Portovenere, Italy

My sister and her husband, Mike, came to visit for two weeks about two weeks ago. We did lots of fun things in the area, but the highlight of the trip was driving 5.5 hours to Portovenere, Italy (ok the car ride itself wasn't that fun...two adults and a toddler cart seat in the back- enough said). 

Portovenere lies on the southern border of the Cinque Terra National Park, which is a quite popular place to visit and to hike the path connecting the 5 towns on the Mediterranean coast. 

We had hiked there when we visited Switzerland a few years ago and it was a beautiful and great experience. But, I am so happy that we stayed in portovenere. It is a typical coastal Italian town with the colorful buildings, plus there is a big church, castle, and island right there. We enjoyed two nice hikes, including one going over and around the island, which gave us breathtaking views. 

 

The only downside is most restaurants serve meals late, dinner starting at 7 or 7:30... Normally lasting a few hours, that doesn't work to well with a two year old who is used to going to bed at that time. Nonetheless Portovenere was rather child friendly and overall we enjoyed it more than the more touristy cinque terra towns.

Marmie and Papa Patton's visit

Almost 6 weeks ago now John's parents came to visit. Their visit started a very crazy 6 weeks for us, as they were here, then John left the same day as them for America fir work for 2 weeks, then john arrived back in Switzerland the same day my sister and her husband arrived. The time flew by and now our visits are done for awhile. 

Anyways, back to johns parents visit, Marmie and Papa is what all the grandchildren call them. We were excited for them to arrive, because they have done very little traveling and we thought they would be blown away by Switzerland and the beauty of where we live. I think they were! While they were here they enjoyed time in Luzern, a few good hikes, a trip to L'abri community (founded by Francis Schaefer) in the French part of Switzerland where John's Dad gave a speech, and a trip to Lake Como in Italy. The trip went by very quick and fun was had by all.

Lausanne, Switzerland

 A few weeks ago John had another holiday from work, it has been so long I forget what catholic holiday it was (I have been lazy with blogging!). Anyways John had traveled to lake Geneva earlier in the summer for a bike race and had nothing but great things to say about Lausanne, where his race started. Laussanne is on lake Geneva, is in the French speaking part of Switzerland, you can see the French alps across the lake, and is surrounded by the swiss vineyards. He particularly enjoyed the train ride-it had fewer tunnels than most train rides inour part of Switzerland (so you can actually see things) and passes by several lakes. So we decided to give it a go!

 

The train ride was gorgeous, although entertaining  a 20 month old was not quite as relaxing as the train ride John had by himself. The problem is that trains don't have seat belts :) even in the bus when Hannah has a seat belt on she is content to look out the window, but on the train she knows she is free and wants to move about! Nonetheless it was a beautiful train ride!

Once in Lausanne we walked down to the water and bought supplies for a picnic lunch by the water. It was a gorgeous day and a picnic by the lake was very relaxing. Then Hannah took a sub par nap in the stroller as we walked along the lake. I am pretty sure she must have smelled the ice cream because not a second after we purchased our cones was she awake after only sleeping 45 min.... She needs 2-3 hours to really survive the day :). Needless to say this led to a fussy hour train ride and a passed out sleeping beauty once we got in our car to drive the rest of the way home! 

If you are ever in Switzerland I would recommend a trip down to the French speaking region along lake Geneva.

Tubingen, Germany

Every time we have planned a little trip to Germany we have never been disappointed. Something about the culture there, and the prices :) seem more comfortable to us than switzerland. But I am sure part of that needs to be attributed to the fact that we just go there on vacation and have never tried living there. Whatever the reason we really like Germany.

Two weeks ago we had a three day weekend thanks to Pentecost Monday so we drove towards tubingen Germany. We were going to camp but the campground was full by the time we called. I think that was a blessing because we found a nice holiday apartment 35 min from tubingen and it even had a swimming pool. Plus the temps were 90+ that weekend and camping with Hannah would have been no fun! No one likes to sleep when they are sweating constantly!

                                                

We spent the mornings going on a hike and then we would swim while Hannah napped and then drove twice up to tubingen for the afternoon. Sadly because of the holiday most of the shops besides restaurants were closed. We decided we need to go back because there were a lot of very fun little shops. 

                             

Tubingen is a university town, with a very good theological school- Jurgen moltmann works there so John was excited to find the theological buildings on campus! Sadly he didn't bump into Jurgen. We miss iowa city and it's restaurants and culture so it was nice to spend some time in another college town and see and feel some of the same culture. We definitely would recommend tubingen to people wanting to visit a town in Germany.

                             

Changes

So last week was my last week working as a physical therapist at the hospital outpatient clinic in Stans. The last 4.5 months have been a good first working experience in Switzerland. Of course there were the bad days, like the first one when one of my first patients was upset that I was not swiss/was not impressed by my German skills and wanted a different therapist. I am surprised that I went back :) I must say that most of my patients were very nice people and didn't put up a fuss when I explained that I don't yet understand the Swiss German and would appreciate if they spoke high German to me. I am glad most people switched, well otherwise I wouldn't have known what their problem was. Speaking of German, I do go through long periods where I really get frustrated with German and wish I could do my job here in English. That is one of the first changes that needs to occur, my attitude towards learning German. I desire to feel positive and motivated again towards learning this language. But offen feel depressed hat even when my high German gets better, I still can't understand a bit of Swiss German! 

The other change that is happening is that I officially have a new job that I start tomorrow. It is in a town outside of Luzern called Littau. It is a private practice with 5 other therapists that almost all work part time. I am happy to be continuing to work 2 days a week, and this job is permanent unlike the temporary hospital job. The bummer is that I am back to driving to work, 25-30 min. I will really miss riding my bike to work. Hence the attitude change that needs to happen regarding driving to work! 

In other news, we are recovering from hand foot mouth virus. I was lucky and only caught cold symptoms from it, but check out John's hands. His feet look the same :( and it is really painful! We are thankfully on the mend and looking forward to a weekend of camping!

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit

The past two weeks my parents came to visit. It was the first time my mom has been to Europe and the first time since my dad was in the military.
  Hannah was pretty excited to have friends here for two weeks. She really got good at saying Grandma and Grandpa while they were here. She even got to spend two days with them by herself to get spoiled while I went to work. It didn't take her long to get used to all of the attention.
  
While they were here we went down to the Italian part of Switzerland twice for hiking. It is usually always nice weather on that side of the mountains, so worth the hour drive!

We also headed over to Lauterbrunnen area past Interlaken. This is where you can see all of the big mountains, Eiger, Jung Frau, Moench. We took 3 different cable cars up to the top of the Schilthorn. It was an incredibly blue day so we could see all the mountains! There is also a cool rotating restaurant on the top of the mountain.
    
Of course we had to do a little tour of Luzern, because it is close, and such a pretty bigger city. We decided to take the boat to Luzern, walk through the town, and then bring the train home. It was a perfect way to experience Luzern.
  

One of the last things we did was take a 4 day trip to France. We were hoping that the weather would have been a little nicer because our apartment was right on the lake. But sadly it was fairly cold mixed with rain while we were there. We did get some awesome Hamburgers one night for dinner, like with yummy beef and all (we haven't loved the beef here in Switzerland).
  
All in all it was a great trip. We are still trying to convince my mom to come back in October, so she can have more Hannah time and we can get away for a little trip!