First Week in Switzerland

Monday morning we woke up to a beautiful day in Switzerland! We arrived after dark Sunday night so we had our first look at the mountains in the morning! Wow! It’s enough to take your breath away! We are on the side of a mountain about half way up at about 4100 feet, the peak of the mountain is about 8280 feet. We are staying in a 3 bedroom cabin in the forest! We open our windows in the morning and have a 360 degree view of the Swiss Alps! (Our house is the one with the red shutters, you can see the ski lift going up the mountain and see the mountain view)We enjoyed the change of scenery from the Netherlands where everything was flat. We also enjoyed having a little more space and in a house not an apartment! We enjoy the beautiful weather and could play outside all day. There is a gondola ride that goes right by our house. The kids and I took a ride to the top where there is a playground and enjoyed the mountain views. This is the most beautiful place I have ever been, and we get to live here for a couple weeks! Brett is working out of the Zurich Switzerland Intel site while we are here.
Tuesday we woke up to a cold and cloudy day. We couldn’t see the mountains anymore since we were in the clouds! This weather continued for the rest of the week. The highs were in the 40’s and it rained for a few days, the tops of the mountains got lots of snow. I guess this weather is unusual for this time of year, but I don’t think I would want to live here through the winter. (This picture is our mountains after the snow)We went down the mountain into town to get some food, unfortunately the grocery stores were all closed so we had dinner at McDonalds and realized that Switzerland is just as expensive as England! We thought it would be cheaper because the dollar is worth more than the Swiss Frank but they just mark their prices way up. Our $1 menu items are 2.50CHF here. Big Mac meal was like 12CHF about $10! We ate for about the same price at a nice restaurant in Germany.
I drove down the mountain the next day to go to the grocery store and had another shock as I bought groceries, things are very expensive here much like England! The drive up and down our mountain is gorgeous! There is a huge mountain on the other side of our mountain with a bright green valley down below. The weather down in the valley is about 10 degrees warmer. There are waterfalls everywhere, from the snow melting at the top and descending all the way down to the river in the valley.
We enjoy hiking around our house there are a couple nice mountain trails, we all enjoy the outdoors especially when the weather is nice. Alana is becoming quite the hiker, she loves it and always wants to walk fast and be the leader. I put Allden in the back pack and he loves to be outside.
Saturday we were excited to see the sun shining and headed out to enjoy the other sites in Switzerland. We drove about 3 hrs to Interlaken. It is a town between 2 lakes in the foothills of the Alps. The water was a gorgeous turquoise blue color with green everywhere! In the background is the Jungfrau mountains, one of the Alps’ most famous peaks, it is 13,642 ft. The mountains are full of pretty alpine valleys and villages. We had a picnic lunch in a green valley with a waterfall nearby and the tall mountains in the background! This must be as good as it gets! We took a train ride up to the top of the Jungfrau mountain to a viewpoint at the top of the mountain. It’s called the “Top of Europe”. The panoramic train ride was magnificent, but quite expensive. The weather was perfect, with blue sky’s perfect for a view at the top. The first part of the journey was to Kleine Scheidegg, about halfway up at 6762 ft.
Here we had to change trains, there was a bit of snow here and the scenery was beautiful. The train then makes its way through tunnels cut through the mountains. We stopped occasionally to look out and admire the glaciers. We finally arrived at the Top of Europe Station at 11,329 ft. This is the highest railway station in Europe, the construction of the railway took 16 years to complete. We took a lift to the top of the viewing station and looked around. This mountain has “eternal snow.” The kids were excited about the snow for about 5 minutes until they got cold. They had icicles hanging off the side of the building and it was -5 degrees C. We walked out in the snow for a few minutes and took a couple pictures, the views were breathtaking! They also had an Ice Palace which was a huge glacier that they carved a tunnel through and the walls and floor were all solid ice. There were several ice sculptures that we saw. Allden didn’t like the cold at all and the girls were ready to get back in the warm train. This was a neat experience and we really enjoyed the day. That night we stayed in a hotel near Bern.
Sunday morning we went to church in Bern, right next to the Bern Switzerland temple. This was the first temple in Europe. The meeting was in German so we didn’t understand much but the kids were excited to go to Primary and nursery so we stayed, their teachers spoke English. We had the missionary’s translate for us.
After church we took a scenic drive along the Sustenpass through the mountains. This place is gorgeous! Then we drove down through Lucerne, the green countryside and crystal clear blue lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains is amazing! We had dinner sitting by the lake with Swans swimming around, I think this is the most beautiful place we have ever had dinner!
We are having so much fun in Switzerland! I know our pictures don’t do this place justice-you will just have to see it for yourself!