OK, here is my next installment. Before I begin there will be a bit of back track. I had planned on writing my Holiday in sections and after reviewing my last posting I see a very important beginning piece has been left out. If I don’t correct it now, none of you will understand the rest of my holiday adventure. Here it goes!

Most of you know that I was expecting a visitor over the Holidays. I had not written about it because……well, I was being self centered and just wanted to talk about myself. No not really, I was going to talk about it as my Holiday unfolded.

My very good friend (OK now I can say boyfriend), Dan came and spent Christmas and New years being dragged around half of Europe. He arrived at the Schiphol airport at 7am Thursday morning on the 21st of December. I met him there bright and early. We made our way back to The Hague by train and arrived at my place at around 9 am. He slept for awhile, and then we went for a walk around my neighborhood. That evening we meet up with Frank and Kristina for dinner so introductions could be made. They did not know Dan from Portland and if we were all going to spend a week together, I thought it a good idea for everyone to have a chance to talk before our trip began.

The evening went very well (as I knew it would) and we all had a good time even though Dan felt like he was on Mars, which is normal given the effects of jet lag. He also was able to meet Clark and Louise, the two lovable labs. One of the great things about living in a culture that is extremely dog friendly, your furry well behaved companion can join you in most pub/reentrants. Anyway, after dinner we all headed to our respective homes to prepare for our travel day which was going to start at 9 am the next morning.

This was the bit that was left out…..now onto the first day in Switzerland.

Our first day not only being Sunday, but also Christmas Eve day, our options for an outing were limited. We decided to drive into Brig and look around town. We were hoping to find a grocery store open because there were a few essentials that were in short supply at the château (like toilette paper). Kristina thought our best hope was the train station. And she was right. There was a great little grocer opened there and we picked up what we needed. It was the only thing open in town besides some restaurants. After some window-shopping and a walk around Stockalperschloss (first photo) which was once the largest private residence in Switzerland, we all headed back to our home for the week.

Christmas Eve dinner Kristina and I cooked megret (duck), spatzli and endive. After stuffing our selves, we all sat around the wood stove talking and telling stories. Missing our families.

Christmas Day, the four of us decided to take a gondola ride up to the ski town/resort Bettmeralp. Also home to the Aletsch glacier that was added to the World Heritage list in 2001. We just went to site see, not to ski. The snow was just OK and on this day the four of us just wanted to look around. Once in Bettmeralp we walked through a picture postcard ski village up to another gondola that took us to the glacier. On our walk, we pasted people pulling little ones bundled up on old fashion wooden sleds, Swiss version of a stroller. It was great to see rosy-cheeked kids, tucked in and snoozing.

Once we reached the glacier area, we only had to walk a short way past the restaurant that looked like it needed to be in orbit, to get a view of Aletsch. It was Awesome. To the lift there was a view of the Matterhorn, to the right, the glacier. There is a plaque next to the glacier explaining how this was an area preserved as an area of peace. I wish I had written down what the plaque said because after reading the words I understood why this area was added to the World Heritage list. Just looking at it gave you a since of calm.

Of course after sitting by the glacier for a while, we headed to the restaurant for some soup and gluiewine. Oh yes gluiewine is everywhere. Now this upper gondola stops running at four and we were all so taken in by the view that we missed the last gondola down to the village and had to wait for the staff to go down in the last three cars. Once back at Bettmeralp we caught the next gondola down to the valley and headed home to our Christmas dinner.

More soon!

Love
Kim