Brian and I have officially become very delinquent with the blog, but we have an excellent excuse–we have been spending time with very generous friends who have been showing us around Switzerland! Interestingly, although we had five friends to visit with on this trip, they all happen to live in Switzerland. We also happened to meet these friends when we were all living in New Jersey.  What are the odds that seven people who used to live in New Jersey would spend time together in Switzerland!? I guess pretty good when they consist of three couples of whom four attended Rutgers, and two of them are Swiss….but I digress.

We began our stay in Switzerland by visiting Zurich where our friends, Saemi and Leena, took us to dinner at the world’s oldest vegetarian restaurant, Hiltl. I can think of no better way to begin a trip somewhere than at a historic vegetarian restaurant! The following night they made us the very traditional Swiss dish, fondue. This was followed by the even more traditionally Swiss game, Carcassonne. Ok, the game is not actually Swiss, but we had a lot of fun playing it. They also took us to get Swiss pie which is thinner than American pie and you can get it either sweet or savory. The savory version is similar to quiche. At any rate, we had a great time! Thank you very much Saemi and Leena!!

After Zurich, we took the train to visit our friend Patricia in the exciting town of Tegerfelden. Actually, every time we told someone we were headed to Tegerfelden, they said, “Where?”. In fact, Patricia herself feels that Tegerfelden is so boring that we didn’t even see the town aside from the pretty view of it from her apartment window. Instead, Patricia took us on a fantastic hike in Melchsee-Frutt to see an amazing view of the Swiss Alps, to an annual fair in Basel, to the cute medieval town of Stein am Rhein, and to the lakeside city of Konstanz. She also made sure that we tasted every single traditional Swiss food, snack or dessert, which I think makes us officially Swiss now. We also reunited with another former New Jerseyian–her dog Delta! He actually remembered us too, which was really cute. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Patricia!!

Our final friend visit took place in Bern with our friends Vitor and Rui. Vitor and Rui are actually from Portugal and have moved to Switzerland for work. Despite them only having lived in Bern for 9 months, they really know the city well and were excellent tour guides. We had a lot of fun seeing the Bern bears, hanging out at an anarchist bar, drinking Swiss beer and Portuguese wine, riding free city bikes, seeing the rose garden, drinking at the bar that Einstein used to frequent, playing games and cooking dinner together every night! Even though those darn air mattresses wouldn’t cooperate, we had a blast! Thank you again for everything Rui and Vitor!!

We will flesh out more of what we did in Switzerland when we chronologically catch up (we have a few places we visited before Switzerland to still post about!), but we wanted to make sure to update everyone on what was happening with us to make our posts slow down. More importantly, we wanted to make sure that we properly thanked our friends for giving us an unforgettable experience in Switzerland. The time we spent with all of you was so much fun and you made sure that we did things that we wouldn’t have been able to experience without you. As we emphasized again and again, you all always have a place to stay in DC! We hope to see you again soon!!!