17 years!! or something like this is how long its been since I last saw them..that's half a lifetime ago for me. When we last saw each other it was at their ranch outside Brisbane Australia and I had long, 'I wanna be Jim Morrison' hair and was wearing a paisley, 'I wanna be Jim Morrison' vest with mirrored, 'I wanna be Jim Morrison' glasses. In retrospect, it seems that my attempts of capturing Morrison's unique brand of 1970's hippy-cool at the proud young age of 17 failed miserably as all Helen said when she saw the picture was "why are you dressed like Joey Laurence from Blossom?" ugh..sorry Jim, I know you're turning in your grave but she doesn't know..she doesn't mean it.
Anyway back to the family. Had a great time with my aunt and uncle. For many years Urs' job allowed them to travel and live in various parts of the world..and coupled with their native penchant and experience traveling for fun Helen and I spent many hours discussing the in and outs of much of the world. They are retired now and living on top of a hill outside Lucerne in a pyramid house that was apparently designed by an architect who was later abducted by a UFO. We stayed at the house for 3 days soaking up the sun and mouthfuls of refreshing mountain air.
As it turns out cousin Karen and her beau Ray were already having a party Saturday night and this provided the perfect opportunity to catch up with them and my other cousin Nicole and her beau Faby. We ate, we talked we laughed..it was good to see the cousins again. :)
(At barn party, from left to right: Aunt Dawn, Cousins Karen and Nicole and Uncle Urs)The next day we all went to Ballenberg which is an interesting open air museum of rescued historic homes from all over Switzerland. Apparently they rescue these old 200-800 year old cottages and mills etc and move them to this spot where they are preserved. Most interesting is that several of these old places are still working so you can get a chance to see how the 300 year old water powered wood mill works or how the meat smoke house works (i.e. with actual meat being smoked), and so on.
Monday rolled around and the cousins had to get back to their jobs and Helen and I needed to start heading west towards Morocco so we said our goodbyes and promised to not let another 17 slip by before seeing each other again.
2 comments:
Switzerland's an island right? Miss me don't ya? :)
switzerland is actually a special kind of island called an 'anhydrous island' in that it is completely surrounded by not-water.
Post a Comment