43 Days.....Where Did They Go?

The suitcases are open on the bed and I am not ready.

When we landed on August 16th, September 29th sounded like it was a very long way off. Somewhere along the way I started a 6-5-4-3-2-1 countdown, and now I wish I hadn’t.

So, before we lock up the Garden House for another year, let me look back at the whole of it.

It began with rain and ducks

Our first full day here it rained and rained. I sat and listened to the thunder roll off the mountains, which is still one of my favorite sounds in this world.

Lynda, Carolyn and Keith from Preston were visiting Tanja, Syrena, and Manu and before they left they hid rubber ducks all through the Garden House. I found five that first day and I found more the next. I even found one down in the pocket of my shorts — one of them must have slipped it in when she hugged me!!!!

When we finally said goodbye to them on the train, Lynda handed a couple of little ducks to the conductor. He was so pleased. There were smiles and laughter all around. Amazing how two small rubber ducks can bring that much joy. It definitely is the "Year of the Duck"!

Michael worked, so I got on the train

Michael had to work for most of this trip, with two weeks off, so a good many of these days I went out on my own.

This year, I left the DSLR in its case back at the Garden House. Those lenses are heavy and I decided I had hauled them up enough mountains. So it was the iPhone, all summer long.

Now here is the difference between Michael and me. To me, the iPhone is a camera that happens to have a telephone in it. To Michael, it is a telephone, a Kindle, and his calendar, and half his office — and somewhere down in there it happens to have a camera. Same phone!!!! It is all a matter of which end you are looking through.

Visited Meiringen for Sherlock Holmes and meringues. Hergiswil, to watch the glassblowers pull vases out of molten glass. Gstaad on the GoldenPass Express, where I never once had to change trains. Sion, where I walked into the cathedral and found a graduation being rehearsed. Basel, Laufen, Mürren, and Brienz where I followed the smoke of the steam train all the way up the mountain.

And... Iseltwald, which a dear friend always said was a little bit of heaven on earth. He was right.

We plan our days around food. I am not apologizing for it

Three separate trips to Cailler. I am not going to tell you how many grams of chocolate ended up in that carry-on — the contest is closed, and congratulations to An Song Yi of Busan, South Korea!!!!!

Raclette in Gruyères. The Emmentaler Schaukäserei, where the raw milk still comes in twice a day and gets warmed in copper kettles. Kambly in the Emmental, on their own little train, where the Bretzeli is still made from a grandmother’s recipe from 1906.

Three evenings at the Jäger in Murten with Eyup and Gülcan, who treat us as their honored guests every single time. If you take only one recommendation from me all year, take that one.

Marc and Thea had us over to their house in Leissigen for dinner one evening. A wonderful evening in their home, and exactly the sort of thing you cannot plan for or put on an itinerary. Thank you both.

We took another cooking class at Sherly’s Kitchen in Zürich. Ten years now we have been going to Sherly's, and we enjoy it immensely every single year. This time it was the Sichuan glass noodle salad, bok choy and button mushrooms, and the sweet and sour orange chicken. These have never been one-and-done classes for us — we go home and make these dishes over and over again. We were lucky enough to have lunch with Sherly in Bern last Friday as well. Thank you, Sherly, for ten years of it.

Where is all the snow?

I have to write this part, even though I would much rather write about anything else.

On the 20th of August I put up two photographs of the same mountains one year apart, and you could all see it for yourselves. Then Grindelwald, where there was hardly anything left on the north face of the Eiger. Then Zermatt, where the Matterhorn had the least snow on it I have ever photographed, and where every tree but one at my favorite viewing spot had been cut down.

The trees in the Emmental were brown. The bears in Bern were praying for rain. And... on my day in Meiringen the town fire alarm went off and the woman working at the museum and I stood and watched smoke come up the mountain.

Twenty-seven years of coming here, and I have never seen it like this.

The weather could not make up its mind either

It was 90 degrees F (32 C) in Basel on the 8th of September. Two days later the high was 57 degrees F (14 C) and we could not get warm. Bathing suits to fall jackets in forty-eight hours. Hail at two o’clock in the morning in between!!!!

Two days in the middle of September

On the 15th, Michael turned 70. We spent it in Luzern, on the Chapel Bridge, in churches, and at the Old Swiss House for his favorite wiener schnitzel. For the first time in all our visits, there was actually somebody up in the Water Tower looking out.

On the 16th, we had been married 37 years. We went to the Jäger, of course. Eyup made the northern pike specially for Bennett, and then sent us home with a bottle from a vineyard that was planted in 1876.

Sharon and Bennett were with us for that whole week and it was better for having them here. Bennett finally got his paraglide over Interlaken, too.

Twenty-seven years, and still finding new things

Our friend Käthi suggested we go up the Heimwehfluh. We have walked past that funicular for twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years!! The ride takes four minutes. From the top we could pick out the Adventure Guesthouse by its red shutters, and a little piece of the yellow blinds on the Garden House. I don’t know what took us so long.

That is what comes of returning to the same place. You notice that the hairdresser is a laundry now, and the bike shop has closed, and the bus stop at the end of Helvetiastrasse has moved. You take the same photograph from the same spot every year, and you check on the moss growing on the same tree and you try to make the photograph more interesting from a different angle.

And... then the cows came down

This last week the summer flowerbeds came out in the Höhematte and the pansies went in. The air turned crisp before nine in the morning. There were fewer people on the Höheweg than the week before.

Then on Saturday, the cows came down off the mountain for the winter. You hear the bells long before you ever see the cows. Gaby stood at her usual corner to keep them from straying off down the side street.

Gaby and Felix own the Woodpecker in Interlaken. She carves there and they sell her work there, and over the years a good deal of it has quietly followed us home to Arizona. Two angels. A Madonna. And the complete nativity scene, which lives in the curio case in our office where we can see it all year round. Then every Christmas out it comes, so that anyone who walks through our door can have a proper look at it.

Gaby is very talented and does such beautiful work!! This year it is the birds. Michael and I fell in love with that piece the first time we laid eyes on it, and she finished the carving just in time. By this time next week, it will be hanging in our house. I still have not decided where, though.

Sunday we went up to Wengen for the Chästeilet, our second year in the cheese share. I picked our wheel this time. I wanted one from Wengen, and I wanted a darker one, because darker means a little older. Get there early, is my advice. By noon the bottom shelf was bare.

So...

Forty-three days. Many mountains and valleys, one guesthouse, and very nearly everything else reached by train and/or bus and home again before dark.

Thank you for coming along every single day. Thank you for all the contest guesses.

Thank you to Helena, Imme, Carla, and everyone who works at the Adventure Guesthouse. The Garden House has been home all this time, and they are a very large part of the reason it feels that way.

Thank you to Lynda, Carolyn, Keith, Sharon, Bennett, Gaby, Felix, Käthi, Tanja, Syrena, Jöli, Marc, Thea, Sherly, Eyup, and Gülcan for making it what it was.

The suitcases are still open. I suppose I had better go and do something about that.

This afternoon, the service picked up our suitcases with some filled with chocolate bars, Kambly cookies and clothing. Now, off to the Zürich Airport they go. Thankfully, we don't have to schlep our bags on the train tomorrow morning.

Arizona here we come!