Monday 13th September 2010.

Due to legal complications (not really!), I never told you about our Swiss experience. We’re in Normandy, today, we travelled from Pontlevoy in the Loire yesterday, very sad to be leaving Michele our host there. Will be writing about that soon, but in the meantime here’s the first of two from Luzern, way back in August!

Saturday 28th August.

We got up very early this morning (really!) and left Munster at 7.30am! Then we went to Germany… It took about an hour and a half and we had breakfast there…. Then we went to Switzerland in time to take possession of the keys of the apartment of two Australians in exile in Lucerne. They left about two hours ago and I’ve been wandering around for one of those hours in a little love trance. I didn’t realise it when they were here but Charde (the girl Australian) either really likes crafts or she likes to buy (lots) of books on crafts.

I think I’m in craft heaven. In fact I feel a blog about how much I love crafts starting to bubble up. Maybe tomorrow. For now I’m soaking up the beautiful atmosphere Charde has created here and trying to read all her books before we leave tomorrow – so much beauty so little time!

But before I start let me tell you about my shopping experience here. When our hosts left to go to a concert for the weekend in Zurich I became ravenous. I think it’s my body realising the only opportunity for food may have left and it’s time to get something on board (or in mouth) before it’s too late. Of course we forgot to ask where the shops were, we got the restaurants and traditional beer place but not the supermarket. So I picked a direction and started walking.

After two turn-arounds I decided I’d have to chance an encounter with the locals. Now the Swiss speak a lot of languages, like German, Swiss German, French and Italian. Should I have another go at French or perhaps German (I did German for a year at college, but sadly my talent for languages didn’t show up there either)? Naw, it was much easier than that – they speak English too! So I picked a nice young man on his bicycle to ask. “Do you speak English”, I ask. “A little”, he says. “Great! Could you tell me where the nearest supermarket is?” I could fault him on nothing, he was great, the only word he had a problem with was “tracks” but he did such a good impression of railway tracks while saying “Train?” that I worked it out. And 10 minutes later I was in a mini-market beside the train station.

And I think my “problem” with traffic is healing. In no small part due to the Swiss drivers. This is what happened: I came up to the yellow striped crossing place and started to tell myself “look left, look left” but no sooner had I’d glanced left than all the cars (and even a bus once) stopped…. for me….. to cross the road. And they waited until I arrived safely on the other side! When it happened the first time I waved to the driver (or maybe the passenger, I keep forgetting that the driver is on the right), but I’d have a pain in my arm if I waved at every road so now I’m acting like it’s no big deal.