This Crazy Life

Yeah, it's been crazy. We're in a state of financial recovery, but we're also bouncing around as if traveling was our job. Traveling is our rent, actually, and our jobs just keep traveling with us - thank goodness. We're getting back into the swing of things, you could say. Much of the summer was spent in Zurich, with a couple of interludes.

For two weeks at the end of July we went to Vienna to cat and house sit for friends. The train was fast and they even showed us how fast. Might be our favorite long-distance train in Europe.

It was so hot in Vienna I can't describe anything else about the city. I can't wait to go back, though. Good friends, old and new, live there and it took us too long to get there.

Stephansdom, Vienna

Anker clock, Vienna, with its moving people

And then at the end of August we had a house sit for about 10 days in the French Alps, not far from Geneva, on a farm. The French Alps... well, mountains are stunning.

French Alps farm sitting is good

Le Bargy, Mont-Saxonnex

Mont Blanc from the train. Now we know how it got it's name - Sept and the only white thing around...

Then we went back to Zurich for the first 10 days of September, staying with friends, and I went on a camping trip to another stunning mountain setting.

Klöntal - photos don't do this place justice

Some very muddy kiddos. It was a good trip.

We are currently in Norway back where we were after that first summer of bicycle touring. Talk about stunning. When we're here it feels like everything else is far away and only the here and now is relevant. Two weeks fjord-side eating way too healthily, playing with kids who still love us (even though they haven't seen us for two years), and catching up with old friends.

it was Christmas / the king's birthday and they made a feast

apple season

Joshua adjusts the brakes with a little help

fjord view

Give a kid a camera... and they'll get a hilarious photo of Ramona and Joshua together.

And now a 10 day house sit outside of Lillehammer, on the side of a huge valley. The scale in Norway is just bigger. The weather, chillier. I've picked up the knitting again. We light fires in the wood stove to keep warm.

Fall

Well, early fall

Our charge, Bryan, who has to be tempted into a walk up the hill with treats every 10m or so.

Next stop will be more fun with friends in Amsterdam (with a side-trip to Berlin for my first round of check-ups). Then a house sit in Czech Republic. Then back to Vienna and surrounds for about ten days. We're alternating visits with friends with the house sits we could gather during Sept-Nov.

But at the beginning of December things will calm down again - 4 months in one place! We're really looking forward to that. Yes traveling is good, visiting friends is fun and filled with love, seeing new places is refreshing. But it's also expensive to bounce around and we didn't exactly have the cheapest winter and spring this year.

This is the life. Like any other life it has its ups and downs. Like any other life, I am currently procrastinating because I have work to do, but plenty of time, and I don't feel like working. A normal case of the Mondays. Maybe Bryan needs a walk.

View from this week's "office", top outdoor temps in the range of 10C.

Tour-ism

My sister came to visit! My sister came to visit!

We're back in Zürich, one of our favorite cities in one of our favorite countries, and I finally got to share it all with my sister. It was a whirlwind trip that included a lot of swimming in very cold rivers and lakes, hiking in the Alps, beautiful sunny days, hanging with good friends, eating cake, and of course bicycle touring.

With all the fun, we only had time for a four day tour, which we maximized by taking the train out and riding the bikes back. We did a route (in reverse) that Joshua and I did last year. We also gave ourselves plenty of time to explore in non-bike touring ways. Last year we did the same distance plus an additional 15kms in only two days. This year we did it in four, doing about 30kms per day and going downhill rather than up. So. Tour-ism, here we go.

I don't think they mean it.

We rode from Lungern to Sarnen on day 1 after our train ride, which included the first stage of the Brunigpass climb - going down was really spectacular. That evening at the campsite we made the mistake of setting up next to some kids who stayed up late smoking their hookah and giggling. Corina actually asked them to be quiet, and then said she felt really old. Welcome to the club. I was very grateful that they quieted down, and it was funny to watch them wake up the next morning looking grumpy and poorly slept. Corina swam in the afternoon when we arrived and the next morning. I wimped out. So coooold!


We followed route 9 east and north, and made some friends along the way.

they made cute faces, but didn't want to eat the flowers Corina offered to them

swans tip their rear-ends straight into the air and eat off the bottom, apparently

this is an airport runway crossing - the bike path goes across an airport

what it looks like in the middle of an airport runway

On the second day we made it to Horw, just south of Luzern.

along the lake there's the best bike path. okay, they're all the best. this is Switzerland.

And here we decided that it was worth our while to go up to see Pilatus for ourselves. We went for a swim in the afternoon and sat around giggling about our camping neighbors, but decided that if we were up early enough the next morning, we'd go see Pilatus. This is one of the first dramatic mountains you see as you head south, and last year I became kind of obsessed, saying the name over and over again as we rode around and away from it - you can see the peak for a long time when you're touring through the valleys around Pilatus.

We got up relatively early, took our bikes to the Luzern train station, locked them up, put our bags in a locker, and bought ourselves a round-trip ticket - up on the Pilatus Bahn, which is the steepest train in the world at a 48% grade (so they say), and down on the other side by cable car and ski lift. Little did we know what the view would be like from up there.

pretty steep tracks

at the bottom 

uh

getting more dramatic

cows!

oh right, mountains.

and an alpine horn 

you can climb a bit higher and see the full view

of the hotel and restaurant near the top

this guy with his pipe and beer. pretty sure he hiked up.

the flowers were incredible

The pictures do not do the view justice. The mountains were fully visible when we got up there, which isn't always the case. Even before we left, small clouds started to form around Pilatus and on the cable car down we went through clouds. It's just so moist here and with the temperatures in the mid-20s C (high 70s F), all that water just floats up and turns into clouds.

The same day as we did the whole magical Pilatus journey, we rode our bikes almost to Zug. More swimming, thank you very much.

The following morning we spent a bit of time wandering around Zug, which is a lovely little city. We did some tourist shop shopping and one of the shop owners gave us a key to the clock tower, so we could hang out and see the view while she gift-wrapped the things Corina bought. Then we headed back towards Zürich and unfortunately disaster struck.

Corina's iPhone? Gone. She probably had all the good pictures, sadly, and although we did our best, the iPhone is still missing. It's official, I need a new camera - my pictures are not enough. If it was going to be returned anywhere, it'd be in Switzerland, so we're keeping our fingers crossed. 

We rode back into Zürich, unpacked, and then packed back up so we could head into the Alps for some serious hiking with our good friends Thomas and Emily. With the views from Pilatus in mind, we were looking forward to getting a closer look.

Here are our bikes

The bikes! They arrived! And they were professionally packed, which makes a huge difference. The pedals were in bubble wrap in their own small cardboard boxes. Sadly, the front racks and fenders had been removed, which is a whole different kind of fun bike project. Ah, well, not a big deal, considering that nothing was broken. Huge thank you to Sandy on Menorca for getting these packed and shipped for us. Yay!

Yesterday, we went on a family bike trip to the grocery store. A dad, his two year old in a trailer, 5 year old on his own bike, me and Joshua. It was glorious.

Back on Track

Okay, maybe not entirely back on track. Once we have our bikes perhaps we'll be back on track. So where are our bicycles? We don't even know at the moment.

The saga started with leaving them on Menorca, where we expected to return after our trip to the US in Dec/Jan. Then there was the whole cancer thing, which derailed us and sent us to Berlin for 5 months. Thankfully, our hostess on Menorca could ship everything we left to Berlin. But we decided to wait for the bikes because we weren't exactly going to be using them in -6 C weather. When it got a bit warmer, and we made other plans to leave Berlin, our house sitting luck turned us back toward Zurich. So we decided that to bring the bikes to Berlin and then schlep them on the train to Zurich was unnecessary. Just ship them to Zurich, right?

Trying to get quotes was not easy, since we were not there with the bikes. We tried Bike Flights and High Country Shipping, as well as FedEx. FedEx was very expensive, High Country was a bit less expensive, and Bike Flights gave us an initial quote of $150 per bike (very reasonable) but then I never heard back from them to finalize. Meanwhile, on Menorca, there are two shipping companies that were willing to ship the bikes. Our hostess went above and beyond the call of duty to get the bikes packaged at a bike shop and then tried to get quotes from the shipping companies. The first company gave a very high quote, but the second had more reasonable rates. They seemed a bit confused, however, and gave her a rate that is only for within Spain. In her words, "Don't think there's anywhere in Spain that you spell Zurich. oh well, we can't all be brains!"

After a few more exciting hiccups - like the requirement of a scanned version of my passport - they finally shipped the bikes last Monday. So they'll arrive just before we do, most likely. It's really going to be awesome if they arrive in good condition and the Swiss authorities understand that we're just bringing them in temporarily, not importing them. The law is that we don't have to pay taxes, but you just never know. We can't all be brains, even in Switzerland.

In the end, we had to pay roughly €350 for both bikes to be boxed and shipped. Not too bad, but a fortune by our current standards. Still way better than replacing those bikes. Unfortunately that doesn't include much insurance. Please let the shippers be cyclists.

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Besides bicycle drama and medical drama, we've had a bit of lovely travel, too. Recovery took us to SW France to visit our friends, who we spent time with and house sat for a couple of winters ago. There we did a lot of walking, Joshua started running again, and we both appreciated the advantages of a life in the country. City life is not for us. It's good to have good friends in the French countryside.

And now we're having a lovely visit with other friends who we house sat for last summer, out in Saxony. Despite the flooding, we made it out here. Had to take a different train route and as we were waiting for the second leg on the platform, Joshua realized he'd left one bag on the previous train. The bag with our keyboards in it. The bag with his power cable and many other valuable things. The bag with the mint plant gift. The bag with the iPad. He looked at me, handed me the phone and said, "can you help me while I freak out for a minute?'

We called our friends, and they said we'd probably have to wait until it made it to lost and found in Dresden. But while we got on the next train and then took a bus to our final stop, our friends talked to a co-worker whose other friend lives at the last stop of that particular train at the Polish border. That friend called another friend, who got to the station just as the train pulled in, jumped on board, and grabbed the bag for us. I tell you, it's good to have good friends.

We've just got a few days here, then we take the night train to Zurich as long as it doesn't rain again and wash away the rest of Bavaria. Two months in Zurich, split in the middle by a visit with my sister and a trip to the Alps with other very good friends. And hopefully we'll have some bikey things to write about in just a week or two.