Through the Alps

 

The last two weeks I took a much needed break from blogging. Those two weeks were very busy - I got a lot done and feel that I did get accomplished quite a bit.

In my last post about our trip we had just crossed the border from Liechtenstein into Austria. We stayed the night in Übersaxen, a small town in Vorarlberg. We had a delicious meal here of Cordon Bleu with Bratkartoffeln (left) and Ungarisches Rindsgulasch (Hungarian beef goulash, right), accompanied by some local beer. That, of course, is for Elizabeth and Bleubeard's T Tuesday.

The next morning we left after a wonderful breakfast (unfortunately I forgot to take pictures) and took a route through the Alps. We first hit Stubenpass and then Arlbergpass to get into Tirol (Tyrol). Those passes are fantastic mountain roads. In the picture below you can see how the road winds up along the mountain.

Austrians are just as skilled road builders as the Swiss.

We eventually reached Kaunergrat and walked out onto the platform to enjoy the view - which would have been spectacular if there would have been less clouds.

Nevertheless, we had a nice view of the valley with the river Inn running through it. From here, I saw the village of Prutz where I spent a three week vacation with my parents and bother when I was 9 years old - I could even make out the house where we had rented our vacation appartment at that time (red arrow). It was called "der Turm" (the tower) because it had a square form with a four-sided tapered roof. The view to the other side into the direction of Landeck was just as nice and a road that we often travelled during that vacation.

This was a wonderful little excursion down memory lane, and since we were making our own memories, it was time for a family photo (with Prutz in the background).

The destination we wanted to reach that afternoon was the Campanile di Curon in the Reschensee or Lago di Rèsia which is in Südtirol (South Tyrol), an autonomous province in Italy.

This bell tower is the only visible remains of the village that was buried here under water when three lakes - Lago di Rèsia, Lago di Curon, and Lago di San Valentino alla Muta - were joined together to form one big artificial lake. Curon Venosta was the name of the old town that was demolished and flooded soon after World War II. The bell tower is more than 700 years old and was restored in 2009. It serves as an imortant historic symbol for the region.

But what is happening here?

Sorry, I'm afraid you must endure the weirdness of the Bartz family.

As you can see, we thoroughly enjoyed being with our daughter and letting our weird side shine.

This tower has been photographed a million times, so I tried to find new POVs.

Not too successful, I'm afraid. So let's stick with family photos of which we took many. When you haven't seen your child for almost two years and you don't know when you will see her again, you take advantage of every opportunity to take pictures together.

And since it is Halloween today and Día de los Muertos tomorrow, my Talavera Frida will make an appearance here.

Lost and Gained

Moonrise over Pepperwood last weekend

Rain's prompt for this week's Thursday Art and Dinner Date is Lost. I first thought I skip this, but then I realized that this prompt actually falls into a time when we, as a community in my city, commemorate a date that is engraved into our minds. Last weekend marked the fifth anniversary of the firestorm.

The night of October 8th to October 9th, 2017 - Sunday to Monday - was a night when many people in our county lost their homes and everything in it to the flames of extremely fast moving wildfires that actually were a firestorm. In my city alone entire neighborhoods burnt to the ground. 24 people lost their lives. About two weeks after the fire I wrote a more detailed post about it which you can read here.

On Saturday evening we went up to Pepperwood Preserve - we are members of this nature preserve, Kaefer had done an internship here and we enjoy the many interesting events. Pepperwood had burned badly in the firestorm and is a great example for how quickly nature comes back after a natural disaster. Their way of commemorating the anniversary was the showing of the documentary film "Embers of Awakening: From Firestorms to Climate Healing". This film was directed and produced by Phyllis Rosenfield and her Listening for a Change non-profit organisation whose mission is to promote understanding and acceptance of human diversity through education, oral history and the arts. I met Phyllis 20 years ago for the first time; she is a remarkable woman.

Here is a preview of the film (it's about 6 minutes):

While there was a tremendous amount of loss for way too many people, we have also gained much from the fires. There is a better understanding that we MUST do something about climate change, since these extreme fires happen because of the changing climate (now we just need to get the rest of the country on the same page). Many people are becoming more conscious of the way they live their life and are changing old habits. There is better "forest management" (can you ever manage nature?), but that seems to be the smallest change since most of our forests are on federal land, and federal is - well, slow (you know, they don't have enough rakes... sorry, I couldn't help myself). There is a tendency to listen to the indigenous people who have lived on this land for hundreds of years and know how to deal with fire. Our emergency alert system has been updated, and "Watch Duty" is currently my preferred system since they are in Sonoma County and report every fire here. I feel better informed. We know how to pack our bags real quick, we do have two grab-and-go boxes that are always ready to go and a list what needs to be done in a hurry. 

Now, let's go to the dinner part - much more pleasant.

Sometimes I'm not in the mood to cook and do some simple things or even grab some frozen items. I call this the "lazy cook". Recently we had a lazy cook dinner - oven-roasted asparagus.

It's so simple it almost makes you cry... Place a bunch of trimmed asparagus spears in a bowl and drizzle with 3 TB olive oil. Toss to coat, then sprinkle with 1 1/2 TB grated Parmesan, one clove minced garlic, 1/2 tsp sea salt and 1/2 tsp ground black pepper. Arrange the asparagus on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake in a 425 F preheated oven until just tender, 12 to 15 minutes depending on thickness. Sprinkle with lemon juice just before serving. Have a glass of dry Riesling with it.

Misty Mountains

 

Last week you could read about our rainy day in Luzern, and today we're just continuing with rain. We began the day with a good breakfast and a cup of delicious coffee - this, of course, is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth who every Tuesday get into the "drinking habit" with T Tuesday. Since we were in Switzerland we decided that we have to go into a grocery store and stock up on chocolate. Swiss chocolate is just the best. What you see here is just a small portion of the chocolate aisle.

We drove around Vierwaldstättersee while it was raining on and off. The mountains were hiding in the mist and we could only see in our minds what this place would actually look like on a clear day. But a clear day we didn't have.

And into the mountains we went. The Swiss are masters in building high elevation roads, tunnels and concrete protections from avalanches. I always find it quite exciting driving along those roads through the Alps.

We got higher and higher with less and less traffic - but unfortunately not less fog. It stayed with us throughout the day.

We chose to drive via Klausenpass which is a rather narrow mountain pass road with thankfully not much traffic on this misty day.

Halfway up we stopped at this bench that was on top of - nothing. You can see there is a protective fence in front of the bench. Unfortunately we couldn't find out what all the symbols meant - the clock, the hiking boot with flowers in it - but the five-to-twelve seemd like a warning.

On we went, up into the misty mountains. The road became even narrower.

It was just as misty and gray at the pass with the addition of some leftover snow and low temperatures. We walked around a little bit, but pretty soon got back into the car.

On the other side of the mountain the weather hadn't changed. This is Kanton Uri where Wilhelm Tell, the national hero of  Switzerland, came from (if he ever existed). The villages are small and picturesque and often have a monument of Wilhelm Tell with his crossbow (sorry, I didn't take a picture of one).

When it finally stopped raining, we found a place to eat our picnic, something we had bought in the grocery store in the morning. It was a nice location, heavily scented with wood and a view of the rising mist.

Not long after that we left Switzerland and crossed into Liechtenstein.

The Principality of Liechtenstein is a VERY small country, located smack in the middle of the mountains. The language is German, its capital is Vaduz and it's the world's wealthiest country. I can't say that it made any permanent impression on me.

We did find an old castle ruin, Obere Burg Schellenberg where we hiked up to. We had a lovely view from there and also used the opportunity to take a family photo.

I did like this reminder to pick up after your dog!

Only minutes later we crossed into Austria at the smallest border crossing I ever saw.

Playing with Watercolors

 

Last week I told you that I bought a set of Winsor & Newton watercolors. I didn't have much time to really try them out, but I did play around a little bit and this is my contribution to Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date this week.

I made four watercolor backgrounds with a wet on wet technique that I learned in one of those free online classes and then stamped an image over it. 

 The color combination for this card was inspired by Toni Burt's taster lesson for LifeBook 2023. The stamp is by Stampington & Company.

"Lovely as a tree" is a favorite stamp set of mine by Stampin' Up. This card pretty much turned out the way I wanted it to be.

This Da Vinci woman is another favorite stamp - this one is by Rubber Baby from 1991. I actually dabbed away most of the color after I had put it on the paper. I love the subtle look. This is for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

I love everything ocean, so there had to be a lighthouse in the mix. The stamp is by Stampendous (1989).

When I came to the US I heard for the first time of Italian sausage. I had never seen that in Italy. Over time is has become a popular item for our dinners - I love the fennel flavor. Last week I made crumbled up sweet Italian sausage with zucchini, eggplant and tomatoes (all from my garden), garlic and Italian herbs (I used the Penzey's mix "Tuscan Sunset") and a little bit of cream. It was good.

A Rainy Day in Switzerland

 

Last week I left you in Freiburg which is very close to the Swiss border. Switzerland was our next destination. If you happen to have paid for a vignette - the toll for Swiss highways - you can take the highway and reach your destination pretty quickly. After all, Switzerland is a small country that has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. However, the price for this vignette is pretty steep considering that we were only spending two days there (Switzerland is a very expensive country) and therefore , we decided to drive along the smaller roads. It's a decision that we didn't regret, even though our progress was relatively slow. There are a lot of mountains to cross - but that was on the second day and will be dealt with in a seperate post.

We have been to most of Switzerland before, but we never had visited Luzern (Lucerne), so this was the place we reached in the early afternoon. Luzern  is located on the shores of Vierwaldstättersee (Lake Lucerne) and its outflow, the River Reuss. Its main landmark is the Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge), a covered wooden footbridge with its octagonal Wasserturm (water tower in the sense of a tower standing in the water). The bridge was first erected in the 14th century (c 1365) and spans the river Reuss. 

It was dry when we arrived, but we did see some darker clouds gathering at the horizon. We decided to first cross over the modern footbridge (top photo) to the other side and walk back via Kapellbrücke and taking our sweet time with it. As it turned out, we pretty much hadn't a choice once we reached the covered bridge.

The clouds and the sky became dramatically darker and more ominous from minute to minute.

The first drops started to fall when we had just reached the bridge - we were lucky. We walked along the bridge, enjoying the still nice views. I loved the flowers at the side of the bridge.

The view through the sides to the shores with their old city buildings was quite impressive.

The Kapellbrücke (and two other wooden bridges in Lucerne) features painted interior triangular frames. This is unique since none of the other European wooden footbridges has this feature. The paintings date back to the 17th century and depict events from Luzern's history and were executed by local painter Hans Heinrich Wägmann. Originally, there were 158 paintings, but the majority were destroyed in a fire in 1993. Today. there are only 30 paintings that were fully restored (of the 47 that were collected after the fire).

Then the thunderstorm started.

Within seconds the bridge was wet on the inside, the rain came in from all sides and on top there was thunder and lightning. I'm not sure how sensible it was to stay on a wooden bridge in the middle of a river during the thunderstorm, but we didn't have much choice - we were stuck. I have to admit that it was quite exciting.

The thunder and lightning didn't last long. I tried to make a short video of the relentless rain. Turn up the sound.

After we were finally able to leave the bridge without getting completely soaked, we drove along the Vierwalstättersee to Buochs. Our hotel was right on the lake and if the weather would have been better, we would have had a great view of the mountains.

Instead we had low hanging clouds - they looked quite dramatic and I loved this moody atmosphere.

We had a delicious dinner in the restaurant of the hotel. I had filets of whitefish from the Vierwaldstätersee which is called "Felchen" (I couldn't find a proper translation, some call it a Lake Constance whitefish). They served Bavarian beer, so I had a dark Weißbier from the Erdinger brewery which happens to be one of my favorite Bavarian beers. This, of course, is for T Tuesday where I greet Elizabeth and Bleubeard with a cheerful "Prost" (German "cheers").