Welcome...

From Interlaken: Camille and I just finished a nice day of travel from Hallau to Interlaken. We were planning on heading up to Gimmelwald today, but the promise of a little more time to relax and the rain coming down outside has conspired to keep us here for the night. Tomorrow morning we will head up the hill in order to find out what RJ, Anna and my parents rave so much about. So yesterday morning we boarded a train from Zurich to Schauffhausen, then got on a bus to Oberhallau. That is the town my great-grandfather Graf was born in, and where he lived before emmigrating to America. It was interesting to read his autobiography while there, and to find that the town is actually about half the size now as it was 130 years ago. It is definitely a sleepy dairy town, in the middle of a wine and general agricultural region. We wound up walking another half mile along the road to Hallau for the night, (as there was no place to stay in Oberhallau), and got a nice room upstairs in an older lady's home. We hiked a bit out of town, but overall just spent the afternoon lazily until dinner. It was definitely more difficult, though, as we both have realized that most of our travelling recently has been in central america, where we both can converse quite easily. Here we speak virtually no German, and although we find that we can get everything we need, there tends to be a lot of pantomiming and looking at the dictionary. Overall a bit frustrating to spend most of the day in silence except to talk with each other. Otherwise the country has been very charming. The people are helpful, the transit system is incredible, (and has the well-deserved reputation of being exactly on time), and the food apparently primarily cheese. The fruit may actually also be made of cheese, we're not really sure. Well, the front desk is about to open at the hostel, and our hope is that there is room available on a Saturday afternoon. We shall see... Ryan and Camille