La Chaux De Fonds and 00ook

Bonsoir!

I arrived at the train station in Salzburg early on Thursday morning. This time I knew my way around, or at least a direct line to the station. What I wasn't sure about was how difficult it would be to buy my ticket at the kiosk. Sure enough, it didn't recognize La Chaux De Fonds as a destination so after some deliberation I found the service counter where I was able to get my ticket for my 8 hour train ride. I slept for most of the first 3 hours, including the 4 other people in the same cabin. Plus this guy, who even after a few days from Munich, still needed time to recover:

Luckily we only had to change trains twice and both those times were close to the end of the trip. Going through the Alps provided some amazing views. One thing I was expecting however was that my passport would get stamped as we entered into each new country. But that is not the case, unfortunately. Apparently Europeans trust each other to travel into different countries without checking tickets or passports. So I would have liked a stamp from Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, but oh well.


I had lunch in the dining car: Frankfurter Wurst--two smoked sausages with a bulky roll and a side of mustard. And I ate it like a native, with 2 hands, the sausage in one, the roll in the other, alternating bites. Add to it a glass of whiskey and I was feeling alright. Then the Yankee fan made a comment about my hat. I told him we'll see him in the playoffs.


I got into La-Chaux around 7:00 and called Ann (whom I had never met before but I have known her sister for a handful of years now). We walked to their beautiful home and I met her husband Roland. A quick shower and change of clothes and we were off to dinner at friends. Good conversation with Americans and Suisse. There was different kinds of cheeses, wine made right in town, grapes grown in the area, vegetables with ranch dip (they go crazy for ranch dip since they can't get it over here--Ann brought it over from the States) and the after-dinner drinks I mentioned earlier. Steve, Jerry, Ann, Roland, Muriel and Miriam talked about all the food they missed (was this a care-package hint?): cheez-it, cheese whiz, Campbell's onion soup, ranch dressing, American tea...



The next morning, 10/2, Ann and I drove 2 hours to the Alps in the Canton (Canton's are regions, kind of like our states) of Bern. We took the tram to the top of the Schilthorn and had lunch at the revolving restaurant Piz Gloria. The views going up were amazing:


















But as we got closer to the top, this is what we started to see:

At the top, there were some breaks in the cloudsAnd here is the Piz Gloria:















Does this look familiar to anyone?





On Her Majesty's Secret Service was filmed here (I had no idea until we arrived). Now, I'm not a huge James Bond fan but I do know quite a bit and I like the films, although some I get confused with others. Ah, George, you only lived once in the world of 007.



Monkey. Super Monkey.

Okay, this is getting outta hand. It's 2:30 am and I need sleep. Let me just say that dinner was wicked good (a phrase I taught our Scottish dinner guest) and a traditional Suisse dinner. More posts about that tomorrow. We are going to walk around town in the morning and go to a farmer's market and possibly head into France so I can ship some cheese home.


Goodnight!


Posted by Limejuiceboy at 7:20 PM

1 comments :

Bobby Stanford said...

George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Sevalas, Peter Frye, and Super Monkey. Now that's one hell of a motion picture.

October 3, 2009 at 12:04 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )