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!