtower/city gate and see the layout of the roads very easily.  The city gate was heavily fortified with windows for marksmen, and interestingly, on the side of the gate was an iron rod which served as the official unit of measure for tradesmen wanting to do business in the city. This was long before units of measure were standardized and each city had its own unit.  Speyer is the seat of one of the German states, and we saw the Stadthous and the Rathaus, which both still looked very medieval in architecture.

After finishing in Speyer, we stopped at farmers market and picked up cherries from France and the first of the local German strawberries.  At a second stand we picked up white asparagus, which is very particular to this region of Germany.  The asparagus (called spargel) is sorted by diameter, and you can get spears in classification that range from very thin to over an inch in diameter. This type of asparagus needs to be peeled and there was a peeling machine right on-site.   Evidently it is hard work to peel it, and Karin said that their family has bought a lot more local asparagus since the farmer’s stand put in the peeling machine.  You insert each stalk one at a time into a machine which feeds the spears through a water-cooled set of wheels which strip off the peel.  The peeled stalk then shoots out with energy into a pool of water on the other side. The entire system is about 3 feet across and has a clear front so you can see the stalk being peeled.

We headed home with our peeled asparagus and other fruits to meet Luzie and have lunch.  Luzie got off today at 1pm and came home while Vrenni went to a friend’s house and then to tennis, followed by music lesson.  The remaining four of us had German pancakes for lunch which were very similar to Swedish pancakes and are the size of a dinner plate and very thin.  You coat it thinly with jam, roll it up an then cut it to eat.  Katie and Luzie played a game of Monopoly on the iPad and then went into town alone to pick up Luzie’s bike and have ice cream.  When they returned they played with the ripstick and then the iPad again. 

Karin and I spent the afternoon talking politics, and comparing the health systems in Germany and the US. In actuality the systems sound very similar, both financed by employers with employee contributions.  There are different levels of care here too, and different plans and systems. The main difference is that there is a government safety net plan that picks up if you lose your job so that no one ever goes without insurance.  If our medicare system could do that, the countries systems would be virtually identical.  Karin was surprised to hear about our Medicare system exclaiming, “Why you do have “socialized” medicine!”  And I was surprised to hear that their system was so similar in many ways to ours!

We had our dinner late in the evening out on the patio.  The adults had boiled white asparagus, and ham cold cuts, while the kids had red sausage (the ones cut so they curl up), and everyone had boiled potatoes with butter.   I really enjoy wheat beer, so we had some local wheat beer, which was non-alcoholic and quite delicious.  They even tracked down one glass that is the particular type in which you serve wheat beer and let me have that glass. It is becoming more common here to drink non-alcoholic beer so that you can enjoy the beer with none of the side effects.

The kids went inside to watch “the Tooth Fairy” movie, and the adults stayed outside talking long into the night.