Ali- Last Saturday our Baltimore buddies, Lorie and Jackie, arrived in Zurich, having found a budget round trip airfare that required a drive to Philly, a plane flight to Laguardia, a Supershuttle ride to JFK and then a 1 hour wait on the tarmac all before their red eye to Zurich. 
We met them at the airport and you can see they were clearly excited to be out of the flying tin can major-artery blood-clot free.
Sunday. Lorie told us they had come to hike so Sunday we trekked up our local mountain, Uetliberg, heading for the tea hütte to have lunch. 
Our original plan was to do Via Ferrata in Braunwald, which means iron road in Italian and is an interesting mix of climbing and hiking. But alas, it was raining and hanging off a mountain side in the peeing rain sounded like a less good idea. Plus Lorie and Jackie got to experience the joy of hiking to beer, one of my favorite Swiss activities (Note to Child Protective Services: that is my beer and not Maya’s…. she went with the hot chocolate with schnapps)
Monday. On Monday, after taking Maya and Joe to the airport, I sent Lorie and Jackie on the Golden Circle, a scenic touristy day trip we did last summer to Pilatus. This trip involves a train to a boat to a cog train (steepest in the world!) to a gondola, to a train. That evening I was told the highlight was the cog train (steepest in the world!) 
but otherwise, this was too much riding and not enough hiking and too many damn tourists! Check. Good to know.
Tuesday. So for Tuesday I sent them on one of my favorite hikes: Seealpsee. The plan was for them to hike up and take the gondola down but of course, things went array (plan C anyone??) with a missed turnoff. Despite that they had a fantastic time and declared it a really hard but perfect hike. The highlights were the scenery and the cows, who were easily wooed by Lorie into a little roadside smooching. Jackie was very understanding and decided it was ok to open up their marriage to cows but goats were out of the question. 
Wednesday. On Wednesday I played hookie (thank goodness no one from work reads my blog!!) and we hooked up with the American Women’s Club for a guided hike. Our experienced hiker guide, Tory, was taking us on the Seven peaks hike or in German: Sieben Gipfel Wanderweg. Imagine my disappointment when I found out this didn’t refer to buttergipfels, 
the delicious croissant like Swiss pastries, eaten during a leisurely stroll, and instead we were actually hauling ourselves up 7 bloody hills. Well after a late start at 9:45 am from Zurich hauptbahnhof and a lovely gondola ride up from Unterterzin, we made it to the beginning of the hike at a quarter to noon. 
The hike time was billed as 5 hours and 30 minutes. The last gondola down was at 6pm. No one did the math. Instead, our group of 7 intrepid American women (Superhero names: Puissant Patti, Locked and loaded Laurel, the Torynator, Stormy Stacy, Jackie Onasty, Lorie Lovesalot and Ali-xander the Great) started hiking, immediately disturbing the mountain peace. There is no argument: American women are ridiculously loud. I can say this as a particularly loud American woman. Hikers far ahead of us would nervously look back as they heard us coming and would hike on with renewed purpose. 
Peak 1 was a tease, but peak 2 was serious business.
We decided to stop for lunch to gather strength, convincing ourselves that large doses of “hiking chocolate” would make the next peak ascent seem ok.
Damn hiking chocolate didn’t work and peak 3 was devastating.
We all crawled the last few feet to peak 4 
and engaged in a little selfie blitz to leave last precious moments for our loved ones in case we died ascending peak 5.
Here Jackie and Lorie are trying to get a feel for what it’s like to look down from heaven, which is a big assumption about their ultimate destination given the whole cow love thing.
We hiked on distracting ourselves from an increasing awareness of how screwed we were by enjoying the amazing mountain flora (check out the tiny truffula tree from Dr Seuss’s Lorax) and scenery. 
Morale took a dive when the trail headed down through an impressive rock slide, which was navigated mostly on butt.
At last we reached a sign that said we still had several hours to go and it was nearing 5 pm. We could no longer stay in denial; we were not making that gondola. The decision was made to skip the last several peaks and instead head down the mountain, making the 1700 meter descent by foot. Now the hike became more of a forced march that took us along foot wide paths hanging to the side of the hills
and steep rocky paths.
As in all good epic tales, there was even a panicked flight for our lives, when a herd of cows started chasing us along a road.
At last, as the sun began to set we made our way into town, passing a beautiful waterfall that we all claimed made it worth the 4 hour descent on foot (this was a huge lie, which wouldn’t even have been true had the waterfall been made of beer or gold).
The entire hike ended up taking 9 hours, which is a personal record for me for a day hike. My step counter claimed 42000 steps and 14.6 miles.
Lorie and Jackie had 16 and 18 miles respectively, which I found to be a shocking degree of measurement error. So who knows how far we went but my consumption of ibuprofen and subsequent muscle soreness told me it was a f!$%!ing long way.
Thursday. You are probably not surprised to hear that Thursday was a day of rest for loud American women. I went to work and then joined Lorie and Jackie at one of the local Flussbads for their first float down the Limmat. 
We then headed up the hill to the forest and they had their second Swiss cultural experience of the day: grilling würstli over an open fire. You’ll be happy to know Lorie still has all 10 fingers after using a Swiss Army knife to prepare our würtli sticks.
Friday. All of us had been told that Gruyère was the place to go and I had not yet made it there during our year. So Friday morning we boarded a train for the 2.5 hour trip. The things on our to do list included the cheese factory, the Giger Alien museum and the Gruyère Chateau. 
After getting our bearings we hiked up the hill from the train station to the cute medieval town (I realize originally cute went with medieval the way fun went with torture but I think this is the modern description of any small tourist town with cobblestone steets) of Gruyère. Our first stop was the HR Giger Museum, which holds the collected works of HR Giger, the artist responsible for the Alien movies. 
We weren’t allowed to take photos inside (the photos above are all from us embarrassing ourselves in front of the museum and in the gift shop) but you’ll have to take my word for it: Giger appeared to be a guy who watched only sci-fi movies and porn as a young man. Across the street from the museum is the Giger cafe where you can get ridiculously overpriced ‘Alien coffee’ ….which is just coffee. 
Next we headed to the cheese factory to see cheese made. This was less exciting as the cheese making process takes months and mostly involves watching cheese mold on a shelf. So all we saw was a vat of milk being stirred. But we did get a Gruyère cheese sampler pack and learned some great fun facts, like the fact that the US is the second biggest consumer of Gruyère cheese behind Switzerland. 
After that we headed to the Gruyère Chateau, where we watched the most bizzare informational video I have ever seen and then toured the 1200 odd year old castle. 
We all had different favorite sites here but I think the random severed human hand had to win the prize for ‘best exhibit dug out of the castle cellar’.
I also appreciated the sundial which never saw the sun. 
Well no trip to Gruyère would be complete without consuming cheese products. So we found a nice little restaurant and practiced our bad French while challenging our lactase production.
We then waddled back to the train and complained of our cheese bloat for the 2.5 hour ride home.
Saturday. I had big plans for Saturday. I still had paragliding on my Swiss bucket list and Lorie was foolish enough to agree to go with me. Jackie, being generally smarter than us, decided to be the official videographer at the landing spot. While one can foolishly jump off any mountain in Switzerland strapped to a parachute, I chose Interlaken, which is home to Jungfrau and the longest paragliding season in Switzerland. I randomly chose a tour company off the My Switzerland website – because why would you want to research that and check reviews?? – and paid 340 CHF for two of us.
The tour company picked us up at the Interlaken train station and drove us and some very nice Canadians up 1000 meters to a spot overlooking the two lakes that give the area it’s name. 
There was a 10 minute informational spiel and then we drew straws for who got which instructor. I was hoping for a really hot guy to be strapped to for my tandem paragliding journey, though I was slightly concerned that I would pee on him. I ended up with a local Swiss guide named Kusi, who was less beef cake but pretty funny and highly capable, probably preferable personal characteristics in a paragliding guide. 
At the top, we all got geared up and final instructions. 
Basically the idea is that you run like hell down a hill pulling your instructor and the parachute until you both trip and roll down the hill or (this is the preferable option) you get enough lift to take off. Here is Lorie about ready to go all teathered into Miki, the guide from Tokyo.
I decided not to opt for the full video and photo package so there are no pics of me in the air but here is one of Lorie so you can see how the tandem system is basically a giant baby Björn. 
In summary the experience was not terrifying at all and I didn’t pee on Kusi or vomit on him, which he politely asked me to warn him of if it was imminent. In short I loved it and may have to invest in Paragliding school at some point.
Jackie met us at the bottoms and got this video of our landing. I’m the first yellow parachute landing and Lorie is the last yellow and red chute coming down.
After an exciting morning we did a leisurely hike through Lauterbrunnen in Interlaken, traipsing past a number of waterfalls before hoping on the train for home. 
You can tell the week has been an exciting one for the loud American women.