Maxwell in der Schweiz
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31 December 2022
This week Maxwell came for his first visit to Switzerland. As expected for a dad vacation, our time together was chock full of activities! He flew in Tuesday evening and was immediately excited by the real highways on the way from the airport. The kid loves cars and motorcycles, and had a ton to tell me about his baby, Seppuku. He bought himself a motorcycle this year and got so tired of hearing everyone's stories about the one person they knew that was horribly injured in a motorcycle accident that he named his motorcycle for the samurai custom of ritual suicide. After supper I took him up Rosinli with the dogs to survey to Zürcher Oberland at night. Conversations in person are so much better for catching up! We finished the evening on the couch in front of the TV.
Maxwell slept in Wednesday, so the sun was well up in the sky when we headed out on our hike to Bachtel. The weather was mild this week, but often cloudy. Fortunately Wednesday there was mostly blue skies, so Maxwell could get the full view of the Alps offered from Bachtel. Along the way we stopped at the Täuferhohle, where I fell into monologuing about the history of the Reformation of the church in Switzerland. Later on the hike he repaid me though with monologues on cars and motorcycles. Meanwhile the dogs roamed free in the forest as I've always done with Paula, but was still trying out with Eddie. I took Maxwell up the tower on Bachtel to see the peaks with the guidelines, which he enjoyed as I do. Coming back down the tower we realized that Eddie was nowhere to be seen. Paula was running around having a lovely time, but Eddie was just gone. Instead of calling Iwona to come pick us up, I had to call her and tell her I'd lost our new dog. Then the hunt ensued. To make a long story short, Eddie ran home. All 10 kilometers! Maxwell and I followed the trail back hoping to find him based on sightings of fellow hikers, but in the end it was the phone number on his dog tag that one of the neighbors called when they found him on his way home. It doubled the length of our hike though, to over 20 kilometers. Then I grilled some tuna steaks and steamed artichokes for dinner, as these were things I used to cook Maxwell when he was young. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had an artichoke. Again we finished the evening on the couch, watching Christmas Vacation - an old favorite for Maxwell and I, but new to Iwona.
Thursday started off with a walk down to the waterfall in the Kemptner Tobel. And Eddie didn't ditch us, which was good. Then Maxwell and I drove out to Bad Zurzach to spend the afternoon in the hot springs there. It was nice to share the pools and the sauna and he giggled with joy in the lazy river. Lying in the bubbles after a couple hours though, he confessed that he'd probably had enough. So we headed back to pick up Iwona at the office. Due to a miscommunication I believed that we needed to make a hurried dinner before going to the evening's party at the Flieger Flab Museum in Dübendorf. I'd thought it was just dessert, but it was actually a dinner. When we realized my confusion I'd already started on the tacos though, and we weren't sure what they'd have safe for Maxwell's allergies. So Maxwell had tacos and Iwona and I dined later at the party. The museum really covered the complete history of flight in Switzerland, and had quite a few military aircraft, engines, and artilliary. We even lucked upon a table where a woman spoke Norwegian, having spent half a year in her youth working on a farm on the Hardangerfjord. Still, most of the conversation was in German, and Maxwell got a little bored as the event continued late into the night. Arriving back home, Iwona and I went to bed while Maxwell warmed himself up some more tacos.
Friday we set our alarms to get an early start as I took Maxwell on the SBB train to Ticino. He was as excited as I was about Brezelkönig - the soft pretzel store in nearly every large train station. During the course of the day he had 4 of them! We managed to get a table in the dining car for the long leg from Zürich to Lugano, and Maxwell enjoyed the scenery as the sun rose. Along the way we talked about plans for next summer and his hopes and dreams. After passing through the longest tunnel in the world under the San Gottardo Pass in the Alps, we arrived on the Italian side in Lugano. We took a stroll along the lake from the train station to the funicular up San Salvatore. It was good that I only bought one way tickets, because Maxwell's acrophobia was activated by the second train, quite steeper than the first and mcuh higher than the one he's used to on Fløyen in Bergen. We didn't linger on the top, as there were too many clouds to see Milan down in Italy and Maxwell was eager not to be up so high. It was my second time up the peak though, so my own acrophobia was not as bad this time. After hiking down we enjoyed an Italian lunch on the lakeshore.
After lunch we hopped back on the train to nearby Bellinzona to get a look at the castles. These were new to me and once formed a barrier all the way across the valley guarding the passes. Maxwell noticed the obvious similarities to the Lord of the Rings, as there was even a lone tree in the courtyard of Castelgrande. Unfortunately all the week's hiking had hurt Maxwell's foot, so he went to the café at the train station while I hiked up the the second castle at Montebello. Then it was back to Zürich with a 1 minute stop in Arth-Goldau that was a little too close. Maxwell gave me a hard time about the drei Minuten Verspätung as I had waxed about the punktlichkeit of the Swiss train system. Back in Zürich we took a short walk along the Limmat before realizing we'd packed enough into the day already and then headed home for more tacos. After dinner I took the dogs for a walk and there were a couple fireworks in the valley below. This or the darkness caused Eddie to bail and run home. Now we know his MO at least.
Today Maxwell slept in a bit while I wrote this. The sun was shining bright though, so I got him up in enough time for a short hike up Rosinli before I drove him to the airport. The sunshine was so warm we ended up taking off our sweatshirts. Then Iwona made us pierogis for lunch and we said our goodbyes. I said I would try to come up in the Spring and he said he would come back down in the Summer, probably with his bike. I love him so very much.
