We departed Zurich for Flumserberg (near Walensee—a deep and blue lake) today. We needed to be out of our AirBnB by 10:00 AM, and Lucy’s flight wasn’t until 2:00 PM, so we headed out and took the tram down to Lake Zurich and hung out on a couple of benches enjoying the weather, people watching, and killing time for a bit.
Tim suggested that Benton walk with Lucy to the train station to the airport while he watched Benton’s and his bags. This was a smooth move by Tim—pretending efficiency and laziness while also removing himself from the final farewell of the couple. Lucy listened to the suggestion and then said, “Well, I think you guys are going to leave from the same station, so we might as well all just walk over together with our things.” Tim then had to more explicitly state his actual motivation for the suggestion.
Once Lucy had departed, Tim and Benton took three trains, a gondola, and a bus to reach their AirBnB for the next three nights in Flumserberg, which is one of the many little towns above and around Walensee. It’s a ski area…that is excellent hiking in the summers.
They were settled in to the flat with sufficient time to grab a very late lunch, do some grocery shopping, and then get in a 4.5-mile hike nearby (we initially planned to take a gondola up and do a hike that would be more downhill…but found out the gondola’s stop running at 4:45 PM in the summer!).
Because of the late lunch, we just picked up some fresh pasta and sauce on our grocery run and had a small meal in the flat for dinner.
The plan was to then watch Sour Grapes—a documentary that Simon had recommended (in Lyon), which was slated to occur after the penning of this entry was completed.
As of this writing, Lucy had successfully made her flight from Zurich to Reykjavik and was en route from Reykjavik to JFK, which is a much improved experience as compared to her trip from the U.S. to Spain!
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: the ants covering the ground on the trail; the AirBnB host (Alex, who was Australian) telling us that would could just ride the bus without a ticket, because everyone was so trusting that they wouldn’t check and, if they did, they’d be fine with us just being confused Americans.
Tim: At the bus stop in Tannenboden, having an older gentleman duck into the shelter to get out of the wind to light a cigarette and then start speaking to me in German. I said, “English?” and he asked if I wanted a cigarette (in English). I said, “No, thanks,” and he chuckled and said, “Good choice.”
