“We scaled a mountain!”

(For context, read part 1 before reading this.)

Our goal to leave at 9:30 got us out the door by a remarkable 10:30. We were planning to mosey over to Interlaken to find those stunning picturesque spots that end up on everybody’s Instagram feed. Instead, the closer we got to Interlaken, the closer we also got to Schilthorn, and the closer we got to Schilthorn, the more excited my brother-in-law got about taking the cable car up the mountain.

green field with snow-capped mountains in the distance and train

It was the perfect day for it, or the perfect morning at least. One glance at the forecast told us that it was now or never.

So we left Interlaken without any of those Instagram-worthy photos. (It’s just as well; none of us have Instagram anyway.) Oh, but first we stopped for a short fuel stop which turned into a loooong bathroom break. My sister, nephew and I waited in the rental car as the minutes streeeeeetched on. “Should I go check on them?” I asked. But we decided to stick together, just in case. The three of them finally emerged with a reconciliatory bag of clementines and cherry tomatoes. It turns out that they had been waiting outside of a locked bathroom door with nobody inside, until someone had enough mercy to give them the key.

We bought our cable car tickets at the bottom of the mountain. “Let’s go,” Dad said weakly and we began to question whether or not this was the best idea. Heights are–eh–not Dad’s thing, and riding a bulky cable car up the mountain on a skinny piece of wire was particularly frightening. But, in the end, we were all game enough to get on board… although, the incentive may have been partially due to choosing the lesser evil– “Stay at the bottom and watch my family plummet to a certain death or plummet along with them?”)

So up we went, Dad relating a story of a cable car crash he had seen recently on YouTube.

It was a blast. No plunging or swaying. As we glided up the mountain to 9,744 feet, the view was progressively more breathtaking. At the top, my sister and I went outside for a stroll and came in stiff from the icy wind. But oh the view!

We climbed a final set of stairs to Piz Gloria, the rotating restaurant at the tippy top of the mountain. The outer ring of the restaurant makes a complete circle every 45 minutes. Initially, we almost left Dad behind when his chair leg stuck to the immobile wall and kept him in place. He waved at us. “Well, goodbye!”

“Bye, Dad! See you in 45 minutes!”

Before and after lunch, my brother-in-law kept checking our oxygen levels. He claimed I was turning purple. I wasn’t the only one who got a headache before it was all said and done.

On our way back down the mountain, we discussed what rating we would give our day. Dad gave it a 9, but only after our feet were on solid ground again. Still, I would give him a 10 for conquering his fear of heights!

We got home, tired. “Well, no wonder,” said Mom. “We scaled a mountain!”

colorful sunrise over silhouetted fir trees

The next morning was our earliest yet… which wouldn’t break any records except our own.

My Swiss friend came to spend the day with us. It was rainy and muddy, a perfect day to spend tracking down a bit of Anabaptist history. Due to complications with the directions, we were late for our tour, practically unacceptable for the Swiss. I guess we got away with it since we were American. Our tour guide was kneading dough when we arrived. My sister wanted to roll her eyes, assuming it was an act to replay Anabaptist history. It turns out that our guide was simply working on lunch so we saved the eye-rolling and sat back to enjoy the tour.

She gave us a long bit of history and showed us around her house which was built in the 1600s with a hideout for persecuted Anabaptists. It was a fascinating peek into our heritage.

My friend took us to a Mom ‘n’ Pop style Swiss restaurant where we ordered rosti and Rivella (a resourceful soda made from leftover whey). It was glorious to have an interpreter rather than just offering blank, ignorant smiles. The food was yummy and [relatively] inexpensive. My nephew took it upon himself to charm the other restaurant patrons and spent most of the time turned around completely in his seat.

Later, we discovered that the restaurant claims to be the oldest restaurant in Switzerland, dating back to 1356!

My friend had warned us not to order dessert because she had something else in mind–a visit to the local Kambly cookie factory. There, we shamelessly helped ourselves to the samples–the only free thing we had found in Switzerland so far!–but then walked out with arms laden with purchased cookies. It turns out Kambly knows what it’s doing after all! One of the favorites was a chocolate merengue that managed to be both fudgy and crisp as it silently melted in our mouths.

Our last adventure was a local store which was really quite large and overwhelming. We bought chocolate and groceries mostly. And then topped off the evening with creamy Swiss ice cream which may have ruined our Prairie Farms palates forever.

Cheese and chocolate

Hello, everyone! It’s been a few weeks. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I have…mostly because the nudge to update has been less of a nudge and more of an ominous cloud above my week that I. Just. Can’t. Quite. Get. To.

But now it’s Sunday and I have a quiet morning before our afternoon church service. So here I am, pecking away on my phone because I’ve been staring at my computer screen far too many hours this week and the idea of voluntarily sitting down in front of it again threatens my emotional stability.

First, the reason I have fallen a bit behind in writing:

FAMILY!

Yes, my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew came for a visit! Well, to be more accurate, we met up in Zurich and after a luscious week in Switzerland, came back to Spain for them to get a taste of my life.

This post is a bit of an introduction to our time together. We’ll see how wordy I get along the way. I was tempted to copy and paste the online journal we created for this trip, but as I read through it, I realized just how much it was not written for public consumption. *slight blush*

We met up on March 7 after we had all missed a night of sleep and felt covered in layers of trip grime gleaned from public restrooms and random people coughing on us. I arrived a while before my family since my flight from Madrid was more on time than their flight from London.

While I waited, I was startled by how much the people looked like me. Or I looked like them. I’m not sure which. As would soon be discovered, this caused some confusion because “Guten tag” can only go so far.

After the joyous reunion with my family, we were more than ready to leave the airport. But first, our reserved rental vehicle was a 5-seater for 6 of us. And then there were seatbelt issues that kept the car dinging at us as we wandered through the labriynth of airport traffic and had to pay 12 CHF for even daring to be there at all.

But as we left Zurich, the scenery continued to improve and so did our moods. Dad and I made the first shopping trip while everyone else snoozed in the van. Dad made a beeline for the meat and cheese and looked disgruntled whenever I dropped vegetables into our shopping basket. We may have spend a considerable amount of time in the chocolate aisle, but it was nothing compared to the time it took us to find a simple tube of mayo.

As we wound up into the mountains, we kept exclaiming over the stunning scenery…and the lack of guard rails on the narrow roads. Forget hairpin curves; winding up to the farm where we stayed was hairpinning all of the way! (My poor brother-in-law was very patient with the other 4 gasping drivers in the car with him.)

From the outside, our Airbnb looked a little dumpy. Mud. Dogs. Random farm equipment. (All of which we would eventually realize is part of small farm life in the Bern area.) But once we were inside, our place was warm, clean, and welcoming. The hostess had left us a loaf of fresh bread, homemade butter, cheese and jam.

We made ourselves at home.

green grass, fir trees, and snow covered mountains

Our first full day in Switzerland was rainy. We didn’t get a whole lot accomplished since it took considerable effort to drag everyone out of the house by 1 p.m. (Which means I don’t have to try to make a long story short for blogging purposes–the long story is short!)

We puttered along, “oh my”ing at the incredible scenery. We also snickered at the “ausfahrt” (exit) signs all along the way. My Swiss friend sent a message to welcome us to Switzerland.

“It’s so beautiful up here in the mountains!” I wrote back.

She laughed when she responded in a voice message. “These are the hills.”

close up of town with mountains in the distance

We drove to Gruyère where we strolled around around the free part of a cheese factory and then feasted on cheese fondue until I wondered if I’d ever want to eat cheese again. Our waitress spoke English, which was helpful. She also spoke Spanish, which was fun.

fondue pot with fondue dripping off of piece of bread

Side note: The prices took us a while to get used to. Visiting Switzerland isn’t for the empty-of-pocket. Even though we had tried to prepare ourselves, at least one of us would often sigh or grumble.

We sipped hot chocolate from a shop across the the street from the cheese factory as we wandered back to our van. We tried to get a peek at the local castle, but we would have had to park and walk through the rain to even see it. So we started for home.

That was pretty much our day besides a quick Aldi stop and two liters of fresh milk on our doorstep when we got back to our Airbnb.

I’ll write more another day. We really did do more than eat cheese and chocolate, although those two reasons alone are enough to warrant a trip to Switzerland!

Have you ever been to Switzerland? What sorts of things did you do?

Trying dieting

I’ve never been the person watching what she ate, until I came to Spain. Then it was simple: overdose on protein and stay away from sugar and caffeine. Until I got back from the States this fall and my blood test revealed shocking cholesterol numbers.

Genetics? Yes. Well, partly. Also, my love affair with cheese. After visiting France a couple of years ago, I thought it would be nice for God to call me to a country where one can eat a different kind of cheese every day of the year. Now I’m thankful I’m in Spain, where cheeses are outstanding, but numbered.

The doctor gave me a “to eat and not to eat” list. I did my own research, plugged a basic menu into a nutrition calculator and stuck to it for the most part. I’ve been eating well, make no mistake, but food prep takes longer than it used to. Plus, I spent a couple of months enduring my roommates snickers when I weighed almost everything I ate. I also had to endure my sister’s judgment when I feasted on a rosy salmon fillet, roasted brussel sprouts, rye crackers with homemade hummus, with a mango and 85% chocolate for dessert.

I love baking. I would probably bake every day if it weren’t for the piles of dishes. Or the piles of sweets. When I had a roommate, it was easier to dispose of my leftover baked goods. Granted, she was not always pleased to see another plateful of a sugary something with an attached note: “EAT!”

Honestly, I am a healthy eater by discipline, not naturally. If you’re going to trip me up, set out a cracker variety and a luscious cheeseball, chips and salsa, or just mounds of greasy potato chips. I don’t even like bread, but once and a while, I pig out on bread, especially if it’s loaded with heart-stopping slabs of cold butter. It hasn’t been all that long ago since I ate an entire bag of chips in one day. Or one day, I was walking down the street and smelled hot dogs. Hot dogs! And I could taste them, roasted over a fire, overloaded with tangy mustard and a heap of shredded cheddar. I admitted this craving to my roommate who, after watching me carefully blend kale smoothies, was amused. Rightfully so.

For us first-worlders, food, like so many other things in life, is a choice. What we choose today may affect our tomorrow.

Do you have a food plan? What do you do? Do you make allowances or take days off? Wedge in a bit of space for that mousse au chocolat? Speaking of which…

Photo by Cody Pulliam on Unsplash

Cheese, soap… and plants?

“Are you going to write about this on your blog?” my roommate asked as she watched me tie a dish towel full of curds on the cupboard handle.

“I don’t know. Should I?” This wasn’t the first time I had made cheese, but it was the first time I had tried making paneer.

The man at the Asian store looked at me funny when I asked if they sold paneer. “Paneer? No, you make that at home.”

“I’d rather buy it,” I assured him. But since that wasn’t an option, I picked up a few liters of milk instead.

All of the YouTube videos crow that it’s the easiest thing in the world to make. Blah, blah, blah.

I couldn’t even find cheesecloth for sale.

But you know what? It is the easiest thing in the world to make. At least close. Heat one and a half liters of milk and add a bit of vinegar and zaz. Cheese. Well, at least curds that are easily pressed into cheese with the help of a brand new cotton dish towel.

I used the cheese to make saag paneer. But was more pleased with the cheese than anything else. (I think I may have even convinced my sister to try making cheese too, although she scoffed at my use of a “linty” dish towel.)

A few days later, I was making soap. (Sort of. I was stirring the soap that someone else had masterminded.) Homemade soap! So cool! I had been dying to try it for ages but was afraid I’d burn my arm off with lye. At least, my roommate was afraid I would.

But together with a good friend who has been making soap since forever, we made little bars of soap so smooth it took hours of stirring. We watched music videos and talked about dreams and life in general. The hours passed quickly.

The problem is, the soap is refusing to set up entirely. (Maybe with some more time, we hope.) My friend isn’t sure what went wrong. I guess I don’t know either, but I’m pretty sure my inexperience had something to do with it!

And what’s my next project? Well, I’m currently trying to keep two plants alive. One is a birthday gift (only one more day until I can give it away!). And the other was a gift for me. It came with the guarantee that it was easy to keep alive.

We’ll see. The day I received it, I forgot it at work in a dark windowless room… for the weekend. Fortunately, my roommate rescued it for me, but it hasn’t forgotten. Oh, no. I can feel it glaring at me from the windowsill.