Tuesday - Switzerland

Tuesday morning I woke up early and excited about the day ahead! Fritz, Vreni and I had breakfast and by 8:15 Fritz and I were at the train station in Belp to make reservations for the international trains I will be taking on Friday (I will travel to the Netherlands then), as well as buying a ticket to take the train to Bern at 8:35. At 8:55 I was at Bern Haupt Bahnhoff, and met Anna Saurer and Katrin Schiesser. Anna was an intern at Coastlands in 1995 and she and her friend Caroline and I shared a room and many great moments together. Katrin and her husband Flo were interns in 2008. It was great to see them! They got me a cup of coffee and we found a nice little cabin in the train. The first leg of our trip (train ride from Bern to Interlaken Ost) took an hour and I did all the talking. The second leg (train ride from Interlaken Ost to Brienz) took about a half hour and I made them talk and during the third leg (a bus from Brienz to Ballenberg) we laughed and joked and admired the landscape. Ballenberg is a park where the different regions of Switzerland are represented in homes, farm homes and buildings, equipment, vocations and lovely farm animals. We had a great time walking around and watching bread being baked in a stone oven with a wood burning fire underneath, watching someone cook a pot of vegetable soup on a wood burning stove and actually tasting it, and watching a blacksmith at work. It was lovely talking to the very friendly people who baked and cooked and worked the leather of the cow bell leashes (I have no idea how you call those things, but they are beautifully decorated with hand stitching). We had a great time and at the end we visited the Ballenberg Chocolaterie and treated ourselves to some local handmade chocolates.

Around 3 in the afternoon, we did the trip in reverse order: bus, train, train and then arrived in Ostermundingen where both Anna and Katrin live. At Katrin's home, the three of us were joined by Pia Freiburghaus, who was an intern at Coastlands in 2007 when Bob was also an intern and we were living on campus. It was so great to see Pia and catch up with her. We told crazy stories about things that happened in our internships and had a great time together! Pia dropped me off at the Schaller's home and then I watched a little bit of ice hockey with Fritz (who used to play) and Vreni: Bern against Geneva in the finals for the Swiss Championships... The team who wins 4 out of 7 games will be the champions. Tuesday's game was game 6 (Bern had won 3 and Geneva 2)... It was rather intense, I can tell you that! Ultimately, Geneva scored the winning goal in overtime, and now both teams won 3 games. Thursday evening is game 7!