Rain, rain, go away. Generally shoddy weather, but nothing too tough to dampen the spirits too much. When it wasn’t raining, I was skating…
(click on image for a video clip – will open in new window)
It was a day of small quiet back roads, following cycling route 34 through the Swiss countryside.
I stopped for a bite for lunch over the road from a large farm house. An almost as large dog came sniffing over, and I had flashbacks to Turkey, with the massive scary dogs. This one today was just content to bark every so often. Enough for me to get nervous, and for the elderly owner to raise her voice at the big fat pooch.
I am being somewhat spoiled at the moment with wild berries. Rasberries, blackberries, cherries. I was innocently picking some massive black cherries towards the end of the day when an old man wandered up. I said hello, and him being seemingly pleased that he had on his hands an English speaker, struck up a conversation in English. He was most apologetic towards me for the Swiss once again winning the America’s Cup (sailing competition).
“Just pure luck,” he kindly explained.
He laughed at me using a doggie poop bag to collect my cherries, and then invited me to his house for a beer. I accepted, and was led to a big apartment-like building. It turned out that Urs and his wife Elizabeth had retired two years ago from the baking business. The lower floor of their building was the bakery. Urs still bakes occassionally. What was supposed to just be a beer turned into a loaf of fresh bread, cheese, sausages, and a bed for the night.
Urs showed me his bow and arrow and other shooting apparatus of varying kinds, including a couple of guns.
“It’s my hobbie,” he proudly claimed.
Elizabeth scoured their house for maps of the area for my skate over the hill to Basel. In the end they just ended up drawing a map.
Its was a Kiwi Skipper that won the Americas Cup, just not the one representing New Zealand 😉
I've heard that there's sposed to be a pork chop in every beer or a loaf of bread in every pint of Guinness but it seems there's more than just that what with the fresh bread, cheese, sausages, and a bed for the night.
I can tell you that my 2 year old daughter was really impressed with those cows in your video or "Broos" as she calls them. If you listen carefully you can see she is right, cows do say "Broo" not "Moo". Maybe they have a different accent in Switzerland though 😉