18 Years and Life to Go--Wochen 14-15

We have been busy these last two weeks!  Lots of exciting events have been going on:

Dane traveled to Warsaw, Poland for the International School Track and Field European Championships for middle schools.  He was excited because he got to miss a day of school—and the day before was parent/teacher conferences, so he didn’t have school that day as well.  They traveled by night train to Warsaw.  I haven’t ever gotten to sleep in a bed on a train, so I asked Dane how it was.  He said it was okay, but there were girls in the next room that he could hear talking and talking through the wee hours of the night.  (On the way home, he was stuck bunking in the same room as the coach, who offered Dane ear plugs, as his snoring is pretty loud.)  The meet was great!  His team came in second place.  They brought home the sportsmanship trophy, too.  Dane ran the 800m, the 1500m, and the 3000m.  The 800m didn’t go so well.  Dane said that race is just too short for him.  In the 1500m, an 8^th grader from his school, pulled out just 100ths of a second in front of him, causing Dane to come in 4^th.  But in the 3000m, Dane came home with a silver medal.  We are very proud of him, as this is a huge accomplishment for a 7^th grader.  We look forward to seeing how well he can do with another year of maturity under his belt next time around.  Also, because he did so well, Dane was invited to the ISST European/Middle Eastern International Schools Championship meet.  Usually only high school kids go, with an occasional middle school kid invited to run with the Junior Varsity team.  There were 3 middle school kids invited this year.  So Dane is excited to miss almost a full week of school to head to Waterloo, Belgium, to compete there.

Danyon has found his new fetish and possible calling in life.  He is obsessed with garbage and garbage cans.  Every time we pass one, he says, “garbage, garbage” or “Look, garbage out”.  He has been known to search packages of food and find the picture of the little guy throwing the garbage away in the trashcan.  Then he points to the guy and says, “garbage”.  One day, when I was picking the kids up from school, he found a piece of garbage on the ground (he is also known for finding random garbage and throwing it away—at the track meet a couple weeks ago, he spent a good 5 minutes picking up the trash around a trash can and placing it back in).  He picked up this piece of paper and looked around for a garbage can to put it in.  He finally spotted one across the street.  As he headed out into the road, I yelled at him to stop and that he couldn’t cross the road because it wasn’t safe.  We walked a little further and there was another garbage can out at the street.  He headed out again.  It still wasn’t safe so I told him “no” again.  At this, he started to cry and throw a fit because he could see the garbage cans, he had the trash, but wasn’t allowed to throw it away.  It was his worst nightmare come true.

 

Dyllan had an activity for church.  They were making crafts for Mother’s Day.  When we dropped her off, we ran into a Flohmarkt (flea market).  While she was crafting away, Deagan, Danyon, Dan, and I explored the market.  We didn’t find a whole lot (Deagan and Dan were excited to find some WII games, and I found some kids movies that we hadn’t seen), BUT, the biggest find was the langosh stand.  When we went to Budapest for Dane’s track meet, I was fully expecting to get some langosh.  However, as it turned out, there wasn’t any time.  We came home with our mouths still watering.  Well, this little booth at the flohmarkt satisfied that craving and we were all happy again.

 

Dan spent a week in South Africa!  He was excited to go back.  He stayed at a place that was a sort of bird sanctuary.  He saw all kinds of different birds.  He even brought home a huge feather from one of the birds.  We are leaving it in quarantine for several weeks before we open the bag.  His favorite part of the trip was getting to go out to the cattle feed yards.  It’s a whole different world in that part of the country.  There were places that he and his co-worker drove through that she said that you just didn’t stop—for any reason.  They passed by men in camouflage—not military or police-- with automatic weapons hanging out by the side of the road.  Dan’s co-worker’s neighbor was robbed and the co-worker found men in her yard as well.  Her house was the likely next target but the police were coming quickly.  Dan said that the country is beautiful and the tourist areas are still safe.  We would like to take the family down there, if we are here long enough.  Dan said that you would need at least 2 weeks to see everything.  I don’t think I would have a problem with pulling the kids out of school for a week to see Africa.

 

Mother’s Day was wonderful, at least for me!  I got up, showered, and the kids and Dan had a full breakfast of muffins, fruit, and juice waiting for me.  They showered me with gifts and cards that I loved.  Dan brought me some cool African jewelry.  After church, I got to eat as many Cheetos as I wanted for lunch.  We also had strawberry torte.  Dan bar-be-qued pork steaks for dinner and vegetables.  Since it was our anniversary too, I wanted to make a nice dessert.  The kids didn’t want me to make anything on Mother’s Day, so Dyllan and Deagan made Whoopi-pies for dessert.  I did sneak into the kitchen and made homemade buns.  It was a nice touch to the Mother’s Day/Anniversary dinner.   It was a great day.

The next big event was Dan’s birthday.  (A big THANK YOU to all who participated!).  The kids were my partners in crime.  We spent hours wrapping and getting everything ready.  I decided that I wanted to give Dan 40 little gifts for his birthday this year (a block of his favorite cheese, a package of his favorite candy, notes from his co-workers, tools for his bike, etc.)  Dan’s co-workers were all very excited to participate and several sent me notes to give to him.  The “catch” to getting all his presents was that he had to fish for them.  Since Dan loves fishing so much, I thought it would be fun to let him fish all day.  He got to go fly fishing for some of the gifts.  (I tied a really long ribbon with a magnet on the end to a ruler.  Then he had to throw his line out into the pond—a very small bowl with fish with magnets on them.)  Dan proved to be a better fly fisherman than I thought, as he had caught all the fish in that pond within just a couple of minutes.  Each fish he caught had a number on it that corresponded to a gift.  As he caught a fish, he opened a present.  For the rest of the fish, I made a pond of blue jello.  I put laminated fish in the bowl and he had to show that there was still some youngness in him by not using his hands to pull the fish out.  Dan didn’t waste any time, he plunged his face right into the pond.  This fishing was a bit harder, and so he only pulled out a couple of fish at a time.  This fishing truly did last all day. 

Luckily, he didn’t pull out the fish that’s number was for the cake until after dinner.  Dan grilled some beef steaks.  We haven’t bought any beef steaks since we got here.  The beef is way too expensive.  But, we splurged a little for Dan’s birthday.  We also had baked potatoes, asparagus, and garlic bread.  Dan ended up buying all the stuff and grilling his own steaks.  I was too scared to ruin them.  Dan has always had a Dairy Queen ice cream cake for his birthday.  Since moving here, we haven’t continued that tradition because they don’t exist here.  But, this year, I found a copy cat recipe online and decided to give it a try.  My cake did not look nearly as pretty as DQs.  I had trouble with a small freezer and a few novice problems, but now that I have made one, I think that the next one will turn out better.  But, regardless of how it looked, it sure did taste really good.  Dan’s favorite present was the “surprise party”.  The kids took all the pictures that were sent and taped them all over the inside of a box, collage style.  Once every speck of the inside was covered, we put all the notes that we had printed out and placed them inside.  The kids made a big surprise pop out sign, so that when Dan opened the box, it said surprise and at the same time, we yelled, “surprise”!  He loved all the pictures, all the notes, and he watched all the videos everyone sent.  He loved it!!  He really appreciated all the time that people spent in sending him a note/video/message for his birthday.  It made his day perfect.

 

As my anniversary gift to Dan this year, I planned a trip to Switzerland.  I had never been, and I really wanted to visit.  Dan has been, but has never been to the touristy parts or gotten to do anything fun.  It stinks to go to Switzerland for work, and no play.  I arranged for a friend to come and stay with the kids so that Dan and I could have a weekend alone.  Wednesday, I packed our bags and by Wednesday evening, we said goodbye to the kids and we were off to the airport.  We flew into Zurich.  Since we arrived so late, we didn’t get to do anything but see our hotel

room that first night.  But, the next day, we were off and running.  We walked through the old town of Zurich.  We walked a bit along the lake.  We had a great morning.  We stopped at a restaurant for breakfast that a friend recommended.  It was called Cake Friends.  We found it to be a fun place.  We headed to a church, Fraumunster , to see the stained glass windows of Marc Chagall.  Unfortunately, the church was closed to the public as there was a church service going on.  We didn’t get to see the windows, but we did get to stand on a bridge and hear the bells of 4 different churches ringing all at the same time.  That was pretty cool.  After a couple of hours, we headed, by train, to Interlaken.  We stopped along the way in Bern—just to see it.  We only saw what you could see from the train, but it was a pretty place.  Once we got to Interlaken and settled in our hotel, we set off exploring. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We took a train to Lauterbrunnen and from there, a bus up to Trummelbachfalle.  We got to see a very powerful waterfall, made of the runoff of the alps, up close.  We took an elevator that took us inside a cave to the falls.  The water has carved chutes in the rock mountain so that the falls look like they are running through slot canyons.  It is pretty incredible to see.  There were 10 different chutes in these water falls.  The sound in the cave was a roar of water.  We had to yell to hear over the sound of the water.  None of the pictures that we got do it any justice.  It was incredible.

 
 

After the falls, we headed back to Lauterbrunnen and took the cable car up to Murren.  Since it was a holiday, the stores and shops were not open—only a few restaurants.  However, this made it so that we practically had the whole town to ourselves.  We walked the pathways and took pictures of the Eiger and Monch.  The Jungfrau was always covered in clouds.  It was a really fun place to be at the foot of the alps.  It was getting pretty late, so we headed back to Interlaken.  That night for dinner, we had to try the Swiss Fondue, of course.  We loved it. 

The next morning, we woke up to rain.  This was our day to head up into the alps and go up the Jungfrau.  As we got higher and higher, the weather was getting colder and colder.  On one train, the guy coming through the train checking tickets, noticed Dan’s sweater (Canada hockey).  He asked if Dan played hockey.  Dan of course answered, and a conversation started.  It turns out, that this guy whose name is also Dan, works for another company that makes and paints hockey masks for goalies.  Dan had done a mask for the goalie of the Calgary Flames.  He had all kinds of pictures and videos of the masks.  He also had one that he had done for the same guy for when he played for the Avalanche.  It was pretty cool to meet a guy that had painted NHL players hockey masks on a train in Switzerland. 

 

The snow plow

By the time we got to Kleine Scheidegg, we were in full white out snow blizzard.  We had one more train to get to the top.  The train was delayed due to the weather (I thought they should be used to the snow by now) and also an electrical problem.  After waiting about an hour and a half, we were finally heading up the mountain again.  We got about 7 minutes up the mountain when the train came to a very abrupt stop.  The engineer tried to back up and get another run at it.  He tried this for several minutes with no luck.  We were stuck.  We couldn’t get up the mountain.  They called the snow plows to come and clear the tracks again.  After the snow plow, we tried again for several attempts to get up the mountain.  Finally, after about 30 minutes of being stuck, the engineer finally gave up and decided to work on heading back down the mountain.  Where there was no snow yesterday, there was now snow thigh deep along the tracks.  The two engineers had to plow through it to get to the other side of the train to head back down.  The plows came and cleared the track.  We were finally headed back down the mountain. 

We saw that they were
preparing the rescue dogs

We got back to Kleine Scheidegg.  We were supposed to be seeing the alps really close up, but all we could see was white snow.  We figured that even if the train did get running again, we still wouldn’t see anything from the top.  We gave up on that idea to go up to the top of Switzerland, and decided to head back down the mountain to Grindelwald.  We never made it up, but we at least have a story that we were stuck on the frozen mountain for awhile.  When we told Dane the story of how we were stuck and could have frozen to death in the Alps, Dane’s reply was a very unenthusiastic, “hmm”.

 

 

My souvenir.  Dan's was a knife

Grindelwald was a nice little town.  We enjoyed wandering the streets and doing some souvenir shopping.  We found a little butcher shop that made sandwiches and we bought a house brand salami.  We had them slice it up for us.  We ate our little lunch of sandwiches and salami on the train ride to Lucerne.  We arrived in Lucerne in the early evening and we explored the town a bit. 

This restaurant had fur coats
 for the guests to wear on the patio. 
We knew we couldn't afford that.

We found a mini raclette set.

For dinner this night, we decided to have Raclette.  We have never heard of this before, but it was recommended to us by a friend.  They told us that it was very Swiss.  They brought us ¼ inch slices of cheese, tiny steamed potatoes, pickles, and little pickled onions.  You took the cheese and placed it on the hot tray.  As the cheese melts, you cut up your variation of potatoes and pickles into small pieces on your plate.  When the cheese is melted, you scrape the cheese over the top of your plate.  You can sprinkle a little nutmeg for garnish.  You then eat this wonderful plate of melted cheese and potatoes.  It was so good.  They brought us a huge plate of cheese, that there was no way that we could eat that much.  Well, guess what—we did.  We couldn’t eat another bite, but we did eat all the cheese.  There was something about the pickles that seemed to cut the fat and melting the cheese made it fit into the crevices of our stomachs nicely.  I asked the waitress how many kilos of cheese we ate (it really was a lot of cheese).  She said she didn’t know, and she’d have to ask the kitchen.  She never told us, so I’m assuming we didn’t want to know.

 

The next day we took a boat across the lake to Alpnachstad.  Then we went on the steepest cogwheel railway in the world (48%), up to Mount Pilatus.  It was really neat to see the views along the way up.  However, once we got to the top, we were in the clouds and couldn’t see the view.  We took a little walk along the dragon trail and learned about some of the dragon legends that come from this area.  (Apparently, there was a dragon skeleton found in the mountain).  Also at the top, there was a group of alpine horn blowers.  We stopped and listened to them for awhile.  Dan made some friends with some birds, too.  These birds would ride the wind currents and hardly have to flap their wings.  They just hovered over head.  We took a cable car down the back side of the mountain.  And from there we took gondolas across the back side of the mountain.  We did see a mountain goat on the mountain from there.  As we got lower down, we heard the bells from cows tinkling below us.   We caught a glimpse of a peacock as well, but figured it was owned by the farmer, not wild.  The whole place was green and wild flowers were plentiful.  Once we got down, we were in the small town of Kriens. 

 

We decided to do a little shopping and grab some lunch in this little town.  We found a store that sold fondue and raclette sets.  We walked in.  The shop owner quickly came down to meet us.  Our whole conversation was in German and this is what she said:  She asked if she could help us.  We told her we were just looking.  She told us that she had 3 shops she was looking after (all connected) and what did we want to look at.  We told her we would just look around, ok?  She said it was NOT ok to look around and that she did NOT sell any souvenirs.  At this, we certainly felt that we didn’t want to spend any money in this shop and not even in this whole town.  This was the only rude Swiss person we had come into contact with our entire trip.  And after that, we headed straight back to Lucerne where the people were happy to let you “look around” and were willing to be courteous to their customers.

We wandered around both the old and the new parts of Lucerne.  We were just taking it all in.  That night we really wanted to try a chocolate fondue for dinner.  However, after several attempts from the reception desk to book a reservation, we finally got a reservation for a boat restaurant that had chocolate fondue.  When we arrived, however, we found that the chocolate fondue is only during the winter season.  Since we had already had so much cheese, we decided to do regular meat fondue.  It was a perfect evening.  We practically had the entire part of the restaurant to ourselves and were eating on the lake.  It was the perfect romantic evening.   
 
 
 

 

The chipmunk cheek is a Lindt chocolate ball. 
I didn't think it would be polite to show you the inside.

The next day was our last day of vacation.  We took a walk along the lake and ended up at a museum.  We went on the Chocolate Experience.  It was a little cart ride that taught you about the making of swiss chocolate.  I have to admit that the tour wasn’t as filling as Zotter, but you still learned a bit about the chocolate making process.  We got 7 Lindt chocolate balls at the end of the tour. 

 

From there, we went to a pro beach volleyball tournament.  Admission was free and we got to see Netherlands play Turkey in the men’s semi final match.  The atmosphere was fun and it was cool that we got to see Netherlands play, as they are the current world champions.  After that, we took our stroll back around the lake and back to the train station.  We headed back to Zurich.  We had just enough time to head into the Fraumunster church to see the stained glass before heading up to the airport. 

 

Traveling with Dan has its perks.  We get to go to the business lounge—did you know that they have lounges that have lounging chairs, charging plugs, give out free food and drinks and tell you when to head to your gate?  They are there, you just have to travel with Dan to get into them!  We did have a great trip.  We loved Switzerland.  We loved spending time together and going on dates everyday—kid free.  It was a perfect weekend and best way to celebrate 18 years together.

The kids had a great time while we were away.  Dyllan cleaned her entire room while we were gone.  She even cleaned under her bed, all of her wardrobe, including under it, and even behind her dresser.  It was sparkling when we got back.  We heard reports of swimming all day one day, playing games all day, another day, and having a great time.  It seemed everyone had a great long weekend!  The best part was that after dinner, I asked the kids to do the dishes, Dyllan and Dane immediately started and finished.  Deagan got pjs for Danyon and everyone was only asked once.  It was wonderful!!  Maybe Dan and I should leave more often!