Swiss Family Willis

Sundays are quite special here. Shops are shut, like all the shops! And it seems most of Switzerland is out and about with family and friends, exploring, hiking, cycling, swimming, eating together… It’s a pretty cool atmosphere.

We combined two of my favorite things: hiking and Swiss mountains and took to Mt Rigi, an easy half-hour drive from our home in Altwis. There we took a gondola halfway up the mountain and did a 4 hour loop hike up to the top and back down. Part of the walk was called ‘the way of the cross’ so we thought it fitting (being Sunday and all) to take along some communion bread and wine (syrup!) and celebrate Jesus.

The views of the Vierwaldstättersee and surrounding mountains are stunning.

A well deserved ice-cream after in the beautiful village of Weggis.

There will be more posts of mountains and hikes ?

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Last Friday, we spent the day at Thermalbad Brigerbad. The pools are pretty awesome, there’s a 182-metre waterslide, we had some great weather, and it was an enjoyable time.

We drove to Brig via the Gotthard Tunnel and the Nufenen Pass. It’s steep, windy, alpine country. The Nufenen pass is the highest mountain pass with a paved road in Switzerland. It has amazing views; you can see the impressive Gries gravity dam (holding back the Griessee), some large wind turbines, and lots of rocks.

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On Friday, the 14th of September, we went to a swimming pool all the way out on the other side of Switzerland to a place called Brig.

It is set in a valley surrounded by mountains. It has the longest Alpine thermal waterslide in the world, at a shocking 182 metres long and it goes down the side of a mountain. Another cool feature at these pools is the turbulent pool, which had jets to push you along the loop. Every second half hour they ran the slide, and every other half hour they strengthened the turbulent pool. So we could alternate between the slide and the turbulent pool, with a 10-minute gap between them. That’s 20 minutes of the slide, 10 minutes of something else, 20 minutes of the turbulent pool, then 10 minutes of something else again, and it keeps repeating.

One downside to the pool was that it took 3 hours to get there. But on the way back, we saw some incredible sights. Mountain passes with crazy bends and huge dams on lakes.

Overall, the pool excursion was pretty cool, and it would be great to do it again sometime.

On Wednesday we went to the Goldau Tierpark. It had animals roaming around and it has to be one of the greatest days of my life! Why? Because I made a new friend and she is a deer! The way we became friends was… I walked up to her and put my hand in front of her nose and then she was calm and let me pet her. Another thing she let me do was take selfies with her and she would even pose for them, like how cool is that.

There were some cool forest playgrounds too, animals I’ve never heard of before and ate my first pommes frites for lunch. Delicious!

On our way to the Goldau Tierpark (a really cool park set at the foot of mountains, in a forest where tame animals roam free) we passed by the Northern Mountain Range.

There were lots of trees up the sides of the mountains, and they were starting to change colour as autumn is approaching. I could only imagine the beautiful picture when the trees were half orange and half green. And then add the Zugersee (Lake Zug), and it becomes something you’d see in nature documentaries. It filled me with joy to recognise that I come from such a beautiful land.

Monday was Daniel’s first day back at work and my first day of study – a diploma in NLP (neurolinguistic programming).

Nice though, to be able to work and study from anywhere. At the Badi, on the balcony, in bed!

So we’ve had to get into a bit of a routine and it’s been good. Boys are spending a couple of hours each morning doing their German studies and a bit of schoolwork. The plan is that they’ll attend Swiss school after the Herbstferien from mid-October. The Swiss kids come home for lunch each day. Lunch is the main meal here, so I’ve been cooking lunch and it’s bread and cheese etc. for dinner. Its quite nice actually, leaves the evenings free for exploring, family time, swimming, biking, hiking…

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After the trip to the Knies Kinderzoo, we explored Rapperswil. It’s has a beautiful ‘Schlossberg’ and lots of fun activities around the lake (Zurich).

It reminds me of the verses we read this morning from Isaiah 26: We have a strong city! We are surrounded by the walls of Gods salvation…

Today we went to the kinderzoo and it was really fun. First we went to the entrance which wasn’t like a ordinary entrance, it had a concrete wall with holes in the shape of people and you had to walk through them to get to place where you get tickets.

So after all that we met the giraffes and zebras but then I saw a moose which wasn’t actually a moose, it was a water buffalo which is my 7th favourite animal (now). After that we met the elephants but something was quite interesting was that one of the elephants had a black eye.

(Ben really wanted to go here as his big brothers visited this place 10 years ago before he was born…)

Yesterday, we had a blast. After lunch, we travelled 20 minutes to a nearby town and swum at the Badi (pools) there.

The Badi wasn’t large, but it was fun nonetheless. There was the main pool, a kid’s pool with a small slide, and a kid’s splash zone. The main pool had two diving boards, an area with lanes, and a ‘Wibit’. And a river running through.

The kid’s splash zone had lots of sprinklers that turned on and off at regular intervals. There were many different types of sprinklers, such as water cannons and a tall tower that sprayed water and you could change what the water sprayed onto.

After the Badi, we drove home, and it was dinner time. For dinner, we walked to the nearest park where a live band was playing. We got some sausages and beer (which us children didn’t have) and listened to the music. After that, we went home and to sleep.