Phew! Found a way

12th Oct, 2007
If you’re reading this, you’ll know I’ve solved our problem with the mobile connect: it's done a bit of a runner, and won’t connect - so at present it’s mobile but nothing else. So the notes following are catch-up stuff.
I’m writing this on the train from Brig in Switzerland to Milano in Italy, where we’ve got a couple of nights booked. We had a major rest day yesterday: slept till at least ten (Celia quite a bit later) and then had another snooze in the afternoon. Read a lot, and had dinner with our hosts. Even managed to get a hold of their baby; we’re missing holding babies. Today is mostly a travel day. Celia had been a bit disappointed that we hadn’t stopped longer in Zurich, so we decided to travel back to Bern, by way of compensation, travel forward from there to Brig and then onto Milano. Bit of back-tracking, but the famous Eurail pass covers it all. Bern turned out to be a very grey city. Grey might not exactly describe the colour: it was kind of sandy stone colour, meaning it had a slight beach sand tint. But all the buildings in the old city were made of this, and they’re all solid and imposing. It’s like someone has said: we’ll build a city all in one colour, all in one dominant style and that’ll be it. This is the old town I’m talking of; across the bridge over a huge drop down to the river, there are many houses that are much traditionally Swiss - and to our eyes, much pleasant.
Anyway, we ‘did’ Bern, and hopped back on the train after about an hour and a half. That took us back along the line past Thun and Spiez, and then it veered off somewhere, and we climbed and climbed until we were so far above the valley, the cars looked like insects crawling along. Why they built the train up on the side of the mountains I‘m not sure. You‘d have thought they‘d have built it in the valley, since most of the towns are down there. Still, the views are spectacular - when they‘re not interrupted by one of the innumerable tunnels. Huge mountains, caverns, raging torrents, waterfalls, snow on the highest peaks - you name it! This is certainly a marvellous piece of countryside, though it might be a bit difficult of access! And now we‘re heading through more of the same, so I‘m going to stop typing.