From Reading/Playing

From Reading/Playing

Harry Potter

Leif has discovered the Harry Potter books at our local library (in English) and is currently working his way through the 7th one. He started the 4th book just before the ski break and has been plowing through the 600-700 page books. We have to pry him away to eat, sleep, or have a conversation with us. It's pretty amazing they can be so captivating.

Hanna read Ramona and her Mother this week and is now moving into her second 'real' chapter book. I got up this morning and saw her reading light on in her room (Hanna is generally not our early riser) and she looked up at me from her book when I poked my head in the door.

St Moritz/White Turf

We traveled to St Moritz in the Engadin region of Switzerland to see the famous horse races on the lake. It was a spectacular cold, sunny day. The train ride was an adventure of its own as the tracks wind through and around the mountains. For part of the trip we sat in the panoramic car with huge windows for the best viewing of the scenery. The horse races were quite an experience! They had to shorten most of them to 800m because of track conditions, but it was still thrilling to see the horses flying down the straightaway. The most interesting and unique race was the skikjoring where people ski in their downhill skis behind the horses as they run at full speed 2 times around the track. It looked like you had to be crazy to try it. St Moritz is filled with glamorous people in fur coats, boots and hats, so it was entertaining to people watch at the races. Leif and Hanna sat in the front seat of a Rolls Royce Phantom- there were even stars on the ceiling. On the train ride home, we overheard Elisabet pretending to have a cell phone conversation with someone and she said "oh, I'm sorry I'm busy, I have to go ride my horse in a race right now".

Ski trip to Klosters

Schools are closed for a two week ski break, so we booked a room (with 8 bunks) in Klosters and took the train with my parents (Galen and Grace), 5 bags, 3 backpacks and one set of skis. It was fairly easy to get there by taking one train to Landquart and then hopping on the famous Rhaetische Bahn rail to Klosters. We stayed in a great hotel with a large room for all of us- 8 bunks handmade by the owner, a living room, 2 showers and a trough sink with a row of 4 faucets. We were thankful for the 8th bunk the first night after Hanna managed to pick up a 12 hour stomach virus. She was recovered enough by the morning to even try some skiing, and somehow, somehow, the rest of us didn't get it. It snowed heavily all day the first day of skiing so the powder was lovely. We skied at the family resort called Madrisa (a gondola ride up to the base), and the snow kept clogging up the magic carpet on the kids run. Hanna and Elisabet enjoyed getting the feel of their skis, and even more so the hot chocolate in the lodge. We were wiped out by the end of the day because all the lifts were T bars, one taking at least 15 min to reach the top. This meant our legs never got a rest! Leif and Travis fell off the long T bar lift on one of their first runs and ended up in 2 feet of deep powder. They made it out however, and recovered enough to make a full days worth of runs. The second day of skiing we took the Gotschnabahn up to Parsenn ski resort (a gondola car of 120 people). Once at the mid-station you take a second, smaller gondola up to the next part of the mountain. The view from this mountain was spectacular, and we were not even at the top. The runs are mostly above the tree line, so it's very different from skiing in Colorado or Utah. We may have been a bit overly ambitious taking Hanna and Elisabet with us, and they spent the day between my legs or their Papas. Hanna did do a little skiing on her own on the flatter sections. By lunch the two of us had to rest our quads - if you've ever skied with a kids between your legs you know what I mean- and we left them with Nona in the lodge so we could ski up higher on our own. Leif tried out the fun park and got air on a few jumps. Travis and I skied down to Klosters on a long trail from the top while Papa and Nona took the kids down the mountain via the Parsenn bahn (a funicular train car) and the train. We skipped skiing on Sunday to go to St Moritz and see the White Turf horse races and then on Monday, our last day in Klosters we went back to Madrisa where Hanna spent the day teaching herself how to turn and navigate the "gates" on the kids' slope, Elisabet practiced her turns the pizza wedge, and Leif went to the top of the mountain and skied down from the long T bar lift several times. We took the gondola down and the bus back to Klosters, turned in our equipment at the rental store, picked up some snacks at the Co-op, and boarded the 17:32 train back to Zürich. By 8:15pm, we were in our apartment.

Zeppelin Museum

After our disappointing Saturday, we made plans to take a train to northern Switzerland and the town of Romanshorn on Bodensee. There we could take a ferry across the lake to the German town of Friedrichshafen. While exploring the train on the way, the kids discovered that some of the trains have a kids play car with a mini playground (slide, climbing structure). We got to Romanshorn around lunchtime and found that the station was closed from 11-12:20 for a lunch break so we got some food in the Coop market and huddled in the shelter to eat while we waited for the ferry. The ferry ride was about 45 min across to Germany and Leif and Travis spent much of it outside in the cold and wind, watching the waves and looking for interesting birds. Elisabet and Hanna and I stayed in the warm inside dining room, drinking hot chocolate and eating a snack. The only thing open in Friedrichshafen on Sundays is the Zeppelin museum- they barely glanced at our passports when we disembarked the ferry. We learned about the failed transportation airships. They were unbelievably huge and they had a replica of the Hindenberg inside the museum. The main reason they didn't last was that they could never make a profit for the number of passengers or the transport of goods on the airships. And it didn't help when the Hindenberg exploded as it was landing near New York, killing some of the crew and passengers on board. The Nazis used the airships to distribute propaganda during WWII, dropping leaflets from the sky as they floated over towns and villages. On our return trip to Zürich we sat in the play car and the kids spent the entire hour running around with the other children, laughing and screaming as they played games on the slide. Despite the communication barrier, they seemed to be able to come up with several games together. And they were nice and exhausted by the time we got home. It had been a snowy day so the views were not very good, but still interesting to see the countryside from the train windows. I ran in the morning and found that at least 3-4 inches of snow had fallen a bit higher up on the hill from our apartment (compared to our 1 inch) and it was magical running in the quiet streets with huge, wet, fat snowflakes falling thickly to the ground. We're looking forward to a visit from my parents starting tomorrow morning and we will travel to the resorts in Klosters and Davos Switzerland for some skiing and maybe sledding. The kids have a two week ski break which started Monday. Such a rough life!

A failed expedition

Saturday morning we woke up and made a plan to go to St Moritz- a resort town in southwestern Switzerland to see the horse races on Lake Engadin. It's supposed to be quite a sight! We made a hotel reservation for the night, packed up our bags and headed for the train station after lunch. When we tried to buy tickets, they told us that they could not guarantee our getting there by the night because it was snowing so hard in the pass that the trains were not allowed on a section of track in the mountains. They had sent people on their ski vacation, hoping to take them via an alternative route, which was now also closed, and now the buses going around the closure were filled to capacity and it might mean a very long wait. The kids were pretty disappointed (and so were we) that we had to return to our apartment, lugging our bags behind us, the only adventure being spending an hour in the main Zürich train station. Hopefully we'll be able to make it to the races either this weekend or the next. Travis was wanting to see how they raced on skis with the horses (skikjoring with a horse!!). They also hold a major nordic ski marathon around the lake in March, so we will try to get there for that event as well.

Weekend Excursions

On Saturday we spend the afternoon at the Zürich Zoo. Most of the outside exhibits were closed, but they have a fabulous Madagascar Rainforest exhibit with large tortoises (one of which Travis put in the CT last week at the Tierspital), fruit bats, monkeys, and birds. The trees and plants growing in the exhibit were amazing and it was hot and humid inside, a wonderful feeling compared to the biting wind outside. The humidity was so high that Leif's glasses were fogged up for several minutes when we stepped inside and occasionally water dripped off the leaves from above. We also spent time exploring the an amphibian exhibit with a large collection of poisonous frogs- spectacular in their bright yellow, blue and red colors. Another highlight were the weeks-old tiny marmoset babies on the back of their mother in a tree. They also had a newborn sloth and another monkey pair with a baby born in January. When the zoo closed at 5pm we went to a nearby pizza restaurant and had dinner. So far most of the places we've eaten have had pizza and pasta (perhaps the proximity to Italy influences their love of their food). The pizzas are thin and individually sized, typically topped with mushrooms and proscuitto. We were joined at our table by a couple and their 2 1/2 year old daughter. The woman spoke English very well and gave us some tips on meeting people in the city. Then we decided to walk down the hill through the forest to our apartment. It was dark, and a little bit icy on the trails, but still and beautiful. Elisabet held by hand and chatted to me the entire time. I accidently took us a little out of our way (there are TONS of trails winding through the forest and I've run on a few of them) so we walked for about an hour to get home. I think it we take a more direct route we could do it in 30 minutes or so. Amazingly, no one complained about all the walking- I'm sure it helped that it was mostly all downhill.

This weekend we also took a trip to a town on the other end of Zürichsee called Rapperswil. The town has a section which is closed off to cars and has a castle from the 1200s and a wooden bridge that stretches across the lake. The castle was bought and restored by a Polish count and has a Polish museum inside. Leif was hoping to learn about knights and medieval armor, but most of the museum was about the German and Russian invasions of Poland in the 20th century. Still, there were a few cases with swords and guns to keep him interested.

The snow started falling steadily in the afternoon while we were out walking on the wooden bridge. We were excited to see some interesting water birds such as the pochard, goosander, red-headed pochard, and even the exotic Mandarin duck (from E. Asia).