Month: September 2017

Sorry for the delay in updates for this last weekend (and yes, we still haven’t gotten the Florence pictures up).  Christine has been traveling, and I was getting ready to make the trip back to Portland.

Last weekend, we met up with Mom and Dad in Vienna.  This was their last stop before heading back to New Mexico, and my last weekend in Europe.  Vienna is pretty beautiful.  The Hapsburgs really spared no expense in making it the capital of the world at the time.  Now, granted, many of the buildings were originally built for their own use, but today they are open to the grimy masses, which was good news for us!

Mom, Dad, and I spent Friday walking around the city and ended up at the Imperial Treasury after lunch.  They have an incredible collection of treasure amassed by the Hapsburgs during their reign.  One of the most impressive pieces was a container carved from a 3,800 caret emerald.  This thing was HUGE!  After the museum, we hurried out to the Airport to meet Christine when she arrived from Berlin.  The four of us headed back to the apartment and then did some more sightseeing before realizing that it was time to eat again and most restaurants were already full for the night… oops…  We ended up at a nice Italian place, where they took pity on us and found a table.  The food was great!

Saturday, we got an impressively early start for the Franks and made our way out to the Schonbrun Palace – the Hapsburg summer residence.  This complex is amazing!  I don’t know if I have ever seen a palace on this scale, clearly money was of no concern for these people.  We walked through the grounds to the Zoo, which is the oldest in the world (this is their claim, I have not verified it).  I was really impressed by how extensive the Zoo was.  The exhibits were really nice and they had everything from horses and cows to Pandas and Koalas.  We over-stayed at the zoo, so we sprinted back to the subway station and made it to the restaurant just in time to make our reservation.  Christine and I shared a traditional Viennese dish of a pork chop in what I can only describe as a crispy, sourdough empanada.  It was quite tasty and perhaps something that we will need to try to emulate at home (when we have an oven again).  I miss having a full kitchen…

Sunday morning, Mom and Dad had an early flight, so we bid them farewell and then promptly went back to sleep for a few hours.  After waking up the second time and getting fed, we headed off to the Haus des Meeres, which is an Aquarium with a bit of a zoo flare as well (monkeys and birds in one of the habitats).  The aquarium is built in one of 6 flack towers that were constructed around Vienna to protect it from the Allies in World War Two.  The aquarium is as impressive as the Zoo, and kept us occupied for several hours.  After lunch, we headed to the Natural History Museum.  We only had an hour and a half so we were barely able to scratch the surface of this enormous collection, originally a private collection of the Hapsburgs, of course.  The minerals and gems, meteorites, and Dinosaurs were pretty excellent!  From there it was a quick trip back to the airport, and back to Zurich.  Good weekend!

Mom, Dad, and Max arrived in Zürich on Labor Day and we spent part of the day exploring the old part of the city.  Without fail, we headed for some of the local Churches.  In the words of Max, “Well, that didn’t take long.”  When in Europe with our parents (specifically the male one), there are a lot of church visits, and understandably so.  Churches are the custodians of huge amounts of history and some pretty impressive art.  So, we visited the Grossmünster and then the Fraumünster.  The later of which had some very impressive Chagall stained class windows.

Mom, Dad, and Max headed out to Grindelwald on Tuesday and had a spectacular time (no surprise).  They got further up First than we did (though they did take the tram to the top), and they went all the way up to the Jungfraujoch (the highest train station in Europe and the home of some truely spectacular views.  If I can get them to share some pictures of their trip, I will post them.

The family returned to Zürich on Friday evening, so we celebrated out reunion with a great meal at a French restaurant in the old city.  We all agreed that it was one of the best meals that we could remember having!  Saturday we got a typically Frank start and took one of the ferries down the lake to Rapperswil.  I had been there on my own a few weeks before, but it was great to share it with everyone.  The weather was a bit damp the second time around, but I think that we all enjoyed it.  The Swiss build some pretty impressive playgrounds and slides.  Dad proved that he was indeed the youngest at heart of all of us and rode the slide down the hill.  It turns out that the people we had watched go down before must have had a significantly higher coefficient of friction than Dad, because he got more than he bargained for and was expelled from the exit of the slide with quite a bit of leftover momentum, which was then promptly absorbed by the ground and is left buttock.  Fortunately, his bones are as strong as his spirit 🙂  It was nothing that a good dinner of Fondue and Raclette couldn’t fix.

Max headed back to the States on Sunday morning, and the rest of us headed for the Zürich Art Museum.  Those of you who know Christine and I, know that this is perhaps not our favorite activity, but we were pretty impressed with the collection, and I personally found some works that I would, in fact, like to have in my home… don’t worry, I am not thinking of becoming an art thief.  After a quick lunch at the museum we walked down the eastern shore of Lake Zürich to a large park with a very interesting mechanical sculpture that has a few “performances” a day.  We were able to catch the last one before heading to dinner.  It was pretty cool!  Dinner was amazing Italian food with homemade pasta cooked just right.  Are you seeing a trend here?  We Franks love good food 🙂

Mom and Dad headed to Austria this morning, but we look forward to seeing them in Vienna next weekend!

Seriously, Just WOW!

Last weekend we headed for the village of Grindelwald in the Jungfrau Region of the Alps.  The train ride was a little more interesting than the ones that we have had in the past as it required two connections, but hey, it’s Switzerland, and things are almost always on time so even a 6 minute connection is doable.  Upon our arrival at the station, we were taken to our guest hours by the mother of one of the owner’s of the house.  She was about 85 and the drive was reminiscent of the scenes of Peter Sellers driving the delivery cars down the hill (without the crashing into the pool part).  But, she got us there safely and it turns out she makes a mean Linzer Torte – so good!

I am going to keep the rest of my narrative pretty short, because the pictures can tell you so much more than I can.  Saturday was rainy with total cloud cover above 1,500m.  We did a hike up the east side of the valley to the middle tram station on the Firstbahn, and took the gondola down after some much needed coffee and time by the fire.  We walked around the town a bit (I needed a winter hat because I was downright cold), and then headed out to the bird rescue.  They had several different breeds of owls, some ravens, and another bird that we have yet to identify.  The owls and ravens were fed a pretty generous supply of chicks.  It was a little odd, yet fascinating to watch them eat (fortunately it had been a while since we had our tasty fondue lunch).  Even in the cold and cloudy weather, the valley was incredibly beautiful!  We had dinner at the guesthouse/restaurant and it was delicious!

Sunday the weather was clear, so after being dropped off at the train station and putting our big bag in a locker, we headed off on the hiking trails up along the Eiger Wall to Eigergletscher and then down to Kleine Scheidigg.  The hike was absolutely amazing!  When we got to Kleine Scheidigg we had a late lunch and some well deserved beers.  We took the train back to Grindelwald station and from there caught our connections back to Zurich.  We will have to make it back to Grindelwald some day soon.  It was just so cool!  The skiing here looks like it should also be amazing, so I think that will have to be added to the list of things to do.