Somewhere over the Mountain...



Lucern



Tanja, Jolie,Amelia & Donna-the horse



Friday we took a long drive towards the south of Switzerland, near Thun, to visit my life time friend Tanja.  I met Tanja 25 years ago on a Christmas trip with my cousin to Germany.  We’ve kept in touch ever since, and have only seen each other twice since our initial meeting, so this made it the third!  She now lives on a beautiful property high up in the mountains surrounded by fields and forest with her cute little daughter Jolie and two horses to look after, and of course her husband who unfortunately we couldn’t meet as he was away on business.  We ate lunch outside in the lovely sunshine and while Noah slept we helped rake the horse arena!  It was fun being out in the sunshine with lovely views and chatting while we worked.  Poor Tanja has such a huge job looking after all that land and a little one I only wish we could have stayed a few days and helped her out!  I think Maciek’s ideas about helping on a farm are fading after that!  She made us some delicious Canadian coffee (she lived in Canada for some years and has it sent over, I don’t know the name of it but it was so nice!) and a yummy chocolate cake while the kids raided another child’s toys!!  It was really lovely seeing Tanja and meeting her little girl, and hopefully if we stay in Austria for a while it won’t be seven years before we meet again!



Tanja's place - gorgeous ( for sale too)



From Tanja’s we took the ‘scenic’ route (Karen’s choice, not ours) through some pretty hairy and scary mountain roads, (nearly lost the side mirror a couple of times, and at one point while climbing a steep section of road, we got stuck behind a tractor, which was trailing a ride on lawn mower!) to Lucerne, a city we both remember from our Contiki days!  We didn’t arrive till 6.30pm, and had just enough time for a quick dinner and a wander around.  It was nice actually in the evening, as the weather was lovely and there were only a couple of tour groups oohing and aahing and snapping pics!  Needless to say, Lucerne is another one of our favourites.

We’ve had three full days in Switzerland, visiting friends and famous places! (“how do you know so many people in Switzerland?”, said Suzanne!)

Peach and Monika were fantastic hosts.  We really enjoyed sitting up in the evenings and chatting, eating Ben & Jerry’s and drinking tea (of course Peach and Maciek didn’t have tea, they had BIER, because they’re MEN!)  Every evening we had a delicious meal to come home to.  Monika even made hats for the kids!  Thanks guys – we really appreciate all you did and your company.  And thanks Yannik for sharing your precious toys!

And no, as tempting as it was, we didn’t set up a Swiss Bank Account…..