The Quinn Family Excellent Adventure: Goodbye Venice Italy - Hello Switzerland sans Kaitlyn

The train to Switzerland was awesome. We had to switch in Milano. Unfortunately we only had 20 minutes to explore the area. After Milano, the flatness of Italy slowly transforms into unbelievable mountainous scenery. I was hanging out between cars enjoying standing by the windows when the ticket checking person saw me. I explained to him this was all new to us and we were impressed at how beautiful it was. He indicated we were about to hit a really long dark tunnel. I headed back to my chair and waited. He soon came by with some paperwork about the Gotthard Base Tunnel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel. What an impressive feat of engineering. I'm so glad he let me know about it otherwise it may have gone unnoticed. Our reserved seats on this train were made obvious by illuminated displays for each of us. What a great idea to do this. Those without reserved seats can at least know which to choose. Upon arrival at the Lucerne train station it was time to grab some cash and Sim cards. Switzerland is not part of the EU. Our Euro's would be accepted but a crappy exchange what would follow. Our Greece Sim cards would work apparently but the roaming charges would kill us super quick. I had previously Googled Salt as being a great underdog provider. We walked around a little lost in the train station looking for a Salt Sim sign. Our first store was simply a cell phone company and they had none left. They were nice enough to indicate their was a Salt store just around the corner. The Salt staff were great and soon we had 3 Sims purchased. Two of them were activated on the spot. The third was for KT when we got to see her in a bit. The total was about 60 Swiss Francs for 15 days and unlimited data. Sweet. Armed with cash and sims it was time to figure out the bus system and get to our Airbnb.

Rainer the host of our Airbnb was very kind enough to provide crazy details in the listing. I should have read it closer. There were plenty of buses to his neighborhood. The one we chose looked good enough stopping a comfortable 900 meters away from his place. Little did we know it was a staggering amount of climbing. With our bags and portable kitchen in hand, we had to take a few breaks. We finally got to Rainers place. He is a very geeky gear oriented guy. His main entrance has a camera so he saw us grabbing a breath and said come on Steve you can make it. It was funny. We took 2 trips the last steps up to his place and were astonished at what we saw.

Rainer is a pretty cool young dude with a very successful advertising company. He had purchased this beautiful house in an impressive fancy part of town only a year earlier. As we was kind of burned out working so hard, he wanted to try to slow town a bit and use Airbnb as an income creator. Smart dude. Our room was super tiny but perfect. Upstairs are 2 larger rooms. Downstairs is a cool area that has three beds. It was once an indoor pool. Nobody seems to use pools anymore and it was a perfect 3 bed bedroom. The final room was the coolest. Up until 2015, the Swiss government made it mandatory that all citizens have a bomb shelter. They are very expensive to build. The doors are massive. There is even a requirement to have a ventilation system. Reiner converted the room into the Bomb Shelter. Apparently because of the wall thickness, its unbelievably quiet and dark. Sounds nice. After chucking our stuff in our room it was time to grab some groceries. Rainer was heading out so he gave us a ride to town. The old historic part of Luzerne is really ancient and pretty. We got our first glimpse of the prices of things. OMFG !!. We walked around the tourist area a bit and settled on a fast food Thai place for our late lunch. A bowl of rice covered with a "spicy" Thai chicken stir fry was like 17 Swiss francs. Luckily the location had a spice it up station with condiments like peanuts and hot sauces. I loaded it up like crazy twice. Swiss spicy aint like what I'm used to. Luckily we could only eat half of the portion, perfect for another meal.

Back at Rainer's place we learned the views of the nearby mountains like Pilatus have been hampered by clouds and rain for quite a while now. We led Rainer know where we go the great weather is soon to follow. It's a really strange phenomenon we observed many countries ago but it seems to be consistent. We soon met another Airbnb host Hayden. He was from New Zealand and shut his busy life down for a while to get out in the world. He had no plan and was just letting the windows blow him around. Fortunately for him Rainer was planning to soon visit Canada and his girlfriend. He needed a person to run the Airbnb show and they both made a decent deal. It was nice that Rainer and Haydon were of the same age and energy level. Rainer has quite the party setup going with special wines, schnapps and a beer keg. He's a businessman and sells it all as singles or in bulk. 2 Swiss Franks for a beer and various prices for the other stuff. I was kind of glad Hayden was there otherwise I would have probably partied way more than I should have. They partied a lot, way more than I can at my age.

We explored Rainer neighborhood multiple times and did a majority of it by foot. As he lives fairly high upon a hill, it's a pretty good workout each way. We soon learned of a method to get to Pilatus. A Golden Pass offers multiple methods and our Eurail pass provides us a 50% discount. Timing was everything for Pilatus. It's so high up that it's pretty easy to spend 100 Swiss Franks to see only clouds. We looked ahead of the upcoming weather and saw a decent 2 day sunny period worth waiting for. We also had to properly time a meeting with Timi and Kaitlyn. Timi's family wanted to have us over for dinner. We wanted to take public transit there. They recommended it the same day as our Pilatus trip. I had no idea how long Pilatus would take once up there. I opted for 2 separate days. It was a good call.

Our trip to Pilatus started with a nice walk to the ticket cute port near the ticket office. We were 20 minutes early and the second in line with our Golden Round Trip tickets. https://www.pilatus.ch/en/discover/golden-round-trip/ Slowly the line formed behind us and filled in quite a bit. Once boarded we walked around to find a could viewing area that was not too sunny. The back of the boat seemed nice but soon it got very smelly with the exhaust of the ship. We headed to the shady side of the ship and watched the beautiful shoreline go by. The ship makes 3 or 4 stops before the final location of our cogwheel railway. Michelle found a nice spot inside their cafe/restaurant to sit and pose with Mr G and Mr. M. Once at our final stop there was a pretty big mas exodus from the upper part of the boat, the first class portion of the ship. We headed along with them towards the Cogwheel train and showed our Golden pass to reveal our tickets to the train. The first what quite full so we chose to wait for the next. We were warned it was 30 minutes. Weird, it only took 10. Soon we were walking up a really steep staircase alongside the train. We were lucky to get the back of the train offering a unblocked view of the scene below. From our position I could see the controls and gauges of the vehicle. It looks very old, suspect from the 50's or 60's. The train is soon moving up at a pretty decent climb doing the entire ascent to the top of Pilatus in 30 minutes. The climb is the steepest ascent in the world at times as much as 48%. We passed a few hikers on the way up, some with simply running shoes. Wild. Soon the landscape is covered in snow which looks kinda challenging with the warming weather. At the top we noticed a dramatic change in the temperature and slight change in the oxygen content. It is 2128 meters lol. Rainer said for each 200 metres up is about a 1 degree celcius drop in temperature. It's called the lapse Rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate

and it's a little complicated and dependent on the air moisture. It seems close enough though. As Pilatus is a 1600 meter climb from Lucerne, this should be a 8 degree Celsius drop. Whatever it was, it was significantly cooler. Before to much photography it was wise to pop a few layers on. The views are spectacular and we picked a totally awesome clear day. The snow blocked the trails in both directions from the peak forcing us to only see the main parts of the peak. The are 2 hotels to explore, a weather station, a cave/view port structure and a nice cafe store inside. We had to have a little food and some kind of commemorative drink with Mr G/M. We watched a man climbing up from about 700 meters below. We were interesting in watching the route he was taking and how we could get to the very top and inside. The snow is quite deep at the top just below where we were eating. I knew I had to seek this guys out as he could easily have been in his late 60's/70's. I packed up and somebody approached me saying did you see that crazy guy just walk up here. I saw him come in downstairs. The guy is mad. I told this person he's an inspiration and we all should look up to him. I walked downstairs to where someone would probably go after a climb. I saw a man sitting, eating with a few items scattered about like he is taking a break. It was him. Totally cool dude. He drives part way parking his car about half way. From their is 2.5 hours to the peak. Less down of course. We was just breaking in some new shoes and found it was perfect. He is a local and indicated in his younger days we could do the entire mountain in 2.5 hours. He invited me to join him on his return trip down. I really wanted too but had only crummy running shoes and no poles. I wish I was better equipped because that would have been perfect. I shook his hand and bid my Swiss hero farewell wishing him luck.

The route home was a typical gondola albeit quite a long one. It stops midway at a place called https://www.pilatus.ch/en/discover/fraekmuentegg/. There is plenty to do there especially for kids. It was kinda boring for us so we hopped back onto the next downward gondola. This gondola was so long it entered a station and would could either stay on or if desired get off. It had a cool transition spot there the gondola switched to a different track. So cool. Once finally at the bottom of our Pilatus journey, we were offered a bud ride back to downtown. It made more sense to walk from there back to Reiners place. It was super hot but we found one of many free spring water feeds to guzzle and cool off. The route home took us through a really cool experimental grape vine field. These guys know how to utilize land. An awesome hot walk was a great way to finish off a great day

The next day it was finally time for dinner with Timi's family. Reiner's family is connected with an excellent quality wine maker and he offered us a bottle for being so awesome. The wine was a perfect gift for Timi's family. They were going to pick us up so we did not have to worry about figuring out the bus and all that. This gave us some time to do some wash and hang it out to dry. Timi and KT were on time we were soon reunited. I had to get Rainer out to meet Kaitlyn as this may have been the only time. Timi was driving his Mom's Audi sports car. It was not obvious until we heading into the country side. The roads there are really thin and windy. Timi likes to drive a bit quick and the road is perfect for it. The countryside is spectacular and would be an excellent place to pedal bike. I'm so glad they drove us because the place is pretty remote. We soon met Timi's Mom, step dad and brother. His Mom spoke English easily. Dad and bro did not. We were treated like royalty with plenty of drinks, snacks and conversation. I had not done a backup of KT's phone or camera since she left us in Venice so I was committed to that. After the backups I had the chance to pop a Sim into Kaitlyns phone giving her much needed internet.

After all the technical stuff I was able to converse more freely. Timi was very helpful as an interpreter for us. Their place is spectacular. Their backyard is literally rolling farmlands. We had great conversations about our travels and life as a Swiss. Timi's parents dissapeared into the kitchen to prep up dinner. We did not know it but we were about to enmjoy a special Swiss meal called Raclette. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raclette. It's kind of like cheese fondue but a little different. They have a special cheeze melter/cooker/meat cooker setup in the center of the table. You grab a few slices of cheeze and pop them into a holder and into the heater. You also grab some meat slices and veggies to being cooking on the top of the grill section. This part is similar to the Koren BBQ. While the cheeze melts you grab some potatoes, mash them up with a fork, add some mayonnaise and special spicing. When the cheeze is melted (not too much) you pop it onto your potato mash and yum yum. The table is full of all kinds of other condiments and yummies we experimented with. I especially like these onions things that were candied and super duper spicy hot. After your cheezy potato mash thing is done you do it again. I think I did 3 rounds of cheeze. 2 two many lol. It was great but man it was heavy. After dinner we enjoyed coffee/tea in the backyard while Timi's parents cleaned up. We felt so guilty but they insisted. Finally after little break and chat we had some nice desert. Timi busted out some Swiss Army official chocolate. His mom had a wonderful sponge cake for us. After all that food and sugar, it was time for a serious nap. As it was probably 9:30 PM, sadly we only had a few more nice moments of conversation left before all of was were close to dozing off. Timi thankfully was eager to give us a drive home and we had to say our goodbyes. I hope to be able to see them again. They were such a generous family with so many great stories to share.

KT was still following Celina whom we met and dove with in Fiji. I got her WhatApp and we were able to coordinate a meeting date. She and her father were close to Zurich so I figured that would be a great place to meet. Timi and KT were able to attend as well. Timi had a nice place in mind. We though Luzerne was expensive. It turns out Zurich is the most expensive city in the world. Dang. Oh well. The train ride there was super nice. The city is beautiful. The water moves fast and is very clear. We got there with plenty of time to spare so we walked around and rested in the part. I was getting a little sick so I needed to chill. At the restaurant the rain forced us inside. That's when we saw how fancy pants the place was. Timi has a very different perspective on affordable. Finding parking was tough for Timi and KT as well as Celina and her Dad. It was nice to meet Celina's Dad. His English was great and we hit it off really well. Celina reflected on her experience with Fiji, being sick so much and her eating habits. I was not supposed to mention to him anything about her sugar habits. That was a fun rule to break. Celina indicated it took a long time for her health and digestion issues to spring back after 3 month's in Fiji. She looked much better, lost about 10 pounds and felt great. I think Fiji was such a transition for her lifestyle that it was all stress. After chats and a nice late lunch Michelle snuck the bill and paid for everyone. Celina's Dad was hey wait. Next time in Europe we said it will be your turn. We hugged farewell for now and all headed back to our homes. A great visit with an old friend.

We only had a few days left in Switzerland. We had a freeish pass to anywhere by train. Many told us to hit Interlaken. Off we went. At the Lucerne train station I noticed an employee struggling to load food items into the food car. I quickly threw my stuff in and headed back out to help him. We was so happy to have help even though they were done. After departing we headed back to him to find he was not yet ready to hand out and coffee. No big deal. He did tell me the best views to and from Interlaken is from the left side of the train. We just had to switch. This train is kinda cool as it climbs a pretty steep incline throughout the first part of the journey. It quite surprising how well the train handled the track at this angle. You can hear how hard the train is working on the twisty turny tracks as the wheels grind and squeal quite a bit. After quite a bit of up, the train stops, switches tracks and direction as well. This part to Interlaken is astonishing. We decided to grab a coffee and the person who I tried to help immediately recognized me and insisted we switch to the food car to enjoy a snack. He provided us with all kinds of advice and was very nice. We heard he does this route between 2 and 3 times per day. We wanted to time our return home to possibly be in his car again. The train stops at the cutest station and it was only a few minutes walk to the Inclined Railway up to the Harder Kulm.

The train to Harder Kulm is nowhere near as steep as our cogwheel route to Pilatus We were very lucky with the views and crowds this particular day. At the top we wanted to do a little hiking but as we had poor shoes, we had to be cautious. We followed signs for a reasonable sized hike and were surprised how slow our progress was compared to the ETA on the signs. Perhaps we made a mistake or we are just not as in shape as these Swiss people. I suspect the later :-) Throughout the day we notices dozens of para-gliders passing the peak. I was curious where they were landing and thought would be cool to see. We carefully watched them descending on the city below and on the train down estimated the location. It was a fun project as it put us on a path towards the inner city. The center of Interlaken has a massive open field and much of it is uncut. I love that they have let nature take it's course allowing wild flowers, tall grasses and whatever will be, be. The pilots of these para-gliders had plenty of safe space to setup and flare for their landings. It was nice to see the smiling faces of the customers. Payment was done just after landing with a remote payment system right on the spot. These people know how to do it. I never did check the price. With a few hours left in town we headed towards the lakefront. It was a hot sunny sweaty day for us and the lake offered a great chance to cool our feet and clean up a bit. The water was really cold and refreshing.

All cleaned up we were ready to head back. We knew where to sit to enjoy the views and watching Interlaken change back to Luzerne. We sadly we chose a different train than the one our new food car friend was on. Back in Luzerne we had time to visit the The Kapellbrücke, literally the Chapel Bridge.

It was our last night in Luzerne. We had a very early train to catch and a little Googling revealed a bus stop from a different location. I needed to see where it was and the last thing we did was check for this stop. The walkway to the stop was only 200 meters from Reiners home. It was however all down on pretty good quality steps. Finding the route in advance was wise. Knowing what was soon to come with all our gear on was equally wise.

We popped our heads into Rainers home ready to pack and cleanup. Rainer was so glad to see me. He wanted so bad to go for a downhill mountain bike ride. He and Hayden needed a third person to assist with the process. I was both tired and honestly scared as I know how stupid I become on a mountain bike. I tried so hard to say no but they were in real need. Ok I said telling Michelle we would be back soon. Rainer has 2 bikes and most of the gear. He was short 1 helmet and after a few phone calls it was determined he needed to drive to his studio. We moved his van seats around, stuffed some hardcore downhills in the van and took off towards his studio. It was a great chance to see Luzerne from a vehicle. His studio is the basement of a home he used to live in. Professional recording equipment, green screen, camera's ... all kinds of stuff. We found a cool helmet and off we went. I still had no idea what the ride was going to be like. We headed back to his neighborhood and drove upward. We drove a lot upward. We pulled aside and geared up. Rainer had a tonne of protective gear. Killer shin pads, pull on back and chest protection, full face mask. I had a helmet and gloves. Once again I got scared. We took off on our bikes and Hayden drove down to get us. These bikes are wicked, the throw on the suspension is huge. The seat is low like a trick bike. After riding on a walking track it becomes clear what we are doing. Some people in the community have built a downhill track through the forest. Rainer suggested I go around all the jumps on the first pass to get use to the route. I can see why he wears so much protection. This track is wicked. I had to hang on hard and break often. It was crazy fun. There are about 5 sections to tackle and it was pretty hard to hand on. Before you know it you are punching out of the forest to the waiting van. I drove next. We switched roles driving and riding. Now I understood why to need 3 people. Some kids where there with no vehicle doing this riding up. Ouch. Hayden crashed on his first run but was ok. I could not afford a crash so was super careful. It was a blast. We just kept going around and around. I think I did about 6 rides. I was getting tired and was concerned about the packing and early to bed that was getting closer. Unfortunately our teenage brains kept going for "just one more" Luckily some Airbnb guest was struggling to get into his place which forced us to stop riding. I was a little muddy, really sweaty and totally energized. I told the guys I was sorry for not doing any jumps but crashing and hurting is not an option at 53. Hayden was impressed I could keep up like that. Cool. With a little practice and gear I can see trying this at Whistler

We got home way later than Michelle was expecting. She was already packed and winding down for bed. I had 1 hour to do a quick pack and we headed down for a final farewell beer and photo with Mister G and buddy. I still had muddy legs and no time for a shower. We were in bed soon after and looking forward to a 5 hour sleep before our quick rise and long downhill steps to the bus. I usually don't sleep so well with these early rises worrying the alarm with not work. We rose without issues did our typical morning routine back whatever would fit into our portable cooler and left a few items in the fridge for free. The downward steps to the bus was fun in the dark. We had to be very careful to not wipe. The bus stop we intended to use was no longer available as that section of the road was fenced off for construction. Fortunately all was required was a short walk upstream. Our fears of no bus was soon gone when locals started to show up. Whew. The train station was only a few minutes down the road and soon were were relaxing on the way to Fussen. Yay. Our route to Fussen involved 3 vehicles. A fast train, a slower train and a bus. I've read getting around Germany can be fun as the trains can be late and the directions confusing. Our route had plenty of transfer gaps so we confidently set ourselves onto our first train from Luzerne. Thanks Switzerland, we will be back.