Month: September 2016

Joe. Ali just posted a lovely piece on today’s adventure, the Swiss Alpen Cow Parade. She kindly left out a few details with respect to the start of our trip (to spare you boredom and me humiliation), but I thought I’d fill you in.  Our day started early, with a 7:04am train out of Zurich. In the Bahnhof, we stopped at a bakery to pick up goodies for our breakfast on the train (a Swiss Family Abraham tradition!). This type of purchase is something I do several times a week, and typically involves only minimal German conversation skills. I’ve got it down. This purchase started out smoothly.  I requested 4 butter gipfli  (aka buttermondsichelfettmacher) and ein Berliner (of ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ fame). So far, so good. But then I noticed a sugar-coated goodie in the display. Needing another purchase to round out my 10 Franc lunch check, I asked the lovely Swiss lady behind the counter,  “Ist es lecker?” (translation: Is it tasty?). Her wordless response was easy to understand: “Huh?”, her face replied.  So I tried again with “Schmeckt es?” (translation: Is it delicious?). Her response ruined me: “Tut mir leid. Ich kann Englisch nicht verstehen.” (Translation: I’m sorry, you idiot American, I don’t understand English). Ouch. 

In the two months of experience I’ve chalked up so far, I’ve found the Swiss to be both tolerant and appreciative of my attempts to speak their language (though German isn’t even their language; that would be Swiss German). It was either too early in the morning, and/or too terrible a hack job, and this lady was having none of it. I tucked my tail, and my delicious pastries  (the unidentified goodie included), and headed for the train. 

After relating this story to a friend of Ali’s from UofZ later in the day, I was told of an even better episode of American foolishness. She was speaking on the phone with the doctor’s office, trying to get some help for her boyfriend who had scratched his eye badly.  In her distress, she told them, “Mein Freund kratzte sich am ei.” Now, the word for ‘eye’ in German is ‘Auge’. The word ‘ei’ is pronounced “eye” and in her haste, she blew it (in her defense, this woman’s German is spectacular). The problem: In German, ‘ei’ means both ‘egg’ (the delicious ovoid breakfast food) and ‘ball’ (as in testicle). So she was telling the doctor her boyfriend had scratched his balls.  Not exactly an emergency… 
Lecker!

Ali – At the end of the summer, the fat Alpen cows descend from the mountains to the more temperate climate of the Swiss valley. There is something about this annual trek that says ‘good excuse for beer drinking and meat on a stick!!’ to your average Swiss villager. So throughout September and October, one can train out to a small village and watch the Alpabfahrt (go ahead and get all the fart jokes out of your system… I’ll wait…). We picked Schüpfheim as our small village viewing spot. 

The plan was to train with some Austrailian friends to a mid-fahrt (giggle pause) spot and hike down with the cows to Schüpfheim. Frankly I wasn’t convinced this was the best plan, as I couldn’t think of any position in a line of cows that would make for enjoyable hiking. But who am I to be a cow party pooper? So we got off the train in Entlebuch and followed the wanderweg towards Hasle, which was listed on the brochure as the starting place for one of the cattle drives.

The lovely wanderweg led down to a river. This probably should have been our first hint that the plan had gone awry. But frankly we were having a lovely hike through a series of covered bridges and were distracted watching Maya and Orion (Austrailian buddy from school) goofball their way along. 

When we got to Hasle there was an eerie lack of cowbell noise and two guys drinking home brew out of the back of a truck. Turns out the tricky Swiss named both a town and a region Hasle. We were two hours away from the actual cattle drive start point, but luckily only 1 hour away from the endpoint at Schüpfheim. Onward!

Fast forward an hour and we have been passed by all the Swiss elderly hiking to the festival and are now arriving in the town. We wander past a Swiss swing set and enter the festive atmosphere of a village waiting for cows. Crowds were lined up on the Main Street and vendors were hawking alp cheese in various formats: chunked cheese bits, melted cheese, cheesey quiche, block of cheese, bread with cheese, etc. We parked ourselves on a curb, cracked open beers (because it was 11am and we needed something to wash down the cheese) and got ready for the parade, not knowing exactly what to expect. What followed was an auditory and visual spectacle.

First let me just say that if you are anything like me, everything you know about Swiss yodeling came from The Price Is Right game show where the little Swiss dude climbs up the mountain to yodeling music. I am now feeling a bit betrayed by Bob Barker because that’s not really what Swiss yodeling sounds like. Swiss yodeling looks and sounds like this: img_28091

Next came the alphorns. This is also a sound that is really hard to imagine or mimick on a game show. Gus, Orion’s father, called it a Swiss digerydoo, which apparently he plays because, you know, he’s Australian. Apparently there’s one basic note but you can also play the harmonics by changing your mouth shape while blowing. When you get a whole flock or gaggle or herd of alpenhorns together, the sound is truly spectacular: img_28111 tvdk52441

Finally the cows came home. I don’t know what past-life cow herder memory this evoked, but I have to admit I got a bit emotional watching the cows and herder families parade through the street. The sound of 30 cow bells resonating through the air and the sight of doe-eyed, flower -bedecked cows was stirring: img_28111. The sight and smell of 30 cows worth of poo schmeared across the street like cream cheese on a bagel evoked a different emotion and made the cheese products seem slightly less appealing.

This scene was repeated 7 times as 7 herder families made the trek down with their flowery cows, and then the industrial size street washer –  WaschSchnecken …yes, the wash snail; I kid you not – made a pass power washing the poo away with Swiss efficiency. There’s a last little fun fact that I would like to share.  Apparently Entlebuch is the official Swiss Alien Welcoming Region.  Yup.  Aliens.  Welcoming Region.  Check out this promotional video.  So take that, SETI!!  Only Swiss genius could have come up with the idea of wafting cheese aroma into space to attract aliens.

Joe: Maya and her classmate, Orion (an Ozzie!), baked two delicious desserts last night, including these awesome meringue doohickies. They taste a bit like melt-in-your-mouth roasted marshmellows. But Better!

Joe: After 9 plus years together, my brother Jon and his life partner, Sarah (aka Aunt Beautiful) got married this past weekend. A hardy “Mazel Tov!” to the both of them from the Swiss Family Abraham.  The wedding weekend consisted of three days of partying on the quaint island of Nantucket, MA. Maya had been looking forward to the wedding, and her role as junior bridesmaid, for a long time. She has also been missing her cousins, so spending time  with them  was worth using her two “Joker days” at school to boogie back to the States with me. 

Day 1. Friday morning we trammed it to the Zurich airport to catch an American Airlines flight to JFK. I tried to get us bumped up to business class, but managed only a bump to premium economy (3cm more knee room, oh boy!) on what seemed to be a perfectly preserved 1970s era jet. Though rocking the vintage angle has its merits, AA would be well-served to update their cabin interiors to modern standards…No USB ports and no entertainment system didn’t seem very premium. But the flight was uneventful, save for my fretting over how we were possibly going to make our connecting flight to Nantucket. 

We were scheduled to land in JFK terminal 8 at 1:25, and our JetBlue flight was scheduled to depart at 2:45 from terminal 5. That’s a tight connection that gave us about an hour from touchdown to do the following: Taxi, deplane, go through passport control and customs, take the AirTrain to terminal 5, go through security, and get to our gate before the boarding closed on our flight to ACK. Given that I’ve spent an hour just in the JFK passport control line in the past, I had good reason to fret. My strategy was to hassle, of course,  and to rely on our next flight being delayed.   And we made it! It took some line cutting and some spirited jogging, but we got to our JetBlue gate to find the plane had of course been delayed 15 minutes.  They hadn’t even started boarding!

A quick (but expensive!) flight later, and we arrived on Nantucket, where we were met by my sister and her family. We changed into our bathing suits in the airport bathroom, and headed directly to the beach for wedding party number 1 – Beach BBQ.

It was just great to hang out with Abraham and Greenwald family and friends.  The effort put into planning and preparing for the weekend was obvious, yet Jon, Sarah, and Sarah’s parents had nothing but warm smiles and enthusiasm for their guests. 
Day 2. Golf, Cousin-time, and more partying. Saturday mornimg, I went golfing with the boys while Maya hung out with the Kaufman cousins. I had the honor of being in a foursome with my nephew Jake who is now a bona-fide golfer. Wow. 

Day 3. The storm approaches (Wedding Day!) Though plans for a wedding on the beach were dashed by Tropical Storm Hermine, Sunday was unexpectedly beautiful – though windy. After a morning of tennis with Abe and Tito, I headed to Jon and Sarah’s house for pre-wedding prep (aka ping pong). When I arrived, I was much relieved to find Maya getting her hair done by a professional hired by Sarah. I had been dreading having to battle Maya’s hair after a weekend of beach frolicking. But while I was put at ease, it was obvious that Jon was preoccupied: He actually lost to Zach in ping pong! In Jon’s defense, he played Zach “lefty”, and the game was very close nevertheless.

The wedding itself was, of course, beautiful. The ceremony highlights were the bride (radiant!), Jon’s vows (tears everywhere!), and the fact that I got to hold my nephew Joshua during the ceremony. It felt like I was not only watching the wedding ceremony, but in fact holding a little piece of the miracle that is Jon and Sarah as husband and wife.

The wedding reception, held in a tent behind the Greenwald house, was typically elegant and casual. The clear highlight of the reception was the speeches. Mine in particular. In an impromptu maneuver, Maya twice stole the mike from me and spoke eloquently of her relationship with Uncle Jon and Aunt Beautiful. I was blown away by her poise in front of the crowd. She made me very proud.

Day 4. Monday was a tough day. For Maya and I, it meant leaving the island and all of our loved ones. For just about everyone else, it was a day of cancelled ferries and strong winds as Hermine blew over in earnest. Our day started with an 8am flight from ACK to Boston. 18 hours later, we landed in Zurich (24 hours, if you include the 6 hour time difference). Luckily, the flight accross the Pond was not full, and Maya was able to lay accross three seats and get a reasonably solid night’s sleep. Two hours and a shower later, Maya was back behind her desk at the Schule Letten.

It was way too short a trip, but our Nantucket weekend wedding adventure was otherwise fantastic. We wish Jon and Sarah all the love and happiness in the world. Maya and I thank them and their parents – Rich, Judy, David, and Carole – for so generously hosting us in ACK.

Ali – We woke up Sunday morning in Engelberg at our still lovely hotel Edelweiss. The plan was a hike followed by an overnight stay on a sailing yacht in Mühlenhorn, on the Wallensee (AirBnB lucky find #2!). The problem was which hike? I had identified 3 potential theme trail possibilities, sticking with our theme trail theme… Our theme theme as it were. We had the Bannalp Dwarf theme trail, the Wirzweli witch trail (aka the Hexenweg) or the Toggenberg Tone trail (aka Klangweg). After vigorous debate about the merits of Dwarfs, Witches and large musical instruments, we opted for the Hexenweg 20 minutes up the road. We arrived to a parking lot full of small children and baby Björn-bedecked parents, which was a strong sign that we were at the right place. We hopped on the Wirzweli gondola, growing ever more sure that we were headed the right way. At the top, signs directed us to a second gondola where we encountered a line of 60 or so parents and kids and a two small gondola cable car system with a 10 minute turn around time. My math skills quickly determined that this was going to be an untenable wait in the burning Alpen sun. Undeterred, we decided to hike up to the Hexenweg trail… I should note that by ‘we’ I mean Joe and I. Maya was not onboard. Just about the time our ears were bleeding from the incessant complaining, we reached the spooky door at the edge of the forest marking the beginning of the Hexenweg. Here, I also passed a  German language milestone: I recognized my first pun. ‘Herzliche’ means warm, as in Herzliche Grüße- warm greetings. Check out the punny sign on the Hexenweg! You get it???? You get it??? Who says the Swiss are uptight and humorless?

So I won’t go into details on the Hexenweg, which was mostly a hexendud. However there was one trail activity that made it worth the 25 CHF gondola ride, Alpen cooked skin and bleeding ears. A theme trail design genius had attached a broom to a zipline so kids could fly in witchy fashion through the trees. Brilliant! 

 

 

 

Once we finally re-emerged from the witch woods, we took a short cut down the 45 degree pitch hillside. Joe choose a running, serpentine descent while I choose a lumbering-sliding, direct descent. Maya was embarrassed by both of us and took off on her own down the regular path. She was just putting the finishing touches on a daisy chain by the time we came careening down to the bottom. The gondola took us back to the car and we got the hexen out of there!

Done with theme trails, we headed towards our evening destination: the aforementioned sailing yacht. What I didn’t mention was that the boat was named Maya.

What I also didn’t mention was that it came with a 10 year old girl named Eileen. So we arrived in Mühlenhorn and were greeted by our delightful hosts: Miriam (Swiss), Gary (Scotish) and Eileen (Swistish). We quickly became best friends and it was decided that Eileen would spend the night on the boat with us, faking illness on Monday morning so she could skip school (only Zurich has Boys Shooting Holiday).

The boat was lovely with two sleeping cabins and all the boatly amenities minus any toilet facilities as this is strictly Vorboten on Wallensee boats (but there was a toilet and shower in the marina so only a minor hardship for the weak middle-aged bladder).

 

The evening was spent swimming and drinking beer on the bow virtually childless as Eileen and Maya were tucked in their cabin, coming out only occasionally to raid the minibar. The next morning Gary and Miriam arrived with breakfast and we all sat down to a splendid feast. By the end Gary and Miriam had invited us back for sailing and scuba diving and Maya and Eileen were planning their next play date. I’m not sure one can have a more successful AirBnB experience. We headed back to Zurich and turned in our rental car, fully satisfied that we had achieved Swiss road trip excellence. Maya declared it was the best weekend yet in Switzerland. The bar has been set…

 

Ali – Maya is off of school for Knabenschiessen (as far as I can tell this translates to boys shooting holiday) Monday and Tuesday, which I only realized this past Monday. A bit of googling revealed that few weekend adventures in Europe could be cheaply planned with so little lead time leaving me with one viable option: ROAD TRIP!!!

So Sarurday morning, off Joe goes to pick up our rented compact car. He came back with a BMW kosten frei upgrade, looking quite pleased, until Maya asked why he didn’t get a Ferarri.

We headed south past Luzerne into central Switzerland for about 90 minutes, which revealed a surprising fact: the Swiss are actually mole people. This became the most logical explanation after we travelled through the 12th tunnel, at least 3 of which were plopped for no good reason along the road. Further evidence comes from the fact that the radio and GPS won’t work in the tunnels, which isn’t a problem for mole people who can’t hear anyway and navigate by smell (you can smell those Alpen cows for miles!…errr…kilometers). So obvious! The only other possibility is that some Swiss guy in the government purchasing office bought an expensive tunneling machine on Amazon after a late night schnapps binge and convinced the transportation department to make tunnels everywhere to justify the purchase. 

So we made our way to Aareschlucht or Aare Gorge in Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland area of Switzerland, on a tip from a Swiss coworker. You might recognize ‘Bernese’ as in Bernese Mountain Dog, a breed which the locals are very fond of despite the fact that it won’t bring you schnapps in a tiny barrel when you are stranded in the Alps (that’s the Saint Bernard).

Aareschlucht is the Swiss Grand Canyon, carved by a river and glaciers, and we were pretty excited to see it. The trip became even more awesome when we discovered Meiringen is the (somewhat disputed) origin of Meringue! The gift shop was like a meringue heaven with sugary egg white clouds drifting around in all shapes, colors and sizes. 

We tore ourselves away from meringue heaven and headed into the gorge. Ok I have to say it: it was gorgeous (pun intended). 100 years ago a marketing genius had the brilliant idea to fasten a walkway to the side of this natural wonder and start charging for entry. Another fun fact: the military dug huge bunkers into the gorge wall as a ‘Custar’s last stand’  precaution at the end of WWII.

 

The gorge took about 1 hour to traverse. Maya was super keen at first and then got a bit impatient, asking us why old people always took so long to look at things. I told her I wanted to see what the journey had been like for the glacier.

After Aareschlucht, we headed to Engelberg, which is one valley over from Meiringen. The drive upon entering the valley was so beautiful that a road side sign actually warned us “Augen auf die strasse!”: keep your eyes on the road, idiot driver. Our destination was the Brunni Bahn that would take us to a chair lift that would take us up to the Tickle Trail, another of Switzerland’s popular theme trails (a la Riesenwald from a couple posts back). The Tickle trail was advertised as an enjoyable sensory experience, where you kick off your hiking boots and wander around experiencing sensory bliss through your feet.

Ok flash forward and we catch an empty Bahn going up, surrounded by  glacier adorned peaks and mountain mist.

 

We catch the chair lift and hop off at this wee little lake, around which winds the trail. Like giddy schoolgirls we tore off our shoes and plunged into the first sensory delight…broken glass sharp pebbles in freezing water. Next were the needle-sharp pebbles, then the larger puncture wound stones. I think the razor blade wood slats may have been next but the searing pain in my feet made it all a bit of a blur by this point. Relief came in the big brown cesspool that was either watery cow poop or mud, but who cares as long as it wasn’t more broken glass and razor blades sensations. 

Now I should note that during this whole experience, we were surrounded by the most joy-inducing panorama one could ever hope to view.  I’m betting you could have a similar joy-pain experience by getting a massage while lying on a bed of nails if you are interested. 

We ended the day at our delightful hotel- Hotel Edelweisse– in Engelberg. This was a last minute airBnB lucky find. A fantastic 100 year old family friendly hotel in the hills of the village where the owners personally greeted us, told us the history of the hotel, and then invited us to go soak in the outdoor tub. 

Much better than the cow poo foot bath on the tickle trail.

Ali – So 1.5 months in, and I feel highly qualified to speak with pompous certitude about foreign language acquisition. 

Now I realize that most language acquisition takes place in children so you would think they would be the best authority. But let’s face it, a kid learning a language has, I think, zero self-awareness of the process. They have very little experience with capability in any subject, so being incapable is a fairly natural state of affairs. So I wouldn’t look to your average 2 year old for insight on this one. The adult learner, however, has a keen sensitivity to the process as we have spent a lot of years basking in the illusion of capability and independence. Being thrust into the world of inability and dependence for basic skills like communication and reading is discomfiting to say the least. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s an unqualified negative experience; on the contrary I have gained a deep well of empathy for ESL students and brain trauma patients. Each day is humbling as kindly language-capable folk speak slowly to me with lots of hand gestures and supportive statements. But, with the perspective of an unspecified number of decades of living, I find the challenge highly motivating. 

I think part of this feeling comes from all the times I have heard that adult language learners are doomed to failure. I think this is complete nonsense born of a failure to recognize that the way adults go about language learning is usually quite suboptimal. Compare your average adult language learning experience to that of a child. The child is totally and completely immersed in the language, surrounded by native speakers who go out of their way to use all tools at hand to convey meaning. “Look at the ball, Timmy,” says mom in a sing-song clear voice while holding a ball in front of Jimmy’s chubby face. An adult likely self- motivated to sign up for a once per week language class at a community college, getting at most 3 hours of exposure out of every 168 hours. Frankly, I would love to do the experiment of taking a non-English speaking adult foreigner and a non-English speaking baby and plopping them into the same language immersion context to see who learns the fastest. My money is totally on the adult, but sadly I’ll never get this study through the IRB. 

Further this declaration of futility probably also stems from an unreasonable definition of success, which hovers around the threshold of fluency. But functional success where one can communicate their wants and needs with caveman-like verbal skill is really all that is needed. I’ve had highly successful conversations with sales clerks and bank representatives using not more than 10 subject-verb-object combinations semi correctly ordered and conjugated. Success might also be measured based on less apparent indicators. This fantastic article about the benefits of just trying to learn a language indicates that a reasonable goal of language learning might have nothing to do with functional use of the language. Anecdotally I fully subscribe to the brain goosing effects of struggling with a language. German word order might generously be called unexpected by an English speaker (there are less generous ways to describe it). For example wenn ich Zeit hätte is if I time would have, i.e. if I had time. Or ich hätte fahren sollen is I would have to go should, i.e . I should have gone. Trying to get this Yoda-like word order right is the equivalent of mental burpies, and is the reason I have no reserve impulse control at 5pm to keep me from eating a WHOLE bar of chocolate after work. Chocolate must have! I declare as I walk in the house.

Finally I think a better point of view in language learning and everything else is to embrace learning for learning’s sake. Nothing is futile if the goal is simply to have the journey without a care for the destination. Turns out there are huge upsides to just going down the path of new skill development and we adults may be best equiped to enjoy the long hike. 

So, German learn I will! Maybe I’ll even have some impulse control in a year…..now that may be expecting too much.