Dave in Switzerland

As most everyone knows, Dave showed up for a visit shortly after we moved to Bern. It was a great visit. The weather was occasionally good and occasionally less than good. Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves.

The first couple days it rained off and on in the mountains, so we stayed in the flatlands and went over to Thun, where we saw the town, castles, had some coffee, rode the boats, and finally walked along a moraine that runs along the south side of Lake Thun. Then over to Lake Geneva where we took some more boat ferries (over to France this time) and saw Lausanne and Geneva. It is a pretty spectacular area.

Finally the forecast was for good weather in the mountains, so we made a bee line for Zermatt and the Matterhorn. Dave got us set up to go up to the Kleine Matterhorn, at nearly 3900 meters and walk around inside a glacier. We finished off the day with pizzas and beers.

Again, the Swiss Weather center was calling for two nice days in the mountains, followed by pretty bad weather. So Dave and I made the snap decision to head up into the hills for an overnight hike. We took the train to Lauterbrunnen, and then a bus to Isenfluh, and finally hiked for about 4 hours and a couple thousand feet up to get to the Lobhornhuette, where we stayed overnight and had a great dinner and breakfast. The next morning we took a roundabout path back to Lauterbrunnen (involving a lot of hiking, an old train, two gondolas, and a bus) and got me back to Bern in time for my 5pm meeting with my boss!

After all the wandering, we spent a couple days resting and looking around at some nice surrounding towns (I also, alas, had to work a bit), mostly Sierre, Fribourg, and Bern. On one morning, Dave and I woke up way too early and went up the hill behind our house to see the sun rise. We timed it perfectly, the valley was filled with fog, the sun crept up over the mountains...it was a perfect (if cold) morning.

We also had lots of fun at one of the local rope courses. We got ourselves all harnessed up and swung around the treetops (at one point over 100 feet in the air) for a few hours. And of course, we finished it all up with pizza and wine. mmm.

We were quite thankful to have Dave around, even if it was such a short time.