Parents week and Switzerland

Ok this one is long but so worth reading!

Monday was one of the best days of my life. Neil and Tonya Bordy arrived in Germany!!!! I went to their hotel straight from class and it was SO GOOD to see them. They were really jet lagged and tired and I had a paper to write so we split ways and met up later for dinner. Of course I took them to a German restaurant and of course they got Wiener Schnitzel. I was on cloud 9 all week spending time with them. 

Mom and Dad in Germany...

Tuesday after my classes, we took a little day trip to Nuremberg. Allie’s mom and her friend were in town as well so we all hopped on the train. This is where the trials were held for the Nazis of the Holocaust. My dad was especially interested and wanted to go somewhere to learn more about that! Here’s a typical Bordy story for you and keep in mind that we had limited time in Nuremberg. We got there around 3 went to eat first and the train to go back came at 7:30. By the time we decided what we wanted to do it was around 4. Since I had already taken a group trip to Nuremberg and went to a documentation museum, we tried to find somewhere else to go. We decided on the Palace of Justice which was the building the trials were held in. We didn’t know how to get there, so we spent the money and took a cab. It took a good 10 minutes to get there, it was further away than we thought. Once we got there, while my dad was paying, me and mom walked up to the gate and what do you know? It’s closed on Tuesdays. The ONLY day it was closed out of the week and we didn’t notice in the brochure. The cab driver had already driven away, we didn’t know what to do because we were so far away from the town square. We started walking back and considered taking a bus or tram but couldn’t find one anywhere. This would only happen to the Bordy Family. We just made an executive decision to go to the documentation center that I had already been to, which was fine with me (it was kind of our only option). We flagged down another taxi and were on our way. Shortly after we got in, the driver proceeded to tell us he wasn’t from Nuremberg and it showed because he had no idea where he was going. He took the longest and most traffic-y (if that’s a word) way to get to there. It was a extremely frustrating taxi ride to say the least. We FINALLY got to the museum and the rest is history...see what I did there hahaha. The rest of the day was nice. And I didn’t care what we did, I was just happy to be spending time with them! 

Thursday was the day we left for Switzerland. The plan was for me to get out of class and them to meet me at my dorm around 12:15. Well, they got lost and an hour later arrived to pick me up. The drive to Switzerland was the most beautiful drive I had ever been on. It took about 6 hours to get there plus stopping to eat. You can imagine the drive up the mountains wasn’t the easiest. My mom driving a stick shift winding up and around the mountains and even worse, in the dark, was not the smoothest of rides. It was pretty scary for all of us especially La Tonya. We stayed in a little town called Gimmelwald which required us to take a cable car up to. We finally made it, and let me tell you the town was DEAD. We stayed at ‘Liese’s Heart Place’, a room in a woman’s house that she rents out. Thankfully, a nice old woman asked us where we were going and showed us the way because otherwise, we would not have been able to find it. We got settled in and (I) went to sleep early. 

We slept in until around 9 on Friday morning. I will never in my life forget the moment I got up and looked out the window. The alps were right outside the window. I will just go ahead and say that Gimmelwald Switzerland was the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and will ever see in my life. 

This was the view right out side our window and it only got better through out the trip. The first thing we needed to do for the day was to convert our money to Swiss Franks. The little town was beautiful, but boy was nothing ever open when we needed it to be. We had to go back down to the town we parked our car in the go to the bank. It was no problem, because we also needed to eat and there we no restaurants in the little town of Gimmelwald. We just barely made it to the bank before it closed for lunch, got our money and ate at the nearest place we could find. OH how could I forget to mention this... Rick Steve’s Switzerland book was like the bible the entire weekend. We never left our room with out it. That told us all the great places to go and things to do. I don’t know what we would have done with out that book. Once we were done eating, we rode the cable car up to another town a little higher than ours called Murren. This town was a little more lively. It actually had a grocery store and restaurants and people. We shopped around and got grocery’s for dinner and breakfast for the rest of the weekend. Liese had told us that it was about a 45 minute walk up to Murren from Gimmelwald. Well, we all know with the hills and altitude we were not walking up, so we decided to take a little hike down. I’m so glad we did! It was so beautiful walking down with the alps popping out in front of you. I can’t even begin to explain to you how pretty it was. At one point, my mom mentioned it was so beautiful she wanted to cry. I thought that was a pretty accurate description. 

Once we got back to Gimmelwald and dropped off the groceries, made out way back to the cable car station to go all the way up to the very top mountain called Schilthorn. It was 10,000 feet up. A James Bond movie was also filmed there (I couldn’t tell you which one). It took about 20 minutes to get up there and once we did, there was more beauty. The view was great. I feel like I’m being so repetitive saying how beautiful it was, but there’s no other way to describe it. We spent a good time up there and went back down the Murren for some wifi. It was all around a great day. Very relaxed full of the best scenery I’ve ever seen. 

The Schilthorn views...

Saturday I was again amazed to wake up and see the view. It just didn’t get old. I also forgot to tell about the cows right outside the house. When we walked in the back yard we were feet away from Swiss cows enjoying a morning snack of swiss grass. That was pretty awesome. 

Looking through our holy book (Rick Steve’s travel guide) it told us about some hikes. He rated each hike in their difficulties. We thought an “easy” 2 hour hike to some glacier fields sounded appealing so we woke up the next day and started on the hike. Get ready for a good story... Before we started we found a man outside in his yard and asked for directions to the start of this hike. He nicely showed us which direction and the last thing he said to us, leaning over his fence was, “I hope you have good shoes on” Well I looked like this... 

We started it out and because of the altitude, my mom was a little worried. Going up a smaller hill in the town winded her so in the first 10 minutes of our hike when we started going down hill, the thought of going up this hill was not a good one to Tonya. Well, we kept going down and down the hill and she knew her limit and decided to drop out. After 15 minutes of this supposedly “easy” hike, it was only me and my dad left. We kept going, and about 15 minutes later we found a sign that pointed in the way we needed to go. It started going up hill at this point, and it was not easy. We stopped numerous times to take breaks. This is when we decided this hike should not have been put in the easy category. After about 45 minutes of continuous uphill hiking, we came to a split in the trail with no signs. We used out best judgement and picked the one that went uphill (why we did that who knows). It was already hard before, but the trail became more and more steep and more and more strenuous. At some points it would be so uphill we couldn’t see the rest of the trail. And at some points we would go up the steep hill and finally think it went down, but instead turned a corner and went even more uphill. My dad and I were dying. This was NOT and easy hike. We could not stop saying how good of a decision it was that mom turned back. There would have been a rescue helicopter come get her in those alps if she had continued.  We sat down and and got the Rick Steve book out, because surely we were on the wrong trail. It said we should have crossed raging rapids and gone through a shooting range (yikes) and we had done neither. Fortunately, we looked down and there was the bridge that we needed to cross. Sure enough, Neilsky and I climbed down the mountain relying only on rocks in the grass to keep us from sliding down. We got down to the lower trail thinking it was going to get better and not so uphill. It got worse. We got so high there was snow on the ground. We also got the the point we were practically climbing rocks. The trail just kept getting worse and worse and it didn’t feel like we were getting any closer. I will say, the scenery was just as beautiful as it has been all weekend, if not more, but it was just miserable.

 After stepping up rocks like you would step up on an elliptical machine, we had to take a break. It has been around an hour and a half now and if felt like 5 hours. We had also noticed we hadn’t seen one person on this trail. At this point, we felt so defeated, we decided to go back. The trail was not going down hill any time soon and we just couldn’t do it anymore. We turned around and it was all down hill from there. UNTIL we got to the last 30 minutes. This was tough, but nothing we hadn’t done before. We pushed through it and somehow through some miracle made it back to the house. I will never forget that hike for as long as I live. I was done with physical activity for the rest of my life. After telling mom the story, resting, and eating a late lunch, we wanted to get our money’s worth for the cable car passes we bought and went back up to Schilthorn. On the cable car up, at the very end of our ride, we happened to see 5 people hiking up the mountain to Schilthorn. Obviously, after my experience today that made me nauseous to even think about. Rick Steve rated that hike extremely difficult, so I literally couldn’t imagine what that would be like if I thought his “easy” was extremely difficult. We stayed up at Schilthorn a little longer this time and took the last cable car down which was at 6:03. Dad and I were in the gift shop finishing up some purchases when mom comes in and tells us the people that were hiking up were just about to get up here. We rushed up to go watch. Right when we got out there the last 2 were just getting there. And what do you know, they are speaking english (which is really exciting to hear here). My mom, of course, started cheering for them. We got to talking to them and two were clearly American. We asked them where they were from and one was from Cincinnati , Ohio. What a small world. Only an hour and a half away from us and we are meeting in Switzerland. They were all young adults, a couple years older than me, working for an internship. We started asking them questions about their hike and told us they started at 9 o clock that morning. I could not believe it. They made what I did earlier look like nothing. I couldn’t believe I was complaining about an hour and a half of hiking when they did 9 hours of it. Even worse, it was getting dark and they had to go all the way back down. One chose to take the cable car down which was absolutely understandable. Once we got down to Murren we were starving. I had a bit of trust issues with Rick Steve because of previous activities that day but we went to a restaurant that he recommended and boy was it the best meal I’d had in a long time. It was the perfect ending to a very long day. As you can imagine, I was exhausted and went to sleep right when we got back to the house. We had to get up early-ish on Sunday and get back to Regensburg. 

This trip was so much fun and I am extremely lucky I got to spend it with my mom and dad. I loved every second of it (well maybe not the hike). We got back into Regensburg at around 5. I had a test and some homework due the next day so they only stayed for a little while and went back to their hotel. My mom and dad left Monday afternoon and it was really sad to see them go. I can’t stop thinking about how fortunate I am for getting to spend time with the best parents in the world while in a different continent. I was so happy they got to see and experience a little of what I do here everyday. I love you mom and dad thank you so much for coming!! 

Annnnnnd that’s where this blog ends. Stay tuned for the Neuschwanstein castle this weekend and fall break the weekend after that.