Don't blame Europeans for their gap-toothed ways.

I broke a tooth on my first weekend in Switzerland, way back in April. I didn’t write about it, because it would draw the question: What were you eating that would break a tooth?

The answer is gum. Mint-flavoured.

The molar is not that interesting, except that it crumbled in Switzerland, not at home in Canada where I would have booked in for a dental appointment post-haste, while in Switzerland, I spent five months with a molar in some state of disrepair, chewing only on the left side of my mouth, and turning away all foods that might cause further erosion. It added some excitement to our stay here, knowing that at any moment a nerve could be exposed, sending me lurching into the streets in search of dental care.

I’m not alone in avoiding Swiss dental care, although my reasons differ from most who take a pass because Swiss dentistry is pricey.  I dodged Swiss dentistry solely because its tricky business to engage a syringe-armed non-English-speaking-dentist, as illustrated in Madrid where I sent my son in to the orthodontist to get his braces fitted, only to have him return to the waiting room with rolls of cotton batting stuffed in his mouth and minus four teeth. This was followed by a heated discussion with the orthodontist in Spanish and French about how our communication could have slid so far sideways as for me to not notice the word “extraccion.”

No way was I going to give another European dentist such an opportunity.  I suspect a lot of gap-toothed people in Europe are like myself, foreigners who did not see the dentist’s evil designs in time to escape. I offer this photo of Amy Winehouse as evidence in favor of my argument.

Which brings us to a Swiss phenomenon: Dental spa vacations. The high cost of Swiss dentistry has created a thriving business in out-of-country dental tourism. One acquaintance holidayed in Croatia where she spent mornings on the beach and afternoons in the dental chair. A similar phenomenon exists in Canada where some book into Mexican dental clinics, which is cheaper, but only until the patient returns to their Canadian dentist with a complaint that turns to be expensive to fix. It seems the adage that a deal that is too good to be true probably is too good to be true.

At least that’s what the staff at my Canadian dental office told me as they patched up my tooth when I was back in Canada this summer. The molar turned out to not be a very big deal after all, but I’d rather hear that from my own dentist, than from a German-speaking Swiss dentist who reminds me of Sir Laurence Olivier’s performance in  Marathon Man. 

We’re gradually broadening our geographical horizons here in Biel, starting this weekend with a walk to Nidau, which could be either an entire other town that happens to have grown into Biel’s border, or a suburb of Biel. Owing to our language limitations, this will remain another one of the universe’s unsolved mysteries.

What is stunning about Europe in general is how much it looks like North America, and that is true for Switzerland as well. True, there are unique areas, but as an example, we find much of the south-central part of France looks a lot like Western Saskatchewan, which coincidentally looks like East North Dakota. But you won’t see many photos of that on travel sites because only the quaint photos get posted. Mea culpa – I, too, tend to post photos of Europe as tourists see it, because who wants to see more of Saskatchewan or North Dakota?

But to get back to Switzerland, as we strolled out of Biel, a very blah yellow-brick apartment building of nondescript character flanked our left. I thought about photographing it, just to demonstrate how every country has its ugliness, but I could not muster the strength to unstrap my camera, so overwhelmed with boredom was I as I gazed on this structure, looking so much as it did like the 1950s and 60s-era apartment salt-boxes on Pembina Highway in Winnipeg. That era’s architects have much to answer for, what with destroying the landscape the way they did back then.

Paths run along both sides of this canal.

But enough grousing. On to Nidau, where we followed a charming gravel path alongside a canal choked with boats parallel-docked along the shore, until it met the River Aar, a main waterway here notable for the fact that it is the country’s longest river that happens to both originate and end inside Swiss borders. It’s a tributary of the Rhine, and one that changes colour from a dusky green to teal to a sparkling emerald, depending on where you find it.

Nidau has a fairly brief entry in Wikipedia (which reveals that it is a municipality of Biel), and that is because it lacks the turnstile tourist attractions that bring people to

Switzerland, such as a genuine cobblestone-avenue’d Alstadt, that is 16th-century-or-earlier old town, mountain ranges or entrancing town squares, but what it does have is some fairly expensive real estate, including riverfront homes that go for one million francs and upwards.

The houses ranged in size from about 2,500 to 6,000 square feet, bringing to mind the many Swiss I’ve met who take pains to assure me they live in spacious homes with large yards, a puzzling self-revelation as I can’t remember any Canadian or American making a similar introductory statement. The Swiss are not ostentatious by any means, but maybe they feel that Canadians look upon all European domiciles as closet-like flats, and they’re eager to correct such misapprehensions.

Nidau’s retail centre is lined with shutter-bedecked old buildings and charming shops, including one displaying hand painted birdhouses where the shopkeeper assured me the neighbourhood was very safe for walking. I ask this because some of my solo meanderings in the earlier spring attracted unwanted attention in the form of swarthy-looking unkempt gap-toothed men speaking to me in strange languages.

A shopkeeper is not necessarily the best source of information on a street’s crime rates – retailers are loath to frighten away customers, but the streets did feel safe, although somewhat under-populated for a Saturday afternoon.

Unlike Biel’s town centre that is jammed with franchises both local and foreign (a Starbucks just opened a block from our hotel), Nidau’s retail centre was full of Mom & Pop shops, giving it a somewhat unique air, suggesting a Switzerland before American and British franchises descended upon it.

It’s unlikely Nidau will ever become a tourist mecca, but it’s a pleasant place for a bike ride, jog or walk. Unlike more tourist-centric areas, it lacked public washroom facilities, and we didn’t spy a single coffee shop along the river walk, something of an oddity that suggested that we really had stumbled upon an ordinary suburb, albeit a rather wealthy one.

In keeping with the week of wandering through the many blog themes offered by WordPress, here’s yet another one. Yesterday’s was Viva Chateau, which got a thumb’s down for grey typeset that was harder to see, and yet, it was so pretty. Today’s is Pilcrow. Anyone prefer one over the other?

Note: Yesterday’s photo of people on a bench by a lake was taken at Lac Biel. Today’s photo is of the River Aar at the locks near a canal that seems to be called Zihi, but we’re not sure about that name.

A sign of the times - Over 50, will travel with meds.

The joy of travelling to Switzerland twice in one year is that I get a do-over on packing. During my first three-month term here, there was time to consider what was missing from my life, what I wish I had shoehorned into my suitcase.

So last June, as I winged back home to Canada, I made a mental list of all the things I would haul to Switzerland on my return this fall, among which was going to be more Crystal Lite iced tea packets than Swiss customs agents had ever seen before.

What did I bring back? Not a single sleeve of Crystal Lite.

Instead, my suitcase rattled with bottles of Tylenol, Advil, Aspirin, Nyquil, all manner of stomach remedies, prescriptions, extra eyeglasses, medical records and the like.

Living overseas for an extended time is something like shooting up to the moon. You know you will have to do without, and there won’t be much there that’s recognizable. Medications overseas typically have different names, even those produced by the same manufacturer. I have no clue what painkillers are called here in Switzerland, although when living in Spain we found a painkiller that does not grace North American shelves. It worked wonders, leading me to suspect it was some kind of over-counter codeine/heroin derivative.

It’s not just the different names and languages that produce hurdles; sometimes dosing levels differ, which has been known to cause some serious health crises.

All of this leads Dave to think about his young-adult trips to Europe in which he purchased no emergency health insurance, brought no medications and somehow still made it home in the same condition in which he left. Of course, back then he didn’t have any assets that a foreign hospital or Health Canada could seize.

Those were the days.

And so in the spirit of providing real information in this blog, something I don’t do very often, I advise travellers pack some pharmaceuticals, unless you want to chance finding yourself at a drugstore late at night where the pharmacist speaks French, Latvian and Parsee but no English, and offers you diarrhea remedies when you need something for a fever, that is if he really is a pharmacist. You could be talking to a teenage part-time cashier for all you know. And this is if you’re lucky enough to find a drugstore open late. I have yet to see a 24-hour pharmacy in Europe. I’m not saying they don’t exist; just that they are not readily evident.

Know before you go:

• Let  your doctor know how long you will be away and ask for prescriptions to cover that period. Doctors will usually prescribe up to a year’s worth of medications. Note: Only do this if you need prescriptions. If you are over 50 and on no meds at all, good for you. Skip this step.
• Prepare to pay. Those with extra prescription coverage through Blue Cross or other Canadian insurance carriers should check their policy. Many policies will only apply to a three-month supply, so if you need a year’s worth of that cholesterol med, the remainder of that year’s supply will come out of your pocket.
• Transport Canada and Canadian air carriers exclude prescriptions from luggage restrictions, and so prescriptions do not need to fit inside that one-litre plastic bag of toiletries you have to wave in front of the airport security staff.
• Keep your prescriptions in the original packaging, otherwise, you might have some explaining to do when border agents open your luggage.
• Read your emergency health coverage policy (assuming you buy a policy)(if you don’t buy a policy, you just might be in for a surprise liquidation of your assets). Check for exclusions. For example, many insurers will not cover you if you don’t have health coverage in your home country. Many will not cover pre-existing conditions unless the condition has been stable for three months.
• Check with your provincial health office for limitations and exclusions on coverage when you are absent from Canada. Find out how long you can be away from Canada before your government-funded health care lapses. Some emergency-care policies do not cover people whose government or home-country insurance is void.

This blog theme is called Chateau. What I like: It’s different. What I don’t like: Maybe it’s too fancy, and the grey text on the top bar is a little annoying.

Soldier with gun slung across his back. At least he has no trouble carrying it when he's walking, but it's another story when he's looking for a place to put it down.

On the train ride from Zürich to our little town, two armed young soldiers boarded our car. The one in the seat next to us fumbled around with his rifle, first leaning it against the bench but then quickly grabbed the barrel as the rifle slid downward, then tried to hang it from a hook, before he finally propped it in the corner.

“I hope that thing is not loaded,” I whispered to my husband, but not too loudly in case the soldier was not a soldier, but some random lunatic roaming the rails.

This illustrates  the problem with not speaking the local languages or having studied up on Swiss military attire – we are out of the news loop, so if the authorities are looking for some crazy gunmen we would be the last to know, unless we were the first to get shot, in which case, we would be ahead of the news loop to a degree that would have thrilled my former editors, but not my mother. I’m retired, so I prayed that the soldiers were not maniacs, while knowing that if I were still a staff reporter, I would be praying in the opposite directions. Maniacs may be bad for everything else, but they are good for newsrooms that feed on the carrion of trauma.

Military service is mandatory in Switzerland and  scores of young Swiss-in-uniform ride the trains, usually carrying beer, not guns, although the guns could be hidden. We like to think they keep the guns and the beer separate, but we can’t prove it one way or the other.

Thus, we are introduced to one of the oddities of  Canadian culture where we listen to co-patriots groan at the U.S. for its love affair with guns, but seem less bothered by post-adolescents toting weapons on public transport in Europe, stowing rifles like awkward hockey sticks among the bench seats. But then the U.S. is closer, so it is easier to see what is going on down there. Not so easy with the Swiss who are further removed and who have seduced us all with chocolates, ice cream and endless stores of cheese, one variety for every village numbering 35 inhabitants or more.  This is how they get away with slinging guns around in public places – by soothing our nerves with chocolate. It works. I can’t see anything wrong with this. Pass the Lindt, Toberlone, Caisse chocolates please.

We are just back after three months in Canada where we married off a son and basked in the glow of Costco and Wal-Mart lights. On our return, today, we endured a completely uneventful trip where all our connecting flights went smoothly and no luggage was lost, mostly because we only took carry-on. Air Canada’s baggage handlers won’t find us so easy to fool after that trip in April where they lost track of our giant neon-glow-green  suitcase, possibly because its brightness blinded them temporarily.

Biel/Bienne Braderie music festival and carnival hits town.

The streets of our town of Biel/Bienne are currently choked with stages, musicians, food tents, carnival rides, outdoor bars, outdoor drunks, families, and the usual array of market vendors selling hammocks, purses, shoes and animal skins.

When cooking for thousands, bring a large frying pan.

It’s a three-day party that reportedly attracts 300,000 visitors to town. I don’t know about the numbers, but I did see some panicked travelers trying to get a hotel room, one woman in particular whose driver pulled their car up to the hotel doors, so she could put one foot on the pavement and shout across the walk and past the entrance doors to the front desk, asking if they had any rooms. The answer appeared to be “non.”

The stage musicians are primarily Swiss stars, so we’re not familiar with their names, although that doesn’t take away from the quality. Caroline Chevin blasted out the main stage last night with her fabulous vocals and energetic rock band. We saw some American talent in the form of Larry Woodley and his band from Boston. Larry jibed us in that sporting American manner about the Bruins kicking Vancouver’s behind, but very politely made no mention of the ensuing unsportsmanlike Vancouver riot.

The price of admission for this three-day event: Free. I could be wrong about this, but judging by the packed streets, and brisk business being done at the food tents, it seems like a good business model.

We enjoyed some wonderful East Indian cuisine, managed to not get our pockets picked and after lurching our way through the throng, found Biel’s Alstadt (old town) almost empty, with only a few farmers left packing away their produce. We ducked into a subterranean chocolate shop, then enjoyed a quiet coffee at an outdoor cafe.

Here's something you don't see enough of in North American festivals: Flower auctions. This man held a large audience's attention auctioning off flowers and bouquets. His audience was larger than some musician's. Go figure. Here a customer buys a few orchid-type flowers.

In a few weeks, Biel will host a chess festival. What a shame it is that I have to miss it.

After over 4,200 hits, 247 comments and 112 posts, this blog is going on hiatus, to be picked up again on my return this autumn. I’m heading back to Canada for some happy family stuff. If you subscribe to this blog (see the subscribe button in the upper right corner, you will receive a notice when I start up with the continued not-so-wild adventures of a middle-age, middle-class, middle-of-the-road couple exploring middle-Europe.

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We’re staring at eight hours of train travel today as we head out to Switzerland’s “top of Europe” Jungfrau region where we’ll take a hike on the Mannheim trail.

I might take a few photos.

Courtesy Wikipedia

This shop clerk might flee if we speak English to her.

Conversations go in funny ways when in a foreign land. That is normal when I attempt French, but even more so when I give up and stick to English. It marks me as an outsider, thus casting my conversational partners into the role of cultural interpreters. No one seems to mind this.

At a designer discount shop yesterday,  a clerk greeted me in German (I guess I don’t look French), to which I smiled warmly and said, “I don’t have the first clue what you just said.”  That may come across phonetically in strange ways, but so far, everyone responds in a friendly manner, so I’m pretty sure it does not sound to German ears as  “Hand over all your money.”

More than once it has sent clerks fleeing out of the store, after hastily explaining in French or German they’re going to retrieve someone fluent in English.

It is awkward when I dart into a shop for a quick peek with no real intentions of committing to a retail relationship lasting longer than a minute, and suddenly find myself  managing the store by default, because I am the only one left. It gets worse when new customers come in and ask me questions, as though I would know the answer in any language. They might be saying, “What is your return policy?” but all I hear is “Achtung scweizzergesselschaftundlannder!”  They’re probably puzzled to find a uni-lingual shop clerk in the middle of a famously multilingual country. That is not my problem.

And then there’s the weird feeling of being taken seriously as a shopper, when I am merely a browser. I can’t seem to find a way to prevent this misapprehension on the part of the shop clerks, so I just wait for the staff to return, who sometimes come back with the store owner who was having lunch in the cafe next door.

I’m actually getting the impression that this is what store owners do – eat. They are always nearby and always seeming to have more fun than their staff.

Maybe this is the staff’s way of getting back at their bosses – by forcing them to work.

Courtesy Wikipedia

Saturday, standing in the audience taking in African drummers backing up a Mexican guitarist (how’s that for multiculturalism), I noticed a wasp perched on the protruding shoulder-blade of a young woman, a dancer attached to the African musicians.

Dave and I glanced at each other wondering what to do.  We looked at other bystanders, hoping someone owning a broader linguistic catalogue than ourselves, would intervene, but no one did. The wasp’s legs splayed minutely as though it had found its sting point, so I waved my hand a few inches above it, not touching the blithely unaware dancer.

My hand’s small shadow chased the wasp away, but the girl – she did seem a girl hovering somewhere in that 16-to-18-year-old niche – sensed something had occurred. She spun her head around, searching the audience, and when her nervous eyes landed on me, I gave a small smile and said “wasp.”

For all I know, “wasp”  translates phonetically into “I am a psycho freak about to embark on a 40-year career of stalking you.”  As the Mexican singer strained to throw his voice over the crowd, the dancer’s ponytail flickered as she guardedly monitored me for further encroachments on her personal space.

It was a new sensation to be looked upon with some suspicion, and even though the musical show was engaging, I whispered to Dave and we left. Language is what makes the difference: She was reasonable to be suspicious, because pickpockets do work crowds that are distracted by street performers. And I was reasonable to leave, given that I could not be sure that this little thing might not escalate into something big, like an awkward conversation with a police officer, if indeed we could converse, what with the aforementioned language issues.

This Saturday, we did something we’ve not done ever before. We stayed put.

Instead of taking a train to another quaint Swiss village, we stayed in Biel/Bienne and discovered it has quaintness in significant measure, much of it expressed in local street bands.

In the square, one band took a stage and fumbled so badly that we couldn’t tell to which genre they subscribed. Passing by, they appeared to be a rock band, but not one so familiar with its instruments.

Further down the road, thick-armed coffee-black African drummers played behind a large troupe of pale dancers in loose black sweats and tight sun-hued tank tops. They coiled their torsos around the beat and  pounded barefoot on the cobblestone. About an hour later, the same large group relocated to the town square, but this time the dancers stood still while the Africans accompanied  a Mexican vocalist on guitar.

An earnest smiling jazz quartet searched for a better audience, too, moving from outside a bar popular with the town’s youth, to a straight street lined with both regular shops and street vendors. They drew a large crowd. The trumpet player repeatedly paused to re-position his horn’s microphone. It was hard to say if these little interruptions were timed to the music or if they were random and disruptive, but while I found it irritating, his band members smiled on, so what do I know? Perhaps, later on the way home, they beat him  in some dark corner. Click here to see a 46-second clip of the jazz players.

All this reminded us of other Swiss street musical performances, such as this marching band in Solothurn click here.  I could be wrong about this, but the Swiss seem to have a heightened appreciation for music, not only at the esoteric professional level, but at the fun-let’s-jam outside-even-if-we-totally-suck level, as well. I can’t count the times I’ve passed smiling middle-age accordion players, who probably don’t know that in Canada they might be a source of amusement. Here, I’ve learned a new appreciation for this amazing instrument and those able to master it.

This ragtag assemblage of different musical styles, with a widely varying skill set, makes the street entertainment all the more fun, like American Idol early in the season when the train-wreck performers make the show as riveting as the gifted ones.

Free bikes!

There is no free lunch in Switzerland, but there are free bikes.

You can rent bikes for 25 to 50 Swiss Francs a day from many train stations across Switzerland, or you can get a bike for free through Suisseroule, a loaner program offered at multiple locations across the country.

Why anyone would pay to rent a bike when there are perfectly good free ones? Because the free-bike kiosks are harder to find, that’s why. This is how Switzerland protects its bike rental market.

We would never have known about loaner bikes, except that a Swiss co-worker of Dave’s gave him a few brochures and some advice on trails, adding to the evidence that every Swiss citizen studies tourism as a requirement for graduation.

Free bikes sounded too good to be true. Then we discovered that the free-bike stations are staffed with welfare recipients.

Sabrina, our friendly free-bike-loaner agent. She looks normal.

The Swiss will not tolerate slackers in any form, as we learned when their tax officers discovered an unemployed person within their borders, that is, me, upon whom they have set their sights, first by trying to make me fill out a French/German multiple choice form that did not include “unemployed” or “retired” among the options. We are not sure that the Swiss even have a word for someone like me.

So if I, a foreigner, cannot escape notice, there is no way a Swiss-national is getting off easy, and so welfare recipients have jobs, too. We are not sure if this means they are still welfare recipients, or government employees. I will let you argue over the difference.

In addition to the welfare recipient staffers (which, it turns out, is true), we heard a rumour that ex-cons and parolees also staff these places  To borrow a bike, would we have to give up our residency cards, which could then hit the seamy underworld market for  few hours and be returned to us with exciting new criminal records attached? Note: Could not find any reliable information on the ex-con/parolee rumour. Probably not true. 

We were nervous about this, but what could we do? We are cheap and the bikes were free.

In Neuchatel, we found a friendly young woman seated in the trailer next to the bike racks. She did not look likely to sell our residency cards on the black market. She lacked the bureacracy-tortured visage of Canada’s welfare populace and if she had a criminal bent, we could not discern it.

You see some crazy stuff riding along Swiss bike trails.

We were relieved to discover that we would only have to show our  identification and leave a 25-franc deposit per bike. The bikes are free for the first four hours after which the brochure said we would be charged a franc an hour, but the woman said the hourly  charge would be five francs.

We did not know what to make of this disparity, but neither did we care because if we were on the bikes for longer than four hours, we would probably be near death anyway.

The bikes are replaced every year, well-maintained, light and comfortable. Again, we were in awe of how well the Swiss do these things.

As we rode along the beautiful shores of Lac Neuchatel, we exclaimed over what seemed to be our cheapest travel-day in Switzerland. That was until we stopped for lunch at what may have been a yacht club for Swiss bankers.

Among the 32-45-franc meals, we saw what appeared to be a 22-franc cheese fondue lunch for two. Perfect. We ordered the fondue, which featured the famous local Corgemont cheese, which when served cold has a strong aroma and aftertaste, but when melted down in a fondue is absolutely sublime.

A deconstructed $63 grilled cheese sandwich, also known as cheese fondue.

We ate until we fell into a stupor, which was a good thing, because it turned out we were wrong about the price. It was 22-francs a person on a two-person minimum, and so with our bottled water (eight francs) and coffees, our “cheap”  lunch came to 63 francs.

We laughed about this. Remember, we were in a cheese stupor. Then, realized we had eaten bread cubes and melted cheese – that’s basically like a deconstructed grilled cheese sandwich.

It turns out the Swiss know what they’re doing when they offer free bikes. They know pedaling will make us hungry and that here, there is no free lunch.

To learn more about Switzerland’s free bike program, click here. 

This link should take you to a Google-translated Suisseroule website, but if it does not, search for  Suisseroule, then click on “translate page.”

Dave discovers Neuchatel’s tourism office is closed!

What to do, where to go? We can't make up our minds.

This is an unusual day. It’s almost 10 a.m. as I write this. We have to vacate the suite as the hotel is sending painters to do some work on the balcony and we still haven’t decided where we’re going today.

The choices are

1. Take a 15-minute train ride to Neuchatel, hop on some free bikes and pedal along the lake shore to neighbouring villages, which we have been assured are absolutely charming.
2. Take a 30-minute train ride to Bern, Switzerland’s capital city full of old sandstone buildings.

Entrance to Chateau de Neuchatel; which dates back to the 12th century and is the current seat of the cantonal government and law courts so as you stroll through its ancient halls, you pass by modern work spaces. Cool

On Thursday we prepared ourselves for a trip by France by edging closer to the Swiss/French border by spending a day in Neuchatel. You can’t just show up in France out of nowhere. The shock can kill you. A gradual entry is required.

Neuchatel is only a 15-minute train ride from where we live, (and 12 miles from France) so we have swept past it many times while en route to other places, skipping by it without a thought, all because it is so near.

If familiarity breeds contempt,  proximity breeds boredom and so it follows that in some strange way, Neuchatel’s nearness became equated with a certain ennui, a “we’ll see it later” attitude, only whenever we say that about a place, we almost never do see it.

The laws of devaluation and proximity are ancient. Jesus said “A prophet is without honour only in his own hometown,” and it is true. When someone comes from afar, we attach a certain aura of importance to them. When they are from nearby, we shrug.

Think of how Canadians are always exclaiming over Sweden’s government, social programs, and so forth, while Sweden’s bordering neighbour, Norway, recites Swedish idiocies with such regularity that it is a form of national liturgy.  It should be pointed out that Norwegians know a lot more about Sweden than do Canadians.

This is only an observation and is not meant to denigrate Sweden, although I hear their cuisine is lousy.

All this is a long way of saying that we grossly under-estimated Neuchatel. It has a rambling Ville Ancienne full of Gallic architecture in golden sandstone – a luminous contrast against Switzerland’s usual dark quarried stone. It is a little Paris, a kiss of Spain’s glowing Salamanca, a sandy tropical beach – we loved it. And we nearly missed it, only because it is so easy to get to.

If you go to Switzerland, this is a good spot to hit. It has everything: A sweeping lakefront with a generous promenade, a 12th-17th century castle, ancient church, cobblestone avenues, shops, cafes, funky storefronts and free bikes.

Yes, free bikes. While waiting at the train station we ran into one of Dave’s co-workers. While informing us of more details about his personal life than we were prepared to hear, he also mentioned that Neuchatel maintains a fleet of bicycles that anyone can sign out.

Trust the Swiss to make a library out of bicycles. They are indeed a wonderful people.

The practice is to sign out a bike, then pedal along the lakeshore promenade, past vineyards and presumably dairy cows, to neighbouring villages where the Swiss hope you will stop at a Swiss inn, spend piles of money on an overnight stay and if that works out, pedal to the next Swiss village. By these means, the Swiss tourism industry stands and falls, and if we have learned anything about the Swiss, it is that they are better at hosting international guests than they are at exporting watches, and that is saying something.

We have not checked out the free bikes yet, although we saw a few while walking the promenade. We plan to test the Neuchatelese Swiss on their bike plan and let you know how it goes at a later date, but we can’t say when, although we’re sure we will do it because it is so convenient and, as I pointed out earlier, very near by.

Click on photos to enlarge.

Our gondola did not plummet to the earth and so with my worst fears unrealized, we got off the gondola and were rewarded with a fabulous view over Appenzell’s picturesque valley.

Uneven path surface strewn with cantaloupe-sized rocks to weed out the weak.

In case the random rocks don't trip you up, the Swiss imbed steel bars. "That will fix them," say the Swiss.

We walked over some very uneven mixed asphalt/stone/steel bar path, so we could barely take our eyes off our feet for fear of falling. To the Swiss, this was probably a bonus feature. To the rest of us, it was disconcerting.

After a short steep walk we arrived at the massive mouth of a cave that spiraled down into the mountain. Clinging onto the railing (the trail is wet,  steep and poorly lit), we arrived at the hermit’s cabin made of sturdy timbers with rough cobblestone floors. It was a meditative place, but not for long. I opened a door to get outside and the door made such a grinding screech that a bunch of Swiss leapt up in terror that the giant bear skeleton (on display inside the cabin) had come to life. At least, that is what they told me.

Bears (real skeleton) once inhabited the cave at Ebenalp. Later hermit monks lived here (1658 to 1853). The 'wildkirsche' (church cave) nearby is 400 years old.

It’s possible the door was not “meant” to be opened and it was the first time it was set ajar in maybe … I don’t know, a couple of years, but there were no posted signs reading “verboten,” so I just shrugged and left the Swiss to perform CPR on one another.

We resumed the trail walk, which was now just a narrow goat path on the mountainside, and came upon a second cave, the church (Wilderkirsche) where a wedding was underway. We captured a wonderful moment when a small a capella choir gathered and started singing – the stone acoustics sending their crisp voices out over the valley below. It was lovely, although I’m not sure the wedding couple was so thrilled to see us.

We then walked a narrower path to Ebenalp guest house, which is built underneath a walloping rock overhang, and does not look like the kind of place anyone would want to be sleeping in should an earthquake start up.

Half of the patio tables were soaking wet from ground water dripping from the overhang, but we managed to squeeze in with a friendly rugged crowd of hikers, one of whom may have mistaken me for someone else when I said, “Why helloooo Sweetheart,” but then relaxed when he saw I was talking to his white German Shepherd who was sprawled out between the crowded tables.

It's not just the camera angle - that huge hunk of rock overhangs the 170-year-old Berggasthaus Aescher, an inn that once housed pilgrims seeking spiritual guidance from the mountain's Catholic monks and now serves as a guest house for hikers.

I felt it best to say something endearing to the dog as I would have to step over him to get to one of the few dry empty seats left on the patio. I wanted him to understand that we could be friends. He did, and let us pass without sinking his massive jaws into our shins. What a relief.

This post is already too long, but I will add that Dave ordered soup, which came with two hotdogs in it. He gave the soup the thumb’s down – it was thin, watery and not very flavorful.

But this was all last weekend – today we are in France’s Franche-Comte region checking out some elaborate stone architecture the Spanish built here when they were in charge of the place – yes, the Spanish messed up France. The more we learn about Europe’s small places, the more we realize how its national borders have wiggled around under the pressure of conquest…suggesting that medieval Europe was not too far removed from modern-day Palestine/Israel’s border argument. More about France later. In the meantime, here are some remaining shots of Appenzellerland.

This was not Switzerland's finest cuisine hour.

Fearless Swiss build into the side of the mountain.

Dave inspects cave timber supports. Not really confident these toothpicks can keep mountain from collapsing on us. Shrugs shoulders. Continues inside.

Yes, it's a little steep. Why do you ask?

Hermits cabin at Ebenalp, built right into cave. This would never pass code.

You wouldn't think a path so skinny it needs a boardwalk to bridge the gaps would be so crowded.

Awww, sheep. They were grazing just below the restaurant.

Wildkirschi (or Wildkirsche?) altar

Wilderkirsche - once again, the Catholics get there first and get the better church location.

Wedding guests dressed in proper wedding traditional Swiss attire.

The newlyweds head down from the cave church to the inn for their wedding feast, which will be held under a megatonnage of overhanging rock. If their relationship can handle this stress, they will be okay.

What's this? Is the bride changing her mind and bolting back up the mountain? Or just avoiding pesky wedding crashers (ie. us, who were on our way back from lunch at the inn).

Strengthened by Appenzell’s focaccia and maybe a little too much gelato, we hopped onto the train for a five-mile trip to the end of the line, literally, at Ebenalp, a mountain so high that it has two valleys, one at the bottom and the second about halfway up the 5,380-foot gondola ride, so that just when you think the ride is over and you can breathe again you crest a ridge and see there is more to come.

At first sight,we assumed this photocopied photo taped to a fence at the edge of a cliff was of a couple who had unwisely ruined their hike by pitching over the mountainside and the photo was a reminder to the rest of us to be careful. We were wrong about that. They were getting married in a mountainside cave - a wedding that we inadvertently crashed. Don't they look happy? That's because at the time this photo was taken, they had no idea we were on our way to their wedding. Bwahahaha!

The Swiss are a sturdy lot, and they know that a mere gondola ride where life hangs suspended in mid-air by a series of thick steel cables cannot possibly inspire a suitable level of terror, and so they packed the gondola so tight that I dreaded my body’s cells might try to jump ship in a last-ditch bid to get off the overcrowded gondola, which might only lead to DNA-blending with the other passengers through the inevitable osmosis that would occur from cell-leaping.

If that last paragraph makes no sense, blame the gondola ride.

The whistle sounded and as if on cue, another 12 people jumped onto the gondola, squeezing us in such that I could no longer fully inflate my lungs. I wish I was joking about this.

I felt some degree of comfort in knowing that should we plunge to the ground, my fall would be broken by about 4,000 lbs. of mountain-hiking Swiss – who were very bony, but who also carried massive backpacks. I don’t know what was in the packs, but I hoped they were soft. There was no guarantee of it. The Swiss are so vigorous and such enthusiastic mountaineers that they probably carry about 200 lbs. of stones in their packs to ratchet up the agony of the hike, which would heighten their level of enjoyment.

I worried about the possibility of stones, but there was nothing I could do about this, and so it was into these packs I put my trust.

But I get ahead of myself. Our intention was to take the ride to the top of Ebenalp, then hike down the mountain, which was billed as a 60-90 minute journey. Knowing my propensity for stumbling, I calculated a 20-minute tumble downhill, so I dressed appropriately and left the hiking boots at home in favor of some very nice sandals.

These people could be washing their hiking boots or they could just be bending down to kiss the creek on the valley floor, which they thought they might not ever see again after the ride up the gondola.

My first hint that this was a mistake came when we got off the train where we immediately saw people huddled over the creek (straight and orderly, as are all Swiss creeks), washing their hiking boots. So, I should have brought my boots, which happened to be in Canada.

And then I noticed the temperature.  Ebenalp is in an alpine region, of course, and it was very cold.

The cold would ordinarily have been disastrous, however, I am in the grips of an unrelenting menopausal fever, so while others walked around bundled in layers of Goretex, I embraced the mountain chill in light cotton attire.

Nevertheless, I was worried about the trail mud ruining my nice sandals. I pointed out my footwear to the non-English-speaking desk agent and he cast a gaze of respect in my direction. As a Swiss, he had to admire my apparent attempt to make my mountain trek more rigorous than even the other Swiss milling about the gondola launch, although he must have wondered where I put my knapsack of small boulders.

My willingness to invite hypothermia signaled that I might possibly have some Swiss blood, although that is unlikely although there is a good chance I am related to the French who roguishly invaded Switzerland again and again over the past 1,000 years. Haha! Those French. Invading Switzerland when they should have been watching out for Germany.

And so we cancelled the hike, which made me very happy because now I would have no reason to ride that gondola. I was wrong about that. Dave pointed out the main point of the trip was to see Ebenalp’s mountain-top cave church, hermit’s cottage and sip on some beer at the Ebenalp guest house from where we could see Bodensee (also known as Lake Constance).

So up the gondola we went, with it swinging more than I would have liked, but there was nothing I could do about it but pray that God did not want to play a big joke on me, who has a fear of heights, by making a 5,000-foot plummet part of my exit from earth. I would have arrived at the pearly gates in a very ticked-off mood.

Tomorrow: Cliff-gripping trails, caves, weddings and the worst soup ever.

Can we get to here?

Dave is huddled over his Acer netbook at the dinner table, taking a grueling online tour through rail and hotel websites to find out how to get to a place only 60 miles away from us.

The trouble is that we are without car. Not that we could not have a car – we could buy one if we liked, but in the spirit of sparing ourselves the nuisance of making our presence known to more bureaucracies, we are doing without.

Bureaucracy-avoidance is paramount, because as we have learned in past international moves, bureaucrats live on the flesh of foreigners, and as proof of this, just yesterday I received a formal tersely worded notice from the Swiss tax offices demanding to know the name of my employer so that I can stop evading taxes.

I don’t have an employer – that has been clear on all our documentation, and was actually a condition of my admittance to this lovely country, but the tax people are raking about for more revenue, as is their custom. I will take care of that next week. In the meantime, challenges loom over our next trip.

This is the truth about public transport: It works beautifully between major cities, not so much for little French villages just over the border, and so a train ride to Besançon, France (53 miles) can take as long as one to get to Paris, France (250 miles), that is, about four or five hours. Dave has been wheedling away at the keyboard and discovered a 2.5 trip to Besançon, but it is an awkward midday journey, necessitating an overnight stay.

We’ve grown attached to our day-trips that have lapsed into a lovely routine where we laze through a pot of coffee and late breakfast, leave at a civilized hour on a morning train, that is sometime between 10 a.m. and noon, and return on an evening train. A four-hour afternoon stay seems to be about as long as we can stand to stay in one place, even if it is laced with cobblestone avenues flanked by 16th-Century stone buildings. There is only so much of that one person can take.

It looks like we will take that overnight trip to Besançon – a perilous venture on this four-day long weekend when Europeans flood the trains, highways and airports in an obsessive dash to get somewhere, anywhere but where they are. They are like Winnipeggers racing to their cottages on a long weekend, which is what we once were, so we fit in quite well.

We want to get somewhere, anywhere, but here, although really, here is very nice, although it has cobblestone streets, so naturally, we can only stand it in small doses.

“If you receive this message, then your father and I are dead ….”  is a wonderful way to start a video clip, don’t you think? It grips one’s mind in a way that home movies of kids blowing out birthday candles can  not.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Switzerland's Appenzellerland is quintessential Swiss, in so much as it looks as foreigners would expect Switzerland to appear with dairy cows, trimmed pastures and garden gnomes.

We set out for Appenzellerland at the eastern edge of Switzerland on Saturday morning. The first two hours of the train-ride from Switzerland’s Bernese region, where we live, to Switzerland’s east feels as though it is on straight rails, such is its swiftness, but the tone changes on the last train switch. There, the train moseys over rails that bend through a valley, perched up mid-slope with a steep pitch bottoming out in rivers and creeks below.

Cattle appear in the landscape in greater numbers, including a few in what looks like exceedingly tiny farmyards or generous back lawns.

We took a brief stop at Kronberg to try out the bobsled ride. It is a short pit stop of a place and our first introduction to Switzerland’s German region where we quickly learned that English was more welcome than French.

Despite the worldwide-held view that Switzerland is a happy multicultural land, close-up things look a little different. The French, Italian, German and Romanesque populations abide one another in a strange state of suspended animation where nationally they are welded as one, but locally, are in dozens of little pieces, each asserting cultural superiority over the other, like Manitobans over Saskatchewanites.

We’ve heard rumblings about this before – how the Germans resent the French for refusing to learn German, although almost every German speaks French, or so we were told. It turns out that is not true. At Kronberg, the Swiss-German pointedly did not speak French, and any attempts to speak French to them produced scowls that suggested we had walked into a room where the occupants were pausing from a heated argument, but would recommence the minute we left.

We started off with French at the Kronberg bobsled ticket desk, but the clerk looked at us as if we had just said, “Nabadaba ding dong, ala laga bingo!” – which we might have.  Our French is still very rough,  and so we switched to English. The man took our money, but when we asked where to go next, he gave a general wave to his right and said, “Just go around there, it will be obvious.”

If that had been true, we would not have first tried to board the bobsled at the end of the track instead of at the beginning.

When we muddled our way to the correct location, we discovered that each ‘sled’ had its own hand-brakes – in other words, only our own strength would keep us from careening down the mountain at hyper-speed. Adding to the excitement was the fact that the loading operator did not speak French or English, and for all we could tell, might have been mute.

He indicated a set of sled-handles to us, but could not, or maybe would not, elaborate on whether applying or releasing the handles would produce the desired braking action. It seems a small point, but an important one, especially because of our mounting panic as we saw that  our bobsled was moving down a line-up toward launch.

Dave yanked away at the handles, trying to figure them out, and in his confusion suddenly became fluent in French.

“Arretez? Arretez? Does this mean stop???” he exclaimed more than asked, to which the operator returned a blank gaze and so the machinery clicked in and off we went up to the mountainside without any degree of confidence we would make it down in an intact state.

That’s when I turned on the video to deliver that last message to our sons in Canada.

As the sled rounded the top, Dave mucked about with the handles until he was pretty sure he had them figured out, but then was forced to abort that exercise when we realized the next bobsled was approaching behind us. It wasn’t very close yet, but when one is about to embrace earth’s gravitational pull down a mountainside on a sleek steel track, the maximum amount of distance between bobsleds is most desirable.

As a consequence of all this, we rode down in a conservative manner, braking mightily before every curve, wondering aloud whether anyone had ever flung themselves off the tracks, which appeared not only possible, but inevitable given than the curved portions were banked with safety nets.

We made it down to the bottom safely, but as no operator was stationed at the finishing point to catch the sled or tell us what to do next, we scrambled out while the sled was still moving, a view enjoyed by a slew of Swiss-German families who captured our awkward departure on their cameras. Maybe befuddled tourists are the real attraction at Kronberg.

If you go:

Cost: $9 Canadian

Duration of ride:  2.5 minutes

Ride thrill: Variable. Our ride was quite mundane owing to the above-mentioned uncertainties, but a ride without leaning on the brakes could be considerably more interesting.

If you careen off the rails: You will land in a steep slope of pasture, possibly hitting a cow. The ride is at the foot of the mountain, so is not as perilous as to cause dismemberment or immediate death. A bad landing could result in some severe bone breaks.

Could you miss it and still feel you had lived a life worth a postcard or two home? Yes.

Learn more about the sled ride by clicking here.

Dave tries to blend in as a wedding guest? Maybe not.

Every now and then as a reporter, I would stumble into an event that was fleeting – something was happening that I knew I would not see again and that had I arrived moments earlier, I would not have known was about to happen. Those moments seem divine, as though God is showing off.

Yesterday, we took a train across Switzerland to the end of the line – yes, the tracks really stopped there. Then we took a 5,380-foot gondola ride up the side of this mountain, picked our way along a cliff-side trail, plunged into the mountain through a winding cave that spiraled down until it opened to an ancient hermit cabin, then along another short cliff-hugging trail to find an enormous cave filled with people – it was a wedding, and then suddenly from the shadows, voices singing “Heaven is a wonderful place.” This video isn’t very good quality – the cave was quite dark, but it captures a rare moment. It doesn’t do justice to the acoustics of the small group of  a capella singers’ voices echoing off the ancient stone walls.

Click here to watch the video. Tomorrow: More photos, more Ebenalp wanderings.

I'm not scared, why do you ask?

We biked around the circumference of Lake Biel, which sounds like a relaxing way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but it turned into a grueling 55-kilometre marathon in the hot sun. Nevertheless, we’re glad we did it, if only so that we could earn the respect of the Swiss. Click on photos to enlarge them, although there is one that I am sure you will wish you never laid eyes on.