Today - May 17 (up to date now!)

Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Woke up this morning to cows mooing and other farm sounds. Walked over to the other building and had a good German breakfast – assorted cheeses, meats (yummy Black Forest ham) and breads, with yogurt and muesli as well as juice and coffee. Sehr gut! Afterwards, we settled our bill – just 52 euros for both of us – and headed back down to Neustadt to stop for some groceries. We first went to Aldi. Had I remembered how Aldi works, probably would have started out at the other store. Aldi has a limited selection and no brand names. We still bought some cheese, rolls, and juice boxes. Went over to the store next door, and bought some coke/coke light, more meds for Steve, peanut butter, mullermilche (flavored milk) and a box of frozen veggies since they didn’t have any ice (for the little cooler that we borrowed from Scott.) This served us well throughout the day and into the evening!
We continued south from Titisee/Neustadt, hoping to see some cuckoo clock shops along the way. No such luck. We stopped in the nearest town to the Swiss border where we were told that the clocks were north – Titisee and above. Thanks, we knew that. Will have to look on the way back to Scott’s. Had a long line at the border, not sure why as nobody was stopping anyone.
We headed on a route through lots of small towns and finally ended up in Teufenthal, Steve’s ancestral home town from the Lindenmann branch of the Cooper family, through his Grandma. I suspected there wouldn’t be much to see, and unfortunately I was right. We did get to see a castle up on top of a hill, though we drove up that way we couldn’t get too close, wasn’t open to the public. Drove around looking for a place where Steve could buy a remembrance of the town – he finally ended up buying a very small clock, nothing special but he decided it would help him remember the visit. We also got directions to what turned out to be the modern cemetery. Never could find a cemetery with older graves, would have been interesting to see some Lindenmann relatives there. Moved on and made our first navigational mistake. The Nuvi said to go south from the main Teufenthal road. So we did. Not sure why it didn’t want us to go a short distance north so that we could pick up the Swiss autobahn and get south much faster than the dinky little roads we ended up on. We saw some beautiful scenery, and I wouldn’t take away that first glimpse of the Alps in the distance for anything. Nonetheless, it would have been much less time the other way.
We ended up in Bern finally – some unique experiences there included driving on the same road that the trains were using. In one case we were actually following the train! Thought we would finally hook up with the autobahn there but no, nuvi kept us going on the secondary roads. Didn’t matter whether we specified “shorter distance” or “fastest time.” Finally a few towns later, we saw where the autobahn had an on ramp. Knowing that we needed a vignette to legally drive on there, we stopped at a gas station. Nobody spoke English there. After several false starts, finally got someone to understand what we wanted and we paid our 40 Swiss francs and got the vignette. We probably cut an hour off our time by doing that!
We knew we were getting closer to France when the exit signs started changing from “Ausfahrt” to “Sortie.” So I had to start making the mental mind switch from thinking about what to say in German to thinking about what to say in French. Even after we were on the autobahn, the nuvi kept wanting us to take the next exit, so we finally put it on mute and just followed the signs for Grand St. Bernard Pass, which is where we were headed. We stopped just north of Montreux at a rest area where we enjoyed a wonderful view of Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) and the surrounding mountains. After enjoying the view, I thought that there must be a cache in here somewhere. Sure enough, there was and I was able to log my first Swiss cache.
After Martigny we were back on a two lane road, headed down the road toward the Grand St. Bernard Pass and our hotel reservation for the night. We are staying at the Bivouac de Napoleon. Sort of rustic but good enough for one night. We were reserved for one of the chalet buildings but they put us in the main building at the chalet price. Very nice because we have our own bathroom, refrigerator, TV, and Wi-Fi! Obviously this is the first wi-fi I’ve had for the netbook since Grand Rapids as this will be my sixth blog post today, one for each day.
After we settled in, we went down the road to the recommended restaurant. Ordered cokes and then started looking at the menu. Extremely pricey even for a vacation area – 35 to 40 CHF for an entrée. Needless to say we decided not to eat there. We paid for the cokes which were 4.40 CHF each – Steve just about had a heart attack….ate sandwiches and bananas in the room and we were just fine.
We still need to decide about Italy. Would like to be able to “step foot” into Italy – which we wouldn’t be able to do if the pass is closed. We could still get through using the tunnel, but no way to avoid taking the rental car into Italy that way which we’ve been told is not ok. After I’m done blogging I’m going to check the pass information before I go to bed. BTW, jet lag pretty much is adjusted. I’m sleepy and it’s 11:30 p.m. now here, though I look on my computer and it says its only 5:30 p.m. (not gonna change it.) Looking forward to a fun day tomorrow, Steve is beginning to feel better. We don’t have reservations for tomorrow night, though, so it should be interesting. At least it doesn’t tie us down to a particular place.