The weather was OK on Saturday and we went on a hike. The Mascaros drove us out to Hoch-Ybrig. The Baumanns met us there. We rode a gondola and then a chairlift to the top where we could hike along the ridge. I’m sure it would have been beautiful if we could have seen anything. 🙂 Yes, there was cloud cover, but we could still see all the cows grazing on the trail. And what’s more, we could hear them. Their cowbells carry all through the valley! It sort of gives the Swiss chateaus the feel of a busy intersection. We didn’t have very much time so we had to run. The last chairlift shuts down at 4:40 pm, and if you are not on it then you had better start looking for dry kindling.  It was cold.

We looked all over for a restaurant where we could have fondue. Some restaurants were too loud. Others were too quiet and we were worried about bringing kids in there. Lots were closed. Finally Nik negotiated our way into a quaint farmhouse. They had already put cheese on the stove when they heard from a friend that we were coming. (Someone had called ahead from the last restaurant where we had asked for directions.) So we actually didn’t even have a choice of what to order. 😕 It was stressful on Nik, because everyone was looking to him to find the perfect place and explain everything we needed to the owner. We would have never found the place. It was out… way out. But it was packed. The fondue was really good.

Erika Weibel in the ward was so nice this week and invited us to go to the temple with her and her daughter Witny. The temple is an hour and a half drive from Zürich, and they close at noon. (On a Saturday!) So we arranged for them to pick us up at the train station by our house at 7 am. The next morning my alarm went off with a funny sound. I looked at it, and it was Erika, calling us. She wanted to know where we were. It was already 7:15 am. Oops! We hurried fast into our clothes. At 7:20, the real alarm finally went off. Oops again! We got on the road at 7:30, after running to the train station. Pretty good for wearing heels. I felt so bad because they didn’t have time to shop for temple clothing at the distribution center like they had wanted. It was a much more relaxing visit than the last time. I was really worried about returning to the temple after we went in March. It cost a lot to travel there, the temple clothes we rented were expensive, and the multiple languages heard all around all through the session were intimidating. After my always peaceful visits as a temple worker to the Seattle temple I wasn’t prepared for the multilingual Swiss temple experience.  Once I knew how it would all play out I was able to really enjoy being in the temple again.

Google treated us to a family BBQ on Friday. Most of the Google employees think that Google is a family-friendly employer. Whenever people talk like that on the internal mailing lists, it makes me cringe. If Google already thinks that it is plenty family-friendly, then they won’t get the idea to stop doing the 3-day off-sites where spouses aren’t invited. Those trips are a great perk for young singles. They are long workdays for me though. So anyway, we were really happy that they hosted a BBQ and all the Google parents got to bring their kids to play.