A Hike through the Bergalia (Bergell)

http://www.myswitzerland.com/en/navpage.cfm?category=Hike4&subcat=Graubuenden&id=29968

Soglio is the picture at the top.

In another post, I told you about my hike from Bergun to Preda. Sometime after that, I was back in Bergun for another overnight to repeat that hike. Instead of going home the next day, I took a train from Bergun the next day, up to Preda, through the Albula tunnel, down to Samedan, and on to the St. Moritz train station to catch a postal bus. This was easily done in an hour or so, and then I took the bus over the Maloja Pass to a tiny village called Casaccia. This place boasts a population of one hundred, but I only saw one, the lady in the grocery who sold me stuff for a picnic.

Across the road, I followed the signs going to a path that would in a few hours bring me to Soglio. Next there is a description of "La Panoramica", the trail I took. This comes from the website for Bergell at the same address as above.
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Panoramic Trail

The Panoramic Trail (La Panoramica) begins in Casaccia and leads you along the right-hand side of the valley, through romantic and unspoiled woods, down to Soglio. The trail was completed in 1973, and is very clearly marked with signposts. There are no significant changes in the slope of the trail and it is often referred to as one of the most beautiful hikes in the Canton Graubunden. From different look-out points scattered along the trail, nature lovers and photographers can admire the valley’s many famous mountain peaks.

Beginning in Casaccia, the trail takes you to the west, along the right-hand side of the valley, over the Maira Bridge, and across flat meadows to the little Lake of Labbia. The trail continues following the signposts (painted white, red and white) down a slight slope, first to Barga, and then to Roticcio, a small village surrounded by woods of pine and birch trees. After an encounter with the impetuous mountain stream, Aua of Mulina, the trail climbs across steep little meadows and through flat pine woods. From here you can see the village of Vicosporano down below. For a short distance, the path continues downhill and then passes through thick dark woods towards Durbeggia, where it is very pleasant to stop for a rest and admire the beautiful scenery. The stupendous panorama of the mountain peaks of the Bondasca becomes more and more impressive as you finally approach the clearing in the woods where you cross the mountain stream, Valer. A narrow path takes you through woods and across meadows, towards Pravis, as far as the stables of Parlongh. The trail follows the natural terrain of the mountains, up and down, but maintains an almost constant altitude until it reaches Soglio, where it drops suddenly. Emerging from a rocky landscape, you enter Soglio’s warm green meadows.
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The hike was great. On the valley wall on the north side of the valley, you are presented with a panorama of massive mountains and glaciers. The trail varies little in its elevations after you reach the main path. It is interspersed with creeks and falls that are not hard to ford, and for some distances, the path is paved with flat stones. Several plateaus afford one a nice place to stop and gawk, drink, or picnic. Usually these are places where one can take a path down to a village along the valley floor. My goal that day was to reach Soglio where I had booked a room in the Hotel La Soglina.



Soglio is a village pearched on the valley wall above the town of Promontogno in the valley floor. It looks like time just forgot to move onward at first, but it is a village with a church, hotels, etc. Most of it just looks very old. It is old. I found a stone in the church cemetery for an English woman who died there many years ago. Bet there was a real story there.

The hotel was almost new. The bath had a wonderful tub in which to soak, and the cool beer on the patio was a tonic. Dinner that evening in the restaurant was a treat too.

The next day, I was out and in the village for a quick look before catching a bus down to Castasegna. That done, I got on a Swiss postal bus that went through a bit of Italy on its way to Lugano. I had remembered to bring my passport with me. I felt that the driver should have had a nice tip because the villages had streets so narrow that had a window been opened, one could have reached into the rooms of the houses. At Lugano, it was onto the train to home through the Gotthard Valley.

I've got to do this again next fall!

A Blog Cartoon from a Friend

A friend sent this to me in a birthday card.

How I pick My topic Some Days

A hike in Bergun to Preda with an Adventure

Yesterday, I had occasion to recount two hikes that I did some years ago (?1998?). At the time, I wrote a trip log about it but failed to keep a copy with me. The trip log has long been lost in cyberspace somewhere. This is the best that I remember.

It was the year of the Swiss Rail System's 200th birthday. To celebrate, they offered day tickets at a very low price. They sold these once a month for a year in limited numbers, and I opened the station each month to buy them early. I decided that since I could use day tickets so cheaply, I would go places in CH (Switzerland) where I had not been.

One of my two-day trips was to Bergun. Bergun is a small village in the canton of Graubunden in the eastern part of CH. This trip took place in late October, as I recall. I took an early train from Sachseln through Luzern and onward to Chur in Graubunden. There, I changed trains to take what may be the most scenic train ride in CH rivaled only by the trip through the Gotthard valley.

I arrived at Bergun about noon. I had never been there, had no reservations for a room, or knew much about it. I had heard about a hike up to a village named Preda. It was not winter season as yet, so I had the town to myself. I found an open hotel right on the main drag and got a room for the night. Then, I took off to check out Preda. I left my backpack in the room and just carried my stick, jacket, hat, and camera with me.

The walk was well marked and varied from flat to uphill and sometimes steeply uphill. A lot of it paralleled the rail line headed upward to the Albula tunnel. There were frequent places with benches to stop and make pictures of trains as they entered or left tunnels on viaducts that seemed to be engineering marvels. There were also several plaques of information on the construction of the line. A lot of the way, the ground was frozen but no snow or ice was a problem. It was a nice walk until I was almost to Preda. At that point, I realized that my train pass, money, etc. was all back at the hotel in Bergun! I did not look forward to walking back down there, and it was fast getting dark.

Well, in a few moments, I realized that I had a coin pocket in my hat. I always kept two five franc coins in it. They were still there, although a bit corroded. With that in mind, I was in Preda in a few minutes. Now, Preda consists of about six vacation homes and a restaurant (closed on my day there). There was not a soul to see, and it was cold and about dark. The mouth of the tunnel was about fifty yards from the train station. The station was unmanned but had a room in which to wait and a telephone to a station down the line. Looking at the schedule, it didn't look like a train was due, so I called the station on the phone. In my bad German, I asked about trains to Bergun. To my pleasant surprise, the man answered in pretty good English and told me that a train was going to come out of the tunnel going my way in about two minutes. It did! I hopped on and got my ten francs out to buy a ticket. In ten or fifteen minutes, I was in Bergun, and the conductor had never made it to me.

My single room was on top of the hotel but looked fine to me. I spent a good night there and recall the shower was so good that I took one in the evening and another the next AM. Breakfast came with the room as is usual in CH. Being the only guest in the hotel, I went down that next AM not sure of what I would get. On the side of the dining room, there was a table set up for one person. I sat down, and a lady came out to find out what I wanted to drink. Breakfast in CH for me is always some "Milchkaffee". This is strong black coffee served with a picture of steamed milk, and it hits the spot! The lady also showed me a small table set up as a buffet with the usual breads, cereals, cheese, sliced meats, butter, jam, etc. I was impressed and well fed when I caught my train for home.

Signs of the Times

Oh Boy! What else can happen? The VP shoots his hunting buddy, and to make matters worse, he doesn't have a bird stamp on his license. What fodder for the media.

Seriously, I hope neither the shooter or the shootee gets Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PSTD seems to be the poster child cause for litigation these days. What a crock! Haven't we all had it at one time or another? My first episode was after my mother, against her better judgment, let me go with some older neighborhood kids to see my first Frankenstein movie. I guess my parents must have been a little backward, or they would have sued the theater, the producers, and even the actors. As a kid, I'll bet I had PSTD at least once a month. When my first love jettisoned me, I had it for months!

Today, I read in the local paper where two protesters at last years G8 meeting in Evian, France are suing two police men who they say cut a rope on a bridge from which they were hanging. It seems that these two turkeys were hanging on each end of a rope strung across a bridge between Lausanne, Switzerland, and Evian, France. As part of clearing a blockade, the two police men (one spoke German and the other spoke French) cut the rope. One of the protesters suffered physical injury, but the other has PSTD.

My dear old dad told me as a very young kid that being part of a mob was likely to get me in trouble and/or hurt. He wasn't worried about PSTD because it and "pain and suffering" hadn't been dreamed up by the barristers yet.

I wouldn't bet the farm on a Swiss court being very sympathetic. The doctrine of personal responsibility is still recognized here. That Steven Wright blurb about 99% of all the lawyers giving the rest a bad name rings true.

The Sky is Blue!

Well, the ice fog has gone. It is still about 20 F overnights,but the day is going to be beautiful. Spring is not just around the corner as yet, but it is nice to see the snow on the mountains.

A shame to stay in today, but I want to see the Olympic downhill ski race.

The Olympic Games Begin

The events started Saturday about 5 AM Eastern Time. It was 11 AM here. One of the CH channels carries it pretty much in full. The Swiss concentrate on the events in which they have hope for a good performance by their athletes naturally. The real beauty is that here it is ILLEGAL for a station to have a commercial break unless the program is 90 minutes or longer. After 2.5 hours, I am still waiting for one to happen. That's why being in front of the tube is better than being there in person.

In person, I don't think I would be too happy. In addition to the prices, nearly all events are between 60 and 120 minutes away from the city. One travels by bus and should be at an event 2 hours before it begins. Not for me. Guess others feel differently. If I had a kid in it, I suppose I would make the effort. Otherwise, no.

Anyway, in the first few days there have been some surprises, good or bad, depending on your slant. I personally think that all the Olympians are gold medalists.

Needles and Pappy

Pappy was the unofficial nickname for an esteemed mentor of neurosurgery for many years. He was the senior staff man in our training program and had an illustrious family history going all the way back to an admiral in the Confederate Navy.

Pappy was a firm advocate of causing no pain to a patient. Each new trainee was told about this soon after he arrived because at night we were called to treat all the staff's patients. None of Pappy's patients were to ever receive any injections for pain, nausea, or sleep. Pappy did all his cases under local anesthesia, and all his patients got coffee and juice the morning of their procedures unlike other patients who got nothing after midnight. He was a strong believer in "conservative" neurosurgery. We all learned quickly about what we could use on his patients that could relieve their problems without injections. At that time, the state commissioner of health was a former resident in neurosurgery that had bailed out of the program. The story was told that he had given one of Pappy's patients an injection one night. Pappy had seen this on the chart the next morning. That afternoon while the resident was walking along a hallway. Pappy got behind him and stuck him with a needle. The guy jumped around and asked why he had been stuck. Pappy said, "You stuck my patient last night and it hurt. This needle hurt too, didn't it"?

You'd be surprised at how many medications come in suppository form!

A Man Named "Smart"

No, I am not talking about Maxwell Smart of the TV show. This guy got his name as a contraction for "smartass". He was just that, but he was no dummy. He began his neurosurgical residency a year or two after I did and became to topic of some horseplay at times. Smart was prone to put his foot in his mouth at times.

A couple of occasions come readily to mind. There was the time that he left my house after a party, and I cautioned him to be careful driving home with his wife. He replied that they would be fine. He knew the way well, and it was just like his wife, "same old road every night". Then there was the time that we had a PhD in neuroanatomy with us for a few weeks. He was our age and considering going to medical school. Smart shows up in the X-ray department while we are looking at cerebral angiogram films. He had not met the new man, so after introductions, he proceeded to explain some of the vascular anatomy of the brain to this guy. We all just stood around trying not to laugh while Smart just dug his hole deeper. The new man was gracious and let Smart rave onward. When we let Smart know about his goof, it just rolled off him.

You couldn't help but like Smart. He went on to a successful practice. He died a few years ago.

Another Great Teacher

In my second year of pre-medical studies, I took organic chemistry. After a year of general chemistry making "A"s each term, I was looking forward to this. Mr. P had us in organic for about three weeks in high school, and I had enjoyed it.

The professor was Dr. E. He was a good lecturer and pointed out to us that success in his course carried a high correlation with entrance into medical school. He also told us to use the textbook only for reference because the tests would only come from lecture material. After the first quiz, I was distressed to see that I had only gotten a "C" on it. I made an appointment to see him during his office hours, and got a lesson in how to study that held me up through some tough courses including his.

His advice was:
1. As soon as possible after a lecture, copy the notes that I had made during the lecture.
2. Next, again as soon as possible, go over that set of notes and write out some test questions that one would ask about the material covered. Then answer these questions.

I took his advice, did the notes, made out the questions, answered them, and wrote each question on a 3x5 card with the answer on the back. I then had the test! If I learned the cards, it was simple. I never saw a test question after that, that I had not answered before. Dr. E may have been only an average teacher with a subject that could be dry, but his advice on how to study a topic was first rate. I used this method in years to come with any subject that gave me reason to suspect that I would have difficulty, and it always helped greatly.

One note about Dr. E. I recall his final exam question at the end of the year. "Given coal, water, and oxygen, describe how you would make nylon. I haven't a clue now, but it wasn't hard then.

Euthanasia

Like abortion, I know that there are two sides to this controversial topic. I am not in the business of conversion on either one of these subjects, and I don't expect anyone who reads this to try to win me over to their position.

Terms to remember:
Euthanasia derives from the words "good" and "death" in Latin and Greek.
There are two types of euthanasia. Passive and active. Passive is withholding life sustaining measures, and active is painless methods of killing someone.

One of the things that I used to like about living in Europe is that I am only an overnight train ride from Holland. Why do I like that? Because I am a firm believer in the postulation that are many things worse than death. I spent about half of my life in hospitals with injured and sick people, a fair number died, and another group did not die but did not recover. In Belgium and Holland, it is relatively easy for one to choose his own manner of death. In CH too, there are four organizations that assist people to end their lives. One, called Dignitas, will help foreigners, the others are for CH citizens. So now, it looks like I am going to be able to stay at home if I need to euthanize myself. Organizations here merely assist people to commit suicide. It is only illegal to assist suicide in CH if one is to receive personal gain from the person's death. It is illegal for anyone to actively kill another (as if a doctor were to inject or otherwise give someone a lethal dose of a drug). Dignitas requires that you make your own decision, and have a doctor review your medical records. Then the doctor can give you a lethal dosage of a barbiturate. They maintain an apartment in Zurich for you to use if you wish. After death they call the authorities, and an autopsy (mandatory in CH for suicide) is carried out. Now, all this may sound pretty grim. It doesn't sound bad to me if I were one of those poor people with an incurable condition that was going to render me helpless, vegetative, and possibly in long term agony.

We all like to control our lives. Why shouldn't we control our death? Passive euthanasia is a way of life (no pun) in hospitals. It is practiced every day. By then, the patient is beyond decision on his own. If the patient does retain mental function, can you imagine the helplessness one must feel?

The old Hemlock society in the USA has now become Compassion and Choices. It might be worth a look at their website.

Euthanasia is actively sought when one has a pet in misery. Why not let it be a consideration when one is in a similar state?

Bambi II

Mothers hide your children!!! This may be old news, but I just saw an ad last night for Disney's Bambi II. The first edition of Bambi traumatized the hell out of me when my mother took me to see it. I have known others who still tear up at the thought of the voice telling Bambi, "Your mother isn't here", or something like that. If you think about those childhood stories, like "The Three Little Pigs" and "Hansel and Gretel", there was some pretty heavy violence in them for 3-4 year olds.

You can bet that I won't be there when Bambi II opens!

Some Great Teachers #2

I had two teachers in high school that fell under this category. I had a lot of good teachers over the years, but we are talking great here. Miss Faye and Mr. P. were great. It took a year or two of university until I realized that.

Miss Faye was an old maid who taught junior and senior English. You had to jockey around to get into her class, but I was lucky and got her both years. It was a good thing too. She taught on a university level and prepared you for those weekly themes. She was a no nonsense lady with a single purpose. That being to get you to upper levels without being less than well prepared. When term paper time came, she said we could choose any subject we wished. I was working part time at a funeral home then, so I chose "Some aspects of Body Preparation for Burial, past and Present". I had a wealth of reference material at the home plus more from the usual sources. After each stage of the paper's preparation, you had a conference with Miss Faye. Each time we met, she always said, "I don't know why a nice young man like yourself wants to write about these things". She did give an A- on the paper though. I always suspected the topic is what got me the minus. I still get the willies if I try to end a sentence with a preposition.

Mr. P was another matter entirely. He taught chemistry and physics. One you took as a junior and the other as a senior. Mr. P was also an assistant football coach, but he as different as daylight and dark in and out of the classroom. We didn't realize it then, but he taught on a university level. When I went through an entire year of freshman chemistry in college without seeing anything new, I knew that Mr. P was the reason. In reality, I had a better physics course in high school than I got in college. One of my good friends who was something of a genius, and I decided to make some gunpowder. We bought all the ingredients at the drug store, mixed it all up, and then made a pipe bomb to blow up in the woods. It worked fine, but a year or so later I read of a boy who blew his legs off doing just what we did. Grace of God got us out of that one. Then my friend got the idea of making some nitroglycerine. Now that is bad stuff, needs a water bath to prepare it in, and is mighty unstable in its raw form. Anyway, we decided we needed a consultation with Mr. P. He quickly ended our aspirations by telling us that if we did that or he even heard that we had done it, we both would fail the year. That was that.

Both those teachers are dead now. I wish they had known how valuable they were to me and others.

Note from a "Fan"

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Opening Salvo":

"What a pathetic loser you are and a racist to boot. You obviously have an unwarranted huge ego. You are right, no one cares about what you say. You are a sad man."

The above is a comment posted by an anonymous person regarding my first ever blog entry. I think it is obvious that our opinions differ, and it is too good to just lie unnoticed by many who don't always read the comments.

Let's dissect it a bit.

"pathetic loser": There is a lot of pathos in the world. I have been close to some in the past and may see more in the future. "Losers" don't always seem pathetic to me. We have all seen losers who were gracious and even enriched by that experience.

"racist": Racism is a human condition. Those who decry it the loudest are often the most racist. Denial is a powerful mental mechanism and likely a mainstay of this person's psyche.

"unwarranted huge ego": Without ego, people do not even come close to reaching their potential. It isn't a dirty word. Whether the ego of a given person is warranted or not is anyone's opinion. I think we know what this person's opinion is.

"You are right, no one cares about what you say.": Can't fault this person for agreeing with me, can I?

"You are a sad man." Again, he/she got that right. I am sad that this person is so consumed with ill feeling just because we have different points of view on a given subject. He would do better to emulate his old friend who frequently disagrees with me but without this hostility.

This said, I must admit that it is with gratification for me to be able to stir this person's pot so effectively.

Thanks!

Why Neurosurgery??

I have been asked before, "Why did you choose to become a neurosurgeon?". To answer that query is complex because there were a number of factors in my decision. First, I had parents who both had college degrees obtained during the depression. That failed to impress me until recently. They both always encouraged me to be my own boss no matter what I did in life. Medicine no longer fits that category, but it did during my practice life.

Once medicine was a done deal, it had to be decided what type to study as a specialty. My first mentor had been our family internist, but I failed to stay interested in this I think in large part due to the lack of stimulating faculty when I took medicine courses. In our eighth quarter of medical school, our class and the one just a quarter ahead of us took neurosurgery for about twelve lectures. At that particular time, Memphis had more neurosurgeons per capita than anywhere in the world. The guiding forces in Neurosurgery nationally were Memphians. Among these were some great teachers, as I was to find out later.

While in one of the earlier lectures given by the head of the department, a man named Francis Murphey, I asked a question. I don't remember what I asked, but Dr. Murphey didn't know the answer. He also said as much to the whole group! Now maybe that had happened in my classes before, but I didn't recall it being the case. No one breathed,as he said, "Mr. Roy, I don't know the answer to your question, but I will have it at our next meeting". After the class more than one person said to me, "It isn't nice to fool the professor". Well, it was done, and I couldn't take it back. It was my first time to hear this man say such but not my last. Sure enough, at the beginning of the next class, he said to the group, "Roy's question last meeting is answered by such and such". I had met the man who epitomized intellectual honesty and continued to do that as long as he lived.

There was still a year to go before I would begin a rotating internship at the city hospital where neurosurgey residents trained. In the last quarter, I had a chance to do a clinical clerkship in several specialties, and I requested neurosurgery to be one of these. It wasn't much except work that no one else wanted to do, but I got to observe a few surgical procedures. The residents were always busy, but they rewarded my interest with some pearls of wisdom on occasion.

After I graduated and became a "real" doctor, I started my rotating internship. These are no longer offered, but I have always been glad that I did mine. Two months of emergency room, two months of ob-gyn, two months of pediatrics, three months of medicine and its specialties, and three months of surgery and its specialties. One month had to be on general surgery. Guess who took two months of neurosurgery? This time I was a notch above a medical student, had more time to see what the residents were up to, and scrub on all the cases. I worked hard at doing things that the residents asked of me, and I was rewarded by being given menial tasks in the operating room. At the end of those two months, the bug had bitten, and all I wanted was to become a resident in neurosurgery. That happened, and that was that. The reason? Good teachers, good residents, a strong neurosurgical environment, and a man that we all wanted to emulate.

Francis Murphey will come another time.

Apology

I apologize for the "How I" articles being out of sequence. I suspect that this software is feminine, since it seems to do what it pleases. On the other hand, no one has ever given me a prize for computer knowledge.

Net Worth

Here are some average net worth figures (in Swiss Francs) for some world citizens.

Switzerland_817,000

Denmark_725,000

Sweden_647,000

United States_646,000

Germany_626,000

Guinea-Bissau_5,015

Nepal_4,800

Nigeria_4,664

Burundi_3,608

Ethiopia_2,480

Source is the World Bank

How I got to CH (Switzerland) part 2

04 February 2006
How I got to CH (Switzerland) part 2

After my return from CH and my meeting Herr K, I could not stop thinking and talking about this country that had shown me so much in a month's time. Some months after this, someone tossed a Redbook magazine in my lap, and said, "You can't stop talking about the country, so this looks like a good way to get back".

There was a small blurb on one page about some outfit in PA that would get you to CH, rent you an apartment and train pass, and let you go on your own. There was a phone number and address of a company called Idyll Untours. Well, I gave them a call. A lady answered and said, "Oh, you need to talk with my husband, and he's in the back yard, hold on". The husband arrived, and I told him of my CH interest. He explained that the apartments were in private homes. Having lived only in Zurich, I did not know then that most homes in CH have at least one apartment in addition to the family's living quarters. I was unsure just how much I would like to live in someone else's house. When he said the terms were for three weeks, I told him that three weeks might not work. He then told me that if I came in May or late September that I could have a place for two weeks. This sounded better, so I said Ok for me and my family. It turns out that the man that I was speaking with was Hal Taussig, the originator and owner of Idyll. The lady was his wife, Norma, and they were running the company off the dining room table!

So, the next May, wife, me, and two kids all fly over to Zurich to begin our Swiss adventure. We were met at the airport by this man, Hal, who had a sack of cheese pies that he passed out. There might have been eight in out group. He rode us into town on a bus (no trains went to the Zurich airport then, as they do today). In Zurich, we got a train south to Luzern, where we changed to a train going to our villages. At each stop, Hal would get the people who were going to live in a particular village, jump off with them, introduce them to a landlady, and hop back on. Our village was named Sachseln. We met our landlady, Frau B, who spoke no English but smiled a lot. She took us to our home for two week which turned out to be above the quarters of her family but was very nice. It even had a balcony looking out over some majestic mountain scenes.

Hal had given a time for us to meet him for orientation. We did this the next day in an adjacent village, and he was helpful with ideas for hikes, etc. He also had the whole group sit down around a table and learn how to use the train schedules. We also agreed to meet a week later to share experiences in a local hotel stube. In later years, this meeting became known as an Idyll party.

After about two days, I was regretful that we hadn't signed up for the three weeks, but that would come later. Suffice it to say that we all had a grand time with hikes, city trips, museums, and trips to high places like Pilatus, the Jungfraujoch, and the Matterhorn. When our time was over, we all wanted to stay longer. Our landlady took us to the train station and gave us a goodbye bouquet of flowers. We did know that we could come back again and stay longer. This turned out to be an understatement.

More in part 3.

How I got to CH (Switzerland) Final

After that first Idyll trip in 1979, I missed only two years without one, and later, two trips to CH per year. I made other trips to other places, but that was for continuing education. CH was always for fun. I had a new wife and merged family by then. Sometimes it was just us, sometimes, hers, and sometimes, mine who made the trips. By fiddling around with the work schedule, I could have almost a month off for CH. With three weeks for Idyll, we could also have a few days extra to explore other parts of CH too far from our home base to do them while we were in Sachseln.

What sealed us to Sachseln? A Swiss family that we met on our second Idyll trip. From 1981 onward, we always had "our" apartment with them. The one exception was when we had four persons, and they had only room for two. That was cured when they converted a home next to them into Idyll apartments. It took only a year or two for us to become fast friends with this family. To say that the Greutert family was not to become important to our lives would be a real understatement. They remain important to me even today. The children are grown, some of the grandchildren are grown, and now I have a Swiss Godson who is twelve. A big reason why I never left "home" to come to CH was that I had a "home" here too. That all said, I do have USA family that I love dearly. Even more dearly for the very reason that they are far more precious to me here than if they just lived nearby.

Some people think that I am not wrapped too tightly, but if one looks around, there are a lot of USA citizens who live in other countries. I have heard all the ideas about being here to avoid taxes, have secret bank accounts, become a citizen, etc. They all fall under the category of BS. It all goes back to that night in Sachseln in our first Idyll apartment, when I sat out on the balcony nursing my beer and looking at a rainy night twenty six years ago. I thought then, "Someday, why not?". In the years between, if I had a doubt, I would ponder the fact that if I chose not to try this, I would forever wonder "What if?".

Well, in 1994, I did it. I found it not too hard to learn to accept being a "foreigner", I have learned parts of a new culture and language, made some friends that I would not have met, enjoyed the love and caring of a new family, and still hold to the ties in the USA that I value. I hope to spend my time left here in a home that I share with a lot of loved ones.

Ice Fog

For about a week, we have had a beautiful ice fog at our house. It comes dawn like fine talcum powder and coats everything. The temperatures have been below freezing all the time, so it sticks around. Looks like winter.

How I got to CH (Switzerland) part 1

A Swiss man named Herr Kraech had a lot to do with my winding up here as a resident. In 1977, I spent a month in Zurich working in a lab and observing surgery in the university hospital. I lived in a small hotel a few blocks away. With my room, I got breakfast each morning in a small coffee shop. From the first morning on, I sat at a table next to Herr K. He was in his eighties, a small gnome of a man, a retired hotel manager, and had been all over the world in his work. He spoke flawless English which helped a lot since I didn't even know menu German then.

In any event, in a few days, we came to be friends. I usually just saw him at breakfast, but he knew that I had Saturdays and Sundays free. He began to write out itineraries for me and encouraged me to take public transport and see his country. My sole experience with public transport in my adult life had been the MBTA while I had lived in Boston, so the Swiss transport system blew my mind. The fact that one could go to the train station, buy a ticket the size of two postage stamps, and use it to travel on trains, ships, and busses was all new to me. Herr K's itineraries were detailed minutely and guided me step by step to some wonderful places over these weekends. Trips to Mt. Pilatus, Seelisberg, and the Jungfraujoch were a few that I made. Herr K had said that his age prevented him from coming with me, but he enjoyed the tales that I had to tell after my return.

The day before I left to come home to the USA, I left a bottle of schnapps at the desk for him along with a thank you note. That evening while I was packing, a knock on the door revealed him with tears in his eyes and gratitude for the gift. I told him that I would be back to see him. At that time, I had no idea of when I would return, but CH had claimed a prisoner at least in my mind. Two years later, I did get back, but I was too late. Herr K had been dead some months.