The spring-like weather continues, and we’re off down to the valley for some exercise. Ali has a day off work, so she joined us.
The little self-service kiosk outside the farm has been decorated for Easter. They also have a new product – goat’s milk soap! In a sign of the times, a credit card machine has replaced the honesty box.
High above Lauterbrunnen, the Ibex is enjoying the sun and the lush grass in the meadow.
Val was off to Bern to see her surgeon today. Getting there early means she had time for a wander around. Bern is a lovely city.
I stayed in Wengen, and worked my way through my list of fairly dull jobs. I did manage to squeeze in a coffee at the Crystal bar this morning, and I got a nice snap of the crocuses at the bottom of the garden steps.
The bedraggled tree in the background loses a branch every time we have a storm. It keeps the farmer well supplied with firewood, but I fear it’s not long for this world.
The weather’s been a bit mixed lately, but today the sun is out and it’s good hiking weather. A walk in the valley should be nice. There’s a fire burning down there, the smoke doesn’t rise because cold air is trapped on the valley floor.
We had a good walk. The fire turned out to be lots of twigs and small branches that had blown down in the storm last weekend. The farmer has raked them all up ready for the livestock to return to the meadow. Talking of livestock, spring is on its way, and we did see cows and sheep in the barns along the path, though none of them are outside yet.
More signs of spring in our garden.
Tomorrow Val is off to the clinic in Bern to have her stitches removed, and hopefully that’ll be the end of her health saga.
For many years, we endured the typical Swiss supermarket pricing model. It didn’t really matter where you did your shopping, because the prices were all more or less the same. Beer is a good example. The supermarkets charge about 2.30 for a can of good German beer.
Then everything changed, with the arrival of Aldi and Lidl. All of a sudden the Swiss supermarket chains didn’t have things all their own way anymore. There was genuine competition, which was something of a foreign concept here. So now, the Swiss chains try to offer better prices. Val spotted this offer of 24 cans for 32.95 today. She sent me a photo, as I was on the hunt for cheap beer on the other side of town. 32.95 is a good price. It works out at 1.37 per can, so a good saving over the usual 2.30.
Meanwhile, I was heading for Lidl to see what they could offer. I bought chocolate eggs, and some sausages for dinner, then I headed for the beer aisle. Nice German weissbier, for 0.69 per can. I bought as many as I could squeeze into the shopping trolley.
So in the space of a few years, the price of a nice can of imported beer has dropped from 2.30 francs to 0.69. That’s remarkable.
Val had a small surgery on Friday, a small piece of infected bone was removed from her jaw. Despite lots of swelling and an inability to smile properly for my photo, she feels much better. Here we are having lunch at the Co-op in Interlaken today.
If you look closely at the photo, you’ll notice a new Korean flag outside. For some reason the Korean tourists love the Co-op restaurant, so the flag is a nice touch.
Having a lot of time on her hands means that Val has been busy doing her latest jigsaw puzzle. It’s a beauty.
Colin is playing at the Alpine Hotel tomorrow, so we might just have a night out if Val feels up to it.
Last night we were kept awake until the early hours of this morning by the storm raging along the valley. Thankfully our roof stayed on, which is more than can be said for our neighbour’s woodstore, which needed a lot of repairs this afternoon. After these windstorms we normally get rain, and sure enough, as the wind died down at lunchtime, it began to pour. The rain did turn to snow later which is something of a bonus.
Once again there was no skiing at all at Kleine Scheidegg today, nor at First over at Grindelwald. The downhill trains were full of disappointed skiers this afternoon, the weekend having provided no skiing at all. A pretty dismal weekend.
My phone started pinging at about 10 this morning – weather alerts from Swiss Meteo warning of a wind storm. Sure enough, the ski lifts began to close, and by lunchtime Kleine Scheidegg had completely shut down.
To make matters worse, the gondola over at Grindelwald seems to have a technical problem, and it too has been closed since coffee time this morning. Männlichen managed to keep a couple of lifts open until mid-afternoon, but the storm is a big one and I think the authorities wanted everyone off the mountain. Not a good day for the many weekenders who arrived yesterday evening.
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