In time for Octoberfest

 Imagine, flying at 38,000 feet at over 600 mph to cover 5000+ miles in half a day!  What an amazing world!  Now we are eating dinner in a fine restaurant in Zurich, Switzerland, in the altstadt. Tomorrow, we take a train to Strasbourg, France.  We have been staying in an AirBnB which requires us to buy our breakfast makings at a local grocery, but that is just a part of immersion in the local lifestyle.  Everything here is in Deutsch, but we have some knowledge of terms, Google translate is helpful, and the Swiss people usually are helpful.

Swans on the river at Zurich promenade park

This is classic Strasbourg, beautiful half-timbered buildings on the river front.

Beautiful, but this is not the main attraction in Strasbourg.  A much larger cathedral (150+ yards tall) gets more attention.

When we arrived in Strasbourg, we dragged our suitcases from the train station (bahnhof) to our accommodation because most of the area has pedestrian-only streets (fussganger), faster on foot than by vehicle.  When we arrived at the street entrance to our apartment, our landlord had been watching from an upper story window and called out to us by name.  They had stocked our refrigerator with drinks and snacks.  Very nice people.

Dawn has been to Strasbourg previously, but this is my first time.  We are surprised at the large number of tourists; is this a French holiday?  Nevertheless, the city is very scenic with an incredible cathedral, as tall as Notre Dame.  We are again staying at an AirBnB: beautiful, spacious, perfect location, and very welcoming.  Again, one of our first stops was a natural grocery store to get breakfast supplies, including lactose free items.  French is a language we know very little, but English is becoming the international language, making things easier.  Our train trip here (switching from Swiss to French at Basel) went perfectly.

This is the main cathedral in Strasbourg, a major tourist attraction.  Our Airbnb was just one block away.

It is easy to get lost in Strasburg, the streets are laid out around a winding river and its many bridges, thus the streets also have a curving pattern.  Strasburg is a significant city and was even a more major meeting place historically.  At some times in the past, it was part of Germany, thus, there is a German influence in some of the more recent neighborhoods.  The preserved architecture, half-timbered buildings, is a significant reason to visit the city.  Our accommodation is probably 300 years old.  The ceiling is about 6 1/2 feet high, and part of the floor is about 4 inches lower that the other section.

We walked the old town and used a narrow-gauged, rubber-wheeled urban 'train" to see even more of the area.  We both got Covid, which we must have picked up in Zurich or on the train.  For me, it could easily have been confused with a cold (mainly sinus congestion), but Dawn's symptoms lingered a bit longer, so we bought self-tests at the local pharmacy which confirmed our suspicion.  Both of us had previously been fully vaccinated and Dawn had had a previous (and more serious) bout with Covid despite the precautions.  Evidently Covid has become like the common cold: a condition we will just have to learn to live with.  

Being the very end of September, we experienced some cooler and drizzly days.  There are many small wineries in villages of the area.  Due to lost time from Covid, we will have to take that tour at another visit.  Our time was up in Strasbourg and our stay in nearby Colmar was only three days.

Updated Index to Entries

 December 2005-   Building my first boat, Leaving home and Nebraska (amended)

February 2016-     Croatia preview

March 2016-         Iceland, Copenhagen, Zagreb, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Ireland

July 2016-             Scandinavia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Berlin

September 2016-   Colorado

November 2016-   California coast

December 2016-   Washington DC, Island of Maui

March 2017-        Argentina:  Buenos Aires, San Carlos de Bariloche, Mendoza

May 2017-           Northern Italy preview

July 2017-            Alaskan cruise

September 2017- Venice, Lake Garda, Lake Como, Lake Maggiore, Genoa, Nice, French hill villages,                                        Portugal & Algarve 

October 2017-      Lisbon & Sintra, Washington DC

December 2017-   Eastern Caribbean cruise:  St. Kitts-Nevis, Martinique, Antigua, Barbados, Grenada,                                Puerto Rico

February 2018-     South Pacific preview

March 2018-         Tahiti & Tuomotu cruise, New Zealand

April 2018-           New Zealand South Island, Australia

September 2018-   Road trip to Colorado. Idaho, Wyoming

September 2018-   Galapagos Islands, 2015

September 2018-   Panama 2014 trip

September 2018-   San Blas islands cruise 1981

October 2018-       Krakow, Poland

November 2018-   Zakopane, Danube, Budapest, Azores

January 2019-        European trip preview

May 2019-              northern France, cruise to Med, Mallorca, Rome, Copenhagen

July 2019-              Azores, Maine, Cape Cod preview

August 2019-         Omaha visit

September 2019-   A Voyage to Remember, Florida to Panama, 1980

October 2019-        Azores, Maine, Cape Cod

December 2019-    Puerto Vallarta

February 2020-      Madeira Island, Azores

April 2020-            The Lost Vacation (due to Covid), Switzerland, (now rescheduled)

August 2020-         Road trip to Montana

October 2020-        Road trip to Arkansas

April 2021-             Living in Panama, 1979-1982

July 2021-               Brazil preview (canceled and rescheduled April-June 2022)

September 2021-    Switzerland:  Lausanne, Interlaken, Lucerne, Zurich

April 2022-             Road Trip to Omaha, Washington DC, and Florida 

May 2022-              Roatan snorkeling, Our 1972 Road Trip

June 2022-              Bocas del Toro snorkeling, Panama               

October 2022-         France:  Strasbourg, Colmar, & Mulhouse

                                Switzerland:  Basel. St. Gallen

April 2023-             Spain, Canary Islands, France, England, and DC

September 2023-    Scotland, Sardinia

December 2023-    DC, Dubai, Mahe Island (Seychelles)

January 2024-      more Seychelles Islands, Maldives Islands, Sri Lanka

February 2024-    South Africa, a brief stop in Brazil

A Fall trip to Switzerland

 Our visit to St. Gallen became a fateful experience.  We arrived on a Sunday afternoon and found our Airbnb apartment where we expected to stay for the next six days.  From here we could easily take daytrips by train the visit the Bodensee to the north (on the border with Germany) and visit the scenic mountains to the south at Appenzell and Wasserauen.  We then did food shopping (Sunday and only a grocery at the bahnhof was open) and went for a walk to explore the city.  A cog train ride, Muhleggbahn, takes you to a ridge overlooking the city.  At the top is a scenic walking path, "wanderweg", with a series of three ponds and recreation facilities along the trail, Drei Weieren recreation area. 

A couple days later, Wasserauen was our destination by train (end of the line) and then by a cable car to Ebenalp, at 5380 feet altitude, the northern most peak of the Appenzeller Alps, on a high ridge.  A lodge at Ebenalp serves meals and snacks or even an overnight stay.  Several trails fan out for hiking to mountain crest locations.  There is also a steep open meadow with windsocks which is popular for launching by paragliders.  Great views of the surrounding mountains and valleys.

Approaching Ebenalp.  At the very top center of this photo, if you look closely, you will see a building; that is where the cable car takes you and where the paragliders launch from.

This is a more close-up view of Ebenalp.

And here is a paraglider launching from Ebenalp.  This is not a ski slope, as vertical cliffs surround the area.

To get to Wasserauen we needed to change trains at Appenzell.  The town was full of visitors and also cows.  Not sure what the purpose was of this gathering, but the parking lot across from the Appenzell brewery was full of cows in secured close order.  The next day, the same area held a gathering of goats.  A scenic river runs through the town, and we noticed signs marking the routes for several bike trails.  The AB bahnhof there had e-bikes for rent; thus, we made reservations for the following day.

The town of Appenzell, perhaps best known for its scenery and its brewery.

We returned to Appenzell the following day and picked up our rented e-bikes.  We took a pleasant, mainly paved trail and rode our bikes back to Wasserauen and beyond.  At the head of this scenic valley, it becomes a narrow and steep gorge leading upward to a lake and, above that, a naked rock peak with banks of snow in areas more sheltered in the shadows of cliffs.  End of the trail for our bikes. 

The cutest little church in the most scenic location in the valley of Wasserauen.

The green fields look like a carpet covering the entire valley, no crops but pastures for cows, sheep, and goats.

Time for one more photograph before we head back to Appenzell.

We headed back by a different path rising above the valley, diverted into a new area to explore, and then found our way back to Appenzell for refreshments and a potty stop.  Heading west out of Appenzell to follow a new route, Dawn took a serious fall on the cobblestone paving and, effectively, our entire vacation was over.

She spent the next nine nights in the St. Gallen Kantonsspital where she was stabilized, and pain control was achieved.  My job was to take care of the logistics of her hospitalization and start planning for our return to the United States.  However, part of that time we were simply waiting for her condition to improve with nothing I could do to speed it up.  I was able to take a couple of daytrips by train to visit Rorschach, Haiden, and Winterthur.

The central platz in St. Gallen.  If I panned to the right, there is a large cathedral complex with several buildings.  The interior of the cathedral is very beautiful, but after you have seen a number of such cathedrals, they start to look alike.

Fall was in full force while we stayed in St. Gallen.  I walked through this area every day walking between my hotel (after moving from our Airbnb) and Dawn's hospital room.  The Talhof festival began the day before we left the area.

Rorschach is on the shores of Bodensee, alternately called Lake Constance, which is a large lake separating Switzerland from Germany.  Haiden is visited using a cog train; it is a small town at higher altitude from which, on a clear day, you have a vista of almost the entire Bodensee and into Germany.  Winterthur is a larger city to the west which has a large fussganger district (pedestrian only) with many small, specialized shops and interesting displays.  Nearby are also pleasant green park areas.

My visit to Haiden was a bust as far as seeing distant views.  The town was socked-in, immersed in a cloud bank.

Our trip back to the States was long and tiring.  We had arranged a van with wheelchair to get us to Zurich, and we were met with wheelchair service at Zurich, New York, and Denver airports.  Now Dawn needs surgery, convalescence, and then we head for Washington, DC to see our grandchildren at Christmas.