Lugano, the Centovalli and Brig

The Montarina is an old, pink villa, set in a forest of palm trees, that has been turned into a hostel. The next-door building is the hotel, where the non-dormitory rooms are. Ours was simple but nice, and best of all, had air conditioning! Wi-fi was available in the lobby, but if you had your own ethernet cable, as I did, you could connect in your room. There was a nice swimming pool, which we didn’t use, as well as an outdoor breakfast “room” (which we also didn’t use) with nicely varnished picnic tables.

Both the Montarina and the railway station are on a hill overlooking downtown Lugano. To get down the hill, you take a funicular from the station (1.10 francs—about a dollar—unless you have a Swiss Pass, in which case it’s free). We went down, asking the woman who went down with us where we could find a supermarket, she said that Manor was just around the corner, but that it was closed, like practically every store in the city, for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. We discovered that this was true not only of stores, but of many restaurants as well. Eventually, after following Rick Steves’s walking tour, we had salad and a pizza (both good) at Tango, a restaurant with one side on the main square (Piazza di la Riforma) and another terrace on a small square in back. While we were there, it started first to thunder, then to rain, but that soon ended, except for occasional sprinkles.

Lugano is a pleasant city with a nice park on the lakefront, besides being the second-most-important banking center in Switzerland, after Zurich.

The next morning (Wednesday, June 30th), we took the funicular down and went to Manor, which is a gigantic department store, with a gigantic supermarket in its basement. Mary Joy was in seventh heaven down there. We got some food for breakfast and lunch and had a coffee. Then we went to the lakeshore and ate our croissants and drank our yogurt drinks on a park bench.

We went back up to the hotel, finished packing, checked out, and for about half an hour sat in the sun at a picnic table while Mary Joy wrote post cards and I read last Monday’s International Herald Tribune newspaper. Then we went down and caught the 10:30 train to Giabiasco, where we caught the 11:04 to Locarno, where we walked over to the private FART railway station (no jokes, please!), where we caught the 11:37 Centovalli Panoramic train to Domodossola, Italy. We actually had to pay 2 francs apiece for this ride, as a supplement because of the panorama windows.

The Centovalli (hundred valleys) is a long valley with many side valleys. The route, though with no to-die-for views, was much more interesting and pleasant than the previous day’s bus ride. About halfway through, we crossed the border into Italy. In Domodossola, we caught the Milan-Geneva train and rode it back into Switzerland, through the tunnel under the Simplon Pass, and got off almost immediately, in Brig.

We have been through Brig many times, but have gotten off of trains there only for the purpose of getting onto other trains. Brig is the place where the Simplon route over the Alps crosses the broad, deep valley of the Rhone River, which flows from the Rhone Glacier west and south, then curves northwest to flow into Lake Geneva. Brig is on the most natural route from Milan to Geneva and Lyon, and now, with the Loetschberg Tunnel, is on the direct rail line from Milan to Interlaken (which is why we’ve been through here so often in the past), Bern, Basel and Frankfurt. We are here now because, as a rail junction, it gives us a great deal of flexibility for day trips by train, depending on the weather and other circumstances—we don’t want to go to Zermatt when the Matterhorn is covered by clouds. It is a very pleasant town of 19,000, with an interesting old town,where we're staying.

We had a good dinner (Mary Joy was very pleased with her beef and vinaigrette dish) at the Restaurant Angleterre.

The Bernina Express

Tuesday morning, June 29th, we had breakfast at the hotel, checked out and crossed the street to the railroad station. The 9:52 Bernina Express train arrived, a few minutes late, and we went looking for our car, car 13: 17, 16, 15, 14, 11! No 13! I boarded car 11 and was met by a pleasant conductor, who asked if I had a reservation. Yes, I said, but for car 13, and I couldn’t find it. She got off the train, looked at the next car, and came back smiling. No problem. We could stay in this car. So we went to our seats, 45 and 46, and they were already occupied. However, the older couple there asked if we had a reservation, and moved across the aisle when we said that we did. Then, an announcement came over the intercom that this was a special train, with reserved seats and that anyone without reservations should wait for the regional train. So the other couple quickly got off.

The Bernina Express train has large picture windows (in first class they are panorama windows, curving up over), an intercom narration in German and English as to passing sights, and a booklet with maps and descriptions. The train part of the trip ends in Tirano, Italy, where you then pick up a bus back into Switzerland, to Lugano. Both legs are covered by our Swiss Saver Pass, but we had to buy reservations, separately, for each. I had paid for and printed out a reservation for the train online from home, but all I could get for the bus was a confirmation number, which I had used to buy the reservation card itself at the railroad station in Interlaken.

The route, with wonderful scenery, takes you up to the Bernina Pass, the highest non-tunnel crossing in Europe (2253 meters or 7391 feet) and the border between the Danube and Adriatic watersheds, as well as between the Romansh-speaking Engadine and the Italian-speaking Poschiavo Valley. Then there is a precipitous drop, involving many switchbacks, to the town of Poschiavo (1014 meters or around 5300 feet). Farther on is the most famous engineering marvel of this rail line, the Brusio Viaduct, where the train goes in a complete circle—a long enough train could theoretically pass under itself! Our enjoyment of the trip was marred a little by the fact that a group of young Germans in our car was making so much noise that it was sometimes difficult to hear the narration.

A little after noon we crossed the Italian border and arrived in Tirano, on the Adda River in Italy’s wine-producing Valtellina Valley, which had been part of the Graubuenden (and thus of Switzerland) until Napoleon had taken it away in 1797. We had more than two hours until the bus left, so we took our luggage to a nearby restaurant, Ristorante-Pizzeria Sale e Pepe, and had lunch on the terrace, next to a table of nine Japanese. It was indeed “Sunny Italy”: all the temperature readouts we saw were either 34 or 35 degrees Celsius (93 to 95 Fahrenheit). I scouted out the restaurant WC. There was one room marked “Toilette,” with two cabinets. I went to the one on the left: it was a “Turkish” toilet with no bowl. You had to squat over a facility set in the floor. Also, there was no lock on the door. As I came out, though, I saw that the other cabinet had a bowl toilet and could be locked, so I went back and told Mary Joy.

We tried to do a little walk into the center of town, but in that heat, loaded down as we were, we didn’t get very far, but went back to the fountain in the piazza before the station. I sat there with the luggage, while Mary Joy went off to see what she could see. Every so often the fountain would go on, spraying me a little in the back, but in that heat I didn’t mind it.

Then one of the Japanese came by, waving a wallet and asking if it were mine. Indeed it was. I had left it at the restaurant. All there was in it was some walking-around money and a card with my parents’ phone number. I carry anything really important (passport, credit cards, plane tickets, large amounts of cash) in a money belt under my clothes. That had saved us a lot of trouble when we ran into a gang of pickpockets at the bus station in Torremolinos, Spain in 2005.

I had just checked the bus reservation card to make sure of the time of departure. Now I decided to take it out to keep in my pocket until we left. It wasn’t in either pocket of my money belt. Not in my wallet or pockets. Not in my daypack. I started to panic. When Mary Joy got back, I ran back to the restaurant and asked if they’d found it. No.

Going back to the fountain, I felt the card in my underwear or shirt. I had been distracted when last putting it back in the money belt, and it hadn’t gotten in somehow.

So we went to the bus, a Swiss Post-Bus marked “Bernina Express.” When we got on, we discovered that our reserved seats were on the far rear bench, in the right corner (scenery would mostly be on the left side of the bus). At least, there was no one assigned to the middle seat of the five. The last row had only one air-conditioning vent, which was inadequate, though much better than nothing. The first hour of the 2½-hour trip was a boring drive down the Adda, through industrial villages overlooked by vineyarded hillsides. When we got to Lake Como, the drive along the north shore was somewhat scenic, but not exciting. The excitement came when we left the lakeshore and headed up the hillside, with the bus honking loudly as it handled narrow hairpin turns. We then headed west, reaching the north shore of Lake Lugano. We drove through the narrow, winding streets of old lakeshore towns, often honking away, then reached the Swiss border and were waved through by customs. Suddenly, the road was wider.

We arrived at Lugano a little after 5:00 and walked up the hill behind the train station to our hotel, the Montarina.

Another Hike

When we got into our room in Pontresina, there was a sort of background hum that I assumed was air conditioning. However, I couldn’t find any control or vents, and then I noticed that there were some windows open. The noise was the headlong rush of the Roseg River, a few hundred yards from our windows. We had dinner (blah) at our hotel.

Monday morning, we had our free buffet breakfast, then went into town, to the tourist information office. The young woman there suggested several possible hikes, but the one that looked best to us was one that had already seen recommended both by Rick Steves and Mary Joy’s cousin Albert. However, I had assumed that we would have to start with a bus or train ride, but the tourist office woman suggested that the 3½ kilometers (about two miles) to Punt Muragl would be a pleasant walk. And so it proved. The weather was perfect, and the walk was a gentle stroll on a path through fields, along the valley floor. We came to the funicular at Punt Muragl (the only transport that has yet refused to give us any discount at all for our Swiss Pass) and rode up to the top, at Muottas Muragl (2568 meters, around 8500 feet). If these names do not seem to be Swiss German, it is because they are not. The Engadine is in the part of Switzerland where the official language is Romansh, a Latin-based tongue which is spoken by very few people, almost all of them concentrated in Switzerland’s Canton Graubuenden. Pontresina is therefore “Puntraschigna” on the hiking signs.

From Muottas Muragl, you can see up the Inn valley past the resorts of Celerina, St. Moritz and Silvaplana and their various lakes all the way to Sils Maria (famous as Friedrich Nietzsche’s summer home, where he wrote “Also Sprach Zarathustra”). It was a spectacle in green and blue, surrounded by snowy mountain peaks. Instead of taking the really strenuous hike up to the hut where the Italian artist Giovanni Segantini lived, painted and died, we wimped out and took the “Panoramaweg” (“Panorama Way”) hike: first, down a little and back to the head of the Muragl Valley, then gradually up, out and around the high hill overlooking the Bernina River as it flowed toward the Inn. The trail begins above the tree line, through rocks and even a little snow. It eventually moves into a pine forest, with frequent waterfalls and glimpses of the valley and its towns. After a final steep climb (and about three hours of hiking) the trail crosses a cow-filled meadow to the ski-lift and restaurant of Alp Languard. We had an okay lunch (a polenta made with saffron and cheese) at the restaurant, then took the chair lift down the 585 meters (about 1950 feet) to Pontresina. Neither of us had ever ridden in a chair lift before. Mary Joy claims to have had her eyes closed and her hands clenched around the bar almost all the way down, but I don’t really believe that. I found it pleasant and almost relaxing.

Once we were down to earth again, we went looking for a nearby church that was mentioned in the guidebooks. Santa Maria is a very old church, with 13th-century and 15th-century frescoes, as well as a small organ.

After a short nap, we went off on a short hike up the valley of the Roseg. This was disappointing because it was almost entirely in trees, and we couldn’t see anything else. There was a “Vita Course” running in and out of the trail, with various exercises and exercise equipment (balance beams, etc.). We saw two young guys going through this course, and Mary Joy tried a few of the exercises.

We had a light dinner (barley soup, with tiny pieces of bacon and carrot) and dessert at the restaurant of the Hotel Steinbock. It was terrific. The waitress, it turns out, is originally from Tuttlingen. She has become a professional waitress because she enjoys the people contact and different languages, and her trade is in demand wherever she wanders.

A Quiet Sunday Morning, Then Onward

After such a busy Saturday, on Sunday (June 27th), we slept in. After breakfast we walked down with Eva to the old town, where we saw an exhibition on baroque church objects from Zug at the city museum in Burg Zug (Zug Castle). Included in the exhibition was a small baroque organ. Incidentally, Mary Joy and I got in free because our Swiss Saver Pass covers not only trains, but most museums in Switzerland. We had had to pay nothing for any of the trains or cable cars on the Rigi. The pass will end up paying for much more than its cost.

After we left the museum, we walked down to the lakeshore and strolled among the citizens of Zug, delighting in the warm sun. We went back to the apartment, had a light lunch with Andreas, then we all caught the bus (again, free for Mary Joy and me because of our pass) to the train station, where Mary Joy and I said our goodbyes and caught the 3:58 train to Thalwil. There we caught another train to Chur, where we caught yet another to Samedan, one of the resort towns of the Engadine (the valley of the river Inn, which flows into Austria, through Innsbruck, then to the Danube).

The train ride covered the same route as the first part of the Bernina Express, a scenic ride that we would finish on Tuesday. I am running out of adjectives to describe the scenery. It is awesome beyond words. The railroad itself is a major feat of engineering, studied by those designing mountain railways for its ingenious use of tunnels, switchbacks and spiral overpasses.

After going through the Albula Tunnel, the longest high railroad tunnel in Europe, we ended up in Samedan, where we changed trains again for the short ride to Pontresina, arriving there after a little more than four hours en route.

Pontresina is not as ritzy as nearby St. Moritz, and is more of a hiking and mountain-climbing destination (it has several climbing schools). It is stretched out along the Bernina River. Our hotel, Hotel Station, is nice, but not as expensive as most hotels in Pontresina. It does have free wi-fi, which we may not see again until Dublin.

The Rigi Kulm and a Choir Party

Eva and Andreas are avid mountain hikers. For their vacation, starting next weekend, they will spend three weeks in the Dolomites, in the Italian Alps. After a week at a resort, hiking every other day, they’ll start hiking from mountain hut to mountain hut, doing a total (combining distance and altitude changes) of 20 to 30 kilometers (12 to 18 miles) a day.

The last two times we visited them, we had gotten away with level Sunday afternoon walks in the meadows of the Zugerberg. This time, however, we were going to spend pretty much all day Saturday on the Rigi, for which Eva loaned Mary Joy a pair of heavy hiking boots and Andreas loaned me a small backpack, with chest and waist straps, in place of my daypack.

The Rigi Kulm (summit) is only 6000 feet (1800 meters) high, but in comparison with the surrounding area, it towers over both Lucerne and Zug and their respective lakes. Our walk wouldn’t involve starting at the bottom and going to the top (which, of course, Eva and Andreas have done), but only what one of their friends described as a walk suitable for taking visitors on--challenging, but not too, too hard.

We drove to Goldau, just past the southern end of the Zugersee, and from there we took the 9:12 train a short way up, then the cable car to Rigi Scheidegg, a secondary peak, at 1662 meters (around 5600 feet). At that point I discovered that I had left my camera back in my daypack, which was very unfortunate, because this would be one of the most tremendously scenic walks we’ve ever made (incidentally, I’ve now added pictures to the Gimmelwald post). We started out walking downward, through meadows, with a wall of peaks in the not-too-distant south (including the recognizable triangular north face of the Eiger—only a baby ogre at this distance). Then we came into view of Lake Lucerne, spread out far below, and eventually the city of Lucerne itself. But what goes down, must come up, and we started gaining altitude on our way up to the Kulm. The secret to steep uphill hiking is to do it very slowly, and that we did, taking the occasional rest stop. When we finally got to the top, we were met there by a crowd of people who had taken the train up, some of them in flip-flops! Wimps! We sat on the grass and ate our well-earned sandwiches and chocolate, had an ice cream from a kiosk there, when we couldn’t find any open table on the terrace of the hotel restaurant, then we had to decide whether to walk down partway, or take the train all the way. Of course, happy wanderers that we are, we took our backpacks on our back and headed down.

Going down is harder on the knees and calves than going up, so it helps to have a walking stick. Eva and Andreas had extras, which made it a lot easier for us. Down is a lot faster than up, so in less than an hour and a half we were almost to the train station at Kloesterli, which is nearly 600 meters (2000 feet) lower than the Rigi Kulm. To get to the station, we had to take a little bridge across a little brook. Since we had some time before the 3:15 train, Andreas went down to the stream, took off his boots and socks and started wading around. The rest of us joined him. The water, of course, was cold, but it felt good. All in all, they figured, we had traveled a total of about 18 kilometers (about 11 miles) including both horizontal and vertical distance.

We took the train back down to Goldau, drove Eva to the village where she and Andreas would be singing in the choir at mass (to save time, she would shower and change at a friend’s, before going to practice), then drove back to Zug. The three of us showered and changed, then Andreas drove us back to the village, where Mary Joy and I had a salad at a restaurant while he went to his practice. At 5:30, we went to the church, where the women of the choir sang Faure’s “Messe des pecheurs de Villerville,” while the men sang other parts of the mass in Gregorian chant. It was beautiful, and Mary Joy liked the organ and the organist.

Afterwards, there was a wine and cheese reception across the street, followed by a choir dinner at a restaurant way up above on the Zugerberg. We sat at a table with two other couples: Ronnie and James, who were English, Franca (Italian) and Stefan (son of Swiss emigrants to Australia--as an adult he had returned to his ancestral homeland). It was a delightful and funny group. Ronnie, for instance, said that she had arrived in Zug intending to stay there two years, but had now been there for nineteen and had become more Swiss than the Swiss. For instance an English relative or friend had said that she could never live in a country where they didn’t allow you to mow the lawn on Sunday. Ronnie said that in order to be free, you have to have rules, that everyone obeys. Then everyone is free to have a quiet Sunday, without having their peace destroyed by lawnmowers.

As the evening progressed, people at another table started singing from a book of Swiss folk songs, songs that everyone knew, that, as one person put it, she had sung in the Girl Scouts. They had a lot of fun, singing in very nice harmony (this was, after all, a church choir).

Mary Joy met the choir director, who had spent some time in Stacy, Minnesota (as an exchange student, perhaps). He said that an American organist, Gail Archer, had recently played a recital at the church. Mary Joy told him that she’s met Gail Archer, so it’s a small (organ) world. He said that Mary Joy should play there the next time she comes to Zug.

Zug

We are now (Sunday, June 27) enjoying free wi-fi at the most expensive hotel on our trip, in the resort town of Pontresina, just a few miles from St. Moritz, in southeastern Switzerland--but more about that later.

Friday, we treated Albert and Kathi to a nice lunch on the terrace at the Hotel Interlaken, the oldest hotel in the city (it has plaques indicating that Lord Byron stayed there in 1816 and Mendelssohn stayed there five times in the 1830s and 1840s). We sat and talked until about 2:30, when Albert took us to the Interlaken Ost station and we said goodbye. We caught the 3:04 train to Lucerne, and got in a few minutes late, but the train to Zug was delayed by about ten minutes. When it finally arrived, crowds of people were getting on. We were quick to get into a second-class car, and stow our luggage above, but then a horde of kids started boarding, and an adult told us that the car was reserved. So we grabbed our luggage and fought our way out through the boarding children and their gear. Once off, Mary Joy asked if we had everything. No, we didn’t. I struggled through the army of kids backed onto the train, grabbed my bag and managed to swim upstream off the car. It later occurred to me that once on the train I could always have gone back through the cars to that one and found my bag under calmer circumstances, but in the heat of the moment, I didn’t think of that. We found another (crowded) second-class car and stood for the twenty-minute ride to Zug.

This was the second time that I had left something on a train on this trip. On the way to Interlaken, when we changed trains at one point, a man had to run after us with the bag with bottles of wine that we had received from Bernard’s friends. At least I haven’t yet left Mary Joy on any train.

Albert and Jolanda’s daughter Eva (thus, Mary Joy’s third cousin, once removed), picked us up at the station and drove us to her apartment, on a hillside overlooking the old town and the Zugersee (Lake Zug). This doesn’t give you any detailed idea of where Eva and her husband Andreas live, because almost all of Zug could be described as being on the slope of the Zugerberg mountain and overlooking the old town and the lake. We had steaks and tabouleh on the picnic table in their garden, as the sun was going down over the lake.

The four of us walked down the hill to the courtyard of a restaurant, where we joined some of their friends in drinking a beer and watching the World Cup game between Switzerland and Honduras. At the same time, Spain was playing Chile, and Switzerland needed to do better than Spain to get to the next round. But we saw as Spain pulled ahead of Chile 2-0, and though Chile later scored a goal, Switzerland couldn’t penetrate Honduras’s defense, so their game ended in a 0-0 tie, and Switzerland was out. Switzerland only gave up one goal in its three games, but it also only scored one goal.

Gimmelwald and Schilthorn

Yesterday (Thursday, June 24), we checked out of our apartment in Interlaken, took the 9:52 train from West to Ost (5 minutes), took the train from Ost to Lauterbrunnen, took the Post Bus to Stechelberg, and from there took the cable car up to Gimmelwald. Lauterbrunnen and Stechelberg are in a deep valley. Towering above one side of the valley is the Jungfrau, while the other side is overlooked by a plateau, at the center of which is the resort town of Muerren, at an altitude of about 5400 feet. Along the rim to the north and about 2000 feet lower is the much smaller and more rustic village of Gimmelwald—Lonely Planet calls it “cute.” It is one of those places, like the Cinque Terre in Italy, Bacharach in Germany or Rue Cler in Paris, that was almost completely untouristed until Rick Steves found it, and now is full of Americans carrying their blue Rick Steves guidebook.

Still, it is relatively quiet and simple, while our hotel does have free wi-fi (Hurray!), our room has no TV or phone, has bare wood-plank walls and ceiling (a 6-foot ceiling—my head almost brushes it) and the WC and shower are down the hall. It also has a good restaurant (Mary Joy was ecstatic about the smoked trout salad at lunch, less so about the fish ratatouille at dinner)—in fact, the only restaurant in Gimmelwald, population 110.

We arrived around 11 a.m. and after that wonderful lunch walked up to Muerren, which would have been very pleasant, with terrific views across the valley, except that it was like climbing stairs to the top of a 90-story building. We rested awhile, then took the funicular up to Almendhubel, the start of the North Face Trail, which heads north high above Muerren, with spectacular views of the Eiger, Moench and Jungfrau, then comes down in a roundabout way to Muerren. We cut off towards the end on a trail marled “Vorsicht!” (“Careful”), down through an evergreen forest, behind a waterfall (named “Sprutz,” which seems to fit), then down a long hillside to Gimmelwald.

This morning (Friday, June 25), we got up early and took the cable car up to the Schilthorn (10,000 feet), with spectacular views, a revolving restaurant (where we had coffee and rolls) and an exhibition on the James Bond film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” which was filmed there (they blew up the restaurant at the end, I think).

Soon, we’ll go back to Interlaken, then to Zug. We may not have Internet access for several days.

Schynige Platte

Wednesday (June 23). The Jungfrau is out, visible from our apartment window! Today we went to the mountains, to Schynige Platte. We bought some sandwiches and a 1.5 liter bottle of water, then headed for the Interlaken West station, where we caught a bus to the village of Wilderswil, then bought round-trip tickets (29 francs--$26--apiece, taking into consideration a 50 percent discount due to our Swiss Pass) on the cog railway to Schynige Platte. Wilderswil is about 1900 feet above sea level. Schynige Platte is above 6000 feet.

Mary Joy had wanted to do the 10-mile, 6½ hour hike from Schynige Platte to First, but Margot had strongly discouraged that: it would be long and strenuous, with ups and downs and some difficult footing. Instead, we walked the “Panoramaweg” (“Panorama Trail”), which was strenuous enough! The views were spectactular: The Eiger, Moench and Jungfrau and their associates to the south, the Brienzersee, Boedeli and Thunersee to the north.

We left Interlaken at 9:27, got to Schynige Platte at 10:57, walked, had lunch on some rocks around 12:20, walked back, caught the train down at 3:01, and were down in Interlaken, having coffee and cake at Confiserie-Tea Room Rieder (a distant relative, maybe?), by 4:30. Later, we had a very pleasant dinner with Albert and Kathi at the See Hotel in Boenigen, on the shores of the Brienzersee.

Unterseen and Margot

Today (Tuesday, June 22nd), after breakfast in our apartment, we bought a bouquet at a nearby florist’s, then, around eleven, called Margot from the Unterseen post office. Then we walked toward her apartment while she met us partway.

Unterseen is across the Aare, north of Interlaken, and though a much older city than Interlaken, is much smaller and quieter and is part of the Interlaken municipality. The old town is to the east, but Unterseen now stretches west across fields and pastures and includes Neuhaus, which is on the Thunersee. There are still some barns, with cows and horses, close to the old town, within five minutes’ walk of the tourist bustle of Interlaken’s main street (Hoheweg ) and the Interlaken West railway station.

Interlaken and Unterseen, together with several smaller towns, are on the Boedeli, the land separating the Thunersee (Lake Thun) and the Brienzersee (Lake Brienz). Thousands of years ago, there was one big lake and no Boedeli. The Luetschine creek, carrying glacial debris from the mountains, gradually filled up the center of that lake, dividing it in two and creating the Boedeli. The river Aare begins in the mountains south of Meiringen (famous for the Reichenbach Falls, where Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty battled to the death), where it goes through the narrow Aareschlucht gorge, before emptying into the east end of the Brienzersee. It comes out at the west end of the lake, crosses the Boedeli and empties into the Thunersee, which it exits at the northwest tip, at Thun. Then it flows north to Bern and eventually the Rhine.
Margot lives in a pleasant apartment in a newer building bordering on farmland. We sat and talked on her terrace, which looks south toward the Luetschine valley gap and the Jungfrau—except that the Jungfrau remained invisible, as if someone had stolen it. If you didn’t know that it was behind the gray clouds, you wouldn’t realize that there was a mountain there at all. The last time we were here, we only saw it for about ten minutes of the three days.

Margot, Mary Joy and I took a leisurely half-hour walk to the restaurant on the lake at Neuhaus, where we had a good light lunch. Then we walked back through the fields to Margot’s, where we sat and talked until 6:30.

Margot had recommended an Italian restaurant in Unterseen, “Arcobaleno.” Mary Joy had a swordfish farfalle dish and I had a pizza. Margot appears to be as reliable as Lonely Planet.

Afterwards, we visited Jolanda’s grave in the Unterseen cemetery (behind and across from the church, with the Harder mountain rising steeply behind). On our way back through the old town, we checked out a cow barn, but Mary Joy was challenged by a barking dog, so we went back to our apartment.

Wi-Fi At Last!

The recital went very well. The audience clapped long and hard and everyone was smiling. The newspaper reviewer was heard, twice, to call the recital “ausgezeichnet” (“outstanding”) and wrote a strong review for the paper. Mary Joy feels relieved that it’s over and is happy with the way it went.

Afterwards, we went to “Da Luigi,” an Italian restaurant, for a late dinner—Mary Joy, Bernard, Marika and I, and a nice couple who are friends of Bernard. The dinner was good, the mood celebratory, the company very pleasant, and, at the end, Mary Joy once again did some of her restaurant-staff-charming magic: the owner (?) got out his guitar and serenaded her in Italian!

This morning (Sunday, June 20th) Mary Joy, Marika and I went to 9:00 mass at Bernard’s other church and heard his choir sing. Then we helped Marika check out and went back to Bernard’s to have brunch with the couple who own the duplex where he lives. They have sung in his choir and are delightful, gracious and very hospitable people, so, again, we had a very good time. Then we had to finish packing and head for the train station. There we said goodbye to our very good friends Marika and Bernard and got on the train to Interlaken, while Marika headed back to Berlin.

After about 3½ hours, two train changes and the validation of our 15-day train pass, we arrived at the Interlaken West station, where we were met by Mary Joy’s cousin Albert (second cousin by marriage, twice removed—he is the widower of Jolanda, whose father was the first cousin of Mary Joy’s great-grandfather, who emigrated from Unterseen to Wisconsin). Albert drove us to our apartment and introduced us to the landlady, whose mother had known Jolanda. It’s a very nice apartment, though far from luxurious, well-located and with a refrigerator and two-burner range. Albert had something to do tonight, but we’ll get together tomorrow.

We had dinner at a classy pizzeria (“Pizzeria Horn”) that is recommended in Lonely Planet Switzerland. We have never had a faulty restaurant recommendation from Lonely Planet. Rick Steves is not as reliable where restaurants are concerned, but his guide is very useful for other practicalities.

The problem is internet access. We got fifteen minutes for five Swiss francs (about $4.50) at a Latino bar, but all we had time to do was send e-mails to Bernard and Marika and wish our fathers a happy Father’s Day.

On Monday (June 21st) we visited Albert’s apartment for a short time and agreed to meet him and his friend Kathi for tea at the restaurant at the top of the Metropole Hotel (the highest restaurant and the tallest hotel in Interlaken) at 3 p.m. In the meantime, we took a two-and-a-half hour boat ride on the Thunersee (Lake Thun). The weather here has been unusually cold and wet for this time of year. The boat ride was scenic but frigid. It was a good thing that Albert had lent us some jackets that were warmer than what we had.

We met Albert and Kathi at the restaurant at 3. Kathi, a widow who was in Albert’s class in high school, so they had met again at a class reunion, speaks very good English and seems to be a very nice person. While we were there, parasailers came down from the Beatenberg and Harder Kulm, swooped past our window (sometimes very close) and landed in the Hohematte, the big, open park across the street.

Mary Joy and I had dinner at another restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet, the “Goldener Anker,” and again we were very happy with the food--we had the prix fixe menu (mushroom soup, a pork chop in herb sauce, classy vegetables and, for dessert, coffee ice cream with whipped cream and Kahlua.

Then we went to McDonald’s to see if we could get free wi-fi access there. We could—if we had a cell phone! We would log onto the McDonald’s local area network, then give them our cell-phone number, whereupon they would text us a password to get online. But we had no cell phone.

What we tried next worked, sort of. We walked out to the Interlaken Ost railway station, which is a Swisscom hotspot, and there I bought half an hour of wi-fi access online, for 5 francs, thinking that I’d be able to copy all the blog material that I had written in a Word document onto my blog. Not. It wouldn’t copy! So we had time for Mary Joy to write her parents, but I could post only a few sentences on the blog, to show that we were still alive. Then we walked the path along the fast-rushing river Aare, under the streetlamps through Unterseen and back to our apartment.

As you can tell, I figured out how to copy from Word to this blog. I am sitting outside the main post office in Interlaken at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, June 22nd. The sun is shining (finally), so after having lunch with Mary Joy's other second cousin twice removed, Margot (the late Jolanda's 85-year-old first cousin), we may go up into the mountains. Mary Joy was still in bed when I left, so now I'll go back and we'll have breakfast.

Triumph!

We've been having trouble with internet access--still do.

The recital went very well "Ausgezeichnet" ("Outstanding"), said the newspaper reviewer. I'll try to find more access for a better report.

Rocking in the Mud and a Football Cake

Tonight (Saturday, June 19th) is Mary Joy's recital. While she and Bernard went to church to finish her preparation, Marika and I went to the Benedictine abbey at Beuron, about 25 km. (15 miles) away. Because one of the highways is under repair, we took an indirect route, through Neuhausen ob Eck. It happens that Neuhausen is the site of the Southside Festival, a three-day rock music extravaganza. There wasn't much traffic, but just before Neuhausen we came to the festival grounds, with hundreds of cars parked in two or three inches of mud. Late yesterday, the rain had ended and the sun had come out, but now the rain had come back. We went on to Beuron, a baroque monastery set in a picturesque valley. It was built by Augustinians in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but shut down by the government (secularization) in 1802. It was revived by Benedictines in the 1860s and decorated by the "Beuron School" in the early twentieth century. The church is an uneasy mix of typical south-German baroque (in the nave) and a sort of simplified, non-decadent Art Nouveau (in a large transept chapel).

We went from there to lunch with Mary Joy, Bernard, his daughters and a friend named Ute. Ute was a refugee from an offshoot of the Southside Festival: five rock bands in the Marktplatz in Tuttlingen, blasting her apartment so that the radiators rattled. She said that she had been swimming earlier at the public pool and outside there were fifty pairs of boots so muddy that all you could see was the mud, not the boots. Festival-goers had discovered that the on-site shower facilities were inadequate, so they had gone into Tuttlingen to wash off at the pool, filling it with mud.

After lunch, Mary Joy needed some exercise, so she, Marika and I went for a walk in the rain on a forest trail starting at the Lippach Mill cafe, then had a coffee and cake there. The only cake they had was a "football cake"--one in the shape of a soccer ball--so we had a couple of slices of that, then went back to Tuttlingen so Mary Joy could rest before the recital.

Serbia Beats Germany!

Today was a day of more practice and organ registration for Mary Joy, while I spent the morning reading. Around one o'clock our good friend Marika arrived in town from Berlin, after an overnight train ride and picking up a car in nearby Geisingen. Marika visited us last year in Minnesota and went with us on our trip to Utah, Arizona and California.

Mary Joy, Marika and I had a good lunch--local Schwäbische (Swabian) cuisine--at the Engel restaurant just off the main square, then Mary Joy went back to her practice. After a rest, Marika and I went for a walk along the Danube, then had cappuccinos at a bakery by the square. Then, at 6:10, we got the car, picked up Mary Joy and went to the nearby town of Stetten, to have dinner with Bernard and his daughters.

Mary Joy and Bernard went back to church to finish deciding registrations, Marika went back to her hotel, and here I am, blogging.

But the big news of the day here in Tuttlingen is the World Cup match between Germany and Serbia. Surprisingly, the Serbs won, 1-0. Tuttlingen has major populations of Italians, Croats and, apparently, Serbs. The last group went wild, and rather than showing pity on their poor hosts, drove around town honking their horns and waving Serbian flags, for more than an hour.

Tuttlingen

Tuttlingen, Germany, is a nice, middle-sized town on the eastern edge of the Black Forest. It has a reputation for manufacturing shoes and surgical instruments and has a semi-pedestrianized center and more Italian restaurants than any town I remember in Italy. The river that runs through town happens to be the Danube, but it is about half as wide (if that) as the Mississippi at St. Paul. I wouldn't be surprised if you could wade it. When I can, I'll post a photo. The source of the Danube at Donaueschingen is not far from here.

I spent the most of the afternoon wandering the town and reading my book (Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything"--the ideal science book for a non-scientist), broken up by an hour's walk in the Danube Park with Mary Joy. At 7:15 I met her at the church and we walked in the rain to the center of town to have dinner at a Greek restaurant--not great, but things were slow, so they gave us a free ouzo as a before-dinner drink, and some sweet cocktail as a free after-dinner drink, along with the glasses of wine--which turned out to be carafes of wine!--that we had ordered with dinner. Needless to say, we felt a little tipsy walking back to Bernard's.

The quiz answers (don't peek if you haven't taken the quiz yet):

1. Good Friday.
2. John Lennon (this is the one I got a point for).
3. Wilde, 6' 3" and hefty, was a heavyweight boxer.
4. "Jack and Jill" and "Hickory, Dickory Dock."
5. Shaw, for the screenplay for the film version of "Pygmalion."

Travel Day

Wednesday (June 16th) was a travel day: from Dublin by Ryanair to Memmingen, Germany, then by train to Tuttlingen, changing trains in Ulm. We caught the bus to Dublin Airport a little before 8 a.m. and arrived in Tuttlingen a little more than nine hours later. In contrast to sunny, warmish Dublin, in southern Germany it was cold and rainy. A young American woman, living and looking for work in Munich, and with whom we shared the taxi from Memmingen Airport to the train station, said that just recently it had been in the 80s there. Not now.

We are staying with Mary Joy's friend and colleague Bernard, a native of De Pere, Wisconsin, who has spent decades now as a church music director in Germany. Her recital is at one of his two churches, which is where she went immediately after dinner for an hour and a half of practice, worried about not having played since 11:30 mass on Sunday.

Today (Thursday, June 17th), she has been practicing again, with a break for lunch (I made spaghetti). She will have to take a break again at 3:45--because of rosary at the church--when I'll meet her after walking there (1.8 kilometers, or a little over a mile, according to Google Maps).

The Literary Pub Crawl

Later in the evening, we walked down across the Liffey again to take the Literary Pub Crawl (only in Ireland!). Sometimes the nexus between the pubs and the literature was a little tenuous, but it was fun. An actor (our guide) started with a song, where the audience answered the call "What'll you have?" with "I'll have a pint." Then another actor joined him for the opening few minutes of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." He talked about Joyce's "Ulysses," part of which takes place in the neighborhood, and recited the last lines of Molly Bloom's soliloquy ("Yes, yes . . .") ending that novel, in which she mentions Duke Street, where we were. We finished our drinks and went a few blocks to the main quad of Trinity college (our guide said that we would get one literary stop without a pub, but that would be compensated for by one pub stop without any literature). There we were told about Trinity's famous students, such as Beckett, Jonathan Swift. Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith and Oscar Wilde. He talked about Wilde's American lecture tour and recited a letter where Wilde talked about his lecture (on Art and Aesthetics) in Leadville, Colorado, to a bunch of whiskey-drinking miners.

Then we went to O'Neil's Pub, where the other actor showed up and they did part of a scene from a play by James Plunkett, involving a pair of street beggars. Then we went to the Old Standard for our promised non-literary pub stop (instead, watching Brazil against North Korea in World Cup soccer). Finally, we went back to Duke Street, where we heard stories about Brendan Behan, the famous pub-crawling writer. Our guide then gave us a quiz. I (Mike) managed to shout out one answer, but my Jeopardy reflexes were dulled by having been up for 33 1/2 hours, so the winner (of a Literary Pub Crawl tee-shirt) was a woman from Chicago. Second place (a tiny bottle of what our guide called Bushmills "mouthwash") required a run-off question between a young man from Yorkshire and a middle-aged woman from Florida. Then we ended the evening at Davy Byrne's pub, where one of the scenes in "Ulysses" takes place.

Some of the quiz questions were interesting. See if you can answer:

1. Beckett was born on what day near Easter?
2. Unknown to many, Beckett was one of the original writers involved in the musical "Oh, Calcutta!," but withdrew his name from the credits when he learned it would have naked women onstage. Another of the writers, one of the Beatles, also withdrew. Which Beatle?
3. Oliver Goldsmith was hired to compile a collection of Mother Goose rhymes. Needing to fill space, he wrote two new ones himself, passing them off as common children's rhymes. Now they are. Which two?
4. Oscar Wilde, as an undergraduate, was proficient in a sport (one that's in the Olympics and practiced professionally). Which one?
5. Of Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature (William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney), which one also won an Academy Award?

Answers later.

1916 and So On

We're now in Dublin, in a hotel just off O'Connell Street, near St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral. The room has wi-fi, so while Mary Joy is resting (it's 6 p.m. here, noon back in Minnesota, on Tuesday the 15th of June), I'll make our first trip posting.

There were no problems with flights or connections, except one minor one, which I'll go into later. As we were about to take off on our Southwest flight from MSP, we were suddenly serenaded over the intercom by a harmonica rendition of the racetrack call to the post, followed by "Red River Valley!" The pilot stood at the front of the cabin, playing his harmonica, then cracked jokes about how bad his playing was (though it was really pretty good). So that's how our trip started!

Chicago Transit veterans that we are, we had no trouble buying a transit card when we got to Midway Airport, and taking the Orange train to the Loop, then going downstairs at the Clark-Lake station and transferring to the Blue Line out to O'Hare airport. This took us a little longer than shuttle bus or a taxi between airports, but cost about a tenth as much.

No problems at O'Hare, or going from there to Philadelphia, except that when I had checked in online the night before, I had noticed that our seats had been changed for the Philadelphia-Dublin flight and were no longer together, but in fact were far apart. I tried calling USAirways, but couldn't get an answer. In Chicago, I asked at the gate, but the best they could do was two aisle seats, one behind the other, one on an exit row (normally, Mary Joy gets a window seat and I get the center seat next to her). When we got to Philadelphia, it became clear that a lot of other people were in the same boat. USAirways had changed to a smaller plane. People in the eliminated seats were moved elsewhere in the new plane without any attempt to keep them together with family and friends. I found myself next to a newlywed couple that had to trade seats with someone in order to get back together.

As usual, Mary Joy slept a lot on the transatlantic flight and I didn't. We got into Dublin on an extaordinarily (for Dublin) beautiful day: sunny, in the low 60's. We took the Airlink 747 bus (6 euros apiece) downtown and ended up two blocks from our hotel, which gave us a room immediately.

We hurried up to join the 11:30 "1916 Rebellion Walking Tour". The guide (picture above) had a History Ph.D from Trinity College, and had spent a school year as a researcher at Notre Dame (apparently not a good experience). We started with a short lecture in a pub basement, walked to Trinity College, then to the General Post Office (where the rebel chiefs had held out), then to City Hall, then to Dublin Castle. We learned a lot about the causes, happenings and results of the Easter Rising. There was a college group from Alabama with us, and a guy who said he was doing a travel article for "The (San Francisco?) Chronicle."

Then time for lunch (savory tarts-tomato and goat cheese for Mary Joy; red onion and potato for me) at the Queen of Tarts, which was just across the street from where we ended up. Very good.

Though beginning to flag, we went to the Irish National Museum, where we saw a lot of Bronze-Age gold jewelry. Then we returned to our hotel.