In my quest to ski big, I made Jared with entirely too early on Monday and travel with me to Interlaken Switzerland. Arriving in Interlaken we wandered around the town and saw the sights. Interlaken is one of the traditional ski towns of the Swiss Alps, but evidently in recent years it’s become much more touristy. A little higher up at the base of the slopes is the resort town of Grindelwald. It fit my stereotype of a Swiss village, snowed in Chalets, people tramping thorough snowy streets in the shadow of mountains that looked at anytime like the just might fall on you.

There is very little snowmaking in Interlachen, they only have 3 or 4 routes that have the capability for man made snow, so skiing conditions are very much dependant on the weather. The week before we got there, God graced the mountains with 80 cm of snow, All of it powder or as they say in German–Pulver. Jared and I checked our stuff into Lehmann’s Herbrage - a little bed & breakfast in the middle of Grindelwald, and started wandering around the valley. Words fail me.

The extended Charles family has a tradition of writing stories instead of giving gifts for Christmas and several years ago the Christmas story from my uncle Dan talked about his love of german bread and the quest for good bread in America. I grew up on homemade bread and maybe I’m a little picky about my bread. But I was completely blown away by the local COOP grocery store, $2US bought a loaf of the best bread I have ever bought. It was still warm from the oven! Combine that with a block of local cheese and a jar of Nutella and you have a great meal.

I headed to bed early with a full stomach, tucked under a down comforter.

I did wake up the next morning on time albeit slightly groggy. Got some breakfast, Packed up, checked out and headed around the city. The first thing I did was track down an adapter that I probably ended up paying way to much for. Oh well. Live and learn.

I wandered around a little more and went to the train station to catch a train to Kolne and then Karlsruhe to meet up with Jared. The trip from Bruxelles to Karlsruhe went by quickly. After a while I called Jared to let him know I was arriving in what I thought was about 20 minutes. As I was talking to him I noticed a electronic readout that listed the time to the next station. I’m red-green color blind and red on black displays have always been a little difficult for me to read. By slightly squinting I made out that Karlsrugh HBF was only 4 minutes away. Whoops. Before I knew I was standing in front of that edificife of american culture with the big M waiting for Jared to show up. He did and we jumped the next tram to his place stopping off to check out his workplace. That evening was fairly low key playing cards with Carola and David at Tomashof, a mennonite retreat center and the church where Jared goes.

The first think I noticed landing in Frankfurt, aside from the snow on the ground was the word “Welcome” painted in tall black letters on the side of some large water storage tank type construction. It took me a second but I realized yes that is in English, no it shouldn’t be. Planes probably go too fast. It wouldn’t be that difficult of a trick to deposit an unsuspecting traveler in an unexpected country and be oblivious to the fact. Airports pretty much all do look alike. Although Frankfurt and several other places have these really cool clacky signs that rotate through letters to display departures. I’ve never been anywhere that had them before. Maybe you’ve noticed them in movies like the Bourne Identity or The Terminal. They’re pretty slick. Some of you with exceptional memories will remember that I had to wait for 2 hours going through British Passport Control, so German efficiency was dully noted. The train station is connected to the Airport so a short walk and I was waiting for my train. The first stop on my travels was a trip to Brussels or Bruxelles as it’s often printed in Europe. I knew my friend Lindsay was traveling through Bruxelles with some friends so I thought it would be fun to catch up with them. The two prominent languages in Belgium are Flemish and French. I speak some French but no Flemish so I missed my stop on the local train due to my reading the Flemish sign instead of the French sign but a phone called fixed that up. My mobile phone worked in Europe so that made things fun, although it was a little pricy. Lindsay was visiting along with her fellow traveling companions Rebecca, Emily, Stephanie and a Young Life friend by the name of Alison. The first thing I did arriving in Bruxelles was pile in to a relatively small car with these 5 girls and drive to waterloo for lunch in a quaint little cafe. Wandering around downtown Brussels, one stumbles seeing the two most important sites, the town square, and the Manikin-pis. This statue evidently dates to the 8th century although it was recast at one point when some hooligans broke it. It is a fountain of a little boy relieving himself. Evidently the tradition is that during the course of the Holiday year, the little boy get’s different clothes, culminating in a Santa suit for Christmas. Over the years he’s gotten quite a few changes of cloths and they have a museum devoted to them. Heading back to Alison’s apartment, we made dinner a cheap dinner that was very tasty and sat around discussing theology. I’m not sure how these conversations find me but they’re rather fun in moderation.

Europe has these great places of lodging called Hostels; I took another local train and arrived at the Vincent Van Gough Centre, A hostel for those under 35. The interesting thing about them is that you get a bed and not much else, but it’s cheap and you’ll probably share your lodgings with several other people you don’t know. In retrospect the most interesting things that happen when traveling are the problems that you encounter and have to get through. However, they are very annoying at the time. I was planning on using my mobile phone to wake me up the next morning, however the battery went dead. That’s a slight problem. Here I am my body clock is way off and I need to get up on time the next morning. My charger uses 220 or 110 but the problem is that they use different plugs and there was no conceivable way my plug was going to fit in that wall socket. I walked around talking trying English and broken French. The sort of people that frequented this hostel seemed fairly similar. They’d been to this place that place and the other place and gotten the T-Shirt. It’s fairly intimidating. I finally got to talking with a guy named Sergey from Moscow who spoke broken English. I showed him what I knew about Bruxelles and he let me borrow his charger so I could get enough of a charge to wake me up in the morning.