Gruyeres

1 Taxi, 2 Planes, 3 Trains and 1 bus later later and we are off the Grecian Sea and into the Swiss Mountains.

It sounds pretty frightening but it really was not that bad.  We did get off to a regretful start on our first flight when we took the strong advice from the employee at the check in counter on Santorini Island and checked our two 'if all else fails we have some essentials in these bags' bags.  Checked they went.  With them went our lounge passes which were going to feed us in Athens as well as Pattis yellow folder to end all yellow folders.

This binder holds the result of the second job Patti learned in the travel industry to create this trip itinerary.  Much of it was online but all the rail schedules would need to be recalculated and some other things would be lost for good.  We had a very short layover in Athens on our way to Zurich and all we could do was pray that the bags would make it.

The fun really did begin when we arrived in Zurich. Our bags came, now we had to settle in and reserve a bunch of trains for the weeks to come.  We we sat down with Heinrich Helbrugger and he looked at the things we were trying to line up and pointed at his calender. "In your countries of travel, you there are holidays here, here and here" he said in his thick accent (think Schwartzenegger), "There are no seats".  We were terminated. 

Great!  The one train we could make was going to leave in 13 minutes and we still had much to do. So we scrambled to see if we could make a few adjustments before our train left. We figured out some workarounds but getting to Paris from the Netherlands is still in question, time will tell how that will work out. 

The kids enjoyed the trains much more than the planes. 

Riley has been working on a loose tooth for the past couple days and was hiding her efforts from the camera.  This is her expression after I finally managed to catch her in the act. 

The Swiss are renowned for the timeliness and efficiency. Even the taggers seemed to abide by this, at least many of them.  Their graffiti seemed to be sprawled mostly on concrete spaces and not in areas that conflicted with the paint or design scheme of the structure that served as their canvas.

Our first train out of Zurich failed the timing test as it arrived 26 minutes late causing us to miss our next connection with a bus that we had a whopping 4 minutes to make. We would have missed it anyway as we had not a clue where to pick it up and we got out on the wrong side of the station. A very nice woman helped us out and we were able to take a train rather then to bus to Bulle, our next connection city. 

We had a stop which was longer than 4 minutes in Bulle where we decided to walk the town rather than hang in the station. Patti was remarking that everyone, including a bus, stopped and waited for us to cross all the crosswalks even before we entered them. This is the nicest little town in the world. We found a square where it seemed everyone was eating ice cream.  Tara thought maybe it was national ice cream day.  So when in Bulle...

Our last train turned into the school bus. At the second stop along the way we went from a very quiet car to mass chaos in a matter of seconds. It was actually pretty funny. No bus driver here to calm things down although the old lady next to us yelled a few times, I suppose to keep it down, then smiled right away afterwards.

We did finally make it to Gruyere and what a neat and tiny place that was. We stayed in the old city center.  As has been typical on our travels, except the Acropolis, things were pretty quiet. 

We would have had to sell one of the children to afford to eat in a local resaurant, so we scavenged our way into a makeshift dinner.  There are no markets or even stores that sell food in this hilltop hamlet. But we were able to find some meat and Gruyeres cheese that was made right in the building we were staying in.  In fact, some past reviewers of the place we are staying complained of a cheesy smell, I wonder.  Our bread we were able to buy from a resaurant and it all came together with the borrowed knife we needed to cut our bread. We settled down to eat under a tree in the shadow of the chateau on top of the hill. 

After dinner we walked around the perimeter of the chateau. Tara, who is perpetually hungry, was gnawing on what was left of the dinner loaf. Riley commented on how unlady like that is. Tara responded "Just because I am at a castle doesn't mean I have to act like a princess". 

At 6:00 the church bells rang for about 30 minutes. It was a nice sound that filled the square. 

We had a very nice view out of the back wall of the city from windows that opened wide after Tara took the initiative to take down the curtains, rod and all. 

Patti and I left the kids for an hour or so and we wandered the now desolate town. 

We came across a herd of goats ringing their way through the hillside with their signature bells that sound a little bit like a Christmas bell choir warming up. The whole bunch of them responded when I let out a resounding MAAA!  As I understand it, sheep go BAAA, goats go MAAA and cows go MOOO. They all come running to check out the dude with the goatee making goaty sounds.

It was a great way to end one of our busiest travel days. 

We are thankful that God was willing to get us and our bags all the way through. It's funny how when you are traveling and many things have to come together keeping you constantly out of any kind of daily routine you find yourself praying about things that are not all that important in the grand scheme. I often offer these prayers when I am traveling and am at the same time comforted knowing that Gods will is always done and part of the adventure is discovering His will as it plays out.  Daily life is really like this as well.  He works all things out, but I have grown so accustomed to the routine that I often fail to see and appreciate it as I should.  It is sometimes also hard to appreciate that the will of God the Father was that His son Jesus die in my place to free me from the punishment I deserve.

Images in 2015 Gruyeres.