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 graffiti stains on the buildings. Either the youth are not following their parents or many immigrants do not fit the Swiss mold. Who knows? Our editor is full of questions these days. Of course, she expects us to have the answers. We don’t like to disappoint her so we provide answers, usually incorrect, but we try. “Why do you think the people over here seem so cold and stiff—so formal?” she wants to know. “In America, people are more relaxed and friendly,” she continues.
She presses for an answer so we give her one. “Perhaps,” we begin, “because they are neutered.”
“Neutered?” she giggled. “You mean neutral.”
“Didn’t we say that? Of course, when you take a neutral position in the world you have to act without passion and feelings (may we add values?). You have to be above it all,” we explain in our simple way. She seems to accept our answer so we move on to the ATM and collect some cash. The machine is very clever. In the USA, we put our card in and it gives us dollars. Here it gives us Francs. It is a wonderful system. If we were in Zimbabwe, we wonder what it would produce—toilet paper?
In the land of the Eiger, (The North Face) and many other ‘beauts’, we are without words again. Some may indeed be happy to hear that.
The North Face Our editor mentioned that if you are going to keep using words like splendor, beautiful, paradise etc., over and over again, you will lose a reader. ‘The loss of one reader,” we answered, ‘is a small price to pay for explaining the wonders as we see them,’ we replied rather smugly.
‘Yes, that may be,’ she said with those beautiful rolling eyes, ‘but think about it. Having only one reader, you can hardly be too independent.’ She is too clever for her own good.
Words fail us on the magnificence of this town and surrounding mountains. Our editor chose a hike to Kleine Scheidegg. There was absolutely nothing klein (small) about this hike. It is amazing that they build hotels, restaurants and train stations on top of mountains. We remember Stuart Laiken explaining the difference between the Sierra Nevada’s and the Swiss to us, some time ago. His point was valid. In California, you eat your own bag-lunch in tranquility in the wilderness. Here you stand in line at a restaurant. Guess which system we favor.
There are train lines, at what seems like impossible gradients, all the way to the summit. The snow-capped mountains, including the famous Eiger, The Jungfrau, Monch to name a few, not forgetting the glaciers, take the breath away. They are ably assisted in tiring one by a climb of over 4,000 feet, over 13 miles round-trip, including our own extras. We did not get lost today, though. In fact, the Swiss make it difficult to lose one’s way with their informative signposts. We are going to have to try much harder if we wish to maintain our ‘getting lost’ record.
The valleys, meadows filled with color, sides of mountains covered with various grasses and shrubs make it look manicured. The houses, so sweetly nestled into the slopes, look like a picture on a Swiss postcard. Hmm! (Forgive us.) Many of their gardens extend into the wilderness of the mountains. Kindly look at some of the pictures—the place is truly exquisite
Finally, our plan was to hike to the destination mentioned above and take the train back. However, our editor seemed full of enthusiasm today. She invited us to walk as ‘it is mostly downhill’, she explained. One would have thought we understood that concept. Never shy of a challenge, we agreed. We sit alongside the computer exhausted, writing this missive very slowly, so please forgive us if it takes you longer to read.
As we say in this part of the world, you Will have a great Shabbos and if you insist, a good weekend, too.
Auf Wiedersehen,
Jenni and Jeffrey
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