Fall pics

I never realized it, but fall is berry season. All of the bushes here burst out in little round berries that are bright orange, purple, red, and black. Of course I wanted to get pictures of all of them but only managed to get one of a purple berry bush. Next year I'll get one of an orange bush because they were really neat. So here is the purple berry bush (they really are a bright purple, I'm not sure how well my cell phone camera captured them):



Does anybody know what this bush is? It loses all of its leaves then sprouts out in purple berries. I couldn't get a picture of the bush in its entirety because it was in somebody's yard and I was afraid they'd yell at me.

I never got out to take fall pictures this season because it was very cloudy and gloomy outside and the colors didn't look very impressive against a dark gray sky with fog swirling around. It's been nice this past week but the trees are done so I missed it. Maybe next year. I did take a few more pics with my cell phone last week that are only a little blurry. Here's a really colorful bush:



And here's the tree at the end of the driveway that our apartment building is on:



The sun finally came out so I wanted to get a picture of it but it was already past its peak color and had lost its leaves at the top ... I also wanted to get a picture of it without a crane in the picture but that proved to be impossible.

So that sums up my attempt at fall pictures this year.

Weihnachtspyramide

This is our new Christmas pyramid that we bought when we were in Bern. The candles in it, when lit, make the windmill at the top (and therefore the rest of it) spin around. A Christmas pyramid is traditional in Germany/Switzerland/Austria and it's all hand carved out of wood. They come with limitless different designs like deer/nature landscapes, religious scenes, and Christmas-y scenes with snowmen and trees. They were all gorgeous and we took a really long time to decide which one to get but when we saw this one we just knew:



It has little skiers on it!



And is complete with a little woodpile:



I personally love the tree in the middle - it's so neat how the wood is all shaved into little curves and manages to look like a pine tree.

For those of you who can only think of cousin Eddie in National Lampoon's Christmas vacation when looking at the Christmas pyramid ... that's all I can think about too. Thankfully I have no cousin Eddie who can drop in unexpectedly and break mine! These things are not cheap - as is evidenced by the tiny size of ours. If you're so inclined, you can spend up to $1500 on one of these. Some day when we're rich maybe we'll buy a bigger one to compliment this one.

Bern Wanderings 2

A little scenic Bern shot. It's a really cute town.



And here is the Bern bear park:



The park is along the bank of the Aare river, which borders Bern on three sides. There are also "bear pits" but those were closed in 2009 when they opened the park you see here. There are currently 4 bears in residence here. Bears have been kept here in Bern since 1441 as a symbol of the city. They are not only what Bern is named after, but they are also on the Bern flag and coat of arms.

Ever since I went on safari in Africa and then watched the movie "The Cove", I have vowed to never support or set foot in a zoo or sea world-type park again. But the bear park in Bern is hard to avoid since you can see it from far away and you have to walk by it when you wander around Bern. It's completely free so at least I didn't give any money to support the captivity of the bears. I will get off my pedestal now but I dare any of you to watch "The Cove" and not walk away with the same feeling. It did make me sad but the bears were cute and so Martin took some pics of them:







I think they look pretty bored and like they'd rather be wandering free in the mountains instead of stuck in a cage in Bern. But, that's just my opinion.

Some fall colors along the Aare:



Looking back at the old town of Bern from the bear park:



Next we climbed to the top of the church you see in the left of the above picture. Here are some shots of the details of the outside of the church, before we went inside:



350 stairs later, the view:



Looking over the old town of Bern:



And then we found some sunshine on our way back to the train station to go back to Zurich:



And that was our day in Bern.

Bern Wanderings 1

As I'm sure you all know, Bern is the capitol of Switzerland, though it's population is only 130,000. So it has a nice small town feeling. The old town area is very nice - long streets filled with stores with statues in random places in the middle of the street or on the buildings.

We had a cold and rainy day but still took plenty of pictures. Here are some pictures of the statues in the middle of the streets:



This one is a bear:



And some statues sticking out from the sides of buildings:





There are also some big clocks in Bern:





We visited Albert Einstein's apartment (look there he is in the window!):



Einstein's street:



He lived in Bern when he developed his theory of special relativity. Neat.

Even though it was cloudy out, you could see the mountains in the distance:





To be continued in part 2.

Chocolate Hedgehogs

We saw these at a pastry shop in Bern today. An 'Igel' is a hedgehog. Very cute. I believe they were filled with a hazelnut filling of some sort. We did not buy one because we figured it was slightly too large to be called a mid-morning snack. We bought some really delicious little donut-hole type pastries for our snack instead.

Just another day in Zürich ...

Can you even tell these two pictures were taken on different days? I can't. One is Saturday morning, and one is this morning (Monday). Awesome, isn't it? I would have taken one on Sunday morning too but I was too depressed to get out of bed and do it.





And this is Onyx's spot, on the futon in the living room on the ratty old blanket we would have thrown out but we saved for him:



So, it's just another dark-as-night cold and cloudy morning in Zürich! And, side note, it doesn't start getting light out until 7:30am here already ... I think it will be dark until 9am in the middle of winter! My early morning runs will be forced to become mid-morning runs.

The Trift Glacier

Since I titled this blog "The Travels of Garmisch", I figured I'd better take Garmisch on at least one of our travels this year! We usually don't have room for him in our backpacks (and we have to be able to carry everything on our backs on our hikes) but this time he fit! Well, I made him fit. And he had a great time, in my opinion.

Here he is hanging out at the bottom of the Trift Glacier hike. We were waiting for the cable car to bring us to the start of the hike.



Martin was also waiting for the cable car. We had to wait an hour before we could get onto the cable car, which only takes 8 people up at a time. I hate to think what the crowds are like during the peak summer months! You must have to wait about 3 hours before you can get up ... and that's only to the start of the hike.



The hike itself was nothing too serious, from the cable car station to the glacier it only took us a little over an hour. We chose to walk all the way back down to the parking lot afterwards to avoid waiting for the cable car again. So the way down took us about 3 hours but it was worth it. The bottom part was gorgeous - we walked through forests and fields and all the trees were changing and there were lots of neat clouds in the sky.

Anyway, here's the glacier:



It looks impressive in that picture but it used to fill this entire basin (the lake used to be all glacier as well) back before it started melting:





Sorry the pictures of the glacier look black and white. The sun was directly behind the glacier and we don't know how to handle that with our camera so our pictures are all washed out. But you get the idea.

You can view the glacier really well from the Trift Bridge, which is Europe's longest suspension bridge at 170 meters. We walked across it. It swayed a lot in the wind and was pretty shaky but we survived.







And some views from our hike back down to the bottom.

We saw some more glaciers:



And some mountains with neat clouds around them. And fall colors, though most of the trees that high up are pine trees:



And a lot of pretty scenery. I think this hike was the prettiest hike we've done all year: