Month: November 2012

Rain and cold and another quiet weekend.  Played catch-up with pictures and blog posts.  We did get out for a quick bike ride over the hill and through the woods, a quick 20k just to be out.

Monday Nov. 26 was a special holiday for most Bernese.  Schools are closed, trams on changed schedules, some workers take off though most companies don’t close.  Certainly Autodesk didn’t.  So to partake in the celebrations, everyone heads downtown before work, some as early as 5 am.  We set the alarm incorrectly and got there late, about 6:45, to meet our friends who had arrived at 6 and were already a couple of Gluhweins ahead of us.

Oh, haven’t I mentioned yet what we were celebrating?  ONIONS!  And everywhere you looked booths were selling onions, mostly in braided strings, often red and white, sometimes with garlic, or decorated with sprigs of dried flowers.

A few traditions go along with the Onion Market.  Every kid has a bag of confetti,tossing it by the handful on any and everyone, and a plastic hammer that pings when they hit you with it.  Then there’s Gluhwein (”Glow wine”, warm spiced wine), cheese and onion pies, garlic bread and colored necklaces of tiny cellophane-wrapped onions.  Plus the crafts and knickknacks you see at any fair.

The crowds were amazing, though it was pre-dawn.  You couldn’t see what people were selling because there were so many people jammed into the street.

We were shoulder to shoulder inching our way along.  But as predicted by our local friends, crowds started thinning after 7am, although the fair continues all day.  So the Autodeskers left for work and I dawdled about, finally able to make my way along the streets and check out the offerings.

 

My purchases were few, a couple items for Christmas gifts, but since I was thoroughly looped on 2 pre-breakfast glasses of Gluhwien, everything seemed rosy and intriguing.

The weekend would be foggy and cold.  What to do?  Smart Jon checked forecasts all over Switzerland.  Warmest temps would be in the South Valley.  He’d been wanting to bike there after reading about the bike route from Oberwald to Lake Geneva.  Oberwald is rather high into the mountains, meaning colder and a longer train ride to get there, so we decided to start at Visp.  GPS tracks were laid in, train tickets purchased, lunch packed and off we went.

Route #1 in the Swiss Veloland system, www.veloland.ch/en, follows the Rhone River.  So it’s downhill most of the way.  We anticipated easy riding.

And it was, except for the freezing temperatures.  Frost thick on the pastures, mud icy on the paths, and fingers and toes just wouldn’t warm up.  Our midpoint and overnight town was Saillon where there is a huge fancy thermal bath, www.bainsdesaillon.ch.  Daydreaming about submersing myself in those warm waters, I gritted my teeth and carried forward.

The massive rock formations on both sides of the river are awesome.  The towns are necessarily small, snuggled into corners of land.  But this valley has a lot of sun, despite the mountains, and has become famous for wine.  Wherever possible, and in some spots that seemed impossible, they plant grape vines.  Our respect for Napa growers has diminished since we’ve seen what other people do to make wine.

We made it to Saillon just before the early winter sunset.  But the baths, which we passed on the way to our hotel, were noisy with kids and further from the hotel, www.sarvaz.ch, than we had thought, so once established in our room we chose not to go back.

Unfortunately, the hotel restaurant (the only restaurant anywhere near) which we had relied on for dinner was completely booked for the night!  They did offer a set menu in the Bistro of roasted chestnuts, cheeses and dried meats with bread and fruit.  We ordered that, but it felt like an appetizer, so I explained to our waitress that my husband was still hungry and could they prepare something else for him.  She asked the chef, who agreed to accomodate us (perhaps because most of the real dinner crowd were not yet there).  Fed and warm at last, we cuddled under the duvets, watched a little French TV (Saillon is in the French-speaking part of Switzerland), and slept well.

The next day was, unlike the forecast had predicted, a whole degree warmer.  The ride was enjoyable, at least for the mid-day hours.

We particularly enjoyed the church of St. Maurice Abbey.  Built on the ruins of a 1st cen. BC Roman shrine, it was itself rebuilt after a 1942 rock fall.

It was pleasant to watch the landscape change.  After St. Maurice, the valley widens, there are few vineyards and more pasture land.

Then as you ride along Le Lac Leman (Lake Geneva), you pass through marshland which is a bird sanctuary.  We made good time lakeside despite the traffic and the uphill from Villeneuve to Montreux.

We were very pleased with ourselves when we boarded the train to go home.  We had only 3 minutes from ticket purchase to train departure and we made it despite having to take an elevator with our loaded tandem!

A side note for this trip was how much easier it was for both of us to deal with French than with German.  As people spoke, words kept coming back.  Bodes well for our sabbatical which starts in southern France.

Dove gray and drippy skies could not stop us.  It’s a stay-at-home weekend but I wanted at least a walk in the woods.  So we headed into our forest.  The colors this fall have amazed us.  Such a mixed variety of trees and shrubs means nearly every day brings a change.  We’ve been watching the transformations for 2 months and it’s not over.

We kept heading uphill until there was no more up to be had.  Then we circled (by mistake) the top.  As we found our path homeward, we heard it.  Across a valley from the next hillside:  a gently played alpenhorn.  With its quiet music accompanying us, we made our way down. It was like a gnome-home, fairy-forest landscape with the perfect Swiss soundtrack.

Just for contrast, as we passed a shop near our apartment, we heard Hank Williams singing “Move It On Over”.  Such a small world.

Jon had another all-day rehearsal on Saturday, so I spent the time window shopping.  It quickly became obvious that, once familiar with stores and watching for sales, one could find affordable clothes if one lived here permanently.  Though tempted by a few sightings, remembering our difficulty packing held me back from buying.  By the way, so far men’s clothing in Bern is looking very traditional and bland while women’s clothes have more style than I ever see in America.

Determined not to waste a day off in Switzerland, for Sunday I planned a day trip to Fribourg.  Jon was pretty tired, but with a little encouragement, agreed to go.  Fribourg was not quite as attractive a town as their tourism site describes (which is usually the case), but we enjoyed wandering its old streets.

 

The cathedral has a very unimposing front, more so since the plaster is crumbling. Inside, however, the stained glass windows were exceptional, designed and made mostly by Polish artist Józef Mehoffer (1869-1946)  in the late 1890’s to early 1900’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We visited three churches in 1.5 blocks:  St. Nicholas Cathedral, Eglise des Cordeliers and  Basilique de Notre Dame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we exited the third, it started to rain so we ducked into Espace Jean Tinguely et Niki de Saint Phalle.  The museum is tiny and Tinguely’s works, while vaguely interesting, held no sense of ‘art’ for us.  We have seen other ‘recycled-junk’ art which seemed truly artistic, but we found his work boring.

Just up the street from the Tinguely (and offered at a discount if you buy admission to the two museums together) is the Art & History Museum.  Initially it seemed somewhat small and with a rather typical assortment of mostly religious pieces.  As we explored, we were taken deeper and deeper into rooms some of which were apparently part of the foundation of some large fortress or castle from the look of the walls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had planned to cap our day with seeing “Skyfall” in Bern.  It started at 8:15 so between the rain and early sunset, we had plenty of time for a leisurely dinner in Fribourg.   Prepared now to pay exorbitant prices for average food, I was nonetheless stunned with the poor quality at the restaurant we happened to choose:  food so tasteless and difficult to swallow that I ate almost none of it.  This by someone who usually ‘licks the plate clean’ to avoid food waste.

With the food so bad, we didn’t linger and were back in Bern early enough to try dessert at a place we know.  They however were having a food fest that was closed to the public.  So we ‘settled’ for chocolates from a train station store and headed on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In November and December Bern puts on a free outdoor light and music show called “Rendez-vous Bundesplatz”, using the Federal Building, where Parliament meets, as the backdrop.  This night we saw it for the second time and enjoyed it just as much as the first time.

We thought we were still early for the movie, but in Switzerland movie theaters have you pick your seats when you buy your tickets.  With some people buying tickets online, we ended up in the third row from the front.  Still, popcorn satisfied my hunger and though the film was long, it was fun to be in a dry theater, in comfortable seats, watching a new movie in English.

Side note:  I had an exceptionally miserable cold–undoubtedly contracted at one of the parties last week–and with the stress of extra rehearsals and performances and a very long day on Sunday, Jon spent much of this week in bed with a cold.  We are thinking with rain forecast this coming Saturday and Sunday, this may be a complete resting weekend.  Whoever says you can’t have too much fun hasn’t had a 55^th birthday.