The Flag's a Plus

A few weeks ago, Laura and I took a long weekend and visited the town of Appenzell . Appenzell is a small and conservative Catholic town in the Northeast corner of Switzerland. We ran into trouble before we even left. We were staying at a quiet time of year -- too early for Ski season and too late for hiking season. So, many of the hotels had closed either for renovations or for lack of traffic. I made reservations online at Hotel Loewen. A day later, they called me and told me, very apologetically, that they were closing the hotel that weekend, but they'd forgotten to disable online booking. Would we mind spending our second night at the four-star hotel down the street at no additional charge? I told them that would be no problem. There's no direct train between Zuerich and Appenzell. Appenzell is reached via a narrow-gauge train from Gossau or St. Gallen. The SBB was quiet and comfortable with a great view, as usual. Swiss trains are thoroughly spoiling me. The App...

The Swiss like scarves. Used properly, a scarf can expand the comfort range of a jacket or coat. However, there's a growing fashion trend of ridiculous, enormous scarves. They wrap these things around their neck a few times, then pile them over their shoulders. In the end, they look like walking ice cream sundaes with a weird blond cherry on top.

A few pictures from a walk around old town.

I rode the cable car ( The Luftseilbahn Adliswil Felsenegg , or LAF) to the trail along Uetliberg this morning. It took me above the fog that had enveloped the city.  I took a few pictures along the way.  There's a video with the sound of church bells ringing and a panorama in the mix.

This is a picture of a day's grocery shopping from last week. Pictured: A bag of Kaegi  dark orange chocolates. These are a bit like a very light Twix bar. A bottle of sweeter Swiss white wine. A bottle of Ovo Drink chocolate milk A small bottle of cream A bottle of Rivella Chicken boullion concentrate Gravensteiner Apples Green onions Coop store-brand chocolate Ricotta ravioli made with pumpkin pasta For dinner, I diced and sauteed the apples and green onions in butter and a bit of apple cider until they were softened. I added some strong chicken boullion and white wine and simmered some more until the pectin in the apples brought it together almost like a gravy. I heated up the ravioli, then just before I served it, I added the cream to the apple onion sauce and stirred (didn't want to add it too soon for fear of it curdling). Mixed ravioli and sauce, then served with remaining white wine. Kaegi and schoggi for dessert. 

Laura and I have been in Switzerland for months, but aside from a return visit to the US, we hadn't left the country. Last weekend, we decided to change that with a visit to Milan, Italy. We left early on Friday morning via an SBB Eurocity (EC) train. The trip took about 4 hours. We booked second-class tickets because there's not much of a difference with SBB. First class cars are quieter and less busy. That's about it. It was my first time through the Alps since we moved to Switzerland, and they were magnificent. We would come out of a tunnel, and I'd be looking down. My first thought would be "Wow! We're so high that I'm looking down on the tops of the church spires of multiple towns. This view is fantastic." ...and then I would look up. It was often difficult to see the tops of the mountains from the train because they were so high. We were absolutely dwarfed by the mountains, even the ones on the other side of whatever valley or lake that ...

I get a lot of questions about Switzerland's size. So, I put together a spreadsheet showing Switzerland's size relative to each US State. You can view the full spreadsheet on Google Sheets , but here are some highlights: The two states that are closest in size to Switzerland are Maryland and West Virginia. Maryland is 61% (about 2/3x) of the size of Switzerland. West Virginia is 151% (about 1 and 1/2x) of the size of Switzerland. Pennsylvania is 281% (about 3x) of the size of Switzerland. One of the nice things about living in a small country is the short distance to the borders. I can be in Germany in an hour. France, Lichtenstein, or Austria in 2 hours, or Italy in 4 hours (less when full service through t he Gotthard Tunnel opens later this year). This weekend, we're going to visit... somewhere, and "do you want to go to Milan or Munich" is about as difficult as "Do you want to go to Columbus or Buffalo?"