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.