Skiing in the Alps

It still sounds sounds exotic to my ears to say that we went skiing in the Swiss Alps for the week. And it was, in a way, exotic. Although Switzerland and Germany are neighbors, there are enough differences to make it an adventure to cross the border.

To be honest I was more than a little hesitant to go on a ski vacation this year, with kids who are not huge fans of the sport. And although I do love to ski, I would prefer to spend family vacation time some place warm, especially after months and months of snow through the "coldest winter in 30 years" in Bonn. However, Olof made his case, pointing out that we are here for a limited time and what an amazing opportunity we have to go SKIING IN SWITZERLAND! Okay, okay.

There seem to be a gazillion ski areas and resorts within a 6 to 8 hour drive from Bonn, so choosing one was quite a task. After researching "the best family ski areas in Switzerland" we settled on the small alp village of Adelboden, located not too far from the capital Bern. http://www.adelboden.ch/en/page.cfm/Bergbahnen

Finding a place to stay was the next challenge, as it seems that most of Europe has the second and/or third week of February off in order to ski. Really, no joke. This is usually referred to as "sport break" for the kids. This was made very clear to us while we were driving to Adelboden - every other car was Dutch, French or German heading into Switzerland!

We arrived on a cloudy Saturday evening, too late to rent equipment, but in time to wander the cute village. As we wandered, everyone greeted us with a friendly "grüß gott" or 'grüßi" literally meaning "greet god" but generally just hello. We loved the warmth of the greetings and the cozy Swiss accent which was much harder for us to understand, but sounded great.

The deal we made with the kids was that they would try ski school for 2 days and if they loved it, they could continue and if they hated it, we would not push. I was totally impressed by both kids and their brave faces as we booked their ski school and told them they would be on the mountain from 9:30 to 1:45 when we picked them up. Gulp. After making these arrangements on Sunday for the next day, we had the afternoon to explore.

Besides skiing, sledding is big fun in the Alps, so we hopped on the nearest gondola and rented sleds. We opted for the tamer sled run first, which was 3 and a half kilometers of screaming fun for all of us. Well maybe not when the Louise went face first in the snow bank, but otherwise we were all grinning from ear to ear. Of course we had to go again, and again, and again. I have never sledded like this before and used muscles I did not even know I had in order to steer that funky Swiss sled with my rear end.

Of course a week in Switzerland must also include plenty of chocolate and fondue, and we did our best to cover these bases as well.

In the end, Noah loved skiing and opted for another day of ski school. Louise was not so thrilled with the sport, and preferred to go to the swimming pool with me. Olof and I were very satisfied since we both got to ski more than we have since life pre-children, and we got to do it in Switzerland. It was truly beautiful.

Capital cities

Having been inspired by several of Olof's siblings, we thought it would be fun to see how many European capital cities we could visit while on our European adventure. Thus we recently made the short trek to Brussels - the capital of all capital cities in a sense, the meeting of minds for the European Union.

Cities have a lot to offer for tourists. There is always some new food to discover, an alley way to wander down, a museum, pub or famous statue to be visited. In Brussels it is the Manikin piss and Cafe Delirium. And of course waffles. All of which we did in about 3 hours of our visit on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

The kids asked, "What is Brussels famous for, like Amsterdam has Anne Frank's house and canals. What can you buy?" Funny that that is their point of reference. I had to think. Waffles. Beer. Cheese. I could only come up with food, so we had to go find the waffles right away. And on every street corner, there was a lovely little waffle stand, offering delicious warm waffles. So worth the visit already.

Okay, next was the famous peeing statue. Really, literally it is a small, 2 foot statue of a boy peeing. He gets dressed in different outfits according to the season, but he is still just small boy peeing. Nothing to buy there.

And the famous beer. Not really so much for the kids, but we did need to stop for refreshments and happened on the VERY smoky Cafe Delirium which offers over 500 varieties of beer. I had read that Brussels had outlawed smoking in restaurants, but did not realize that cafes did not fall into the same category. I think every smoker in Brussels joined us at this cafe/pub to get in all the smoking they could, in the smallest space possible. Just another cultural experience for the kids. The beer was good.

And on we walked in the beautiful and strangely contradictory city with beautiful intricate buildings from the 1800s and new soviet bloc type administrative buildings side by side.

The drizzling rain did not stop our explorations, but nor was conducive to long explorations. We were happy to get back to the hotel after an early dinner and swim in the hotel pool, which was really the main attraction for the kids.

The next day we avoided the 23 Euro hotel breakfast (over 30 dollars, per person!) and wandered to the nearest bakery. A much nicer and more local experience for us. We took a long walk through the royal gardens and were happy to get back to the car for the next tourist attraction, the Atomium.

I had never heard of the Atomium before, but now I will always associate it with Brussels. This is an amazing structure that was built for the 1958 world fair. "At 102 meters high, with its nine interconnected spheres, it represents an elementary iron crystal enlarged 165 billion (thousand million) times." In other words it is awesome - and totally worth a visit. Both kids said it was something that they would never forget (until they do of course). It was a very memorable way to end our little trip to yet another capital city in Europe.