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| look at the mountain! |
December 23
After getting some much needed rest (and a shower) our bus group was off to Lucerne for the day! On the bus ride we were finally able to see what our little mountain village had to offer:
Lucerne (or the German Luzern) was only about a half hour away and it was such a cute city! It was a fairly small and quaint European city and surprisingly quiet given that it was just days before Christmas. We had the day to ourselves so we mostly meandered around.
One thing we did not want to miss was the Dying Lion Monument, which Mark Twain had described it as, "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world." The monument commemorates the Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution, when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris. I wasn't really sure what to expect but when we rounded the corner in a quiet corner of the city and came to a wooded park area you couldn't help but see it. The lion was carved out of a massive stone wall and was really quite an emotional statue.
December 24
On Christmas Eve we decided to do our own thing. With the advice of Jaqueline, the Swiss hotel keeper, we headed across the street with two toboggans, took a bus to the next town and rode the cable car up the mountain. She had explained that you could hike through the mountain and toboggan down the hills all the way back to the Emmetten side of the mountain. Sounds like a good idea! I started to get a bit nervous when the cable car kept going up and up and up... just how high was this mountain? It finally let us off and we were left by ourselves in snowy weather with not many people on the mountain. Where to go? It seemed pretty straightforward when Jacqueline explained it to us but being up there, we weren't sure where the trail started! Where's the GPS when you need one? We started off, hauling our toboggans behind us, following the tobogganing trail. Skiers whizzed by us out of nowhere and freaked me out because I had no idea where they were coming from! What paths were they on? Was I going to get crushed by an oncoming skier? Conditions were pretty poor - snow was coming down pretty good and you couldn't see too far ahead. When we finally got to some hills we got to try out the toboggans but they proved trickier than we thought!
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| ready or not, here I come! |
I was scared at first because it was so desolate up in the mountain with white-out conditions and we weren't entirely sure where to go. It's one thing to look at the map and say, "OK, we have to go from here to there and follow these guideposts." It's another thing to be up there and actually navigate a snowy mountain, all the while trying to avoid getting pummeled by skiers and snowboarders!
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| O, Tannenbaum! |
As we got used to the toboggans we were able to enjoy the scenery more, enjoying the complete silence and lack of people. It was cold, windy, and snowy but we were decked out in snow gear and having a blast!
And then, perfect timing, we finally found a little lodge for lunch! There was one lady working and playing Christmas music. The menu was all in German so we just chose something and went for it! We got some sort of bratwurst and potato salad, oh, and of course some Heisse Schokolade!
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| just take the dang picture, I'm hungry! |
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| our little lunch stop |
After lunch we made our way back outside and down the mountain before coming to a snow covered street where we walked back to our hotel. Was so nice to go inside and have a hot shower after hours outside acting like kids in the snow!
Later that evening the group was invited to join the local community for their Christmas Eve mass. We were told that there would be a candlelight procession to the church - sounds nice, right? We pictured a nice walk with the towns people, all holding candles and singing Christmas carols. Well, when we got outside, turns out we were the only people out there. Candles were being handed out... well, more like Olympic torches if you ask me. Once we had them all lit it looked like we were out to pillage the little mountain village instead of a nice stroll to the church with the local community. Once we got to the church the locals were waiting outside the church, and we definitely felt awkward afterwards thinking how ridiculous we must've looked.
The service was nice though. Most of it was in German (well, Swiss German which was frustrating for me to try to understand). They translated a lot of it to English and were very welcoming to us. For the first 20 minutes the choir sang Christmas hymns in German. At the end of the service I finally got to do what I've been trying to do every year for as long as I can remember - sing Silent Night in German! Every Christmas Eve when everyone sings the normal verses, I always quietly sang the one German verse to myself - but this time I got to sing all 4 or 5 verses in German! After the service finished and we made our way back to the hotel it was ever so lightly snowing. When we got inside Jacqueline had glüwein waiting for all of us. A beautiful Christmas Eve!
December 25
On Christmas Day our group took the coach bus to a small mountain village called Engelberg. It was definitely a most unusual Christmas compared to what we are used to but it was a beautiful day. I only wished the group leaders had prepped us more of what to expect for this day trip. I had a vision that we were going to this cute mountain village to enjoy the day and possibly have a horse-drawn carriage ride. Oh, and there's a mountain there too. What they didn't tell us was that the mountain, Mt. Titlis, was THE focal point of the town with an altitude of 10,000 feet, and is the highest peak in central Swizterland!! Had we known that we definitely would have brought our snow gear to either ski, toboggan, or just run amok in the snow! When we arrived there it didn't feel like Christmas at all because the mountain was packed with families enjoying Christmas the Swiss way! We took 3 cable cars up the mountain just to get up to the ROTAIR, a revolving gondola lift up to the peak of the mountain.
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| heading up one of the first 3 cable cars |
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| the ROTAIR revolving gondola that we took to get to the peak |
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| crazy skiers, attempting to jump off the face of the Earth |
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| are we at the North Pole? |
Mount Titlis is also home to Switzerland's last glacier. We weren't sure how we felt about the glacier being made into a cave that people could walk through... didn't really seem environmentally sustainable...
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| but hey, it makes for a cool photo op! |
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| look at me, I'm inside Switzerland's last glacier! |
Of course, we had to take time to pose with silly hats...
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| I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. |
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| can I have them both? |
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| the day would not be complete without a hot chocolate and Baileys overlooking the mountain! |
December 26
Monday was our last full day in Switzerland and we wanted to get out on some skis and see where our one 3-hour lesson would take us! We got decked out in our snow gear, walked across the street to the ski rental place, got fitted for boots, skis, poles, and helmets and then slowly made our way to the cable car (it's REALLY hard to walk in ski boots!) When we first got up there I was feeling a bit overwhelmed from the masses of people on the mountain. Jacqueline had warned us that Boxing Day would likely be very busy on the mountain but I had no idea that everyone and their uncle would be out there! On top of that the snow was icy and really packed down - again something I was NOT anticipating from our one lesson in an indoor, quality controlled ski slope. So we made our way to the bunny slope and as I paused to look down to the bottom I nearly freaked! Are all bunny slopes this steep?? Not only that, but it was filled with kids and there was this netting fence at the bottom that was perfect for getting your skis stuck. So when Zach went down first and got stuck like a dolphin caught in a tuna net for about 20 minutes, I was laughing but in the next breath was thinking, "There's no way in hell I'm going down there!" So I watched and waited until he got back up, then watched him go down again, and proceed to get stuck in the netting again. After a few times watching this escapade I thought I'd give it a try. I immediately started going too fast, trying to slow down with turns but was making the turns way too quickly and slid halfway down the hill on my butt where I naturally got my skis stuck in the netting. When I finally got my butt back up the hill I was too afraid to go back down so I waited until a group of Asian tourists, clearly completely new to the idea of skiing, threw themselves down the bunny slope without a second thought! As they tumbled their way down and one of them managed to flip backwards OVER the netting, I thought, "If they can do it, then so can I!" So I got back out there, still managing to fall and butt-ski down half the hill, one time crashing into Zach at the bottom, taking him down with me.
A little while later, Zach said, "Against my better judgment, I'm going down that hill over there." To which I responded numerous times, "Seriously? Down that hill?" What I wanted to say was, "Are you freaking crazy??!" My protesting did me no good, as he went anyway. A half hour later, as I was waiting for him, I thought, either he was dead on the side of the mountain or he's having a really good time! When he finally came back, his experience was kind of in between dead and having a really good time... Out of that whole time he was gone he only managed to go down the hill once and back up the ski lift once... but he fell about 4 or 5 times going down the hill and said it was frightening, and then fell off the ski lift (the kind that you hold on to while it drags you up the hill). He finally had to be paired with a competent skier on the ski lift to help him up. Then he returned, defeated, back to the bunny slope.
We decided to take a lunch break by that point and went to the over-crowded ski lodge where we were bombarded by German speakers and cranky German women serving food. Not quite the quaint experience we had the other day in the tiny lodge when we were out tobogganing. After lunch we hit the bunny slopes with a little bit more confidence and I actually managed to do a few runs without falling! I was feeling slightly more confident by the end of the day so against my better judgment, and with the persuasion of a sage old Indian guru man with a cowboy hat, sitting on a futuristic toboggan, Zach and I decided to try the slope that defeated him earlier on. I decided to go first, but I should've known just looking at the slope that it was too difficult for my level, seeing as the slope dropped off and you couldn't see the bottom. I started going anyway, and promptly picked up speed, too much speed, then made the mistake of pointing my skis towards the bottom of the hill and WHAM! Hugest wipe-out of the day - I fell face first and flipped over 3 or 4 times before landing on the side of the slope, one of my poles halfway up the hill. Dammit! I only managed to go what looked like only a few feet before wiping out. I looked at my lost ski pole a few feet above where I landed and then back to the rest of the slope, and said, "Screw that! No way I'm goin' down the rest of that slope!" So I took my skis off and trudged up the hill to collect my ski pole, and then trudged back to the top of the hill where I waited for Zach to come after me. When I got back to the top of that slope I saw the Indian man with the cowboy hat take off in his futuristic toboggan, probably laughing his head off at my wipe-out.
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| the elusive bunny slope - from this view, it looks like you could just drop off into the lake below, with some wimpy orange netting to save you |
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| stupid bunny... are you mocking me?? |
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| the bunny is just waiting to push me down the bunny slope |
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| where else can you get views like this on a bunny slope?? |
It didn't help that 2 year olds were whizzing past us like Olympic athletes as we teetered and wobbled down the bunny slope. But I guess you have to expect that when these people came out of the womb with skis on.
So despite feeling majorly defeated out there on the bunny slope the views were gorgeous, it was a beautiful day, no one broke any bones and we had fun.
This will definitely be a Christmas to remember forever... to reminisce and laugh at for years to come!
