This trip was made up of Dave, Don, Clay and I. Dave lives in Tampa, Florida; Don in Seattle, Washington and Clay in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We all met when we attended the University of Iowa or shorty thereafter. That was a few years ago.
The trip came together after a visit I took to Florida in July, 2023 when I stayed with Dave and another old Iowa City friend, John for a few days. A few weeks after I returned to Minneapolis, Dave contacted me to ask if I wanted to take a trip to Switzerland. "Sure, I guess", was my first thought. I had been to Norway, Spain and Greece but Switzerland was not on my radar. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Dave then contacted Don and Clay and the trip was on. With so much lead time to plan, you would think that the trip was thoroughly researched and all lined up before we departed. You would be wrong. We found and reserved three places to stay and a car, and it was time to go.
Don arrived on Saturday. I had a Twins game that night so Don spent the night with his brother Jim in Lakeville. Clay came up on Sunday afternoon and picked him up on the way to our house. I got home about 4:30 and they were both there. Susan knocked herself out to feed us all. She made chilaquiles and pico de gallo along with a fabulous salad of greens, bleu cheese and three kinds of fruit. To top it off, she made a scratch layer cake with vanilla icing. Yum. Spent the rest of the evening getting packed and crashed about 10:30.
Got up Monday morning, ate a breakfast of buttermilk pancakes and bacon. Anticipating a lot of hours sitting in an airline seat, we took a long walk around the park. Had lunch, packed the car and then headed for the airport. Got there three hours early, which I hate, but which turned out to be a good thing while dealing with the first of a few kerfluffles that would dog us all day long. We all checked in together. Clay and I breezed right through no problem. But when Don tried to check in, things ground to a halt. Don's ticket had the name "Don Bugler" on it but it didn’t match the name on his passport, “Donald”. While Clay and I stood near the security queue, we watched a lengthy pantomime between Don and an airline supervisor. Several phone calls later, Lufthansa reissued his ticket with his correct name and step one was now complete.
We got in the TSA Pre-check line like we always do and waited a long time with fifty other people to get through. Finally got to the front of the line only to discover that we in fact did not have pre-check! So we dragged our frustrated butts to the now super long “standard” line and spent the next 45 minutes waiting to go through security. Again Clay and I breezed through. We turned to locate Don, only to spot him in the distance still way back in line. We waited another ten minutes until Don eventually made his way through the cattle chute. Stressed but relieved, we were on our way. The Lufthansa gate might have been the smallest I had ever seen so we ended up moving to an adjacent gate to sit and wait. The plane was big and the flight was full so there was an involved process to board all of the passengers. It took a long time. We eventually took off, 15 minutes late. This was to become yet another hurdle in our journey. As scheduled, we had about an hour to make our connection in Frankfurt. We made good time, landing just a few minutes late. The Frankfurt Airport is immense. We got off in Terminal Z. Our next flight was at Gate A11 so we started briskly walking…and walking..and walking some more. We were starting to get a little nervous. Finally after passing 40 or so “Z” gates. We breathlessly arrived at our gate only to find a woman pulling a barrier across it. “It’s too busy,”she says. “You’ll have to go to our passport control at the other end of the terminal.” of course that was basically where we had come from two miles ago. So we put it into reverse and headed back. Arrived at passport control only to find dozens of the same people who had just arrived with us on our flight. There was just one official working the queue at the time, so each traveling group took about five minutes. After at least 30 minutes of this, two other officials finally showed up and took their sweet time opening up. They had nowhere else to be. Finally after 45 minutes we were through. We then had to go down two flights of stairs and head back to our original gate at a fast walk. Of course as we arrived, they had just closed the airplane door and we were out of luck. Nothing to do but get back in line and rebook our flights. Fortunately there was another plane going to Zurich in an hour. So we hunkered down, exhausted and frustrated, and waited again.
Got on our flight and we were touching down in just an hour. Arrived in Zurich and to track down our missing luggage which took an extra half hour and then pick up our rental car. Oh yeah, we also had to find Dave. Fortunately Dave was close by, catching a nap on a bench.
With our group finally together we picked up the car and were (eventually) on our way. We immediately took a wrong turn out of the airport but inevitably made our way.
Dave’s old friend Adao, an 84-year-old painter and sculptor from Brazil, lives in a town not far off our route to Lucerne. Dave will be staying with him for a few weeks after we leave and wanted to drop off some music gear with him. He lives in a stunning home- actually two or three large homes on a hilltop with spectacular views of the valley below and the distant mountains. He was an extremely pleasant and charming man who would have had us stay all day and chat. He showed us around, basically giving Dave options of places he could stay when he returns. His place is surrounded by beautiful lawns and flowers and trees. It was amazing.
We kept trying to tactfully extract ourselves so that we could move on and he kept saying, “You can’t go yet. Let me show you something.” Eventually we just started edging towards our car. After many handshakes and goodbyes, we were back on the road.
First view of the Alps!
The drive to Lucerne was fast and smooth. The roads are well maintained and traffic moves efficiently. Navigating was tricky. We finally negotiated our way through town. Starving and going on little sleep, we decided to grab a bite to eat. We located a parking garage eventually and, using Google and by asking locals on the street, we located Helvetia, a cool sidewalk cafe. It was hot, 87°, so we felt the need to hydrate by sampling some of the local beers. Had big, tasty lunches of fish and chips and then continued to our AirBnB.
It’s an amazing, unique property, a sprawling, working commercial greenhouse operation. As the description of the property online had stated, it was literally inside of the greenhouse. They have three AirBnB’s on site. Our quarters were sustainably built, using wood, salvaged glass doors from an old school and even a clay/straw mixture (adobe) for the walls. Interestingly, our entire kitchen- refrigerator, sink, coffee makers, dishwasher, etc. were located outside our room in the greenhouse space. The greenhouse was full of fruits and vegetables: strawberries, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins and all manner of other growing things. Emmanuel encouraged us to pick and use whatever herbs we could find.
A tour of our AirBnB
We moved in and settled. We are located about ½ mile as the crow flies from the lake and a popular swimming spot. Emmanuel told us that it was an easy ten-minute walk. We set off to swim. Our ten minute walk, with one wrong turn, ended up taking probably 45 minutes. Still, the walk was pleasant and we passed several fit people biking and walking. It’s obvious that the Swiss are active people. Bikes are ubiquitous. Mass transit is efficient and popularly used. Swiss society and values are the way the rest of us should be living. We made it to our destination. We came to a spectacular old mansion surrounded by amazing gardens and trees- including some astonishing sequoias. There is a path that descends to the water. People were stretched out of towels and blankets on the vast lawn that slopes to the water. There is a set of steps that leads to the lake. The water is clear with a rocky bottom. It was quite cool and very refreshing. Just the thing for the weary travelers.
I struck up a conversation with a woman lying next to me to inquire about a good hike. She was very nice and friendly, like most everybody we spoke to. Another lady nearby chimed in and suggested hiking up Rigi Mountain. The sun started going down, it cooled off and we headed back to the AirBnB, we dried off, settled in, turned our A/C unit up to high and hit the sack. Slept like a dead man.