It's true! We're in Switzerland

I mentioned in one of my previous posts how Luke was not convinced that we were in Switzerland. He says that he feels like we are in France because where we live does not look like the Switzerland he imagined. So just to make sure that there really is a place with high mountains and waterfalls and cows, we drove to Interlaken. It took us approx. 1 hr to drive there, but then we decided to head up to the Jungfrau (the "Top of Europe") which was 3 hour ordeal with trains taking us straight up the mountain.

Some views from the train window:



At some point we decided to get off and have lunch since we didn't realize it would take this long, and thus we did not pack any food.
It felt like we were at the top of the world even though we were just at 6,000 feet. It's funny how we felt so high, yet this was the same altitude of our home back in Colorado.
Interlaken is a popular destination for Asians and 90% of the people we saw were Asain. They absolutely loved Jack. We felt like we were walking around with a little celebrity. Everywhere we went crowds of Asians would gather around us and ask to take Jack's picture. Thankfully we were still able to get some photos alone with our little star:



After we had an amazing lunch of melted cheese and potatoes, we got on to another train. This one took us right into the mountain and the next 5,000 feet up were spent inside tunnels like this:

Luke and Jack both napped

When we finally reached the top, here was our view:

Jack was too tired to appreciate it
We visited the ice palace carved out of the glacier


When Jack finally woke up we went outside again
Luke enjoyed his $6 beer
Jack was upset we didn't save any for him
We rented a sled and I took Jack down with me
He didn't like it and when I asked if he wanted to do it again he says "No! Momma do it again" and pushed me down the slope
They had an escalator at the bottom of the hill to bring you back up again. It was awesome!
Some lady broke her foot while sledding and they called in the Swiss rescue helicopter. Jack loved watching the helicopter land, but then they closed down the sledding which was a bummer
So we went back inside and tried to get some more pictures of the Alps

Here is a view from the train window on the way back down
It was an awesome day! It's still hard to believe that we are right in the heart of Europe and that we can be so many places in just a few hours.

Interlaken was in the German speaking areas of Switzerland and all the signs, etc are in German. Luke spent the majority of the 1 hour drive up there laughing over the German words and doing his best to imitate the German accent. I guess some of the words are pretty funny:

"Einfahrt"
"Ausfahrt"
"Wankdorf"
Boys will be boys!

We attempted to get some laundry done this weekend. 2 loads took us almost 3 hours. Apparently one of the many signs (that were in French) warned you that machine #3 was broken. But of course, we ended up with machine #3 and had no idea it was broken...until it took 2.5 hours to complete one load!

Still trying to get over the prices here!
4 washers for 1 dryer. It doesn't work... we ended up having to take our clothes home wet instead of waiting another 45 minutes for the dryer to become free
Jack was antsy in the laundry room so I stuck him in this hallway to play
We also had to move out of our suite into a 1 bedroom room (just next door). We actually like the 1 bedroom better than the suite.

House hunting was not as successful as we had hoped. We spent all day Sunday driving around the surrounding areas to try to get a better feel for the place. I think we narrowed our search down to 3-4 cities that we like. Driving around all day can be pretty exhausting though:
Monday was a holiday in Switzerland and nothing was open, so everyone was out walking around
We rented bikes and rode around the lake


We rode to a park and let Jack play for a while

Then we had some lunch
As we were heading back to the hotel we could see that Jack was getting tired
He fell asleep shortly after we started riding home
We tried to use the Ergo to make some sort of contraption so his head wasn't flailing around. It seems to work:
Monday afternoon we went back to the park by our hotel
It is an awesome place right near the lake
Then we had dinner with some friends at a nearby Creperie. On a side note: the majority of the French children that we have met have been nasty to Jack. He has been tackled, shoved, hit many times and we even had one kid come up to us and throw a fist full of sand in our faces. My poor friendly, outgoing little boy is starting to become scared of other kids. It was nice to finally meet another friendly little person at dinner on Monday (she was not French, she was visiting from another country). Her name was Sarah and she and Jack hit it off
She seemed to really like him
Jack is really missing his friends back home. He always asks to see his best buddy Levi and I am trying to explain that Levi lives in Colorado and Jack lives in Switzerland so we can't see Levi all the time. Not sure if he gets it though:

Finally, here we are practicing our French