Well, I'm back. Sorry. The past few months have been great - and busy. I stopped writing in October because D and I went to Chicago for the amazing wedding of an amazing couple, I had a brief stopover in LV to see my sister while Dave went to Notre Dame to do some work/see some friends, and we met in Rochester, NY to go to our 5 year reunion. It was a busy month!
November was busy too! Dave's mom and dad came out to visit us and we explored Switzerland: Geneva, Nyon, Berner Oberland, Trub (where D's mom's family emigrated from in the 1750s), Montreux, and finally Zermatt.
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| Ooh, big windows |
We took the Glacier Express Rail from Geneva to Lauterbrunnen. The stretch from Montreux to Interlaken is beautiful, and they have special panoramic cars. We were under the impression that to sit in these cars, we would have to purchase 1st class rail tickets (not true). Generally, the people who work for SBB are really great - but I think we got this guy on his first day. He was definitely training, as someone was looking over his shoulder the whole time. So, I tell them we would like to purchase 1/2 fare cards for D's mom and dad - a great deal for Swiss rail. OK, he does that fine. Next, I tell him I would like to purchase tickets from Geneva to Lauterbrunnen, through Spiez so we can go on the Glacier Express route, and we'd like tickets only on the Glacier Express route. Do we have to go 1st class to get panoramic windows? Yes. OK. He inputs everything into the computer, prints it out, looks at it, then throws it in the garbage. Repeat 4x. Finally he gives us all our tickets, we pay an exorbitant amount of money (at least to an un-employed expat wife, but probably not so bad for normal folk), and we go on our merry way. We have an uneventful ride to Montreux, switch to the panorama cars, and then can't seem to find our seats. Hmm, that's weird, we reserved them, we even have the reservation card and everything. The conductor just tells us to take a seat as the train is already moving, and when he comes back we give him our reservation. The conductor then proceeds to tell us that the guy gave us the reservation for the wrong date, oh and he gave us our tickets in a very odd way, oh and he made our reservation in the 1st class cabin with the panorama windows but didn't give us our actual tickets, he thinks. At least, that's what I think happened - this was all in French. Well, the guy is nice, and just as confused as we are, so he lets us sit in 1st class with the panorama windows. All in all, we think we only paid for the reservation for 1st class tickets (its a separate reservation fee and ticket fee), but we got panorama windows!
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| Gorgeous views |
The ride is beautiful, we get to our chalet in Lauterbrunnen, and a bit down the road is a sheep farm with baby sheep! We crash early since the next day we'll be going to the top of Europe!
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