Category: Guemligen

This week we’re preparing for guests.  We borrowed an air mattress.  Which then necessitated borrowing a transformer to pump it. We’ve sent emails back and forth about what to bring us (Jon’s choral clothes) and what they want to do while here (cheese, chocolate, Alps).  We finally took the last of the suitcases and bike boxes to the basement storage unit. And Jon, through much struggle, installed the dining room chandelier!

I had a full day at last:  filled with cleaning everything in the house, setting up beds, and grocery shopping (two visits, couldn’t carry it all in one).  It felt good to have a clear and physical function.  Even though my ‘job’ as ‘vacation planner‘ is theoretically always there to be done, it’s elusive and frustrating with many dead-ends and lots of sitting.  So, we’re ready.

Well, we’re ready for the coming two weekends with our guests.  Then there’s all the weeks and weekends beyond that.  In the last two days we’ve finalized travel plans for our Paris trip (7/28-8/1) and gone through 14 permutations of possibilities for a trip to Scandinavia (potentially August or September).  Somehow the planning has not, as I had hoped, become easier.

Perhaps you have read our earlier blog entries: our wonderful weekend adventures.  Our weekdays, however, are not so exceptional.  Jon is working as he would back home, with all the challenges and frustrations that has always entailed.  I (Mary Carol) am living the quiet life, where the nearly daily trip to the grocery store is my big thrill.  I have begun to accept the high prices of food.  Of course, I try to shop carefully, but when I get to the counter, I just stick Jon’s credit card in the slot and press “ok”, barely looking at the total.  We have TV, mostly watching either BBC or recorded shows from our home set via slingbox.

Jon has joined two choruses so some nights he’s off to Bern to rehearse.  Occasional Thursdays he or we join a few Autodesk employees who hang out in Turnhalle, a cafe-bar in downtown Bern.

I water my few veggies on the balcony, spend some hours every day researching possibilities for our trips, listen to a little German TV or translate part of the newspaper, and often partake of that most popular Swiss activity: walking.  Jon and I are starting to say the Swiss drive and ride bikes like they have no place to go but walk like they do.  Nordic walking—with poles and a sense of determination—seems quite common.

I love food.  I enjoy eating tasty things that I believe are also good for me.

I hate waste. I don’t like spending oodles of money.

I like trying new foods, but I get confused looking at packages and not being able to decipher their contents.

After scrounging out of cans on Monday night (Jon said the tastes reminded him of his childhood in Iowa.  Do you remember when fresh food was rarely available and we liked canned peas?), I walked through my fears and into Migros, the grocery store we were told has the lower prices.  Thus our dinner tonight looked more like what we are used to.  Yet it did not live up to my taste expectations:  the rice was pasty, the tomatoes flavorless, even the organic carrots were remarkably lackluster.  At least the “Pouletpaprika” (chicken legs seasoned with paprika) was a lively entertainer.

It was still fun:  the shop is small and tightly packed, the clerks tolerant of my faux pas, and I did finally find the “Erdnusse” Jon wanted for our bike ride this weekend.

In fact overall the theme today seemed to be:  do what you must and the Swiss will help you through it.  The Migros checkout clerk, Sylvia at the Gumligen train station, and Susanne who handled our “inhabitant registration” at the town hall were all gracious and friendly, as well as Swiss-efficient, leading us through what we required.