Today was a holiday here in Zurich. There is some dispute between Bryan and I whether it is May Day or Labor day. I looked for a Maypole celebration as we drove through town so I could do an "I told you so!" in a very mature and adult like way, but no luck. So there is a very slight chance he might be right. But that's neither here nor there because all that really matters is there was no school or work today. And much like every Sunday here in Switzerland, EVERYTHING was closed. So we decided a little late in the morning to head out on a family outing.
We opted for Interlaken, Switzerland, a mere 2 hour drive from Zurich. Fortunately, I have made one VERY close friend here in Switzerland. Her name is Heidi and she lives inside our GPS device. She talks to me in perfect English and although she seems to have a major problem knowing her Left from her Right, we've gotten very close. I appreciate the way she slaughters all the names of the streets in Zurich and I correct her from time to time like any good friend would. It's nice to have a BFF to drive around town with.
The drive to Interlaken was beautiful, and just as we thought it couldn't get any more breath taking, we'd come out of a tunnel to a more amazing view. Even the kids got into it as we got closer to the mountains and voluntarily turned off their Leapsters to take a look. I started a new rule for this trip. Pictures were not to be taken from inside the car while driving. Bryan has some issues with taking pictures and thinks it's perfectly acceptable to take scenic pictures through the car window. Not only does this cause me to grip my seat dramatically and make comments about how we're going to careen off the side of a mountain, but it also makes me insane when there are bug carcasses from the windshield featured in our photo albums. So we took our time getting there and stopped at lots of scenic overlooks.
We drove through the beautiful town of Interlaken and oohed and aahed at all the charming restaurants and hotels. C noticed the sky was filled with paragliders and we watched as they floated through the air and landed gracefully in a field outside of town. It looked like SO MUCH FUN and I felt the stirrings of my old adventurous self creep up. Bryan must have noticed because after we had lunch, he asked the kids if they wanted to see Mommy hanglide off the mountain. The boys were all over it, although Z (my little dare devil) was a little disappointed he couldn't meet the height requirement to do it himself. Bryan dragged C over to a booth to get some information about paragliding and the persistent sales lady soon had me considering leaping off a mountain while my kids watched from below. Very tempting. In the end we agreed that we would return another weekend so I could perform my death defying feat. Although my leather boots and silk scarf would have looked fabulous from below, I decided it probably wasn't the attire for paragliding.
Instead, Bryan went to a travel office and booked us tickets to Jungfraujoch, also known as the top of Europe. I stayed outside with the kids while he booked us some pricey train tickets. The kids were getting restless and starting to run around and chase each other. I decided to put my best parenting/teaching skills into play and started a game of follow the leader with them. It worked and they were suddenly orderly and quiet. As I was parading them around the area where the travel office was, I thought, "Wow! I feel like I have my act together. The kids are behaving, I'm not stressed out, this is great!". Then I saw something alarming out of the corner of my eye. Was that 2 completely naked women on a poster in that window? Much to my horror, there were multiple pornographic posters in the window of the store I had "led" my young children past. Oh my God, I had been parading my kids back and forth past the display window of a porn shop!!! I don't know how I missed the giant sign with the less than creative store name "Sex Shop", but I'm sure the people passing us on the street thought I was the WORST mother on earth. Fortunately, by some miracle, none of them noticed the posters and our game of Follow the Leader quickly moved to the opposite end of the block. I was relieved when Bryan returned and I could confess my terrible parenting moment.
Finally, we were on our way. We enticed the kids with talk of glaciers and traveling through mountains to get to the very top of the tallest mountain in Europe. (We're not completely sure this is true, but they're young enough not to do the research.) E was well past her naptime now as it was mid-afternoon. Z had been up since 6 a.m. and looked like he hadn't slept for days. He worked himself into a fit of tears anytime something didn't go his way. Did this stop the "always up for fun" Mjaanes family from stepping on a train for a 2 hour ride up a mountain? Of course not! Should it have stopped us from starting our 2 hour trip up the mountain? Hell yes! If we'd had a theme song for our trip up the mountain, it would have been Ozzie Osbourne's "Crazy Train". There was crying, pushing, dropped lollipops, and fights about whether the windows should be opened or closed. Good Times.
Our planned trip required taking 3 different trains to get to Jungfraujoch. The scenery was the most beautiful I have ever seen. Waterfalls, snow caps, glaciers and green valleys everywhere you looked. My words don't do it justice and neither do the pictures, but I promise to take anyone who visits us on this trip, because you will never forget it. It's hard for me to imagine there is a more beautiful place on earth. I didn't even care that the kids were crabby at this point, because I felt so lucky to have the opportunity to see this view. That is, until the conductor came by and looked at our tickets on the second leg of our trip. He kindly asked us if we were planning on staying at the top of the mountain. I figured he was checking to see if he was going to have to endure another train ride back down the mountain with my crabby kids. When we let him know that we were heading back down after Jungfraujoch, he grew very concerned. "This is the last train up the mountain. You will not have time to go to Jungfraujoch unless you stay overnight at the top!" he told us in excellent English. We had no extra clothes or toiletries and it occurred to us that we had just spent the day traveling to get to the "Top of Europe" and were going to have to abort mission only 30 minutes from our destination. We felt like total idiots.
So we spent an hour at Kleine Sheidegg where we were supposed to catch our train to Junfraujoch. It is basically a ski area that has closed down for the season. On the up side, there was lots of snow and the kids enjoyed having a snowball fight. I did get to see a dogsledder which I found oddly fascinating. And we had a pretty good view of a couple of glaciers, which was a first for all of us. How did two reasonably bright, educated adults not plan ahead before setting out on an adventure with 3 little kids, you ask? Well, instead of taking accountability, we're blaming the guy at the ticket office. When we went back to get a refund for our unused portion of the trip, the owner of the travel office was very apologetic and told us the guy who sold us the tickets was very sick and "not doing too well" in the head. Bryan refrained from telling her that after our trip, I was not doing too well in the head either. Luckily, I stayed in the car.
The ride home was sketchy at best and although I wasn't driving, I did threaten to pull the car over several times. The boys finally kept themselves busy by deciding that every time we went through a tunnel, (and there are lots of long tunnels) they were going to sing "Scooby Dooby Doo , Where are you?" over and over again at the top of their lungs. The theme song for this portion of our trip would be AC/DC's "Highway to Hell". Finally, with only 10 minutes left in our drive home, they all passed out from exhaustion.
I learned 3 valuable lessons from the days travels.
1. ALWAYS check the train schedule before departing.
2. NEVER push the limits when it comes to sleep deprived children.
3. ALWAYS check out your surrounds before playing follow the leader with small children.
A rough trip for all, but it provided great stories for laying in bed laughing hysterically at the end of the day. Thank goodness for a sense of humor.
