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.

Sailing away

We went for a boat ride on the Lake of Thun today. We thought we’d have to pay part of the cost, but for some reason which we didn’t quite understand, the trip was free today only, via our Eurail pass. The boat took us to Interlaken, which I’d heard about from some source - can’t remember which - as being a special place, but it struck me as Switzerland’s equivalent of Queenstown, that is, all tourist shops, and lots of things to do if you’re an outdoors person. (There were several people paragliding when we arrived, for instance.) The buildings are a delight, however, and speak of a time when people paid big money to build in Interlaken.
In spite of my misgivings about Interlaken, the trip itself was lovely, the lake calm, the mountains a little misty but still reasonably well-defined, and the air warm. We sat outside on the boat for most of the trip. At the end of it, the ferry navigates its way down a narrow channel, with only a few metres to spare on either side.
Though we could have gone back on the boat, we decided to have a look around Interlaken for an hour or so, and get the train back to Spiez, and then the bus to Einigen. The train, of course, was covered by our Eurail pass anyway, so the trip only cost us the bus fare. (Though no one actually came to check our pass on the quarter hour trip from Interlaken to Spiez, so some people might well have got on for free!)
I didn’t mention yesterday that we had a mini crisis. By mistake I put my debit card (Eftpos, in other words) into a ticket machine at Spiez railway station, thinking it was a money machine. I tried to cancel the operation but no card appeared. Nothing worked, and suddenly we began to think we’d have to face the next week or two unable to get money. (We have quite a bit of cash with us, but we hadn’t got any Swiss francs before we arrived in Switzerland.)
In the end I went up to the ticket office, and explained the situation to the man behind the counter - who fortunately spoke good English. (The Swiss don’t seem to be quite as strong on the English as the Germans are, and some of them don't care!) He came down with a tool, opened the machine, pulled out the part that had the card in it, dug around at it, pried at it, worked on it - all to no avail. We stood there chatting, trying to feel confident that he was going to achieve something! Finally he went back upstairs, called the office in Bern, and they told him on the phone what to do. Voila! one returned debit card - and considerable relief.

Heidelberg

Heidelberg was lovely. Wonderful old houses and streets echoing with voices; huge churches in the middle of the residential area; bars and restaurants galore; wonderful wide river that turns out to be the Neckar and not the Rhein, as I’d thought! We must have given the Rhein the slip at some point in our trip south.
We were in the Aldstadt, or Old Town, and it’s obviously the tourist area. We walked right to the end of the Haupstrasse last night, and came to Bismarckplatz, a platz we’d remembered from our rather hectic bus ride a couple of days or so ago. It leads into the new town, but it was all rather dark, so we didn’t venture much further.
Tried out the strange taste of a Heidelberg schneeball (snowball) yesterday; it’s hard to describe exactly what it is: something between a sweet biscuit and a pastry coated with different flavours. A bit too sweet for our taste, but memorable (even more as we asked to sit down in the place where they were selling them - and have been making them for generations - and it cost us extra to do so!)
We didn’t stay up for last evening’s World Cup game. Couldn’t take any more disappointments on that front.
Missed out on our breakfast of one hot drink and one croissant this morning, because the place that provided it doesn’t open till eight, and we had to be away before that to catch the train. We tried to get the proprietor to give us the drink and croissant last night by way of recompense, but he wasn’t having it on. Not the most PR minded, this particular lot!
Anyway, today we’ve travelled from Heidelberg to Stuttgart in one 45 minute stretch, hung around at Stuttgart station for just under an hour and got on a train to Zurich, (another three hours) and then less than ten minutes after we got to Zurich we headed for Spiez, (another hour and a half) which is just near where we’re staying with one of the people (Darren Hight) who used to be at DCBC, our home church. He married a Swiss girl about 18 months ago, and now they’ve just had a baby daughter - she’s two weeks old. They’re living in a community that offers hospitality to different groups, Christian and non-Christian, and also has a small farm. We’re in the first floor of a chalet (some three hundred years old, but renovated) and have a view overlooking the Lake of Thun - with the Alps in the background. Celia said, If she’d known she was coming to Queenstown she wouldn’t have bothered, but she was kidding! The place is absolutely beautiful. Certainly it’s reminiscent of Queenstown, though the Alps are probably bigger still than the mountains there, but it’s also reminiscent of Dunedin and its harbour.
Since we’re catering for ourselves here, we walked down to the dairy/grocers - the only one in Einigen, the local village - and back again. Going down was fine, but the walk back was a bit of a mission: all uphill.
The photo is of the oldest church in Einigen; in fact, one of the oldest in Switzerland.