Crossing the Atlantic and becoming acclimatized

In Mid December 2008, Laddie and I again crossed the Big Pond.
 

Before departure at Traverse City Airport: An
airline Captain asked me if he was allowed to
shake Laddie's paw.
 

The flight was quiet and eventless. I still
fear flying, but not as badly as before my
first two trips to Switzerland.
 

The mid December weather in Walenstadt wasn't exactly inviting.
 

Lunch with Maria and Claudia. Claudia left Joerg's practice
team in November 2007 when little Yannis (right) was born.
 

Engadine I

A good week after my arrival, we drove up to the Engadine to spend Christmas in Tarasp in the Rothenbergers' almost 400 y.o. vacation home 4500 ft. above sea level.
 

Because of the holiday weekend, obviously half of Germany wanted to cross the Alps. We had to wait one and a half hours at the Vereina RR tunnel before we could board the piggyback train.  

The weather on the southern side was much better, and the last
sun rays on the peaks (here looking towards the Austrian border) sometimes were breathtaking.
 

On the way to Fontana, nicknamed "Downtown Tarasp" by Joerg, there always are horses in front of a barn in Chaposch.  
 

Tarasp Castle seen from the road between Chaposch and Fontana.
 

A woodpile, Swiss style -- a accurate as a Swiss timepiece.
The length of all logs is equal by a quarter inch.
 

Those settlements in mountainous areas often were built in the most awkward places in order not to waste precious agricultural land.
 

Trompe-l'oeuil at its best: It's all mural painting. Even the front door actually is as flat as a barn door.  
 

 Another interesting building in Fontana. The funny looking structure on the left with the little roof is an oven!

In Switzerland, there are dog poop boxes everwhere.
This is the rustic mountain chalet style version. You
tear off one of those yellow bags, scoop the poop,
tie a knot and drop the bag in the box.

Valatscha is situated right on the edge of the
steep Valatscha ravine with the narrow road
I hate so much. Around X-mas, there is no
sunlight all day.
 

I like this signpost for hikers, especially because
of the "Crap Puter." Years ago I had what Joerg
called a crap 'puter.
 

The ice sculture in the fountain across the street
from the house looks different every winter.

For months I had been looking forward to again see Marietta, our dear neighbor.
 

 Making X-mas cookies. Guess he'd like to have some.
 

X-mas cookies American style, made in the Alps.
 

Grooming Laddie in front of the fireplace. He enjoys it.
 

I do hate those roads, even those that have guard rails!
 

Guarda (which means "look out").
 

In Guarda there still is a blacksmith of the old school.
 

Guarda is a tourist trap with quite a few little souvenir stores.

Getting ready for the drive back to the Lowlands, putting on the Amish-made heavy leather harness I bought for Laddie
briefly before the trip. Joerg sometimes calls it "The Bra."
 

The dog wears it with pride, but he also prides himself upon wiggling out of it, no matter how tight the fit. That ability earned him the nickname "Houdini."
 

January in the Lowlands

There were a few snowy spells, but usually there was no snow except much higher up on the mountain peaks.
 

 
Joerg's practice and apartment is in the vermilion
building on the left.
 

 
Same place, looking a bit more north to the sunny side. No snow.

The shady side of the valley shows some snow. Laddie and I walked down to the lake almost daily.
 

 
The little harbor in hibernation.
 

Palm trees north of the Alps on the same latitude
as the middle of Lake Superior!
 

 
There are many such wooden sculptures all
over the place.
 

 
Some have them in their living room, others put them outside. The little sign says the house was built 1763.
 

On one of our walks we met Hansruedi, a.k.a. "Mr. President" of the Railroad Amateurs' Club, and Maggie, his "First Lady."
 

The lake briefly before sunrise.
 

 
Just a few minutes later.  

We spent one weekend at the 200+ y.o. farmhouse of Joerg's brother Richard and his family in Roggwil near St. Gallen City.
 

The large dining room with nice view over the back yard and neighboring orchards.
 

The tiled stove in the dining room, heated from the kitchen.

Ready for Sunday brunch.
 

Richard, Toby, Benny, Brigitte and Joerg.
 

February, first in the Lowlands

One time the father of Maria, Joerg's assistant, came for a check-up. He and I talked and talked and had a real blast, and none of us realized that he could not speak English and I could speak neither German nor Greek, so actually we were unable to understand each other, but the conversation worked great all the same. Maria cracked up when she noticed how we got along with each other.

Then there was a very nice dinner at Heinz' home in Sargans. Heinz had lived in the USA before he returned to Switzerland. The interior of his big house is mostly US style, even the X-mas decoration he had left on for me to see.
 

 
Ok, it's a silly looking photo of Heinz, but it's
the only one I shot of him. Sorry Heinz.
 

 
Docking dogs is forbidden in Switzerland, so
they cannot be called Bobtails. Even a puppy
of this breed is already an "Old English Sheepdog."
 

Santa Clauses and all sorts of paraphernalia all over the house.
Normally there are no Santas in Switzerland. After all, Saint
Nicolaus was a bishop in Asia Minor, not a fat guy from the North Pole.
 

Heinz said there were several thousand items on his tree.
 

 
Doro, although physically handicapped, is a very active woman and an avid cook.
 

 
A delicious soufflé Doro made for us.

 
Of course we raided a few stores in downtown Zurich,
even those at the RR Main Station.
This is the main concourse of the terminal.
 

   
Eckhart, an old friend of Doro, slicing a Chinese hundred-year-old egg. He is a biologist, so I guess he must know what he is doing.

We picked Aunt Dorothy up at her home in the Rhine Valley.  Here we are leaving the Heidiland core area next to the confluence of the Landquart River and the Rhine.
 

Just two miles eastwards, we are driving into the Klus Gorge, which separates the Rhine Valley from the Landquart Valley, a.k.a. Prättigau. The RR tunnel is at the upper end of the Prättigau.
 

 
The keep of Steinsberg Castle in Ardez on the way down the Engadine Valley to Tarasp.
 

 
A first glance of Tarasp from the road that leads down from Ardez into the Inn Ravine.
 

There are quite a few hairpin bends on the road from the Inn Ravine up to Tarasp.
 

 The weather was gorgeous most of the time, and it was a joy to have Aunt Dorothy with us.
 

View from the master bedroom.
 

The house of Richard and Joerg.

The little street right in front of the house.
 

Would you believe this woman is 92 years old?
 

 
Aunt Dorothy and I on the road to Aschera, the easternmost settlement of Tarasp.
 

View from the road across the Inn ravine into the Tasna valley and the Piz Cotschen range.
 

Did I ever mention Aunt Dorothy quit cross-country skiing just a few years ago? No kidding!  
 

Aunt Dorothy and Joerg inspecting a tree harvester on the road.
 

Laddie doesn't look very impressed by the forestry equipment.
 

 
On the way back to Valatscha.

One of the log trucks in the very narrow street in Valatscha.
 

Every slack minute, Aunt Dorothy played solitaire, read or did crossword puzzles.

Aunt Dorothy and Marietta, our dear neighbor, quickly became friends.
 

Marietta invited us over for lunch.
 

Aunt Dorothy stayed in touch with her four daughters over the phone.
 

She tried to teach me how to play some of her variants. We had a blast.
 

She even brought her own ingredients for her cooking!
 

One of Grandma Anna Rothenberger's cookbooks (around 1916).
 

Joerg did a lot of cooking too.
 

Of course we invited Marietta for a cheese fondue.
 

Cheese fondue is a typical winter supper.
 

The Valatscha Hen Circle.
 

For months, a young stag had been watched day by day around noon walking through Fontana, the biggest of Tarasp's settlement, where the church and the store are.

Marietta told us that a hind with two almost grown-up fawns were visiting her kitchen garden on a daily basis too. One day she came to call us when the hind and one of her calves were there. We could watch them from Marietta's living room. The animals didn't even go away when we opened the window to shoot better photos. We could watch them for about 20 minutes before they leisurely walked down to the Netzers' farm.  
 

They watched us but obviously didn't fear much. The farm house is just behind the bushes.  
 

Heavy icicles hanging from Marietta's roof.

This is the back yard of the Rothenbergers' barn.
 

An hour later: The fawn wading through the deep snow in front of the barn after feasting on some hay Arthur Netzer had put there for them.
 

The weather turned cloudier during our last days in Tarasp, but we walked a lot all the same.  
 

Fontana is what Joerg sometimes nicknames "downtown Tarasp."
 

Laddie, me and Aunt Dorothy on the little road below the castle.
 

Tarasp Castle on its steep hill.
 

A closer look at the eastern side of the castle.
 

Posing before departure.
 

Marietta and Aunt Dorothy walking up the icy street.
 

The old ladies easily did what I was afraid to do....
 

The waiting area at the Vereina tunnel is protected against avalanches by this concrete construction.
 

Boarding the piggyback train.
 

Leaving the train at the northern end of the tunnel.
 

The hankie waving ceremony has become sort of a tradition.
 

Last weeks in the Lowlands

The first weekend after our return to Walenstadt, Joerg took me to the artificial lakes in the Prealps south of Lake Zurich, big water reservoirs for hydroelectric power plants. He also wanted to show me the famous monastery of Einsiedeln, but we didn't even make it to the parking lot because we reached the monastery district right at the end of a High Mass in the baroque church, so we got stuck in what Joerg called a Catholic traffic jam.

We eventually made it to Rapperswil, a medieval town on Lake Zurich. The weather was crummy, so the photos aren't exactly breathtaking.
 

Now is this a signpost or what?  
 

Already 1500 B.C. there was a wooden bridge that crossed the narrows of Lake Zurich at Rapperswil, and there was one in the times of the Roman Empire. This is a modern reconstruction of the medieval bridge, seen from the 20th century highway and RR bridge.
 

We parked the car near the RR station. Because of the Park & Ride policy of the Swiss Government, usually there's sufficient parking space around RR stations, not exactly free but reliably available.

The medieval Castle dominates the waterfront.
 

Old hotel right on the waterfront. Guess what "Schwanen" means.
 

Here they are, the swans, right in front of the hotel.
 

A little medieval monastery next to the harbor.
 

Most parts of the town center look like
they had not been changed since the
Middle Ages.
 

 
The Rapperswil area was settled already 5000 B.C..
The town proper was founded around 1229 AD,
"relatively new," as Joerg said.
 

A beautifully decorated door, constructed 1613.
 

Wrought-iron restaurant and business signs also here.
 

Main Square in the middle of the medieval town center.
 

Laddie, wearing his Amish bra, with Richard -- or the other way round.
 

 Joerg and I cooked a Chinese dinner for them.
 

Bigitte obviously doesn't quite trust the 100-year-old egg.
 

Saying good bye for quite a long time.
 

On the last weekend before my flight back to the USA I asked Joerg to take me to Bad Ragaz ("Bad" is "bath" in English and means a spa). You may remember I was there already in spring 2007, and I liked it.
 

On the way to Bad Ragaz, looking back from Sargans to the Churfirsten range in the back yard of Walenstadt.
 

 
The castle and town church of Sargans, seen from the highway.
  

 
On the road from Sargans to Bad Ragaz in the Rhine Valley.
 

The Tamina River on its way from the deep Pfäfer Ravine through Bad Ragaz to the Rhine.
 

I thought these waterfalls (see center of the
previous photo!) were man made to attract
tourists. Joerg said if I had ever seen the inner
parts of the ravine (closed in winter) I would
understand there's no need for such gimmicks.

 
Laddie wasn't impressed by his metal mate.
   

Funny folks. Bad Ragaz is sort of a permanent open-air art gallery.
  

Sometimes it takes a second glance to tell what's art.
 

Yet another piece of whimsical art. The entire bench is cast in bronze.
 

The main entrance of the Grand Hotel Quellenhof in the spa park area.
 

 
She sure thinks she is an objet d'art too.  
 

Pretty artful too: the sign of the Wartenstein Castle Hotel on the steep road up to the Pfäfers monastery.
 

The view from the panoramic restaurant at the Wartenstein Castle Hotel down to Bad Ragaz.
 

View from that spooky road across the Rhine Valley to Meienfeld and the core area of Johanna Spyri's Heidi novel.
 

Sandra trying to protect Funny from Laddie's advances.
 

 
It was nice to have her around.
   

Last walk in the meadows behind the practice.
 

The flight back home would have been a relatively simple thing if it had not been delayed by one day because the airline bureaucrats needed a health certificate to make sure I was able to survive the trip. They thought traveling with a service dog means you must be pretty close to your expiry date. So, while Joerg was organizing the certificate, which was a mere formality and cost as just ten Swiss Francs (about $8.50), the plane to Chicago was already aloft, and we had to drive back to Walenstadt for another night.

The next day, everything went well, the airline people treated us very kindly, and Laddie and I reached our home in one piece (each).
 

Meanwhile Laddie knows where to relieve his bladder before a flight, for instance here at the bus terminal.
 

The curb area at Terminal A, where I had to check in.
 

 
It was not me who asked for this picture, it was the cabin
crew who asked me to shoot it! Laddie didn't care much, though.
 

I was treated like a queen, and this flight
attendant was particularly nice.  
 

Laddie's "big brother," my son Forrest, welcoming
us at Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City.