Day 13 of 23

This will be the last of my regular holiday break updates for a few days. Tanner and I head to Paris tomorrow. I've told Stace that she's welcome to blog while I'm gone, but don't hold your breath.

Our itinerary for Paris is quite loose. The only set plan we have is to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower on Saturday evening because it was better to get tickets for a particular time in advance. Other than that, all we know is that we want to spend some time at the Louvre, tour Notre Dame, visit the Arc de Triomphe, and spend some time walking along the the Champs-Élysées. Other than that, we'll figure it out when we get there. I'll fill you in next week. Happy New Year!

Day 12 of 23

Last night I watched an old classic movie starting Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton, The Third Man. It's set in post-war Vienna. It was more fun to watch because I've been to Vienna and because I understand some German. There were a couple of scenes set in the hotel where we stayed when we were there.

Day 11 of 23

Stace and the kids went to the transportation museum in Lucerne today while I went back to work. It's pretty quiet there right now. Most people are back in the States. The only ones in the office pretty much are those of us who have been here for less than two years, meaning we only get one family trip per year back to the States. With all of the airline security issues right now, I'm just as happy to stay put. I'm assuming that Tanner and I won't have to deal with any of that when we fly to Paris since it's not a U.S. flight. We'll see.

Day 10 of 23--ski day

We had a great day at the Flumserberg. (If you know any German, then you immediately realized that the Flumserberg is the mountain that towers over the village of Flums. And, by the way, the "u" in "Flums" is roughly pronounced as an "oo," not an "uh.") Stace had trouble with her boot, and my ankle kept me from skiing, so the kids were the only ones skiing today. They took a lesson in the morning and then just played around on the hill in the afternoon. After about four hours of skiing, they were, naturally, better than I'll probably ever be. Lindsey could ski a course and make most of the gates, and Tanner could dig in sideways to stop wherever he wanted.

And, this being Switzerland, the scenery was, of course, spectacular. I can't necessarily say that it beats Utah for skiing and scenery, but it sure was nice.

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Day 9 of 23

Tomorrow is ski day. The kids were so excited that they could hardly go to bed. Tanner, who never lacks for self-confidence, isn't sure why he needs ski lessons. He's planning on just charging down the side of the mountain. I hope he's not too disappointed when it turns out to be a little harder than it looks. I'm sure there will be some frustration at first; the trick will be to keep everyone going through the initial frustration and get them to the point where they enjoy it. I'll be watching from the sidelines. I figure my ankle has another two to three weeks to go.

One tricky thing about skiing is that there's a huge initial investment, and we don't even know if it's something we'll do very much. If you count the skis that Stace and I bought for ourselves, all of the helmets and gear, and the expense of lessons and lift passes, I'll bet we will have sunk about $3,000 into this before we make one trip down a mountain. The goal now will be to go as many times as possible so that the cost per day drops. If we go thirty times this year, the cost per day will only be $100, right?

Day 8 of 23

I walked from downtown Zug up the hill to the apartment today, which I consider to be a significant step in my ankle recovery program. I still feel it when I turn my ankle, so I'm not in any kind of shape to ski on Monday, but it's getting there. I'll sit tight while the rest of the family takes a ski lesson on Monday.

Day 7 of 23

We survived Christmas Day, but we're all pretty tired. Santa was up until 1:00 in the morning getting last-minute presents wrapped and things set up, and then Tanner was up at 6:00 to see what Santa had brought. Tanner got an iPod Touch, which he loves, and Lindsey got an easel, which she loves. The kids also got a couple of movies and other odds and ends. Stace and I also got nice gifts from parents and others. Thanks, everyone!

Tonight, we had dinner with our German friends, Ruth and Ansgar. They have two kids, ages 5 and 3, who don't speak a word of English, but they get along with Lindsey just fine. (Poor Tanner is stuck trying to fit into the boring adult conversation.)

It was a green Christmas. The snow has all melted. I've seen some pictures of my house in Minnesota, and it's clearly been a white Christmas there this year. I can't say I'm too sad to be missing it.

Day 6 of 23

We had a nice Christmas Eve. The Russis, our friends from Switzerland and Peru, had us over for dinner with several other folks. It was the usual cross-cultural experience: Christmas in Switzerland with Peruvian food while conversations took place in German, English, and Spanish, whichever was handiest at the moment. We'll be spending tomorrow evening with our German friends. That means we might have trouble calling people back in the States on Christmas Day. By the time you're all waking up, we'll be heading over for dinner with our friends. We'll have to catch people when we can. It might not be until Saturday.

On another note, I don't think I've ever mentioned that Tanner was formally diagnosed with dyslexia last month. We've been doing some fairly intensive drills during the break to help his brain learn how to decode letter combinations in written words. It's a myth that dyslexia just means seeing things backward, but one of the common symptoms is difficulty distinguishing between "d" and "b" (and sometimes "p"). It's interesting to see Tanner struggle with that. We can have him read a nonsense word like "peb" over and over again, then when we come back to it fifteen seconds later and he'll read it as "ped." He's got a few other things working against him. He's also got ADHD and very poor working memory. I'm sure my dad can describe this better than I can, but my understanding is that working memory is even shorter than short-term memory. It has to do with holding facts in the brain long enough to apply them to the problem at hand. Tests show that he's in the very low percentiles in that ability. So we've got some interesting challenges ahead of us.

On yet another note, for those of you in the Twin Cities, good luck surviving what I'm hearing described as the "snownami." We wish we were there to enjoy it with you. No, really.

Day 5 of 23

One small step . . . . For the first time today since the oopsie with my ankle, I walked from the apartment to the train station. It went okay. I'm still not ready for the Olympics, but I'm getting there. I'll be watching while the rest of the family skis on Monday.

Day 4 of 23

Still surviving. Stace, Mary, and the kids went to Ikea in Zurich today. I don't get the fascination, but those who love Ikea really love it.

Have I mentioned that for Christmas, Lindsey wants an easel? She's been talking about it for months. Her art "projeks" are a very important part of her life. I have the feeling that Santa may just come through for her.

Those of you in the Twin Cities, enjoy the two feet of snow that you're suppposed to be getting between now and Saturday.

Day 3 of 23

1. My ankle is slowly getting better, but it will still be a while. The family is going skiing while I watch next Monday. At least we'll save some money, right?

2. Tanner isn't throwing up anymore.

3. We can use our dishwasher again.

Day 2 of 23

For reasons that will likely remain forever obscure, Lindsey, not content with the cute little Ikea bed in her room, decided to build her own bed out of a leftover cardboard box.





Other than that, Day 2 was relatively uneventful. I stayed home with Tanner since Stacie had to play the piano in church. Stace and Lindsey then had dinner with Derek and Mary while Tanner and I stayed home and played chess.

Day 1 of 23

Starting today, the kids have a break from school of 23 days. (The holiday break is longer here to give families the time to fly to various locations all around the world.) Let's summarize where things stand on Day 1 of the break:

1. I'm still grounded by a sprained ankle.

2. Tanner is throwing up.

3. We can't use our dishwasher or our kitchen sink.

So we're off to a rip-roaring start to the holiday.

1. As for the ankle, I think I'm starting to see signs of improvement after two weeks, but man, is it slow. I'm still limping around wherever I go. I'm learning that when you're in your early thirties, things don't heal as fast as they do when you're in your twenties. So much for our plans to spend the holidays skiing. I think maybe we'll all still go to one of the nearby mountains and let Stace and the kids take a ski lesson while I hang out in the lodge.

2. Tanner will be fine. Throwing up in the top bunk of his bunk bed in the middle of the night could have been a disaster, but it helps to have a father who borders on having obsessive-compulsive disorder. When he went to bed, he said his stomach hurt a little. I didn't think much of it but put a bowl by his bunk just in case. That little bit of paranoia saved us from a major disaster three hours later when everything came up. He did a good job of hitting the target. He threw up through the night and into this morning, but it's been a couple of hours now. He kept down some crackers and he's asleep on the couch. We're on the road to recovery.

3. We discovered that when our dishwasher or kitchen sink drains, the water leaks underneath our laminate floor. This is a wonderful thing to discover in Europe on the weekend before the holidays because everyone takes two or three weeks off of work. I'm not sure when we'll be able to get a plumber in here. At least it's not our responsibility to get it fixed since we don't own the place, but still, not having a dishwasher or kitchen sink when everyone's here for the holidays is a bit annoying.

This will all pass. After all, it can only get better from here, rigtht? We'll still get in some skiing, Tanner and I will go to Paris, my ankle will get better, and life will be good.

Meet the new Mister Lindsey

Lindsey is in love with a first-grader named Ethan. She informed us today that they've agreed to marry. There's one provision of their prenuptial agreement about which Ethan felt quite strongly, though: there shall be absolutely no kissing. Lindsey has agreed.

Anatomy of a sprain

This whole ankle thing has been kind of interesting. It's taking longer to heal than I thought, and I'm having some cool symptoms. It got all swollen, of course, which I expected. Within a couple of days of the fall, the bottom part of my foot started to show bruises. A couple of days later, my toes actually started to bruise, even though they weren't involved at all in the accident. I thought that was really weird, but it's right in line with what I've been reading. All the loose blood that's sloshing around in my foot has to go somewhere, and it gets sucked down by gravity.

Turns out that sprains are grouped into three levels of severity. Mine is a grade 2, which is moderate. It means I tore the ligaments partially but not completely. (Thank heaven, because a complete tear would probably require surgery.) The bruise pattern is typical of a grade 2 sprain. I just need to give it a while to get better. We were thinking of starting our ski season tomorrow, but now it's going to have to wait a little. That's not so bad; it's been a busy week.

It's glorious

Recall that I enjoy taxes so much (preparing them, not paying them) that I used to moonlight as a tax preparer. My own federal tax return used to be three pages, maybe four if we were adopting a child that year or if I sold a little bit of stock or something. It took me about twenty minutes to do my taxes each year.

I'm pleased to report that my 2008 tax return, which is the first one that covers our time in Switzerland, runs 52 pages. (And no, I didn't prepare it myself.) It's glorious. It's like a work of art. It contains forms covering the foreign housing credit, the form to get an extension to see if you qualify for the foreign tax credit, the form showing that you actually do qualify for the foreign tax credit, and the form used to compute the foreign tax credit once you've established that you do indeed qualify. It's got the alternative minimum tax and various explanatory statements and all sorts of other goodies. I almost weep for joy as I read through its pages. I hope that someday, each of you will have the opportunity to file a tax return that runs 52 pages. There's no feeling like it in the world.

We gotta fix it

I don't get political on the blog, but let me say something here without endorsing a specific point of view: We've got to fix our health care system in the United States.

I twisted my ankle the other day. (Not an MS fall--I just slipped on some ice while I was running.) It was no big deal, and I knew it wasn't serious. After seeing me limp around, though, several coworkers insisted that I go to the ER to get it looked at. (It's not fractured.) I took the bus over there this afternoon from work. I checked in, had an initial consultation with a doctor, got x-rays, had a follow-up visit from the doctor, got my ankle wrapped, and walked out the door with some cream and some pain pills. I was in and out in 45 minutes. No one asked if I had health insurance because everyone has health insurance. And I guarantee that the cost of the visit will be far less than it would have been in the United States.

The weirdest parade

In the village of Küssnacht, which is on the other side of Lake Zug, they have an interesting tradition. It's called "Klausjagen," which means, in essence, "chasing Santa Claus." It consists of a parade, held every December 4. It's a funny combination of a centuries-old pagan tradition that somehow got combined with the Christmas season. The village used to have a tradition of having a parade with whips to drive out the evil spirits. When the Christians came along and made everything all Christmas-y, that somehow turned into a parade with both whips and Santa Claus. It's pretty famous. About 20,000 people cram into this little village for this parade, so the kids and I decided to join the "fun" last night.

Here was the parade: First, a bunch of guys cracking whips; second, a bunch of guys wearing exaggerated versions of a Catholic bishop's hat, lit from the inside and with very colorful religious designs. I assumed that this would take up about three minutes, but it went on for about 25 minutes. The kids and I were all getting pretty restless. (I've thrown in a couple of blurry pictures below. Conditions were tough for taking pictures. It was dark and crowded and I was trying to keep track of two kids. I think Mary went last night, so she may eventually have better pictures on her blog.) This was followed by the Swiss version of Santa Claus himself, carrying a torch. (He doesn't wear red here and he's not fat.) This was followed by a bunch of guys with trumpets and other horns, but they weren't playing a happy, joyful tune; no, they were just playing a sequence of short notes C-E-G-E-C, followed by a long C. They repeated this over and over again. This was followed by a bunch of guys carrying very large cowbells, which they were ringing. This was followed by a bunch of guys playing some kind of curved horn that sounded more like a kazoo than anything else, but they weren't playing a tune; they were just making noise.

And then it was over. The whole thing took about 45 minutes to pass by. It certainly wasn't anything like the Macy's Parade or anything like that. It actually had kind of a grim feeling to it, which in some ways is typically Swiss. But the kids liked it.

Picture of Lindsey

We've finally had our first real snow here in Switzerland. If you want to see a picture of Lindsey at school, check out:

http://www.iszl.ch/cf_media2/index.cfm?g=1133&menu=1

and look at picture 14.

Life with Lindsey

Question of the day from Lindsey:

Dad, how do you say McDonald's in German?


Today's painful conversation with Lindsey:

In the practice for tomorrow's children's program in church, when asked how she could best help her family, Lindsey spontaneously ditched her scripted line, "Help clean up," and went with her ad-libbed line, "Help Dad do my hair." When I had a discussion with her off to the side about saying what she's supposed to say, she replied, "But I want to say 'help Dad do my hair' because you do it so bad when Mom's gone." Ow.

Lindsey's to-do list

On Saturday, as I sat down with the kids to plan the things we needed to do during the day, Lindsey also decided to make her own list. Here's what it contained:

1. KLENBU
2. EKSSPN
3. WRKONMIPRJEK
4. PLAWSDAD
5. WOJAMVE

Want the translation? Here it is:

1. Clean up
2. Exercise (granted, the spelling on this one's a little mystifying)
3. Work on my projek (or "project," as we say in English)
4. Play wiss Dad (or "play with Dad," as we say in English)
5. Watch a movie

Stace Marie, High-Powered Business Executive

So, at the moment, Stace is sitting in the business lounge in the airport in Amsterdam waiting for her flight to Detroit, which precedes her flight to Salt Lake. Some of you know that for her birthday, I upgraded her flight to business class. I didn't tell her. (I almost posted it to the blog, knowing that she likely wouldn't read it, but I didn't want to tempt fate.)

She finally figured it out when she checked in for her flights in Zurich this morning. Flying business class entitles her to get into some of the lounges in the various airports, including the Air France lounge in Zurich. When I talked to her on the phone after she had figured out what was going on, she told me about her experience with the Air France lounge.

As difficult as it is to imagine, Stace apparently doesn't strike people as your typical business traveler; at least, she certainly didn't strike the lounge attendant that way. Stace got a somewhat skeptical reception from the lounge attendant until producing the magical boarding pass that said she was entitled to be there. The attendant's attitude immediately changed and Stace was welcomed in.

I just wish that I had a video camera on Stace when she gets to her business-class seat on her overseas flight. It would be priceless watching her try to figure out how to adjust her seat (which has about ten different adjustment options), how to choose her movie and get the screen to flip up, how to set up her dinner tray table, and all of that good stuff. She's pretty excited about it. I just hope she can pull it off convincingly without bringing too much shame to the Wood name.

The end . . . .

In discussions with many of you, I've occasionally mourned the fact that given my advanced years, it won't be long before print in books and newspapers suddenly becomes so small that I can no longer read it without glasses. People warn me that it's coming.

Well, I got good news and bad news from the eye doctor yesterday. The good news, I thought, was that the vision in one of my eyes had actually improved slightly from where it was two years ago. The bad news, according to the optometrist, is that the ability to see long distances often shows a slight improvement right before one starts having trouble with reading.

So if I read between the lines (which I won't be able to do much longer), what the optometrist was really telling me is that my life is pretty much over. Bummer.

Musings from Amsterdam

So, here I am sitting in the airport in Amsterdam waiting for my flight to Minneapolis. Here are some random tidbits.

First off, here's the snack I had on my KLM flight from Zurich to Amsterdam: "Antelope skewer and aged goat cheese offered with grilled courgette and beetroot potage." (As usual, I don't even know what most of that means.) For dessert, "ginger lime dessert served with caramel cream sauce." I'll say again that I love eating on airlines that aren't U.S. airlines. Try to imagine that menu on the last Delta flight you took.

Second, I'm sometimes struck by the insanity of all of this worldwide travel. It's about 12:30 p.m. as I'm writing this. My flight leaves Amsterdam at 2:30 p.m. I left the house at 7 this morning to haul my luggage down the stairs and then haul my luggage up the stairs to catch the bus that took me to the train that took me to the plane from Zurich to Amsterdam. When my plane to the Twin Cities finally pulls away from the gate in Amsterdam, I will have already been gone seven and a half hours. You'd think that's a pretty full day of travel, wouldn't you? Nope. In that time, I will have gone a grand total of about 350 miles, an average speed of worse than 50 miles per hour.

And the adventure is just beginning. I then get to sit in a metal box for nine and a half hours, seven miles above the ground or the ocean (in relatively comfortable conditions, granted). My reward at the end of this journey is to hope that my luggage made it with me, to face the scrutiny of a U.S. customs agent desperately looking for something interesting to happen, and then to get to bed at what my body considers to be around 6:00 the next morning, more than 24 hours after I woke up.

I'm not complaining. I knew what I was signing up for. I just sometimes marvel at how nuts it all is. Someone needs to invent a teleporter.

Third, Tanner and I have decided to take a quick trip back up to Paris over the holidays. We didn't get to experience Paris very much when we went to Disneyland earier this year. We're going to take three days to soak it up, visit the Louvre, visit Notre Dame, probably go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and just walk around. That's what's really fun about visiting a city, and that's what you don't get through the window of a tour bus. We'll be staying about a ten-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower. It should be a good time.

Where's Dad?

The kids and I have discovered a fun new game. They're among the first kids picked up by the school bus every morning. The bus starts at the top of our hillside and more or less works its way down, switchback by switchback, until it has everyone, and then it heads to the school. When I walk to work, I pretty much walk straight down the hill on the stairs. If I leave at the right time, I can run into the kids a time or two as they go on their rounds. It's now gotten to the point where they look up and down the stairs when they drive past to see if they can catch a glimpse of me.

But alas, the game must be suspended for now while I head to Minnesota in the morning. This one will be a quick trip, only about a week. I'm going to check out the new University of Minnesota football stadium. Should be fun. I'll blog about what it's like to sit in an outdoor stadium in Minnesota in November watching a terrible football team (Minnesota) play a game against a ferocious opponent (South Dakota State). Needless to say, I was able to get a pretty good seat. Must not be a huge demand for tickets to that one.

Halloween

The Swiss don't really do Halloween, but we managed to celebrate with some Americans. Here are pictures of our costumes. (I couldn't find a costume, so I decided to just open my shirt a little and go with what God gave me.)

In the air again

Well, after three months of being sick of airplanes, I'm ready to climb back on board again. I'm heading to the Twin Cities in the middle of November. I'll get back to Switzerland just in time for Stace to head to Utah for a couple of weeks. I wanted to get one more trip in before the end of the year, and why visit Minnesota in December if one doesn't have to?

More thoughts

A couple more things to add about the cruise.

First, just to illustrate the outrageous cost of living around here, I'll tell you that I got a haircut on the cruise for less than I could have gotten it in Switzerland. When's the last time you heard of someone getting something cheaper on a cruise ship than they could have gotten it on the land?

Second, Tanner turned eleven during the cruise. That's the day we were in Rome. Not a bad way to spend your birthday, right? We ordered a cake to be brought out to him during dinner that night. The staff sang to him. He thought the whole thing was pretty cool.

The report

Okay, here we go with the report.

Last Saturday, we drove from Zug to Barcelona, which took about eleven hours with breaks. It was a nice drive. That part of France was much prettier than what we saw on our way to Paris last winter.

While in the French part of Switzerland, I got a reminder of just how good people are at switching between languages over here. We stopped for gas shortly before we got to Geneva. There were a couple of people in line before me, and the attendant spoke French to them. When it was my turn, I told her my pump number in German and looked at her quizzically, unsure if she's be able to understand. Without batting an eye, she shifted into flawless German and completed the transaction.

The trip through France and into Spain was uneventful, which is what you want on a long drive. Barcelona was a nice city. It seemed more laid back than Switzerland (but then most places are more laid back than Switzerland). We took our best shot at going to church on Sunday morning, but we couldn't find the church. It was located somewhere in the inner city of Barcelona and probably didn't even look like what we would consider to be a church building. Anyway, we drove around the area for a while and then gave up. I'm sure we'll get credit in heaven for trying.

Then it was time to take a cab to the port, and the fun began. We got on the ship around 1:00 and immediately commenced eating. The kids, of course, were deliriously happy figuring out all the details of our cabin, the play areas, the mini-golf, the rollerblading track, the ice rink, the dining rooms, and all the rest that comes with cruising on a big ship.

Monday was a day at sea. The kids went to the kids' club and the parents just chilled. Lindsey loved the kids' club. In this picture (which has horrible red-eye that I'm too lazy to remove but seems appropriate for an owl), Lindsey has been painted up as an owl. She went around the ship hooting at everyone she saw. Later that week, the club had an activity where all the little kids went into the elevator, pushed the button for each floor, and then yelled "wock and woll" (as Lindsey puts it) every time the doors opened. Lindsey reported that "a lady looked at us funny."

Another fun thing about the ship was that we had a different animal made out of towels every night in the room when we came back from dinner.

Things were a little rough at sea that day. The ship was rocking and rolling pretty good. So, imagine Ethan facing the triple threat: naturally unsteady legs, on a ship that's rocking on the waves, running on a treadmill. But at least I didn't also have to do an ice show on a rolling ship like the professional skaters did.

Our first stop, Tuesday, was Naples, Italy. We had nothing booked for the morning, so I just walked around Naples. It was a dramatic contrast with Switzerland. In Naples, there was gridlock at 10:30 in the morning, cars were honking at each other all the time, cars were triple-parked everywhere, and "no parking" signs seemed to be taken as suggestions to ignore. It felt like New York City to me. Crazy.

That afternoon, we all went to visit the ruins of Pompeii, the city buried by the eruption of the volcano at Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 72. The city was forgotten until the 1700s, when it was accidentally rediscovered. It's one of the best-preserved ruins in the world. No one has exact numbers, but by one estimate, 9,000 people died after the eruption, mostly due to asphyxiation.

Wednesday was Rome. Rather than taking one of the cruise line's tours, we joined with the family of my co-worker, Bob, and paid for a van and a driver to take us around Rome. It didn't take long to figure out that you can't really do justice to Rome in a day. You should really spend a couple of days at the Vatican alone, whereas we had about two and a half hours to see the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. We saw the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Roman Forum in the morning.

After that, we visited the Trevi Fountain. Legend has it that if you throw a coin into the fountain, you're assured another visit to Rome someday. (I'm not sure that anyone has subjected that statement to the rigors of scientific study.)

That afternoon, we ate lunch at a real Italian restaurant (meaning that we were the only Americans in the place, which is exactly the way I like it) and then went to the Vatican. As I mentioned, the Vatican deserves much more time than we had for it. We'll need to go back to Rome again without a cruise, just like we need to go back to Paris after our one-day excursion earlier this year. The Sistine Chapel was really neat but really crowded.

Here's the ceiling of one part of the Vatican Museum, video by Tanner:

And here's a picture of Tanner with Luigi, our driver for the day in Rome.

Thursday was Pisa. We spent a couple of hours in Pisa, and it turns out that you can adequately cover Pisa in a couple of hours. There's not much there besides the tower and a lot of really aggressive street vendors selling incredibly inexpensive Rolex watches (and I use "incredible" in the original sense of the word). Sure enough, there's a tower there, and sure enough, it's leaning. Beyond that, there's not much to recommend in Pisa.

By Friday, the kids had about had it with tours. We didn't schedule anything. We were in a port near Nice and Cannes, but we left the kids on the ship, and Stace and I just did some walking around the town of Villefranche. The kids had fun doing some skating. I fell my first time around the rink and scraped some skin off of my palm. That was the end of my skating.

Here's Tanner golfing on the ship with France in the background.

Here's our ship from the land.

Our last stop on Saturday was supposed to be in Marseilles, but the wind was so ferocious that we had to divert to the nearby port of Toulon. I then took a bus to Marseilles and still saw some of the city while everyone else relaxed on the boat.

Then on Sunday, we survived the drive back home. Whew!

A couple of observations: First, of all the places I've been in Europe so far, Switzerland is probably the best place to live. It's orderly, it's clean, and it's a good place for kids. France might be nice. Italy seemed crazy. I'm sure that Italians love it, but Rome and Naples were a bit chaotic for my taste.

Second, it seems to me that everyone should be able to live on a cruise ship all the time. If I ever run for office, that's going to be the first point in my party's platform.

We're back

We survived. I'm too pooped to put much on here now, but here's the list of the countries we visited in the past week either by boat or by car: Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, France, Spain, France, and Switzerland. We saw the ruins at Pompeii, the Vatican and many other sites in Rome, and the leaning tower of Pisa. We ate too much.

Pictures are coming soon.

Here we go

Well, we're off in the morning. We've got a ten-hour drive ahead of us tomorrow. I fully expect that a wellspring of sympathy will fail to erupt in the hearts of my readers.

The U.S. dollar hit a symbolic low again today: my bank's daily withdrawal limit of 510 U.S. dollars limited me to 510 Swiss francs at the ATM today. That means the dollar and the franc are almost even. That fact makes the six francs I spent today for lunch (since I forgot to bring it from home) a little more painful. I can't rationalize it by saying that the exchange rate makes up for it. Earlier this year, the dollar was so good that my withdrawal limit allowed me to get 630 Swiss francs. My company makes up the difference, so it doesn't hurt me financially, but it does make it harder to rationalize nonessential purchases in Switzerland (or in the rest of Europe when one is on a cruise, for that matter).

See you next week! There'll be pictures.

Post #2 for today

Odds and ends.

First, I just wanted to pass along that our driver/guide for our day in Rome next week is named Luigi. If you can't trust a guy named Luigi to show you around Rome, who can you trust? (I think for an additional fee, he can also help you out if you're having trouble with someone . . . .)

Second, here's a picture of a rainbow that I tried to get on film. I was standing on our terrace. It didn't show up really well, but here it is:





Third, send the kids out of the room, but I just can't resist passing along my favorite headline for the month: "Man misses birth of his child after fondling nurse, police say." Sometimes I'm just so proud of my gender.

Here's our ship

Here's a little picture of our ship:

You're welcome, Stace

I told Stace today that once again, she needs to thank me for bringing her to Switzerland. Here's why: four inches of snow today in the Twin Cities. Zero inches of snow today in Zug. What more can I say? We're never going back.

Six days until our cruise. But only five days until our ten-hour drive to Barcelona, after which we will certainly deserve a cruise. And yes, I'll take some pictures.

And in blond news that has absolutely, positively nothing to do with Stace: Tanner today told me that one of his classmates dyed his hair blond. Tanner was genuinely confused by this because he said now the kid doesn't look as smart. I'm certain that this in no way has anything to do with Tanner's experiences with the female adult members of his own immediate family.

Meet Mary Staples

Who's Mary Staples? She's the answer to all our prayers, that's who. Why is she the answer to our prayers? Because she's going to solve one of the major problems in our lives. Why am I making such liberal use of rhetorical questions, a trite and overused style of writing? I dunno. Lazy, I guess.

Anyway, Mary and her husband, Derek, just moved to Switzerland. They live in Zug (or at least really close thereto). They'll be here for at least three years, as I recall, and we've been doing some hanging out and touring. They went to Engelberg to see the cows with us a couple of weeks ago, for instance. Stace is taking Mary and her mom to Ikea tomorrow. (My goal is never to set foot in Ikea as long as I'm in Switzerland, and then to continue to not set foot in Ikea once we go back to Minnesota.)

To get to the point: Mary loves to take pictures. As all three of my faithful readers know, I don't like to take pictures. Neither does Stace. I like to write. Mary doesn't like to write. Think of Mary as the anti-Ethan (with all of the good things that says about Mary). So as I was checking out Mary's blog the other day, which is liberally sprinkled with pictures, it occurred to me that Mary was doing all the work that I should be doing. For example: Mary went to Lucerne a couple of weeks ago and took a picture of the lion monument, among other things. And then Mary went to Lucerne a couple of days ago and took another picture of the lion monument for good measure. All of this goes on her blog. Mary takes more pictures in an average day than I've taken in my whole life. She's younger, she's got more energy, she doesn't have kids, and she loves pictures.

So why should I duplicate all that effort when Mary's already doing such a good job? To that end, I'm going to include a link to Mary's blog in my blog, so you can go check out Mary's pictures of Switzerland. I will, of course, include pictures of the kids now and then, and I'll include pictures of things like the cruise, but if you want the real pictures of Switzerland, check out Mary's blog. She's at http://derekandmarystaples.blogspot.com/. I'll include that address permanently in my blog so that you can go check it out anytime. (For the record, I have Mary's permission to use her blog in this manner.)

Heck, maybe I won't even need to keep my blog anymore. If you're wondering what's going on in our lives, just check out Mary's blog. She'll let you know if anything's up with the Woods.

I'm kidding. As Mary always says in her blog, "Gorgeous, beautiful, wish you were here." (I suspect that's the last time I'll use that phrase in my blog. A tad upbeat, don't you think?)

Yup, I stayed up

Ugh. Game went twelve innings, finished 4 a.m. I'm a little tired. At least the Twins won.

In for the long haul

Okay, the Twins have a one-game tiebreaker with the Tigers tonight to see who goes to the playoffs. It starts at 4 p.m. in Minnesota, which means it starts at 11 p.m. in Switzerland. I'm stayin' up to watch. The game should go until about 2. It's like being a college student again and camping out all night to get season football tickets. Except not really.

Here's a map

Here's a map of our cruise itinerary. We start in Barcelona and take a full day to sail over to Naples. Then we just work our way back up the coast over to Barcelona, stopping at a different port each day. We have about a nine- or ten-hour drive across France to get to Barcelona. That should be interesting.

My favorite German word

At the moment, my favorite German word is "einstechen." (The "ei" has a long "i" sound, and the "s" sounds like an "sh.") It means something along the lines of "stick holes in it with your fork." That word sometimes shows up on lunches that I bring to throw in the microwave at work. I'm supposed to "einstechen" the plastic covering before I microwave the food. It just sounds cool and very descriptive of what you're doing, doesn't it?

History was made today

As I was about halfway through my walk to the train station this morning, I realized that I had left the house without eating breakfast. What's with that? I had brushed my teeth and everything. I've never done that before. It never crossed my mind until I realized I was hungry during my walk. Is this what it means to get old?

Luckily, I was on the way to the grocery store anyway to get some fruit to have on hand at work, so I just grabbed a couple of croissants. Weird.

My new name

The Swiss can't say my name. It comes out as "A-tahn" ("A-tahn Voot," if you want both names). So, in the next logical step, they now can't spell my name after hearing it. I got something today at church with the name "Eaton" written on it. That's someone's best guess at how to spell my name based on the way they pronounce it.

Poor folks. When will they wise up and just adopt English as their official language?

Here come the cows

Every fall, the Swiss bring the cows down from the mountains. It's a big traditional deal for the Swiss with lots of partying and celebrating. They put huge bells on the cows and march them through the center of town.

I took Tanner and Lindsey to Engelberg today to see the descent of the cows. It's the second time we've gone. Here are some pix. I'll also include a super close-up of Tanner and his new braces.

Cultural Musings

First, a couple of odds and ends: Tanner made it back safely from Field Week in Verbier, Switzerland. Naturally, he had a great time. He says that his favorite activity was the ropes course. They also did hiking and rock climbing, visited the Red Cross Museum in Geneva, and did lots of other fun things.

Also, I'm giving you fair warning right now that we're planning to send out one of those annoying Christmas letters this year. We manage to bring ourselves to do that every four or five years. I'm going to write the letter, but I'm going to write it as though it's coming from Stace, but I'm going to write it in such a way that anyone who really knows us will know that it's me writing and not Stace. Make sense?

Finally, to the actual point of today's blog. Here are three random examples of cultural differences between the United States and Switzerland:

1) I was at the grocery store yesterday buying myself a croissant. I had just enough time to run in, grab the croissant, pay for it, and make it to my bus. I went to the express lane. Without warning the cashier either decided to or was required to stop everything and count out the cash in her cash drawer, so she kept a line of about eight people waiting for seven or eight minutes while she slowly and carefully counted up each denomination in her drawer. No one got restless. We all just stood patiently and waited. In the U.S., there would have been shots fired. Needless to say, I missed my bus. The customer doesn't always come first in Switzerland.

2) As I was walking through the train station, people were stationed there handing out apples. There was no advertising blitz or anything like that, no strings attached, just people standing there handing out apples. They were really good. That doesn't happen in downtown Minneapolis.

3) (Mormon alert): I had a semiannual church meeting today in Zurich. In the States, we generally have this meeting on a Sunday evening. The Swiss, who love to have their days free, choose have it at 8 a.m. on a Saturday. Some people need to travel an hour or two to get to the meeting, which makes it an awfully early morning for a lot of folks. Truth be told, I generally skip this meeting here in Switzerland (it's in German, after all), but I was roped into singing in a choir this time around. Let me also add that Zurich is the most painful city in the world in which to drive. Yuck. Nothing makes sense. Even the GPS doesn't know its way around. I drove today, but I take the train most of the time.

Stupid is as stupid does

Do you ever do something just because you're too stupid to do otherwise? I do. (You probably figured that wasn't a rhetorical question.)

Just now, I was eating one of those rare Swiss delicacies, Ramen noodles. (Don't ask.) I was eating them out of a very shallow bowl. I was eating the noodles with a fork. After I finished the noodles, I had a dilemma: I didn't want the broth to go to waste, but I was also too lazy to get up from my chair to go get a spoon. Since the kids weren't around to see my bad manners, my only logical choice was to tip the bowl into my mouth and to drink the broth, right? As I contemplated committing this breach of social etiquette, I looked at the bowl and thought to myself, "That bowl is so shallow that if I try to tip it to drink the broth, I'm going to spill the broth all over myself. Hmmmm." Of course, my next move was to do just that. Sure enough, predictably, I ended up with Ramen broth all over myself.

Why do we do dumb things?

How to earn 42 cents without even trying

Recall that Tanner and I went to the recital for Chad Hoopes in Gstaad a couple of weeks ago. Well, due to some confusion, we bought tickets for ourselves before we found out that Chad's mom had gotten free tickets for us. I was prepared to just eat the 45 francs the tickets cost us. We went to the recital, and I gave the paid tickets back at the ticket office and told them just to give the tickets away or to sell them to someone else if they wanted. To my surprise, the woman at the ticket office said that if they were able to resell them, they'd put the money back on my credit card. (Imagine that happening in the United States.)

I didn't think much more about it and had still written off the cost of the tickets. I looked at my credit card statement today, though, and to my surprise (again), I had a credit back for the cost of the tickets. What's more, due to fluctuations in the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Swiss franc on the day I bought the tickets and the day they were resold, the credit I got back on my credit card statement was 42 U.S. cents more than I had paid for the tickets.

This got me thinking. Some of you may recall that a couple of summers ago I found myself a little racket (completely legal) reselling tickets to a concert given by the band The Police in St. Paul. I grossed myself about $1,600 on that one concert [but then lost about $500 of that in the one bad judgment call I made for that concert, buying front-row tickets that I wasn't able to resell (but then I did get a front-row ticket to a good concert, so it wasn't all bad)].

I'm thinking that I may have stumbled onto my next moneymaking racket . . . .

How to save by spending

Here's how it works:

Step 1. Decide that it's necessary for the family to take a cruise somewhere in Europe.

Step 2. Decide that the cruise the family should take is a twelve-day cruise over the Christmas and New Year's Day that visits Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, and Italy. Convince yourself that the huge amount of money it would cost is a good investment.

Step 3. After a couple of days, come to your senses and decide that spending twelve days in a 200-square-foot cabin with a five-year-old may not be as exciting as it first sounds. Also, realize that the cost of the cruise is a bit steep.

Step 4. Decide that as an alternative, the family should take a cruise in October for half the price, visiting Spain, Italy, and France. (Stace is still a little confused about why we can't save ourselves some hassle and take an ocean cruise that begins and ends in Switzerland.)

Step 5. Congratulate yourself on saving a ton of money over what you were initially going to spend. Feel good about your finances.

So there you have it. We'll try this smaller cruise out for size in a few weeks. If this goes well, maybe we'll give the Egypt/Turkey thing a shot another year.

Yup. It's pricey here.

A recent study showed that the world's most expensive cities, in order, are: Oslo, Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo, and New York City. I worry that living here has immunized me to sticker shock, which may be a really bad thing when we go back to the States.

Oh, well. Live it up for now, right?

No, he didn't

Jenny asked a very perceptive question in response to my last post: After Tanner slept until 3 p.m. upon returning to Switzerland, did he go to sleep the following night? The answer is, no, he didn't, and therefore, neither did I.

We tried putting him down (by "putting him down," I mean putting him to bed, not euthanizing him or insulting him) at around 10:00, I think. Every half hour or so after that, he arose to report that he was still awake. We tried everything: books on tape, music, letting him read with the flashlight, everything. Finally, at 4 a.m., I told him to lie on his bed for an hour, and to come and get me if he was still awake. Sure enough, at 5 a.m., he reported that he was still awake. I decided that he was up for the day. He made it through the entire next day without a nap but fell soundly asleep that night. We didn't let him sleep until 3 p.m. again, and we never will.

In other news, Tanner and I spent seven hours on nine different trains yesterday getting to and from Gstaad, a resort town that's almost in the French part of Switzerland but is still German. We went to see a recital for Chad Hoopes, who at age 15 is on his way to becoming one of the world's top violinists. Chad was Tanner's temporary big brother a few years ago when we went to Wichita to adopt Lindsey. Tanner stayed with Chad and family for a few days. It was fun to see the recital and to see Chad and his mom. Tanner's a pretty good traveler. We could have driven and shaved about an hour from our travel time each way, but the train is more relaxing.

School starts Tuesday. Stace is extremely upset at the prospect of having the kids gone for eight hours each day. I hope she can successfully make the adjustment.

How long can one sleep?

I mentioned that Stace and the kids got back last night. The kids slept for about three hours on the plane, but when they got home, they weren't ready for bed; they wanted to play with their toys, play outside, and that sort of thing. They went to bed close to their usual times, Lindsey at about 8:00, and Tanner around 9:00.

Well, I just talked to Stace, and she said that Tanner slept until 3:00 this afternoon. That's eighteen hours. Can you imagine sleeping for that long? For those of us who are in their advanced years, can you imagine your bladder holding out that long?

We're back

Well, all has been quiet on the blogging front for the past month. Sorry that I haven't written for so long. (That's for you, Lar and Jed.) We were in the States, and I figure no one needs pictures of either Minnesota or Utah.

It was a busy month. During that time, I: worked in Minnesota; visited the dentist for a check-up (but recall that I never get cavities, so it was no big deal); had minor foot surgery; visited my neurologist twice; had an MRI of my brain and spinal cord; donated blood platelets; donated whole blood; flew to Utah and back to Minnesota; went with Tanner to see our friend Chad Hoopes solo with the Minnesota Orchestra; spent four unexpected, extra days for work in the Twin Cities on my way back to Switzerland; and gained four pounds. Stace: flew back and forth between Utah and Minnesota; spent lots of time with friends and relatives in Utah; spent lots of time with friends and relatives in Minnesota; just about assaulted a Delta ticket counter employee in Salt Lake City who tried to charge her $300 for her heavy bags because he wouldn't believe that she was an Elite frequent flier (I guess she just doesn't have that "Elite frequent flier" look) (with help from both sides of the Atlantic, we got it worked out); attempted to smuggle neither electronic devices nor liquids through airport security (hooray, Stace!); donated neither blood nor platelets; and lost more than four pounds. Tanner and Lindsey: caught up with friends and cousins, flew back and forth between Utah and Minnesota; and, by the end of all of this, were complaining about how much they missed Switzerland.

I got back here on Monday, so I have a two-day head start on recovering from jet lag. My new goal is not to get on an airplane for about five months.

Pay off the national debt

Nothing profound here. This headline from today's Minneapolis Star Tribune just struck me so funny and caught me so off guard that I laughed out loud:

"Man swipes debit card, gets charged $23 quadrillion"

Drag.

Matterhorn

Well, since I'm alone for a few days, I decided to kill a Saturday by seeing as much of Switzerland as possible in 14 hours. I used a one-day unlimited train pass to travel to the very southern part of Switzerland to the town of Zermatt, which is at the foot of the Matterhorn. (The train pass was funded mostly by the several thousands of Swiss francs that Stace had left behind in her hoarded loose change. I'm going to get rid of all of those coins while she's gone.) I'd heard that the Matterhorn could be tricky to see because it's so often shrouded in clouds. I got lucky and was able to get a pretty good view. (Stace has the camera, so I didn't take any pictures, but you can see plenty on the web.)

The funny thing is that the Matterhorn seems to create its own clouds. As I looked at the clouds on the Matterhorn, they were moving quickly from west to east. The skies were clear to the west, so I figured that the Matterhorn would clear up in just a couple of minutes. But I realized after a few minutes that the eastern face of the Matterhorn keeps creating its own clouds, so they never go away. It was an interesting weather phenomenon. Oh--I just got some info about this on Wikipedia. It's called a "banner cloud." Interesting.

One sobering feature in Zermatt is the graveyard memorializing many of the people who have died climbing the Matterhorn. Over 500 have died. I've got a couple of colleagues who are going to climb it this summer. I'll have to make sure they know about the graveyard.

Then, I took the train to Geneva. I know almost nothing about Geneva besides the fact that it sits on the shore of a huge lake, but based on my experience in other European cities, I decided to make four assumptions as I got off the train: 1) the city must have been built on a river; 2) that river must be near the main train station; 3) the riverfront would be where all the interesting stuff was going on; and 4) there would be ice cream along the riverfront.

All four assumptions turned out to be correct. The ice cream was really good. It was interesting to be in my adopted home country while understanding even less of the language than usual. It was a bit of a relief to get back to the German part.

So, all in all, a good day. I spent fourteen hours gazing at the Alps, relaxing on a train rather than driving, reading a book, and wandering around a couple of interesting towns. Could be worse.

The Report

Okay, here we go. It'll be long. I'll divide it into chapters so that you can read it in more than one sitting. Here's the table of contents:

I. Thursday: the drive, the castle, and the hotel in Munich

II. Friday: Dachau, fire and flood, Salzburg

III. Saturday: Eagle's Nest, more Salzburg

IV. Sunday: church in Salzburg, Vienna, a dang nice hotel

V. Monday: more Vienna

VI. Tuesday: more Vienna

VII. Wednesday: leaving Vienna, Oberammergau, GPS misadventures, the drive home

VIII. Random observations

I. Thursday

On Thursday, the Woods and the Bundersons hit the road for Germany. It was fairly uneventful. We drove about three and a half hours to Neuschwanstein, a castle built by King Ludwig, also sometimes known as "Mad King Ludwig." After seeing the castle, I'm willing to believe that he was a bit nuts. The whole thing was basically built as a shrine to the composer Richard Wagner. (If I'm Wagner, I'm a little creeped out by all the attention.) Wagner never saw the inside of the castle, and Ludwig died before it was completed.

Even though the castle was gorgeous, it left me feeling a little empty. Everything inside was beautiful, but it was hard to get past the self-indulgence. This guy even built a room that was designed to be a theater for performances with an audience of one: himself. How weird would it be to be the only person in a theater watching a Wagner opera with a cast of dozens?

As it did every day during our vacation, it started to rain during the afternoon, but we had our umbrellas, so we just walked back down from the castle to our car and headed to Munich. The hotel was interesting. It looked more like a converted apartment building. They gave us a key that weighed about five pounds, which I suppose makes it awfully hard to lose the hotel key. I've stayed in worse hotels.

II. Friday
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We weren't sure how long we were going to spend at Dachau. We ended up being there for about six hours. It was quite an experience. We took a tour with headphones so we could go at our own speed and see what we wanted to see. As I mentioned before, it's one thing to try to imagine life in a concentration camp, but it's another to actually see where they slept, how little space they had, where the bodies were buried and burned, and everything else that goes along with life and death in a concentration camp. We didn't much feel like taking pictures, but we did take one of a sculpture that I think captures the spirit of the place:

The whole experience made me want to go back to 1930s Germany and start asking people what in the world they were thinking. I'll grant that many of them may have been ignorant of what exactly was going on in the camps, but people certainly knew what Hitler was about and knew what they were supporting.

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We had some interesting weather while we were there. We'd spent most of the day outside. We eventually worked our way to the museum and were in there for quite a while. As usual, it started to rain. It rained hard, and it kept raining hard. It got so intense that lightning hit the building. It's a good thing we had already watched the movie, because the lightning fried the electronics, and they couldn't show the move anymore that day.

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As I mentioned, it rained hard. That explains the picture that I posted yesterday. When we got the parking lot at the end of the day, it was flooded. The lot wasn't graded very well and didn't have very good drainage. I had to get my shoes wet to get to the car, but we weren't as bad off as the poor soul whose car I showed you yesterday. I suppose he had to wait for the water to drain and then try to start the car, but I think the water was high enough that it probably ruined the car. We were parked a few stalls away, and we were very glad that we didn't have to deal with a flooded car.

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Dachau is on the outskirts of Munich. To reunite with the Bundersons in Salzburg, we needed to go through or around Munich. Neither one went well. Munich was a big parking lot. It was probably the combination of the heavy rain and the fact that it was a Friday afternoon, but we went about twenty kilometers in an hour and a half. Not fun.
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We finally got out of that and made our way to our next hotel, which was right in the middle of Salzburg. It was a fun location. The heart of Salzburg was a fun place to be, with lots of outdoor restaurants and shops and people walking around (until the rain chased them away).

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III. Saturday

Saturday morning, Stace and I, along with Stuart and two of the Bunderson girls, drove back into Germany to Kehlsteinhaus, also known as the Eagle's Nest, which was a birthday present to Hitler. We were supposed to have a tour in English, but the tour never happened, which was a little frustrating. Nevertheless, it was gorgeous. I've been to the top of a few mountains in Switzerland, but this was just about as nice. Pictures don't do it justice, but I'll toss in a couple.

After we came down from there, we went back to Salzburg and visited a museum that was a building where Mozart used to live. That evening, we just kind of wandered around. Street life is a lot more vibrant in a place like that than most places I've been in the States. As we were walking around, we came to a carving competition. There were artisans there carving sculptures out of wood, stone, and marble. They were impressive. While they were carving, there was a saxophone quintet walking around, playing and having fun. That was one of Stace's favorite parts of the trip.

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Later that evening, we rode a train to the top of a cliff that looks over Salzburg.

IV. Sunday

On Sunday, we said goodbye to the Bundersons, who drove back to Amsterdam to fly back to the States. Stace and I continued on to Vienna.

Our hotel in Vienna was right in the heart of the city, just like in Salzburg, so we had a choice: pay $140 to park near the hotel for three days, or pay $13 to park on the outskirts of Vienna and take the underground into the center of the city. As you can guess, we parked in the outskirts and took the underground, but of course, this turned into a mini-adventure.

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When we parked in the ramp and were walking toward the station to catch the underground, we saw a sign in German. We couldn't understand every word, but we could read enough to understand that the underground wasn't running to that station for a couple of weeks due to maintenance on the tracks. That meant that we needed to figure out where to catch a bus to another station, then catch the underground the rest of the way into the city. It worked out okay, but it's a good illustration of the fun of international travel.

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The hassle was worth it, though, because we were able to spend three nights at one of the top hotels in the world, the Hotel Sacher Wien. The cheap rooms there run upwards of $400 a night, but due to a set of circumstances I won't bother to detail here, we were able to stay for free. It was awesome. I was afraid they'd have to drag me out kicking and screaming. They brought us fresh fruit, they cleaned our room twice a day, and it was air-conditioned (a rarity in Europe).

V. Monday

On Monday, we visited St. Stephan's Cathedral, a classic old cathedral in Vienna. It's several hundred years old. I toured the catacombs underneath, where hundreds of people have been buried over the centuries. That was really interesting.

Later that day, we visited museums from the last days of the ruling family in Vienna. The people got rid of the monarchy in 1918, but it was interesting to learn about the history leading up to that time. We also did some of that on Tuesday.

And here's an interesting bit of street art I saw walking around. This kind of thing isn't unusual in Vienna. These folks would just stand there like statutes and would only move when someone dropped money in the dish. Then one of them would bow. (You just don't see that kind of thing in Lakeville.)

VI. Tuesday

On Tuesday, we visited another museum and did some shopping. We went back to St. Stephan's to do more of a tour, and then I found out that I could climb up one of the towers. It was about 350 steps. Those of you who know my morning exercise routine here in Switzerland know that I found that challenge irresistible, so I went for it. I was able to get a good look at Vienna.

VII. Wednesday

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On Wednesday, we got up early to make the long drive home. I wept bitter tears as I checked out of the Hotel Sacher Wien, because I'll probably never have anyone treat me that well again in my whole life. Of course, we got confused taking the underground back to the car in light of the construction and so forth, but we figured it out. We had to swing back through Salzburg since Stace had left her favorite pillow at the hotel, and Salzburg was a traffic nightmare. After that, we decided to make a side trip to Oberammergau, Germany, the quaint little town where they put on the Passion Play every ten years. That led to some interesting experiences with the GPS. The GPS can be both a blessing and a curse. (More on that later.) We ended up rolling back into town at around 10:00 Wednesday night. Whew!

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VIII. Random observations
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First, a comment about pay toilets. At first, it seems decidedly un-American to charge someone to go to the bathroom. I mean, what's next? Pretty soon, they're going to start putting water in bottles and making you pay for those, too. Anyway, there is an upside to charging for pay toilets. Any bathroom where I have to pay is pretty much spotless. I think it's worth 50 cents to have a pleasant bathroom experience rather than one where you have to hold your nose, don't you?

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Second, a comment about GPS. We realized that it only gets you so far. After our GPS gave us nonsensical instructions that basically amounted to, "Drive through this German woman's vegetable garden without damaging the tomatoes," we decided we'd had enough. We started to ignore it. Lo and behold, we got there twenty minutes faster than the GPS said we would. The moral of the story is that GPS can be helpful, but it's better to supplement it with a good map and a good navigator.

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Third, driving on the German autobahn is fun. I hit 160 km/h, which is around a hundred miles per hour. I didn't do it for long, but it was fun while it lasted. If you're not prepared to really haul, though, you'd better stay out of the left lane. Those drivers are serious.

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Fourth, we love Austria. We had a lot of fun, and it's a very lively place. It was interesting to just walk around and get a feel for Salzburg and Vienna.

We're back

We got back from Vienna tonight. There's not time to write the report today, but I'll get to it soon. I'll just leave you with one picture. I'll explain later:





(When I told Stace that I had to get at least something on the blog tonight, she told me that the blog isn't really a matter of life and death. ????!!!???????? I informed her that the fact that she doesn't consider it a matter of life and death, and doesn't even really bother to read it, doesn't mean that it's not a matter of life and death for others.)

Having fun

Just a quick entry from Vienna, and no pictures that I can show yet. Everything is going fine. About our visit to Dachau, I'll just say that however bad you've imagined life at a concentration camp, the real thing was ten times worse. Being there really drove that point home. The day we spent there was worthwhile but draining.

We're having a great time on our other adventures. Driving on German freeways with no speed limit is a blast. The Bundersons are now back on their way to Amsterdam, and we'll be in Vienna until Wednesday. We love both Salzburg and Vienna. We've had some typical vacation mishaps, but nothing fatal. More complete report in a few days!

Out of touch

Well, we'll be pretty much unreachable for a week or so. Not really (I'll have my BlackBerry), but I won't have my laptop with me, and I obviously won't be doing any blogging. The kids are headed to Utah and the adults are headed to Austria. See you next week!

Are they really siblings?

We recently got the school health screenings for Tanner and Lindsey. Not surprisingly, they're both near the 50th percentile in height. It's the weight that's funny. Lindsey is in about the 75th percentile for weight. Tanner is in about the 5th percentile for weight. (His BMI is 14.0, which technically means he doesn't really exist.) It's hard to believe that those two are related, isn't it?

Lost in translation

Sometimes, websites about foreign attractions contain some funny English. You can just tell that someone did his or her best to literally translate a phrase into English.

Here's one for King Ludwig's castle in Germany, which is the castle that gave the inspiration for Disney's Sleeping Beauty castles. In suggesting that we have lunch after our tour, the website says: "You can enjoy this extremely breath-robbing view after your castle guidance."

I'm going to try to keep track of those and post them when I come across funny ones.

Our summer plans

Okay, everyone, pull out your calendars. Here are the official dates for where we'll be this summer:

On Thursday, July 2, the kids fly to Utah. On Friday, July 10, Stace flies to Utah. On Friday, July 17, Ethan flies to Minnesota. On Tuesday, July 21, Stace and the kids fly to Minnesota. On Wednesday, July 29, everyone flies to Utah. On Wednesday, August 5, Ethan flies to Switzerland. On Tuesday, August 11, Stace and the kids fly to Switzerland.

Wow.

Go west

(Jed, you can skip this post since it's just a version of what I told you at dinner today.)

I love flying west. Here's what I was able to get done on Wednesday with seven extra hours in my day: I got up and exercised. I then showered, ate breakfast, and helped get the kids off to school. Stace and I then watched an episode of 24 on iTunes. I then caught the bus to the train station and caught the train to the airport. I dozed off during the train ride to the airport. I did some work in the airport lounge while waiting for my flight. I then did some reading on the short flight to Amsterdam and had a nice little meal (see earlier blog for the menu). I did more work in the Amsterdam airport lounge and also on the second flight before it took off. After the plane took off, I did some more reading, and then I ate dinner. After dinner, I did a little more work. I then watched a movie, dozed off, and watched another movie. I then ate a pre-landing snack and read some more. After I landed in Minneapolis, I checked into my hotel, got my hair cut, picked up my travel kit from the house, went back to the hotel, dealt with work e-mail, and read some more. See how nice it is to have seven extra hours? Two movies, four meals, half a book, a haircut, a couple of short naps, and work, and still in bed at a decent hour. Gotta love that.

Now, of course, one has to pay a price for that by essentially losing an entire day on the flight back to Europe. So my idea is that we should just always fly west. That's all well and good until you run into this unfortunate little obstacle called the International Date Line. That nasty line is an unavoidable fact of world travel that prevents one from flying west forever without losing a day. It always catches up with you in the end. Oh, well.

In other world news, as if the stories about my luggage weren't already sufficiently gripping, there's more. My bag finally found me on Thursday night. Problem is, it got torn up pretty badly. I have no idea what happened, but the airline now owes me a new bag. They're trying to figure out how much they owe me. At one point, they asked me if I had the receipt from the purchase of the bag, which I've had for two or three years. You can imagine Stace's reaction to that question. Anyway, I found a replacement bag that should do the trick for about $85, so now it's just a matter of convincing Northwest Airlines that they owe me the $85. I'll have hourly updates on this riveting saga, so check back often.

Again? Seriously???

Remember that excruciatingly long and tedious story I told you back in March about the airline losing one of my two bags and me having to shave with a blade for the first time and all of that? Well, when I got into Minneapolis tonight, the first thing I did was walk over to the posted list of lost bags before I even went to the baggage carousel. I'm sure my Gentle Readers are way ahead of me on this one. Sure enough, there was "E. Wood." For one brief moment, the hope flared that maybe that list was just left over from when I was here in March. (I had a similar experience when Tanner broke his arm when he was three years old. In the initial split second, I looked at his arm, which was bent like a bow, and thought to myself, "Maybe it's not really broken.") No dice. Just like before, they lost one of my two bags, and just like before, it has my razor in it. There's an old saying that goes something like, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, Ethan is a big, fat idiot for not planning better."

I thought that maybe my super-duper platinum elite frequent flier status would help my luggage get through. Oh, the arrogance. I only need to be clubbed over the head twice before I learn my lesson, so from now on, I'll carry on a one-day supply of essentials. I was on such a hot streak last year. Karma stinks.

On the bright side, here's what I was served on the KLM flight from Zurich to Amsterdam: "Skewer with tomato and pesto-marinated mozzarella accompanied by bresaola and a veal pastrami pladina served on Italian salad with Gorgonzola." Man, I love non-U.S. airlines. I don't even know what most of those words mean, but it was sure good.