The snow has arrived

In the last few weeks we have been watching the snow creep down the mountains towards the valley. Well it finally got just cold enough for us to keep some snow on the ground down here, in the valley! It is great to use the mountains as your temperature guide, knowing where it is and isn't below zero by how far down the snow comes on the mountains. After the snow fall yesterday, the sun peaked out through the clouds a bit this morning and it was SO gorgeous! The first two pictures aren't great because of the buildings around us blocking some if the mountains. The third picture is from a hike on Sunday where we go above the clouds into the sunshine!

Hiking near Bellinzona Switzerland

Bellinzona is in the Italian part of Switzerland and a little less than 1.5 hours away from where we live in Stans. Two weeks ago John had Friday off for All Saints Day and we wanted to go on a hike a little farther away from home.  This was an excellent destination.

Across the valley on the hill is one of the castles

We did a 3 hour hike, going up 1400 m, covering about 8 km and then brought a gondola back down into the town, and then had to walk 2 km back to the car.

Our guideposts that are on all of our hikes

The landscape seemed to be quite a bit different, at least we thought so, to the mountains by us. We were in the trees the whole time and the path was more dirt than rock, which my feet were happy about :)

lunch time

little cutie

The town of Bellinzona has three large and fairly famous castles in the town or right on the hillside by the town plus a river that runs through it. And obviously the mountains. All of these things make it a very lovely town.

coffee time at the top

We are hoping to return to this location in the winter (which has started now I guess) to snowshoe as there is a 90 min loop up on the mountain that you reach with the gondola!

little cutie again

 I am excited to cross country ski and snowshoe.... just have to find people to watch Hannah :) as the winter sports isn't quite as toddler friendly as the summer hiking!

taking the gondola down, bear was nervous

Farmhouses on the ride down

Swiss City Halbmarathon

Almost two weekends ago I completed my 4th race here in Switzerland, the Luzern Swiss City HalbMarathon.  Unfortunately it rained for the first half, but the race itself was a perfectly run event (exactly what you would expect from the Swiss!).  It is getting easier to show up for a race and try to figure out all the details/rules/what is happening when you hear no English and usually no High German either, only Swiss German which still mostly sounds like gibberish to me :)

Storm clouds rollling out, sun coming in.

I met one of John's co workers at the train station who had done the race about 6 times so he helped me navigate the crowds. With your registration you get a free round trip train ride, then a round trip ship pass to transport you to the start area/back to the trains instead of walking an extra 2 or so miles each way.

The mountain in the background on the right is Mt. Pilatus

Just past halfway in the village of Horw

The other thing that I still have not gotten used to is every race I have done here has a Damen and Herren Garderoben area.  This is usually in two different schools and is a big gym or something with access to showers and then a place to put your bag while you run. I have never changed clothes before and after a race in the states but everyone here changes right before the race and then right after the race they shower and change back into the clothes they arrived in. It is such a great idea! I think it works because stealing is not really an issue here so everyone leaves their stuff, not locked in lockers, and they trust it will be there when they return. Unfortunately I am still used to showing up in my running clothes and then just being sweaty and such after that I didn't have warm dry clothes for after the race :(

Warming up with so coffee, Hannah choose milk :) with our friend Trini

John, Hannah, and our friend Trini (who was supposed to run but is injured) rode their bikes into town to cheer me on! It was fun to have them there even if they got a bit wet from the rain as well.

Proud of my mommy!

 We all enjoyed the sunshine that came out after the race and the warm coffee afterwards!

If you are wanting to do a half marathon abroad I would definitely recommend this one, the marathon is just two loops of the marathon so I don't think that is quite as appealing.

Das Erntedankfest

The Swiss Celebrate their Thanksgiving day, Erntedankfest (harvest thank festival) in October, this year it was the 3rd Sunday of the month. The church that we go to had a Thanksgiving brunch and short service. It was a powerful time to reflect upon things that you are thankful for, especially in the last year. John and I were really blessed by this time, as we have so many things to be thankful for over the last year.
Things we are thankful for:

The cows started the Thanksgiving parade off

* That all of the preparations for moving to Switzerland went smoothly and we were able to move here in 3 months time from when John accepted the job.... selling the house, 2 cars, most of our possessions, work visa, getting bear approved.

Traditional Swiss clothing

* That John enjoys his job, there is a whole set of frustrations as well, but he really does enjoy working on making this new airplane fly someday.

Baby sheep

*For a church and the Friends that have come along with it. We have been SO blessed to find a church family to call home. They are a Swiss church of about 100 people (at the most). With Pilatus being in the town there are lots of foreigners and so they have a translator (volunteer each week from the church) to translate from German to English. Most all of our close Swiss and Auslander friends have come from this church.

Lamas!

* For recently finding a place that you can drop your children off on Tuesday and Friday mornings for 2 hours for $9.... this is great because Hannah can hear Swiss German and I can go running or something by myself!

The crazy float... too much coffee schnapps for them!

* For having a real job interview with a Physical therapist the other week, I didn't get the job, but at least they were willing to talk with me!

Over sized Schwingers (like wrestling... Swiss style)

* Lastly, we are thankful for the hard days of being homesick, or wanting things to be easy (aka learning German... why must it be so hard!) because the hard days make the good days even better!! Yes, we do have hard days, but we really try to focus on the positives and so that is what I usually choose to write about!

Little boy schwingers

Brno, Czech Republic

 

The second city we visited in our week trip was to Brno. We choose this city because John had already been to Prague and we have a friend, Beth that lives in Brno.
Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic and is in the Moravian part of the Country. It was about a 4 hour drive from Salzburg. The landscape during the drive was rolling hills and vineyards as this area of Austria and Czech Republic, supposedly produce nice wine.

What does this menu say?

Hannah loves the play areas, John loves the Internet connection!

It was very nice to have someone to show us around Brno as it was a very nice city, but definitely still in the process of a "face lift" after communism took its toll. Beth lives really close to Old town and the big park in the middle of the city, so it was great to know what little shops to pop into while we walked around.  I love little unique shops with handmade clothes/jewelry and such.... the best one we stopped into was a coffee shop/handmade goods shop.

Really Switzerland, this coffee shop with play area is a great concept!! This was our favorite coffee of the trip.

We also stumbled upon a little "festival" going on in Old town while we were visiting. This was great because there were tons of street vendors serving up traditional Czech food. So, it was a great chance to have samples of several traditional Czech foods and treats.

Waiting to order a dessert that reminded us of Auntie Annes cinnamon pretzels!

There it is! So yummy!

As you can tell, we had a great week trip visiting three different cities.  The 8 hour drive home went much smoother than I thought, which is usually the case! I do think a 6 hour drive is a better maximum amount than 8 hours with a little one, we will try to remember that for next time!

Homemade chips at the little festival.

Festival in Old Town

Hannah has her own store :)

Beth's friend was a dog trainer, we met her in the park and Hannah loved it!

Bratislava, Slovakia

In the distance you see the UFO bridge- there is a restaurant up in the top!

This city, the capital of Slovakia is located 1.5 hours south of Brno (which was the second city we visited) and less than 1 hour east of Vienna. We didn't really know much about this city before we decided to go there, except we had some friends that had lived there for a year and we really want to visit more of Eastern Europe.

A nice pedestrian street in Old Town

The city is about half a million people, but didn't feel like too large of a city. And it had a great Old town, which is where our apartment was located. We literally walked out the apartment door and two blocks away was the Old town.

In Old Town, St. Michael's Gate

The weather wasn't the best while in Bratislava, raining about 30% of the time, but it was still our favorite city out of the 3 we visited.  I think the outskirts of the town probably aren't as nice, but the Old town (while still recovering from communism) was very nice. My favorite part was the coffee shops with little areas for children to play, not with dangerous things to climb on but simple buckets of toys (Brno was also full of these types of places). It was great, because we could sit for a coffee for 30 min and actually sit and not constantly wonder what Hannah was getting into.

Hannah happily playing while we enjoy coffee!

Switzerland needs to adopt this coffee shop idea!

Not sure if you can see the item "Bottomless Coffee"- reminds us of good ole' American Coffee Shops

We walked up twice to the Bratislava Castle that overlooks the city. We didn't make it out to the Devin Castle which is about 10k outside of the Old Town, you can see into Austria on a clear day! Next time!

A section of the Castle

We are already thinking of our next visit, as you can take a boat on the Rhine river and then to the Danube river which connects Vienna to Bratislava. It sounds like a fun way to see the cities.... next time, oh wait there are so many places on our list to see while living in Europe!

Also LOVING the cheap food!!