Visitors

It has been a long while since my last blog and I am just going to "blame" this on my visitors. Sandy camefrom Oakland to visit our little backwaters here and Jutta came from Basel so we almost had a full "girls' night" - or several - going (Pamela, we missed you!) It was nice to have visitors. You know how it is, there are all those places at home (which this still is in some sense) one never visits because they are considered "too touristy" for the locals or one feels like one has seen them a 1000 times just to realize - upon closer inspection - that one really hasn't been there in 20 years and even in a slow-moving environs like here some things change in 20 years. So I got to see the big old castle in Meersburg dating back to the early middelages, take boat trips and walk around the city trying to look at it with the eyes of a stranger - always and enlightning thing to do.
So Jutta and Sandy arrived by train on Sunday and - first things first - had a dinner including white asparagus. They are a specialty of southern Germany and this is the season to eat them. I love the taste and since they are almost impossible to get in the US it is a real treat to have them. They need to be peeled however, which makes them even more special given all the effort that goes into preparing them. I also made the first ever unsupervised Sauce Hollandaise which really wasn't all that difficult. My father still makes a big production out of preparing one but I think now that that is probably all for show and designed to instill awe in us every time he prepares one (only after multiple times of asking, begging and making all sorts of promises about being a good girl henceforth and never leaving the bike outside over night ever again). So we had Spargel dinner and a few too many bottle of "explosion wine" in the garden of our rental apartment which has been named "Kolo-House" by Max.

Uli decided that there were too many girls around so he camped out at Mom's and dad's for the time and the three of us had the apartment to ourselves.
Our first trip took us to the other side of the lake to Meersburg. It's a small village build on a very steep hill right by the lake. Early on the nobelmen (I don't think noble-women had much to say about thelocation of castles in those days) decided that this would be a good defendable position which it was as the castle was never conquered in the over 1000 years of its history. Today it is a museum complete with arms and armors, a tower, prison, torture chamber - which I skipped during the tour, I can't take such stuff (I seriously questioned the wisdom of a couple taking their two kids, maybe 2 and 5 inside and explaining the details of everything to the older - maybe I am a wuss, but that doesn't seem age-adequate and make me think that the whole book-burning-Savanarola story Uli told Max was nothing but a cute little bedtime story). In our serious attempts to learn a lot about southern German early-medivial history we came away mainly with the following lessons: a) people were really short back them judging by their beds and full-body armors; b) they didn't really understand the concept of comfortable seating, and c) personal hygiene back in the day must have been a tad sporadic.
Meersburg features nice half-timbered houses which are very characteristic of the area (as well as of parts of Switzerland), decent ice-cream and it's own vineyards. Our apprearance there that day decreased the average age of the tourists considerably - Lake Konstanz and surrounding areas are very popular with the retirees. The pace is appropriately leisurely and - unusual for the visitor from the US - a lot of people travel by bike (even the retirees or rather especially the retirees) and have beer or wine before midday (at midday and during the afternoon as well). The many passanger boats crisscrossing the lake are very popular and often carry what looks like three bikes per person.
Another trip took us to Stein am Rhein - another little jewel of a small city on the lake but on the Swiss part (lake Konstanz as a big German part a sizeable Swiss part and a little corner of it belongs to Autria). Another leisurely boat ride with drinking retirees later we found ourself in this wonderfulcharming old town - and in shock. Every time I set foot into Switzerland I am incredulous about the prices for everyday stuff - the prices are absurd to begin with but on the main "stretch" of this little touristy gem I couldn't believe my eyes: a small (in fact tiny,approx. 1/5 of a quarter) sizemineral water costs roughly 3 bucks, a (small, no refills) coffee 3.60, a package of gummibears - identical bag to be had in Germany for around 70 cent Euro (say 1.10 Dollars) 3.90 and so on. Absolutel everything is outrageously expensive but especially everything that can somehow be produced in Switzerland as the local laws force stores to sell Swiss products as well as imports (don't know the quota). That makes the prices of diary products, agricultural products and especially meat reach stratospheric levels. No big surprise then that Koinstanz is full of Swiss intend to smuggle sides of pork and palettes of yoghurt across the border.
When Jutta left by train yesterday we learned another lesson about Switzerland: copious amounts of industrial and national security secrets seem to be hidden in the most unusual places. Case in point" a donut - not just any donut, of course, but a cutesy small, expensive donut covered in red frosting with white little crosses - just like the Swiss flag. We saw it at the train station bakery where Jutta got herself a 2.80 Dollar croissant for the train ride. We all liked the donut in all its Swiss cuteness but nobody felt like spending another $2.80 on it especially since nobody wanted to eat itin the first place. Since I had my camera on me that day the logical idea was to take a picture of it. So here we are inside a akery in a tiny train station in a small, unimportant Swiss town right by the border to Germany where in 80% of the cases poeple going in and out aren't even stopped and asked for their passports, let alone to show the contents of their bags or trunks.As I take my camera out the sales person tells me with a stern and grave voice to "stop!! You cannot take any pictures in here!" (accompanied by a sweeping gesture that enclosed all of the train station plus a bunch of neighboring apartment buildings, the streets up front and probably even a small sliver of German territory). My first thought was "wow, for once a Swiss with a sense of humor" but her face showed clearly that she wasn't joking and her body-language was similarly blatant: "just try to push that release button and I will slash you this that knife I normally use to cut huge chunks of bread with." I glanced up and asked her whether she was serious - an entirely idiotic question as I knew she was as serious as she could be. I have to say this caught me by surprise but Jutta was just livid. In her best Swiss German - and therefore beyond reproach by the Swiss sales clerk - she started a tirade about how she can't belief how stupid this all is and what a @#$%^ country this is and that she now has the bad fortune to have to live here and what a dreadful way of treating a visiting American who wanted nothing but a picture of a cute donut to show to her friends back in California ...
I am glad she said it because otherwise I would have had to do so and that wouldn't have ended so well because of my unconvincing Swiss-German.

Sandy left today after a short trip - just over a week in Switzerland and Germany. It was fun to have her visit here - it's real pretty here this time of the year if I do say so myself but I guess a bit too unspectacular for the average foreign tourist who goes to - Florence, I guess.

Max spent a lot of time with Oma and Opa and by now picked up a little bit of the local dialect. Every other noun is now used in the diminuitive form and more and more word endings just disappear. It's kind of funny to hear my son talk like my mom.He also seems to get along well in the Kindergarten. The other day I witnessed how he took a shovel full of dirt and poured it over somebodies head. He alleged that the other boy had thrown sand in his face and had the red eyes to prove it - that he poured the dirt over the girl's head, instead of the boy's was the only fault I could find with his action and encouraged him to retaliate against the correct person next time. They are doing fun stuff, little trips to playgrounds, busrides and walks. But every day we ask him what he wants to do he says: I want to go to Oma's cabin (where she keeps her tools from back in the days when se still grew veggies) and work with "my tools". He is one happy little camper here.