Lazarow World-Hike-About

Hello All, The weather is erratic in this part of the world; it proves that you can’t have everything. As our editor mentioned recently, ‘I love it here but would hate to face a winter’. This is apt especially as we don’t ski. We have extended our stay in Grindelwald because the natural surroundings are simply exquisite, providing us the opportunity to enjoy incredible hiking. Our hotel, a family run establishment, is very tastefully furnished and well maintained. Although it is not ‘fancy’, like most (all) things in this part of the world, it is expensive. By the way, the price of gas (petrol) is nearly $6 a gallon, double the U.S. price. Transport is very expensive especially the Alpine system—it makes a person want to hike. Our room is comfortable but we are thankful that we did not bring the cat. We would have no place to swing it. Do you ever wonder about these sayings. Last Shabbos it was raining ‘cats and dogs’. We heard a story about the derivation of this one. Back in the midd...

Where do we begin? If we could sing you would know that’s from Love Story, we think. My apologies for yesterday’s ‘accent’ which should have been ‘ascent’. Not easy to get good help these days. Unfair comment—errors are all mine. Any of the editor’s errors are mine, too—I think that is how marriage is supposed to be. The soul is on fire and some of the muscles, too. We enjoyed a spectacular day, perhaps the best mountain hiking we’ve done since…last week. Seriously, it could be ‘the one’. The sights, the trail itself, the sheer length and steepness of the climb, the endurance required; it was a ‘wow’. (Eight miles, 7 uphill, an elevation gain of close to 5,000 feet.) Our editor is ‘killing’ us but we love it. It was tiring and exhilarating at the same time. Leaving our hotel, we walked down into the valley at Grund, a village below Grindelwald. From there, we gained 2300 feet and then began the mountain trail along the Eiger, up towards the Glacier, another 2500 feet elevation gain. T...

Shavua Tov, We have changed our minds. We are now all for statistics whereas previously we were skeptics. Today, the count was eighty-two, twelve, fifty-five and fifteen. These are not good results from our poll. It makes us a little sad; however, what can one do? Village Frau It rained today, cooling things down for Shabbos. However, as the weather was perfect the day before, we did not think it needed to adjust. Our influence is somewhat limited, to say the least. We left the hotel, which looks out over the valley and at the mountains, realizing we would need to return early to ‘welcome the bride’-Shabbos began at 8:18pm. We set off on our hike to the station at Bort which feels like it is somewhere in the sky. Our editor put it nicely. It is steeper, and that’s along the whole climb, than the road from Gilman Drive through the La Jolla Shores development, the route we ‘trespass’ on the way to shul. One way of testing it is that on the return it was sometimes difficult to stop one...

Guten Abend our Friends und others, We vil expect you to read what we write immediately, if not sooner. Ja. Concentrate fully. Please do not drink ze coffee because we do not vont vet pages. Ha! That is the joke we just made. Gut. You may laugh now. Gut. From now on, we will only speak the Swiss German. No longer will you hear our San Diegan accent. It is kaput. In case you missed it, we have an excellent ear for languages. After just a few sentences, we are able to decide vether ze speaker is not using ze English. We are most talented, inter alia. We throw in ze occasional Latin to highlight our classical education. We never, but never forget our humility, either. Looking down on Grindelwald We arrived safely in Zurich, B’H’ and immediately took a train followed by another two connections to Grindelwald. We have been to Switzerland a few times before. We remember that it is clean and the people are efficient. This time we are off to check the mountains. However, we did notice more ...

Living on the Edge “We’ve been talking about boarding a plane for a while—it’s enough already. Let’s go,” our editor remanded us. “We need to get to Switzerland, I’m getting antsy about those Alps,” she mentioned in her best English. Meantime, one of us still has a foot in the Western United States. That seems to be causing a little problem. With so much to see and do in this part of the world, it’s easy to understand why someone would be reluctant to leave. Well, that’s the writer’s view. Then a thought crossed the mind about Switzerland. A few years ago, Rabbi Wohlgelernter was giving a talk and he added an anecdote. It went something like this: Rabbi Samson Hirsh, the famous 19th century scholar (and great favorite of ours) was telling his students that he intended going to view the Swiss Alps. ‘But Rebbe,’ they protested, ‘Wouldn’t that amount to wasting Torah study time?’ He answered them. ‘When I come before the Great Master after leaving this world and He asks me whether I enj...

Hello from Bellevue, We spent a night and two half-days in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Frankly, we were not impressed with the city but charmed by the wonderful lake. Perhaps we visited the wrong part of town. Nevertheless, the lake is beautiful as well as substantial. We hiked to the top of an overlook in the nature reserve—5.5 miles with an elevation gain of 1100 feet. The views of the water were terrific. We moved on and passed through Moses’ Lake, spent a little time at the Columbia River near the Gorge in Washington and slept in Ellensburg, a college town. We did some business this morning, quite a lot actually, and thereafter made our way to Bellevue, Washington—our gateway east. The direct route from San Diego to this city is about 1,150 miles. We recorded 3,060 miles for our journey, bearing in mind that we did not get lost, not even once. Perhaps that’s the highlight of the trip. As one ‘wag’ put it, ‘couldn’t you find a closer airport than Seattle?’ We suppose he has a point. We wi...