6

We are currently stuck in gridlock, so I'm taking this opportunity to write a bit. Gridlock is interesting, it's like an impromptu party. Everyone gets out of their cars and looks around, talks, gets snacks, explores the roadside. It's a bit of an interesting juxtaposition, with the cars on the other side of the four foot barrier whipping by at 100km/h. We just talked to the people in front, who speak a little English, and they don't know anything about how long this traffic is supposed to last. They're from Belgium. There are a lot of languages around us at the moment; Flemish, German, French, Italian, English. Probably more that I don't recognize.

Ok we can see movement ahead, maybe about a kilometre ahead. So we're getting back in the car.

And we're moving! We managed to figure out how to close the sun roof in time. That was a bit scary.

We just passed a young couple pushing a tiny red car onto a side pull out. That might have been it, but I think it was probably more than one broken down car.

 

Today we're driving to Italy. Been about two and a half hours on the road so far. We stopped off at a rest stop recently to eat some food and stretch our legs. Bathrooms cost 1 euro or Swiss franc, so only those who really actually needed to go went. They sold amazing selections of Swiss chocolate, including copious amounts of toblerones and Lindt. So we all chose a chocolate. Some of them were gluten free. There was not a single well-parked car in the rest stop lot. There were cars that were right on top of the painted line. It was very busy there, I think it's the only rest stop for a good while.

 

We seem to be back in gridlock. We're moving a bit, maybe 10 or 5km/h. Mostly just stopped though. Our satnav warned us about traffic issues earlier on. I wonder how it gets its info. Listening to the radio doesn't help for us, it's all in German. We're inching in and out of tunnels. There's a giant 17km tunnel coming up, so we're hypothesizing that some of this traffic might be a kind of line up to get to the tunnel, and they're controlling the entrance to prevent stopped traffic inside the tunnel, which I guess could be dangerous.

We're still moving very slowly. It's 3:30. We left home about 5 hours ago. We are about 1/4 of the way there. This could be a long trip. We stopped briefly by some port-a-potties but they were so bad that Julias peed next to them. They were very bad. Imagine bad and make it worse with a smell to boot. I'll spare you the details.

We've tried and failed many times to connect my iPod for music but it didn't work. I used my little portable speaker for awhile.

We're listening to the radio again. Lise translates for us: "it's something about four people". We switched to a national music station. It's slow polka and accordions. It's very Oktoberfest. It adds to the atmosphere if you look at the rolling hills of cows and small huts while listening. There was a song that I thought might not be a polka, but I was wrong. That was just the introduction. But this song has a modicum of syncopation so it's a tad interesting.

The mountains here could almost be the Rockies, except for the fact that there are rolling green pastures and small villages in every valley. The hills and mountains have walls built into them, some very old. The entire area has been developed with farms and stone structures for a very long time. It's weird to see that right underneath soaring peaks and trees. I keep expecting to see a grizzly bear or something, but there are practically no wild animals here.

The chord progression of this song is I, V. Repeat to end.

We may have to develop a plan B in terms of getting to Italy; we'll reach our halfway point at about 5pm. So. That might kinda suck.

 

We've just reached a traffic light controlling access to a tunnel. This could be the source of the congestion, if so we might still have a chance of making it to Italy today. Remember what I said about when nothing is happening, there will be a long blog post because I have nothing to do but write? Well this whole traffic thing is a prime example.

The current song has yodelling in it.

We're in the 17km two way tunnel now, and there is no more congestion. So that traffic light was probably it. Safety reasons I guess.

We're out of the tunnel, and there is stopped traffic on the other side of the road leading into the tunnel. So I think it's smooth sailing from here on out. We think we're in Italy now, because the signs are in Italian now mostly. 

 

Just kidding, we're still in Switzerland. They just speak Italian on the other side of the tunnelled mountain, makes sense. We're seeing Swiss flags so we have reassessed our assumption. It's five minutes till we reach the Italian border. It's 5:30 pm.

 

Without really realizing it, we're in Italy. We were driving through a town, we saw a bunch of cars. We thought maybe this is the border crossing? We drove up next to a guy in uniform, and without even stopping chewing his fingernail and continuing to look distracted, he nods and we drive on. He didn't even look at us. We erupted in laughter.

The traffic has immediately worse. There are mopeds everywhere and doing everything. Through red lights, around cars and people. It's a bit stressful. The roads are worse as well. Now we're driving along a really skinny road with oncoming traffic and a brick wall on our left and it's scary. Every vehicle is crazy. I'm surprised more people don't die in cars in Italy.

We're parked in a grocery store parking lot and there are cars parked in front of other cars. I would hate to drive a car here.

 

We stopped at a grocery store to stock up on food. I love grocery stores in Italy (or at least this one); it's mostly raw ingredients, there are lots of gluten free options, and cheese. So much cheese. And cheese options. There are many kinds of bocconcini available, in bags of water. Focaccia bread is abundant. Whole squids can be purchased. The normal store tomatoes are incredible- like the glanford greenhouse ones in Victoria. We had corn thins with yummy ham and yummy cheeses and good tomatoes. I'm saving the bag of boccencini I got for later.

We have gotten in contact via text with Chiara (our hostess), we took out euros, we are stocked up on food (we found some gluten free crackers and cookies at a rest stop- and if anyone can do good gluten free stuff, it's Italians), and we are on our way to Padova in surprisingly high spirits. No low blood sugar here.

 

It's almost 11pm. We have arrived at the apartment and brought our stuff in. I think Chiara runs this as a BnB, because there are lots of empty rooms and beds, and it's very organized. The apartment and surrounding area remind me strongly of my home stay in Salamanca, very similar vibe, just a much bigger and slightly nicer place. We found a giant cupboard full of games including a bunch of Magic cards and jungle speed. We may choose to play one or both of those tomorrow. We put our cheese stuff in the fridge. Chiara went to bed because it's late. I think I will do the same momentarily.

Tomorrow I don't think we'll be heading to Venice first thing in the morning, rather we might stay in Padova, explore the neighbourhood a bit. In the evening though, after it's cooled off a bit, I will get to see my first view of the city that inspired Villanelle from The Passion… Carrying no valuables on my person.

Goodnight.

 

     

5

We did do the coaster today! We left the house at about 11 and drove to Kandersteg where the coaster is. We drove through a town called Riechenbach, not sure what the relation to Sherlock is there if any… But that was cool. Also the terrain and buildings and small villages were starting to look very typically Swiss; rolling green hills, tiny cottages, giant mountains, and cows. Once we got there, we didn't know where to go and couldn't find the tourist info station, so we asked at the train station and eventually after half an hour we found it. Apparently you take the gondola up the mountain, and at the top you catch the coaster. I thought it was going to be a coaster all the way down the mountain, but actually it's more like a typical roller coaster. You start and end at the top of the mountain, they have a track for you to go on and then a system to pull up the cart back to the start.

It's a ski mountain in the winter, which is made obvious by the fact that the washrooms have ski stands in front of them. The hiking paths at the top are glorious; albeit full of cow pats if you step off the path. After the coaster we went a short way along one of them just to take some pictures and take in the Swiss alps around us. I couldn't stop thinking, "Heidi". I was amazed by the diversity in the plants: at first glance you might think it was all grass, but there are lots of small plants and grasses and flowers and shrubs all crowded together. Must be heathy for the cows.

The coaster stops when it rains as the metal half-tube can be unsafe when wet, so we were lucky that it wasn't quite raining at that point. It was raining off and on throughout the day. There was one point where the guy running it went around the track with a wool blanket and a sort of modified broom to squigy away some of the rain that had just fallen. The carts they give you are a bit small, so it can be scary at first, but there is a brake on them which you control so as to not go too fast. Sometimes you can go too slow however, and start a bit of a pile up. It was fun to ride, all in all. I think Tobin had the most fun. I was a little bit disappointed, but only because I had built it up in my head to be the coolest thing ever to the point where nothing in reality could really fulfil that expectation. There was a small bridge over the metal track and a path as well for people to take pictures and see their group members come speeding down.

After lunch in the back of our car consisting mostly of honeydew melon, we started back. We decided to stop at a town called Thun, because we had heard it was neat and it was right on our way. We didn't spend long in Thun, just long enough to walk around a bit, but from what I saw it was neat. There was a covered old bridge over the river running right through the middle of town, as well as lots of walkways and bicycle paths and parks and trees. I saw two swans swimming upstream right next to me; they are big, strong birds. Thun reminded me of a European Victoria. The equivalent of what we saw of Thun in Victoria could be a twenty minute walk around the tourist part of the inner harbour. So we didn't see everything, but I know enough to say that I definitely want to see more of it.

After Thun we came home and had rice and meat sauce for supper. Now I'm just sitting outside on the swingy chair finishing this blog post up, and then I'll be heading in to help clean up. We're leaving tomorrow early to start our six hour drive to Padova Italy, where a house swapper lady has offered to host us for three nights. So we will have two full days to explore Venice, and that is all we are planning to do: walk around the streets and just wonder. No expensive tourist stuff for us (although I do hope we will get some gelato at some point). We'll probably hop on a water-bus too. And we will not be there after 1pm or before 3pm: otherwise I won't be able to continue this blog because I will be burning on the sidewalk somewhere in Italy. 

 

                                          

4

Today was a pretty relaxing day. I wasn't able to blog throughout because we went swimming, and water and iPads don't mix so well. Also cause I was really busy watching YouTube. But mostly the other thing.

We went down to the water to swim, but the current is quite strong so unless you walk upstream for a bit and swim/float back, you can pretty much only wade. So I walked upstream with bare feet on the gravel path (ouch!) for awhile and rode the river back to where the rest of my family was. It's a bit tricky, because you have to be ready to swim sideways out of the current at the right time. There are some rapids just upstream from where I got in, so I wouldn't want to start any further upstream. It was nice swimming in cold water today, as it was just as hot as yesterday.

Apart from the river, all I really did was walk to the grocery store with Julias. We stocked up on staples like hackfleish (ground meat- literally hacked flesh). A lady tried to talk to me in German at the store and I had to answer in English. I'm looking forward to when we will be in France and I will be able to communicate in a language everyone there will understand. Although I've found that most people here speak at least a bit of English, enough to get by.

Jeff made a great salad for dinner with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and seasoned tuna.

Well, today was a quiet day but it was still a day in Switzerland, which makes it inherently a bit more interesting. Tomorrow should be fun, we're planning to drive to a mountain coaster. I've seen videos of people riding them (they're basically just giant slides down a mountain), and from what I can see they look amazing.

 I have no photos from today so here is a comic from theodd1sout.com