Month: December 2016

Ali – For winter break, we teamed up with the Kaufmans (Joe’s sister Paula, her husband Adam and their three kids age 4,7 and 8) to plan a European adventure. I was game for heading to any new foreign land. Paula had her sights on Italy, as the Abraham family lore had it that mom and pop Abraham had the best time of their lives in the Dolemites of Northern Italy (Side note: mom and pop Abraham left their 3 kids at home for that trip, which means they could have been in Northern Jersey and had the best time of their lives). So, after the Kaufmans hung out for a week in Zurich and Adam fixed all of our broken appliances, we hopped on an early morning flight to Venice and rented a minivan that could fit 8 for the 2 hour ride into the mountains. I immediately became the least favorite aunt when I banished the little kids to the third row, taking both a philosophical as well as a physiological stand regarding where car sickness prone adults should get to sit. 

Since it was Christmas Eve, I had it from an Italian colleague that we should do grocery shopping in the Venice area before heading into the rural hinterlands, as food would be scarce until after the holiday. So we pulled off for a grocery run. Adam guarded the van full of luggage from the maurading bands of luggage Mafia while the rest of the crew descended upon unsuspecting Italian shoppers. We piled our carts with ridiculous mountains of food including a bag of lentils that 9 year old Max insisted he loved and tried not to act gleeful when the total was a mere 260 Euros. One of the kids loudly remarked how cheap it was and Paula felt obliged to tell him that 260 Euros was a lot of money, throwing herself into the part of an American mother of only modest means suddenly plopped in Italy for her non-English speaking audience.  

Back on the road and keeping a one pee stop per 30 minute pace, we arrived at our AirBnB in Peaio, a small town about 10 minutes from the world famous Cortina D’Ampezzo.Cortina is exactly what you would picture if I said ‘imagine an Italian village filled with tourists in expensive ski gear’. If you needed skis, ski gear, fashionable clothing (Orange fur sleeveless tunic anyone?) or smoked meat products, you were in business. Anything else was harder to find. 

We strolled through town on the hunt for ski rentals and info about where to ski with 4 children and 4 adults ranging in skill from first-timer to expert. Bear in mind there was zero natural snow to be had anywhere in this world famous ski area thanks to global warming, but you would never know it looking at the abundance of snow outfits.  We soon found the hot chocolate stand, which served a variety of chocolate caldo that was more akin to hot chocolate pudding than a beverage. Even the kids said it was too rich after a half a cup of Liquid Diabetes. 

The next day we did a bit of touring, heading to a famous lake called Pragser Wildsee just off the Austrian border. The lake looked to be completely frozen and folk were skating around with and without skates. Paula had the ambitious goal of walking around the lake on the hiking path but the kids were more keen on the novel experience of walking on the lake surface. So I did what any fun and negligent aunt would do… ignored the concerned look of their mom and marched them across the frozen lake surface with Joe leading as our designated ice thickness tester. 

The excursion brought out the true nature of each child.  Maya and Max, being rather sensible children, expressed concern over the foolishness of the endeavor and urged us to turn back. When I said to Max, “Max, we can’t turn back. We may never get to do this again!”he said,”You are right. We will NEVER do this again.” Aaron, being risk-insensitive and unable to hear the lower pitch of adult voices, kept running out ahead of our designated ice-tester, taking over the job by falling hard on the slippery surface every few feet. 

To end your suspense I can report we all lived and nobody cracked their head open on the ice or cried, defying Paula’s prediction on both accounts. We celebrated with hot chocolate and cake. 

The next day we hit the slopes at Socrepes, the family-oriented ski area. About half the runs were open with several tanker trucks worth of man-made snow spread like cream cheese over narrow strips of the mountain. It was down right balmy and we all stripped off the normally necessary ski layers. Joe, Max, Maya and I took off to the upper slopes since we were all semi seasoned skiers. A couple things I learned: 1) warm weather skiing is quite enjoyable; 2) the first run of the day with rental gear should not be done on the hardest slope; 3) there should be 1 adult per child skiing behind to pick up all the lost gear; 4) if you forget about 3 then Italians are very helpful on the slopes and will re-cloth and re-gear your child for you. The skiing ended up being a highlight despite the warm climate and Socrepes avoided being called SoCrappies forevermore in Abraham vacation tales. 

We soon left the Dolemites for Venice. We had a VRBO “artist loft” rental right next to Piazza San Marco –  artist loft being code for funky/quirky/semi-functional. The adults had all been to Venice 10 to 20 years prior,but for the kids it was all new and enchanting starting with the waterbus. 

The first thing the parents noticed was the abundance of shops with shiny highly breakable glass objects, making them irresistible for kids and a thrilling game of Chance for the parents. The first thing the kids noticed was the stinkiness of the canals, which concerned them as we were booked on a gondola ride. Luckily I had my minty chapstick, which they all shoved up their noses. 

The gondola ride was a huge hit with the kids. Our very nice Gondoleer sarenaded us and told us stories of Venice. He refused to let me row but at least showed me how they can steer these immense boats with such precision through the canals. When the kids asked if he had ever hit his head on a bridge he said no, but he once had a full-figured passenger shift position and send him into the very cold and stinky canal water. 

Most of our time in Venice we spent just wandering through the maze of a city, thanking the tech gods every 5 minutes for creating Google maps.  There are no cars but  hundreds of bridges and small streets. Around every corner is some new delight, like the wonderful paticerria where we stopped for espresso and sweets. It truly is the most beautiful place. 

 Today we said goodbye to the Kaufmans who caught an early flight to London. It was probably for the best as Adam’s spine took a beating carrying 5 year old Josie around Venice. Here he is in a moment of spiritual defeat questioning his life choices:

The Abraham family is currently doing a remake of the movie ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ by taking a waterbus to the train station where we catch a train to Milan to another train to the airport to our flight to Madrid. That’s what European travel looks like when you don’t book ahead during the holidays. Anyway we are looking forward to the Spanish portion of our vacation, though I am concerned about the severity of my Tiramisu withdrawals. 

Ali – Before we left the US, we told all our friends and neighbors they should come to Europe and we’ll meet them wherever they land. This was a bold declaration and we probably said it a bit like you would say, “Let’s get together again soon!” while leaving your 20-year highschool reunion to the guy at your table who’s name you can’t remember. However we were actually called to account for this promise when the Colemans contacted us two weeks ago and said they were headed to London for Winter break. 

I managed to find an AirBnB right around the corner from where they were staying in the Putney area of London that was supposedly a “rare find” as “Ben’s place is usually booked”. So I took that as a sign that we were meant to go and made the reservation for Friday and Saturday night. Next we needed plane tickets, which we found on the bare bones European airline EasyJet, but the only option was flying in and out of London Luton Airport. If you have never heard of London Luton, let me assure you there is a good reason, which became apparent to us later in our adventure…stay tuned. 

So we made the bold decision to pull Maya out of school for half a day and caught our 4:00 pm flight, arriving in Luton 2 hours later (for reference that’s 5pm London time). Then, after using three different transportation systems, getting kicked off one train for no apparent reason, and almost losing Maya behind the closing doors of a departing train, we arrived in Putney…around 8pm. Yea. 3 hours later. 

Our delightful host, Ben, met us outside the flat, and he was privy to the blow by blow travel saga, as I updated him at every turn. The first thing he said was, “Yea, I didn’t want to crush your soul when you said you were flying into LTN and tell you what a wanker that trip would be.”  Ah well what’s a little soul sucking. We were finally in London! 

The next morning we went out touring in London while we waited for the Colemans to arrive. I imagine London is absolutely lovely as seen from our 6th floor flat….if one could just see through the pea soup that they use for air.We also went to the nearby Thames, which may or may not be a lovely river. Intrepid rowers were being very British and rowing blindly along, headless of whatever large object may be just ahead hidden in the fog (boat, bridge, shore, dinosaur…)

We wandered through some markets, giggling and crying at the ‘cheap’ food. “Look Joe! Only 2 pounds for a brownie??? They are giving this sh!t away!!” Clearly living in Zurich has slightly skewed our sense of reasonable pricing.  
At last we got the word that the Colemans were approaching and ran to the train station to surprise them, which we bungled, disqualifying ourselves from doing any spy work for MI-5.  

After the Colemans settled into their BnB, we headed out to our planned activity: the Hop on hop off bus and the London Eye. Pam Coleman had booked it all through Get Your Guide, which we used a lot in Paris and found to have a bit of shady quality when it came to details about how to turn your app-based confirmation of purchase into an actual tour. We ended up on a lovely walking tour through half of London chasing down the elusive Hop on Hop off app voucher redeemer, who seemed to have just left each new spot where we were told at the last spot we would find him. It was the crappiest yet most fun scavenger hunt ever. 

At last a Hop on Hop off bus driver took pity on us and let us on the bus, which was absolutely awesome. I highly recommend the convertible, double decker tour bus in London at night in winter. We had the whole open air arctic tour experience to ourselves because what other nutjob tourists would sit there when there was a perfectly good bus interior?

Eventually we hopped off the Hop On Hop Off bus -which is the other part of the experience according to the name- and headed to the London Eye. Now again, our Get Your Guide voucher was pretty shady and so it wasn’t clear when we got to the ticket booth what exactly they were going to let us do. After a manager was called over to examine our documentation and told us he had never seen the like, he gave us our tickets and we zoomed through a surprisingly short line. The London Eye did not disappoint. 

Finally we decided to head back to Putney for dinner and bed. The Abraham clan had an early trek back to Luton and the Colemans had a bus ride to Stonehenge. 

The next morning we said goodbye to our cozy airBnB and headed to train number one. Alas, there was a worker strike going on, and our train was replaced with a bus, which arrived at the next stop too late for us to catch train number two. The unsympathetic employee at the service desk said it would be two hours before the next train. At that point we gave up on the London train system and opted for Uber. One could really see on the Uber map how bloody far away Luton was and the 80 pound Uber fare was indeed soul sucking. 

At last we made our plane, this time with bare bones Veuling Airlines, and all was well…until Joe started experiencing intestinal distress at 20,000 feet. Guess left over Indian food for breakfast may not have been the best idea.

When we got back to Zurich there was a letter from Maya’s school letting us know that Maya wasn’t in school for half a day on Friday and that her irresponsible parents should do a better job of letting the school know when they plan to neglect her education. Now that’s Swiss efficiency!

Ali- You know how sometimes you think something it pretty good and then one day you find out that what you always thought was pretty good was actually sort of crappy? 

So I always thought that America was pretty serious about Christmas. I mean there are Christmas trees up in malls in November and what neighborhood doesn’t have at least a couple blindingly festive homes. Well now I know that America is a Christmas lightweight. Europe has taken it to the next level. 

First there are the ubiquitous Christmas markets. These are month-long outdoor markets with vendors hocking every conceivable item or food out of quaint little wooden shacks. You can also get every beverage known to man in a mulled preparation so you have something hot and often boozy to hold while wandering through the miles of wares. 

As evening falls these things light up like supernova with simulated LED icecicles and snowflakes. Folk in Colmar-our first Christmas market experience- really got into it. It looked like a toy tsunami hit the town and dumped stuffed animals on every window ledge. 

Zurich has three Christmas markets or Weihnachtmarkt that I have seen and I’ve heard reports of several others. The Hauptbahnhof has quite a nice one with a fantastically magical tree and fantastically expensive gifts for the whole family. We couldn’t resist getting a bottle of Chai liquor, which we can put in our coffee in the morning to avoid having to choose between coffee, tea or booze.

All of 500 feet further down the road is a second Weihnachtmarkt with the “singing Christmas tree”. This is a giant tiered stage that they have decked out to look like a tree and they have small elfish children come sing in it on every hour. I know you think I’m making this up but I have photographic proof.

And while you listen to the dulcet tones of freezing children singing, you can eat buckets of melted cheese at the Rachlette Hüsli or potatoes at the Kartoffel Hüsli. 

There’s plenty of mulled beverages here as well and, in fact, I’m guessing the children up in the singing tree probably get quite a buzz off the alcohol fumes wafting skyward. 

Every night, besides the Christmas Markets, there are festive events. Tonight was the Weihnachten run, where a large number of runners do laps around the Limmat in central Zurich. If that’s not enough you will find that every third person you meet is dressed up as either Saint Nikolaus a.k.a Samichlause (who IS NOT Santa Clause) or Baby Jesus, who comes looking like a woman with wings and gives gifts (really…I am not creative enough to make this stuff up). 

There is also a very weird character  called Schmutzli (loosely translated as dirty guy), who is the guy that accompanies Saint Nikolaus and doles out the punishment to the naughty kids. 

Now in Zurich you can actually order on the web a Samichlaus to come to your home for varying amounts of cash depending upon the number of kids to be visited. The order requires you to fill out and incredibly intrusive survey about your home life. Again I’m actually not making this up even though it seems like the plot for Home Alone 5. In case you were wondering, no we did not order a Samichlaus.

Well I have to say that America will have to get its act together. They are way behind on festiveness and we still have the Parade of the Samichlauses and the lighted boat launch down the Limmat in the days ahead. The latter event involves school children setting paper boats on fire. If that doesn’t make your soul cry Christmas! you are obviously dead.