(A Long Overdue) Switzerland Post!

It's been two weeks since I was in Switzerland, and I'm finally getting around to writing about it.  Sorry.  So on October 21, I headed on over to Switzerland to visit my oma and her nephew's family.  It was a bit of a rough ride; a combination of start-of-the-semester party and a class at 8:00 AM Friday morning (U.S. Foreign Policy (it's awesome)) left me pretty tired.  Fortunately, I was able to navigate the seven or so stops on the seven hour train ride to Switzerland.

Once there, I met up with Oma and Heinz Hersberger at the train station and it was off to the Hersberger household.  Everyone was really great.  And, when they spoke (High) German, I could actually understand them, at least some of the time.  Swiss German, on the other hand, is another language entirely; I can't understand a word of it.  Luckily, they all spoke English and High German, in addition to Swiss.

Also, (and in some ways, most importantly) the food was great.  I had deer, red cabbage, various Swiss cheeses, pork, cold cuts, soup, jelly, chocolate (brought some back with me, too), and a bunch of other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting.  All of it was so good.  So good.

So anyway, the first day we went to visit Uncle Ernst near Lake Luzerne.  Check out the view of the lake from his house here:

I think that's a pretty nice view, but that's just me.  We also went to a restaurant with Uncle Ernst, at which I ate the aforementioned deer.  Also at Uncle Ernst's house were books.  Tons and tons of books.  He had an awesome library of new and old books (all in German, of course).  I was told that I could take what I wanted, but unfortunately I didn't have any way take take them home.  I grabbed Frankreich in Hitlers Europa by Eberhard Jäckel and a 1954 German copy of Die Gute Erde (The Good Earth) by Pearl S. Buck.  (I grabbed the latter because I have the book in English and I thought that was pretty cool.  It's a great book about Chinese villiage life in the early 1900s, just prior to World War II.)  Hopefully, I'll be able to take more next time I go.

Here's a video of the view from <insert mountain name here>, where we had lunch with Uncle Ernst.  Again, pretty nice.  That is Luzern again.

So early (well, not early-early, but at about 7:45 or so) on Monday morning I headed out into Aarau for some pictures.  It was quite dark at first, but it lightened up after a while.  It's a very pretty city.  A video of the town is below, and you can check out more pictures of everything on Google+ (just scroll down in the album a bit).

While making this post, I realized I don't have a picture of me with the Hersberger family.  Oh well...  I guess I'll just have to go back and visit them again, this time getting such a picture.  A big thanks to the Hersberger family and, of course, Oma for a great weekend.  I look forward to the next time.  Until then, I'll just have to somehow satisfy myself with all of this Swiss chocolate.  I don't know how I'll ever get by...