OK, so now that we have recovered from Oktoberfest, we left Munich, headed down south to the little town of Mittenvald. It seems like a nice place to spend Christmas as it is nestled at the bottom of what we think is the tallest mountain in Germany. Just close enough that a good avalanche should be able to completely cover the whole place. Anyway, nice place, but it was really just an overnight stop to make sure that the next day only required about 8 hours of train rides to get to Interlaken, Switzerland.

 

So, we transferred trains something like 5 times in a whole range of samll towns in Austria and Switzerland... Our schedule only gave us about 3 minutes at one stop, 9 at another. It is really nice that they hold the trains when they know you will be late... (FYI, in case I type a Z instead of a Y someplace it is because these funkz European kezboards switch the two letters)

 

Anyway, Interlaken is the clsoest town to the tallest mountain in Switzerland, Jungfrau. They call it the 'Top of Europe' but we found out today that Mount Blanc in France is the 'Roof of Europe' and is somewhere near 2000-3000 feet taller. Not really sure what is up with that. Anyway, the crazy Swiss railroad builders built a railroad almost to the top of Jungfrau. You can ride a bus, then train, then Cog train up to somewhere around 11,300 feet up, all year round. We had a mostly sunny day for it at least. I don't think I would do it if the weather sucked...

 

From Interlaken, we came to Geneva yesterday. Had to buy Linda a swiss watch while we were here... We spent an hour or so out on Lake Geneva on a little boat tour to see the famous houses and such, then headed to Lusanne (40 minutes away by train) to see the largest Cathedral in Switzerland and wander around the town. Geneva itself is famous for all of the Swiss banks and such. Lake Geneva is probably mostly famous for the song 'Smoke on the Water' which my mom will remember very well as the song Paul and Kenny learned right after 'Cat Scratch Fever', the Smoke on the water was actuallz written about burning down a hotel on the other end of the lake in Montreaux.

 

OK, we are off to Zermat tomorrow, then down into Italy. We have lots of pictures, but I don't have any easy way to upload them from public computers, so they will have to wait till I can get on Shannon's laptop, or till we get home most likely...

 

Talk to y'all later.