Living in Switzerland

My roommate, Mary Pat set the ball rolling. She went to Europe for her college graduation present and decided she wanted to go back to live. I said I’d go along. We just needed to have two years of experience in our professions and the Swiss government would give us a job. She chose Switzerland because it was in the middle of Europe. She was a teacher, and I was a Medical Technologist.
In the second year of our Bachelorette years, she met and married Darrel Musick. I had already filled out the paperwork and the Swiss were expecting me. I had a job at the Inselspital in Bern, Switzerland, the capitol city. In 1969 there were no transatlantic airflights. I had to take a ship. Going to Europe on a ship was not considered a cruise. It was a mode of transportation. I chose a German ship, the Bremin, with the Cunard line. The final destination was Bremen in Germany, but I decided to get off at the first stop in France so I could visit my Step-father’s cousin, Germaine, in Paris. I packed up my college trunk and a suitcase and somehow got to New York where the ship embarked. Maurice and Mother took me out to dinner at a fine French restaurant the night before, where I got sick and threw up because I was so nervous. It suddenly hit me that I was going alone to Europe, where I had never been, where they speak a different language, and I knew no one. An old boyfriend and my parents came on board the ship for the disembarking party. Then they blew the whistle and everyone had to leave and I was alone in my cabin with three other single women. Luckily, one of them was Annaliese. She was a couple years older than I and German. Coincidentally, she had been living in the US for two years working as a Medical Technologist and was now going home. She spoke English well and helped translate for me because the whole ship was German speaking only. We traveled second class. That meant that we had areas we were not allowed to visit, we had a separate dining area, and separate entertainment and bar area. Annaliese introduced me to the Compari unt Soda. She swore that this drink would cure any seasickness. We soon had a good time drinking Compari unt sodas all evening while listening to German polka and folk music and dancing. We met some of the crew who were out on a cigarette break. They took us to their rooms and we had parties. They met us while we were outside having a cigarette. The guy came up to us with his lighted cigarette and asked us if we had a match! We ended up the last night before I got off in Le Havre, staying up all night. I got off the ship at 5:00am to catch the Paris train. It took a few hours to get to Paris while I nursed my hangover and got some sleep, but I was still pretty much a basket case when I met Germaine at the Gare. I only had until that evening to catch my train to Bern, so he just drove me around Paris and said “This is Notre Dame”, this is the Louvre, etc. I saw it all from the window of his car. We stopped several times so I could go to the bathroom. I had to ask him for 10 centimes each time, because there was a lady who blocked your way into the WC and you had to pay to get in, or there were coin machines on the locked doors, and one I remember was just on the street, a “pissoir”, that you had to put in the coin to get in and it smelled awful, which was pretty much how all of Paris smelled, actually. He took me to a French restaurant, but nothing like the one Maurice had taken me to in New York. We had boef et pommes frites. Just an overcooked, skinny steak and skinny French fries. Germaine did not speak English very well at all, so it was a very trying day – me with a hangover having to go to the bathroom every hour, he trying to show me the sights from the back seat of his car.
He eventually got me to the correct Gare to go to Bern. It was an overnight trip. I was assigned to a sleeping car with 6 berths. To my surprise, there were 5 other people of course, but males and females, young and old. The bath was at the end of the car. In the morning the porter came and converted the beds to seats. I arrived in mid morning at the train station. I had a reservation at a cheap hotel in town for a few days before I talked to the hospital and found a place to stay. I hailed a cab outside the train station. Heaven knows how I got all my stuff and the big trunk up all the stairs and outside. I do remember that during my whole stay in Europe during all my travels, I never had to carry a bag. Because I was traveling alone, there was always a nice gentleman ready to carry my bags and be of any assistance. I was very naïve and accepted it gracefully every time because I was so amazed that everyone was so friendly.
At last I found a cab and got all my stuff in it, and gave the driver the address. He drove less than a block, but I think he went around the block just to get a fare. I could have walked to the hotel.
A block away from my hotel was a very fancy hotel, the Sweitzerhof. I ate there my first night and had a very nice Italian waiter who was very attentive. He made sure I knew his name and contact information. He was short, but cute, and was learning English. He was from Sardinia, where the language was a slightly different form of Latin. He asked me out a few times. We went to a pretty park once, and out to coffee, but then I met other people and I don’t remember what became of him later.
I found my way to the personnel office of the Inselspital, was introduced to the Cardiologia lab where I would work, and given some names where I might find lodging. I decided to stay with Frau Amstutz on Fabrikstrasse. Frau Amstutz was a widow living in a two bedroom apartment on the second floor. I had my own room with a garderobe, a single bed with built in bookcase, a small chest of drawers, and a desk that was really where you put your makeup and it had a mirror. I used my trunk as a little table and stored some of my stuff there. She worked at this factory where they make a malt beverage that is famous in Switzerland and was sold in the US as well. Swiss women did not have the vote then and she said she was glad. They only go the vote in the 80’s I believe. There was a dark living room with a small TV that she never went into, her bedroom, a small kitchen where I was allowed to keep a few things of my own, and a bathroom we shared. Wash day was once a week and she did it in the sink and then hung up the clothes to dry on her balcony or in the shower. She seldom washed anything, preferring to just air it out on a hanger on the balcony as well. We had a little compartment by the front door where they could deliver milk or bread, called a milch malchli, kokish kashli. I don’t know how to really spell it, but it is the only Swiss German I know.
Frau Amstutz had muesli in the morning, then she came home at noon and cooked herself a big dinner of meat, potatoes and a vegetable, either cut up meat in a cream sauce, or breaded and fried. Spaetzle, the Swiss flour noodles that look like scrambled eggs with butter, or fried potatoes. Then for supper, she ate yoghurt and maybe some muesli with it. I had never seen or heard of yoghurt before. I lived on it. We could go shopping around the corner and down the street where there would be a bakery, then a butcher, then a dairy store with the milk and yoghurt, all flavors, and a flower shop, and candy store, and a small grocery with eggs kept at room temperature in the aisles, oil, veges, etc. all fresh. I mostly ate yoghurt for breakfast and dinner with muesli, and had my main meal at the hospital where the cafeteria had a hearty meal prepared cafeteria style each day. Then I would go home and do stuff before I went back to work at 2:00pm. Everyone in town got those two hours off. That made rush hour four times a day, but it was really nice to have a big break in the middle of the day which made it easier to go back to work refreshed. And since everyone had this schedule, the whole town adhered to it so the movies, stores, restaurants, etc. worked with this as well. It was nice to eat your main meal early so it could digest, and you had energy to finish the day.
Fabrikstrasse means factory street. Next door to my apartment building was a piano factory. You could hear piano music during the day as they did the quality control testing. Across the street was a huge factory that made gondolas, called the Von Roll company. The gondola at Alyeska resort is a Von Roll. Just about any gondola I have ever seen anywhere is made by Von Roll. At the far end of the block was the Toblerone factory. They make the triangular shaped chocolate bars in the yellow and red packaging. The windows are all blocked and barred and it has high security because the recipe is secret. But many days while listening to piano music from next door, a waft of chocolate aroma would blow in the window.
Inselspital was a conglomerate of many buildings, with a tall white duo tower in the center. But it was the new hospital under construction. It looked completely finished when I arrived in Summer of 1969, and it was still not open for business when I left the spring of 1971. I learned that the Swiss build their buildings to last for centuries, unlike the United States. I also observed this in other ways. There was a new road being built. The first year they grade it and put gravel on it. Then it is graded and graveled for several more years until all the potholes and indentations have worked themselves out. THEN they pave it. The stone buildings in downtown Bern were built in the 1500’s. The building code requires that if you buy one of these buildings and want to put in a store or restore it and live in it or something, you have to leave the outside of the building exactly the same, or build it to look exactly the same as it was. All the buildings in the old part of town have covered walkways with rounded arches. The stone is a yellowish color, and the streets are all brick. There is usually a fountain or statue or clock where two streets cross, or a square. It is very charming. Of course there is the bear pits, at the far end of the town. Yes, they keep two or three bears down in a pit. You view them from above which is street level. It looked rather cruel to me. There are a couple of charming mechanical clocks with figures that come out and rotate around on the hour, and bells that chime. The town is centered in a turn of the river Aare. This river flows through the town and divides it with several bridges. On a hill is the center of government. On the square outside this area is a beautiful view of the mountains, mainly the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau. The Eiger is the tall pointy one, the Monch is the middle, more rounded one, and the Jungfrau is the largest one. Every mountain in Switzerland has a name, unlike Alaska. On this square you also stand to watch the fireworks which happen once or twice a year but I forget when, of course not on July 4th.
A story about the river Aare. Peter took me swimming on the Aare. That was one of our favorite things to do in the summer on a hot day. The women have a huge area of lawn and dressing area, and the men have another separate area. Basically the dressing area just covers your middle of your body. Your head and feet are open to view. Most women wear no top when sunbathing, but stick to the women’s side. We would get our swim suits on, then jump in the river and float with the current down to a get out point, then walk back and do it again. It was really refreshing and fun. The river went pretty fast, too, so you really had to be quick to get out when the spot appeared.
So I started work in one of the older hospital buildings in Kardiologie. Herr Professor Hans Peter Gurtner was the head of the lab. There was no doubt who was in charge. He had a certain air about him. He had a white lab coat, a mustache goatee, graying at the sides, and glasses. He authored all the papers, he presided at all the catheterization tests, he had his own office. There were three Residents with white coats working for him under his tutelage. Peter Walser, Dr. Munger, and Dr. Saltzman. Munger was small, blonde, and very kindly. Gerhinger was very tall, dark, and aloof. Walser was large like a teddy bear, had a mustache and small beard, glasses, and a twinkle in his eye. They all spoke English quite well, so I had to try really hard to speak German, since they wanted to always practice their English with me. They had desks in this large room where my desk was as well. Then there were two Fraulein’s. Fraulein Stahli was the secretary. She answered the phones and did the correspondence. Fraulein Munger was the other laboratory technologist. They were about my age. Stahli was short, plump, cute personality and fun, with dark curly hair. Fraulein Munger was tall, blonde, beautiful and aloof. I usually hung out with the two girls, but it was a formal relationship. We used the formal form of “you”. I tried to say “du” once, and was rebuffed. I learned later that you had to know someone for a certain amount of time and then one of you would ask if you could “dutze”. I didn’t learn about that until it was too late, so I worked with these two women for two years and we addressed each other as Fraulein. I learned years later that Fraulein Munger committed suicide after a bad love affair.
My work consisted of sitting at my desk, being asked to come along to observe catheterizations, and after I learned how to do the tests, which were using specialized glass bulbs and tubing and old fashioned electronic devices to mostly measure oxygen saturation, I assisted and also assisted and did tests in heart surgeries, even open heart surgeries. It seemed they did heart catheterizations almost every day. They also wrote papers and I was even asked to check the English translations of the synopsis a few times after I had learned German sufficiently. We hardly ever socialized, except once we all went bowling together. That’s when I got to know Dr. Walser a little. He sort of became my friend, and then boyfriend, and then we were an item.
When I first came to town, I signed up for German lessons at the Berlitz schule. There were about 20 people in our class. The woman who taught it just started out speaking German and only German. We had to figure out what she was saying and repeat after her. We had books to go with it with pictures but they were written in German. She couldn’t speak in our own language to help us because almost everyone in the class spoke a different language! There were people from England, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Sardinia, Turkey, France. I struck up a friendship with a group who would go out to coffee after the class. There were about six of us or more. It was really helpful because we HAD to speak German since that was the only language we had in common. My biggest compliment was one day when I got on the street car, my most common form of transportation, and the ticket taker asked if I was a German girl.
I started dating the Turkish guy. We hung out with these two or three Northern Italian guys and a couple girls. We started meeting Saturday mornings at a coffee house and spend all morning there until everyone who said they were coming showed up. We would decide what we were going to do for the day. Sometimes we would go to a park, sometimes to a movie, sometimes walk around town or go shopping. Sometimes someone would get a car and we would drive somewhere. I remember driving with the two Northern Italians and they would just sing and sing opera arias like they were popular hits. They had such joy. They were fair haired and large boned and not anything like what my concept of Italian was. We decided to take ski lessons. My Turkish friend and I signed up for these classes every Saturday. We got on a bus downtown in the morning, went to a different famous Swiss ski area each week, and had a lesson all day. We went to Grindlewald, Adelboden, Muren, Gstaad, Zermatt, and Interlaken. My last lesson, they asked us if we wanted to take one more run. I was finally getting it so I said ya. However, my body was obviously tired because I fell down half way to the end and wrenched my knee and had to be put on a sled to the bottom. Somehow I made it home and nursed a sore knee at home off work for over a week. I was pretty miserable and learned the word for homesick, heimweh.
But I must have gotten back on my skiis because I went skiing another time and fell and my ski pole cut open my lower lip. I put snow on it to stop the swelling, but it was still a huge lip when I got back to Bern, all by myself without the group. I called my new friend Peter Walser and he took me to the Emergency Room at the Inselspital. Well, they had no emergencies at that time. In fact, it looked like they hardly ever had any. There was one doctor who talked to Peter over coffee for half an hour before he even looked at me. Then he decided, in consultation with Peter, that I should have stitches, and also a tetanus shot. So that took another hour or so. Then Peter decided to take me out to dinner, which was a joke since I could barely talk. But by morning my lip was not so swollen. Peter was going skiing and wanted me to join him. We went to Murren, where they had just finished filming the James Bond 007 movie “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” set there. It features a Von Roll gondola. So we rode the gondola and skied the slopes. In the middle of the day I started to get a high fever and feel really sick. But Peter just wouldn’t believe me and didn’t want to spoil his day so I had to carry on. I remember going down this particularly steep slope. He said to just go down like a shlicht punkt (Exclamation point). Just go straight down and then fall down at the bottom. So I did.
Peter and I dated steadily after that. We went skiing, cross-country skiing, movies, drives in his VW bug, restaurants, beer halls, and traditional Swiss events like Swiss wrestling. That was really interesting. They had the Swiss polka music and band and the big Swiss horn, and the Swiss costumes. The men wrestled by holding on to each other’s under pants, which were special white pants that looked like underpants. Then they threw each other around like that. They were usually really big men.
He took me swimming in the Aare, to local restaurants that served bull’s balls only on Friday nights, spaetzle and made me schnitzel with cream and whisky sauce once. His mother was a terrific cook and had us over for dinner a lot. She made the best weiner schnitzel (topped with lemon) and these hash browned potatoes. His father had been a dentist and he was an only child. His father was retired and was morbidly obese. He lived in his own room in his parent’s apartment. His mother had her room, a small sitting room and kitchen. His father died a few short years after I left, but his mother lived about 10 years or more, still in the same apartment. Most people lived in apartments. Herr Professor lived in a small house and so did Dr. Munger after a few years in a house out in the suburbs. But Peter always lived in an apartment until his death about 1995. He became morbidly obese as well. He had three children. Concheta, his wife, still lives there and we send Xmas cards to her.
After I started dating Peter, I stopped hanging out with the Berlitz crowd. Also, because we had finished all three books. We were the only class to go this far. Peter and I went skiing in winter, to restaurants and movies (spaghetti westerns with “Make my day” guy. This was how he got famous. We also went to museums and beer halls and such. We also visited his parents. We traveled together a little bit. After a year I bought a yellow VW from the gas station on the corner near my place. I paid $2,000 SF for it. After a year, I sold it back to the same gas station for the same price. Once Peter and I went across the state to see a friend of his who was selling an old vintage Mercedes Benz convertible. When we saw it, the engine was out of it and it was in the process of being restored and didn’t look like it would make it for awhile. They wanted 500 SF for it, but when they found out I was American, the price went up, so I decided not to buy it, especially since it was not driveable. That’s when I bought the VW. Peter and I also went to the Basel Fastnacht in February. It was something else. For several days the streets were filled with costumed parades, mostly at night. After the parade you would go to restaurants and have onion quiche and onion soup and flour soup. I took lots of black and white photos and they are in an album somewhere.
I bought a Minolta camera a few months after I got to Switzerland in a camera shop and bought more lenses and filters and such and learned all about photography. I took photos everywhere and really got an eye for good artistic photos. I persuaded the hospital to let me use their dark room and I bought some trays and chemicals and used the stuff there and made lots of prints for my photo albums. One day I was in the dark room making large prints so I had to make the adjustments to the enlarger by stepping up onto a stool and back down again. The next day I could hardly walk, and thought I had something really wrong with my leg until I realized I had been doing that motion for like 8 hours the day before and didn’t realize it, I was so engrossed.
We went hiking almost every weekend in the summer. We had maps of the mountains for hiking and would pick a spot, go to the store and buy wine and bread and cheese and sometimes dried meats and fruit and take it in a rucksack to the top of the mountain. I loved the part where we got to the top and could see the other side of the mountain. That is such a thrill. Then we would drive home and stop off at a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere on the road or in a little village and have fondue. Every time I ate fondue in Switzerland it tasted different because each area had their own cheese. The wines of Switzerland were wonderful. When I got back I could sometimes find some to buy, but they are no longer available to buy in the US, mainly because the Swiss drink it all themselves. We went to Gruyere one time where they make the Gruyere cheese and had clotted cream, something I had never seen or eaten before. Cream that you eat with a spoon. Gruyere is on a hill, a walled town. The dairy fields are all around it below. It is quite beautiful. Switzerland itself is beautiful everywhere. The roads are always groomed, the grass is always cut, the farms are like photos.
Once Peter took me to Nice in France. He really liked the South of France. We went to a glass factory and Calder art museum and all sorts of places. He took me to visit cousins in the North of Italy. It was absolutely beautiful. The church bell was the only sound. We were offered traditional Swiss milch café. Hot strong coffee with chicory in it, poured at the same time into your cup with hot milk. Delicious. We also went to Florence together in October. We stayed in this castle overlooking the town. It had no heat, and the bathroom was down the hall, but we had breakfast on the balcony in the sun in this old palace castle which made you feel like a Florentine. We went to the Ufizi, saw the David, saw all the other museums, and were so busy we forgot to eat one day. We tried to find a restaurant at 3:00pm but everything was closed. We also went to Parma where I learned that here is where they make Parmesan cheese and it isn’t anything like the green can of Kraft parmesan I was used to. It was a delicious hard cheese and there were several kinds, and you could buy it ungrated and by the pound! Then we went to Pisa and went up the leaning tower. It wasn’t very big, in a big grassy field. The steps were really worn and small. Driving back up the Western coast of Italy, we stopped at a seaside stand and got an Italian pizza right from Italy. It was called quatra stagioni (four stages, or four different things on it). It was all seafood, no cheese or red sauce. The beaches were beautiful and the day was very hot, in the 80’s but no one was on the beach at all, I guess because it was October.
In the mountains, every once in awhile Peter would point out a camouflage tented area where the Swiss army had a bunker for maneuvers. He said that there are bunkers all over Switzerland big enough for the whole population to go into in case of a bombing attack or something. Every man is required to go to the military for two years after high school. Then they are required to go to camp for two weeks of training each year to keep up. Every man in the country has a military rifle and fatigues at home, ready to go if necessary. There are bicycle troops, airplanes, etc. all at the ready. Switzerland was not in World War I or II. They remained neutral. They were able to do this because the other countries knew that they had a strong military force and wouldn’t be able to be conquered. That’s what Peter said.
Peter and I dated seriously for a year. Then he decided to go to Mexico to study under some famous Cardiologist in Mexico City. He wanted me to stay in Switzerland to wait for him to return. I upped for another year at the Inselspital but got the idea that it was a favor. The first letter or two Peter asked me to marry him. I was so excited. I wrote back that we didn’t have to wait, I could come to Mexico and be with him, or get a job there or something. He wouldn’t go for that, and I didn’t understand. Then he started talking about this friend he met, a woman who was a travel agent, Conchita. Then he broke off the engagement, saying that I had been unfaithful to him with Francois. I was, but he had no way of really knowing, I think he just wanted an excuse because he was dating Conchita.
Peter was always in a jazz band. He played drums. They played a couple times a month. One of the guys in the band was Francois. When Peter left for Mexico, he asked Francois to “take care of me”. Francois was very good looking, smiley, friendly guy and very smart. He was a graduate student in German and French, he said. I never saw him go to class. His Mother spoke French and his Father spoke German. They understood each other, but only spoke their own language. So Francois grew up speaking French to his Mother and German to his Father! He had a sister. His Father was the Treasurer of Switzerland. But when I knew him, his Father was on suspended leave from his job because he was being investigated. Gradually I learned that what he was being investigated about was the fact that he was taking gold Swiss coins or collector coins from the treasury and selling them to collectors and replacing the coins with equivalent currency in the new coinage. There was no law against doing this, so he was put on leave.
Francois and I hung out together a lot as friends. He was really easy to get along with. We kissed and acted like boyfriend and girlfriend, but I only had eyes for Peter and talked about him all the time. Francois invited me to the South of France to this little village for Christmas. We drove there and stayed in someone’s home. It was a very tiny village with one pub. We met there and had a party. They all sang drinking songs and one of them was “buve, buve, buve”. Everyone was named and then they sang buve buve buve. That meant you had to drink up a glass of wine while they sang that, which was pretty fast. I was very drunk that night and only remember the buve buve buve. We slept in the huge feather bed but the room wasn’t heated and it was below freezing. They put a pan with hot coals in it in the foot of the bed. The feather comforter soon held the warmth from our bodies and it was warm. I told Peter’s mom about this trip and I think this is why Peter felt I was not being faithful to him.
Francois and I went to his University “prom”. I got a new fancy dress and Francois wore a nice tuxedo. We went to this huge fancy hall like the house of government or something, it was very elaborate architecture, marble, etc. There were many rooms and several bands to dance to. Everyone looked very prosperous and beautiful. It lasted until early in the morning. After the dance we came back to Francois’ apartment where he lived with his parents. He offered to have me stay there overnight. He offered me smoked salmon and champagne that he had prepared for us for when we got back. However, his Mother came in to interrupt us to tell him that his Father had shot himself in the head and was in the hospital. This obviously interrupted our evening and I went home, worried about what was happening. It turned out that they must have decided to fire his Dad and accuse him of crimes or something so he just tried to commit suicide. It took him a week to die. I heard that his mother was so distraught that she died a year later.
Another trip I took was to Paris in the Spring. I don’t know if I knew Peter then or not. I went by myself. I had to take that overnight train again. This time I was prepared that my sleeping car was coed. And lo and behold I knew the guy above me! He was the teller at my Swiss bank. He said he was going to visit the United States and was going to Paris for a day or two before going to get his ship in Le Havre. He was taking his motor cycle which he had shipped ahead of him. I can’t believe I did this, but I had no idea where I was going to stay in Paris. Luckily, he knew a cheap hotel and I was able to get a room there as well. He took me out the first night there. We went to a jazz club and then went to Les Halles late at night. This is where all the food vendors came to sell their fresh fish and vegetables to the restaurants. There were famous restaurants in Les Halles for the vendors that sold fresh oysters and onion soup. So we got that, like at 2:00am. That was how you were supposed to see Les Halles. I remember sitting on a big stool while they shucked the oysters and brought them to you. Then we got a big bowl of onion soup covered in hot broiled cheese toast, just like French onion soup in US restaurants. Les Halles has since been torn down and moved to the suburbs. This guy introduced me to his friends who called on me the next day and went with me to the Louvre. I remember the entrance was up these long stairs into this castle like building. I remember the Louvre was too huge to see everything, so I gave up, but I saw most of the famous things like the winged victory and Mona Lisa. When we went there a few years ago, they had that pyramid entrance and Mona Lisa was behind glass. It was also too huge to see it all, though, so it hadn’t changed that much.
That night I went to a dance club alone that these guys told me about. I don’t know how I had enough nerve to do that. It was two or three flights down. Outside as I was walking there, some guys tried to proposition me. I remembered my high school French enough to tell them to get lost.
The next day I was in line to get tickets to the Folie Bergere. There were two guys in front of me speaking what I knew was Schweitzer Duetch. I could even tell they were from the Bern area. I asked them in German if I was correct, and they said yes. They offered to get tickets together for the show so I would have someone to go with. They took me out that night to another jazz club after the show and may have gone with me to another museum. I remember that I was never alone in Paris, that I never ate alone, and that I never had to carry my suitcase because there was always some gentleman to help. Today I would never have been allowed to do that or even considered doing all that alone at that age, 25. I was very naïve and lucky.
About a month after I was in Bern, I got very homesick and so I arranged with Annaliese, the girl from my ship, to visit her in Reutlingen. I took the train (not carrying my suitcase again). In the German style, they had cold cuts for breakfast, a heavy meal at lunch, and cold cuts and fruit tart for dinner. She invited over some friends and had a party. There were two guys there who had climbed the Eiger North Face. They wrote a book about it. They had frozen off several of their toes doing it. They were fascinating to talk to and to hear their stories of this treacherous climb. If you have ever seen a picture of the Eiger, it is a triangle, going straight up. The North Face looks like you have to go straight up a wall. And then the top is actually curved over towards you and very pointed. Not many people have climbed it.
Another trip I took in my VW was to Austria to the Black Forest. I stayed in Saltzburg where Mozart was born. I went to the Mozart house, and this cathedral with these amazing carved doors. I ate Viener Schnitzel and black forest cake, but didn’t go to Vienna. I went to the Neuschwanstein Castle and drove through the black forest which was mile upon mile of forest. I also went to Insbruck, but I don’t remember anything about it except it was pretty.
The first summer my parents came to visit me from their biannual trip to France to pick up their Mercedes Benz. They spent two weeks with me. I was supposed to show them around Switzerland and make them an itinerary, but I was hopeless and had no idea what to do. They met me in Geneva at a fancy hotel. Peter was supposed to maybe come to meet them there but he never showed up or called. We toured all around Lake Geneva and saw the castle in the middle of the lake there, Chillon. We even went to Lauzanne where I had never been. Probably because I spoke German and these were French areas of France. It was nice to see them and to have Maurice there to translate.