Follow

After a pause overnight, the snow returned this morning, heavier than ever. My plan to pop up to the Co-op was quickly shelved. The forecast said the snow should stop by mid-morning, but it was still going strong after midday. The daffodils are sheltered by our terrace, but they were still suffering.

Eventually the snow began to relent, and we sprinted down to Wengwald to catch the train to Interlaken. We stocked up with essentials and headed back up the mountain. We were delighted to find that the sun had come out and melted most of the snow. The railway tracks above our house are wearing out, and work has been going on overnight to prepare for their replacement. There’s tons of railway stuff by our garden path.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is a bit different. It’ll be dry, but we’re expecting more high winds. We shall see.

Follow

It was pouring with rain when we woke up this morning, and by lunchtime it had turned to snow. Fortunately, we have…

We watched ‘Drive to survive’ this afternoon, and then the new BBC series ‘Kin’ after dinner. It would be nice to think that the weather might improve tomorrow, but it won’t. The sky cleared this evening, but soon the föhn clouds appeared over the Jungfrau, and we’ll have another storm tomorrow.

As long as we don’t run out of food or booze, we don’t really mind. The weather in the mountains is unpredictable at best, and at worst, completely random.

Follow

We had a very nice meal at the Japanese restaurant with Anne-Marie and Paul last night. I ate far too much, and I was glad of a cocktail in the Tanne bar to settle my overfilled tummy.

The Alpine hotel closed at the weekend, and over the summer it will undergo a total renovation from top to bottom. The owners therefore want to dispose of the entire contents of the building. There’s tons of stuff, some of it for sale and some given away. One enterprising couple brought a big trolley with them and bought all the leftover firewood.

There was very little skiing today owing to high winds on the mountain, but after all that food last night I’m not sure I could have managed it anyway.

Follow

We booked a table at the Caprice last night, our plan was to have pizza. A glance at the menu revealed that the hotel guests were having lamb. Lamb is very expensive here, and we hardly ever have it, so we asked if we could have some.

Of course, we ended up having starters, desserts, and coffee too, so our plan for a cheap dinner didn’t really happen. It was all delicious though. The weather forecast for today was good, so we were up early and off to Kleine Scheidegg. Sure enough, it was a beautiful day.

We had coffee in the Hütte (behind Val) before returning to Wengen, and we met Emily and Colin for lunch at the Crystal bar. Tonight we’re going back to the Japanese restaurant that we first tried a few weeks ago.

Follow

32 years ago we caught the train down to Lauterbrunnen and got married at the registry office. It was a day much like this one, with snow and cold temperatures. The Lauterbrunnen registry office has long since been absorbed by the bigger one in Interlaken, so you can’t get married in Lauterbrunnen anymore unless you’re a churchgoer.

We usually mark our anniversary with an exchange of cards, not to mention a few drinks and a nice dinner of course. This year, our taste in cards seems to be very similar.

Ah well, I suppose after all those anniversaries it was bound to happen sometime. All we have to do now is decide where we want to eat tonight.

Follow

Val’s surgeon was happy with her recovery when she saw him yesterday, and she shouldn’t need to see him again. That’s great news, so we celebrated with tapas at the Pickel followed by cocktails in the Tanne bar.

At the end of the ski season there’s an open air concert up at the top of the mountain, and it’s happening this weekend. On many occasions, the organisers have gone to all the trouble of building a stage and the hospitality facilities, only for the weather to be so bad that the event has to be cancelled. This morning it looked highly likely that this would be the case today, with a howling wind and horizontal sleet down here in the village. Luck, however, was on the side of the organisers and the ticket holders, as the weather calmed down and the sun came out just as the concert was due to start.

Follow

It’s another nice day, which is good as Val is off to see her surgeon in Bern again. The celebrated physicist Albert Einstein worked in Bern for a while – he was an assistant at the Swiss patent office. Although he was German by birth, Einstein became a Swiss citizen early in his life, and despite subsequently being granted a U.S. passport, he retained his Swiss nationality until his death in 1955.

The Swiss love to maximise a celebrity connection with the country (Sherlock Holmes and the town of Meiringen is perhaps the best example of this), so Bern is home to no less than 4 benches, where you can sit with Einstein’s likeness. Bern isn’t a very big city, so Val managed to visit them all before it was time for her appointment.

Einstein, by all accounts, was a bit of a lad. He only married twice, but had a string of high profile assignations with prominent women of the time, including an alleged Russian spy. Maybe that’s why the Swiss are so keen on him – it certainly makes more interesting reading than the General Theory of Relativity.