Ali– It took me all of 1 month back in the States to declare to Joe that we were going back to Switzerland for winter break. I was having a hard time readjusting to American life and had spent much of August walking around feeling like my cool boyfriend had broken up with me. So spending $3000 on airline tickets in September was a bit like shopping therapy.
Winter break finally rolled around. It was 4.5 months of stressful American living. Why, you ask? Well having tasted a European work-life balance and high quality living I would say the problems are 1) Americans never turn off. Work is nonstop; planning is nonstop; worrying is nonstop. Even if you don’t aspire to American frenetic greatness, it is hard to maintain detachment when everyone around you is on overdrive; 2) The environment doesn’t provide natural outlets for stress. It’s hard to walk or ride your bike or swim in most American cities. We spend our time stuck in our cars and then at our desks building up stress hormones in our atrophying muscles; 3) American politics are at 11 on a ridiculousness scale from 0 to 10 and it’s wearing to watch all that cold-hearted, self-serving, small-minded, ignorant nastiness without some measure of hopeless frustration seeping into your soul.
So it was with a huge sigh of relief that I hopped in the minivan after teaching my final class of the term and headed with Joe and Maya to Newark airport for our red eye flight to Zurich. We arrived on Wednesday, the morning of December 20th and then, after dusting out the old Postfinance bank card and the SBB public transportation system app, headed efficiently to Regensdorf-Watt where the Kusch family live. Laurel, Martin, Sophia and Lil were hosting us for several days and, for the 2 frequent readers of this blog that exist in the world, you will remember them from many of our Swiss adventures. Lil was still in school when we arrived but we headed over to pick her up at lunch break and there was a joyous reunion between her and Maya. Shortly thereafter, Sarah arrived and 11 year old girl bliss was attained.
Joe and I decided to take the girls into Zurich to the Christmas market, which we were pretty excited to get reacquainted with …. until we remembered the 7 CHF cups of gluhwein and 9 CHF currywurst. Only in Switzerland can you spend a day’s wages on streetfood and bad mulled wine. But we put on our holiday spirit and embraced the financial bleeding. 
Thursday, was a blur of some work-related activities and social calling. Joe and I made the rounds to see my Swiss colleagues from the University of Zurich and Hirslanden Klinik while Maya stayed in Regensdorf in Girl Nirvana. We also dragged ourselves out to see the new Jumanji movie in English with German subtitles. Not sure if I mentioned the Swiss movie experience before but it’s a more expensive and upscale version of the American movie experience. You reserve seats in small, intimate theaters and can bring in purchased alcoholic beverages and food. Also there’s a break midway through the movie to provide for beer refills and bladder emptying. For those of us trying to learn german it’s a great way to get some new vocabulary. Did you know rhinoceros in German is a Nashorn (translates to nose horn)?
Friday, we all managed to motivate to make the pilgrimage to the Verkehrshaus – the transportation museum – in Lucerne. Now this may sound a bit lame but bear in mind that Switzerland is sort of known for its awesome feats of transportation engineering. In fact the Swiss are so regularly outdoing themselves and the world in this area that this museum constantly has new exhibits. For example the Gothard tunnel that connects Switzerland to Italy by burrowing through the Italian Alps was just completed in 2015 after 20 years of tunneling. Example 2: the steepest traditional 2 car funicular in the world was just opened in Schwyz with a 110% grade (I think this means over a 45 degree angle). So you can sort of see why this museum is pretty popular; plus all of these tributes to engineering prowess and absurd nature-conquering determination have been made into kid friendly exhibits. And if that’s not your cup of horsepower, then there is also the Chocolate Adventure, an amusement park style ride that educates you on the nuances of Swiss chocolate making and includes some free samples. I know you are thinking that the three girls were probably most thrilled by the chocolate ride but I think the flight simulator, antigravity simulator and new funicular exhibits were close competitors.
Saturday we thought to see the real deal and headed to Schwyz to ride the new funicular. You may remember this place from the gratwanderweg in the ‘Fun in high places with agoraphobics’ post. The plan was to enjoy the new funicular experience and then go schlittbahning. We lost Sarah and her dad, Rick, before the day got started as a result of the 7:00 am departure time. I find that Swiss are generally allergic to early mornings and accordingly, Sarah came down with an 8 hour fever that kept her home but cleared right up around late afternoon we heard. The rest of us made it to Schwyz and rode this new wonder to Stoos where we rented traditional Swiss sleds and then headed up two ski lifts to the trail.
Now if you have never been traditional sledding let me describe this activity. You sit on a wooden sled with your center of gravity relatively foolishly high. There are no breaks or steering, but instead you use foot friction by applying varying amounts of pressure on either side to turn and pressure on both sides to stop. To say this is an imprecise system is an understatement.
Hence we all took some memorable spills. Mine involved my foot getting caught in a hole on an icy hill, which resulted in a face plant into the hill and some aggressive face breaking. I had the ice burn on my chin to show for it.
After several medicinal beers at lunch 
we exchanged our sleds for skis. Lil was a newbie skier but was in the capable hands of Joe…until he let her ski off the cliff. Here he is pulling her back up….definitely don’t tell her parents
Anyway everyone survived and we caught a train back to Regansdorf-Watt.
Sunday was Christmas Eve and the Kusch family was a bit leery of going on any further snow activities with the Abrahams… can’t imagine why. Plus Maya was keen to do some baking with Lil and Sarah. So Joe and I took off on our own to go skiing at Flumseberg, one of the local ski resorts and also the infamous site of the ladies 7 peak Hike from Hell last summer. We got a late start and didn’t make it onto the slopes with our rented gear until noon. But the day was glorious and the slopes were relatively empty. 
We hit pretty much everything on the mountain as there was enough fluffy snow to make even the advanced slopes pretty forgiving….at least on my wounded face. My legs, however, screamed there way down all the moguls and quit on me about 3pm. Luckily we had a dinner date back in Zurich so Joe was forced to call it a day anyway. We bought several large Radlers, and drank and ibuprofened the whole way back to Regensdorf-Watt on the train. 
That night we were hosted by our friends Rick and Manuela, Sarah’s parents for fondue chinois, homemade cake a la Maya, Sarah and Lil and an off color game of Cards Against Humanity. 
I learned that Germans and Swiss are every bit as dirty-minded and morally questionable as Americans. I can’t even write some of the answers given during the game as WordPress would have to take down our blog site. Anyway it’s nice to know off color humor transcends cultural barriers.
On the day after Christmas we left the Kusch’s for new digs, to give them a break from hosting. A Hirslanden colleague, Markus Blum and his wife Liz has generously offered us the use of their home while they were away for the holidays. So we headed out to Uster which is right along the Greifensee, a small lake a bit north of lake Zurich. We hung out for a couple days and then headed for a return trip to Bergün, a place that features prominently in last year’s blog. Bergün is a lovely ski town a little west of Saint Moritz and it lies below Latsch where Andreas has an Alpen cabin. Andreas is the nephrologist that I worked for during our year in Zurich and he and his family have become some of our favorite people in Switzerland. Andreas is far more Italian than Swiss, excelling in what I would call creative planning. So every outing is an adventure with heavy amounts of improvisation.
We met Andreas, his wife Jana, and their kids, Mateo and Paulo at the Zurich hauptbahnhoff at 9:30 on Thursday morning and arrived in Bergün around noon. The plan was for Mateo and Maya 
to learn to snowboard with the help of a private instructor at the local ski resort and for Joe and I to get back on the snowboards after a 6 year hiatus. Jana is a snowboarder and Andreas is ambi-snowsport, but planned to ski with young Paulo.
But the instructor wasn’t available on Thursday afternoon so we instead went sledding. There is a wonderful 5 km sledding path from Praeda to Bergün that is more leisurely than our Stoos experience and the start is reachable by train.
So with our rented sleds we cruised down twice enjoying the scenery.
After two runs we decided it was time to head to the cabin and consume huge amounts of Swiss cheese.
The next day Andreas and Jana treated us to the most Swiss experience imaginable. We made the journey from Latsch down to Bergün on sleds along narrow paths hanging off the mountain. 
Maya went with Andreas as he seemed the most knowledgeable. What she didn’t know is Andreas is also the least cautious adult among us. However all was revealed when they rocketed off the narrow path and tumbled 20 feet down where Andreas landed his 80 kg on top of Maya. I didn’t get a picture of the action but here is maya standing next to the spot they tumbled down
To my surprise she hopped back on the sled with Andreas, which was an unusually foolish thing for my risk adverse daughter to do. She even rode the sled sitting on top of skis while holding a snowboard, which seemed doubly foolish. I was very proud. 
Down at the ski resort, we all strapped into our snowboards with more than a little trepidation. There was a lot of rust on Joe and my skills. Maya had been warned she was in for a day of frustration. 
But I have to say she persevered that day and the next morning. Her teacher was also fabulous, reinforcing my belief that a good instructor is the key to learning any new skill. By noon on day 2, Maya was snowboarding. It was absolutely astonishing given that it took me about two years to be able to turn consistently in both directions. 
As for Joe and I, we managed to regain our former glory. The hardest part was actually the ski lifts, which consisted of one pommel lift and one T-bar. The T bar was my nemesis and I fell off that stupid thing enough to provide endless entertainment for the nice Swiss guy manning the bottom. I also learned a new German vocabulary word: Schwerpunkt. That is your center of gravity and the T-bar guy loved telling me that mine was too high after giggling.
Well after two days and some sore tailbones we said goodbye and headed back to catch our flight. Our return trip solidified our love for Switzerland and our appreciation for the amazing people we met there.
Next year in Bergün! Until then we’ll dream of wild sled rides and way way too much cheese.