Saturday - Switzerland

Thank God, Saturday was indeed a new day! Most of the headache was gone and I felt a thousand times better than Friday evening. In hindsight I don't think it was at all surprising that I had a physical reaction to the hospital visits, Aunt Traude's passing and the news from California that 2 people from Coastlands passed away. I pray and I cry.

Fritz, Vreni and I had breakfast and at 9:30 we left the house and were on our way to Quelle, Kurt Kammermann's church in Kehrsatz which is about 6 kilometers or 4 miles from Belp where Fritz and Vreni live. At 10 o'clock on Saturday mornings a lot of people from Quelle church get together and hang out for a little bit, and then, YES YOU GUESSED IT: they clean the church together! It was great! I met many old friends (Kurt, Bernhard, Gunther and Thomas and Aline for starters) and made many new friends! And I cleaned the stairwell at the church... That was not just a stairwell. Quelle is located in a 5-story building; the meeting room is on the ground floor and then there are offices and classrooms on other floors, as well as businesses, doctors offices and a restaurant. My new friend Monika and I did 5 floors of stairwells and landings. Monika did the mopping after I had vacuum cleaned the steps and the landings. The really cool part was that I carried the vacuum cleaner on my back; it was a backpack vacuum cleaner! Very clever and extraordinarily great for the job! It took us almost an hour and a half to get it all done; I felt very satisfied to have done my part!


At 11:30 Fritz and Vreni drove me to The Rosengarten in Bern, where Elisabeth Skottke was waiting for me outside a beautiful restaurant. We wanted to have lunch outside but the wind was rather strong and cold, so we decided to relocate inside. We had a lovely lunch together and caught up on each other's lives with tears and laughter. I know Elisabeth since about 16 years or so from Coastlands and this afternoon I spent with her. After lunch, we walked down to where the old bear cave used to be. There has been great joy in the city of Bern for the happy arrival of 2 bear cubs in the town! They are in the news now pretty much daily, as a dose of happyness in a rather dreary world. Since the old cave could not hold 4 bears, the city of Bern decided to relocate them to a hillside near the river and make it safe and viewable all the way around... and there sure are a lot of people who want to see what is going on with the bears. Papa Bear has been separated from the family, for fear he would eat the little ones. Mama Bear and the cubs were sleeping outside on the wall and looked very happy and lazy.

Elisabeth and I continued to walk and talk along the river Aare for a while, then crossed over and took a little cable car type vehicle up the hill, so we did not have to put our old bones through the strain of walking up hill. We chose a nice terrace to have dessert and had a great time together!

We walked through the old town of Bern and Elisabeth showed me the toy store where she works and trains young people with psychological problems. Her job is to train, evaluate, instruct and correct these young people to get them ready to enter a professional work environment. It was great to hear her explain the process and how she likes to further these young people's development! I bought some flowers for Vreni at the flower market and on the way to the train station we ran some other errands and then Elisabeth put me on the train from Bern to Belp (an 11 minute train ride on the fast track). Fritz picked me up in Belp and showed me where I should walk to get home from the train station if need be.

Back at home, Vreni had cooked dinner and we were expecting the arrival of a couple, Fred and Susie who would join us for dinner this evening. The five of us had a marvelous time, with lots of laughter, mostly caused by language issues. Fred and Susie own a language school and they themselves have surely an ear for languages. They even knew a bunch of Dutch words of which "slurf" was (hands down) the favorite! We laughed so hard it was painful....