Travel Space 4 U

The second of August. We go to Bern, the capital. Bundestag is covered with plastic films, it is being repaired, the square is under reconstruction. The weather has changed, it is rather cold and it rains. We walk along a big street with a gallery on one side. Suddenly I felt unwell, we sat down near some café, took tea, Julia went to a pharmacy on the ot he side of the street and fetched valerian. I rested a little, and we went to look for a museum. People in the street helped us, and we found a Kunstmuseum with a collection of pictures, that was not very interesting, and a unique exhibition of photos of the period before the Second World War.

We had the museum free of charge thanks to our general ticket. While we were in the museum, the rain stopped, we decided to look at the famous bears of Bern (the bear is the symbol of Bern. Two big bears were in a deep hole and the public was up behind a barrier. We fed the creatures with dry fruit, they were actually asking for something sweet.

We returned home, as usual, by train. There are a lot of various train cars, two-storied, as well as one-storey ordinary cars. They are very comfortable, never crowded, the names of the stations appear on a display above the doors, as well as in trams and buses, you don’t have to listen to the names. Sometimes we meet in the train women with dogs. We didn’t see dogs and cats in the streets. The streets are very clean, especially in small towns. There is a system of collecting garbage. The citizens buy special bags, that are collected in a definite container. If anybody throws a bag of garbage somewhere, a special detective service finds him and makes him to pay penalty. The drinking water is clean, the air is clean, the rivers are full of ducks and swans. Municipalities pay farmers for cutting grass in medows and hills. In Rappersville people greet strangers when meeting them on the roads, in the bus from the railway station to Rappersville everybody greets the driver and vice versa.

The next day, the 1-st of August, Confederation Day, a national holiday of Switzerland, dedicated to the unification of separate cantons into a state. The houses were decorated with flags and other decorations, the national flag of Switzerland is red with a white cross in the middle.  Lena was at home, and she took us to the mount Santis not far from her town. The weather was fine, we came to the foot of the mount, parked and came in the building. Here we found some kind of a museum of the processing of cheeses. All the stages of the process were demonstrated and here the products and beautiful souvenirs were sold. Then we mounted up in a special elevator.

We left the elevator, here it was quite very cold, we went up some staircases, looked at stuffed animals and birds, the population of the mounts, and came up to the observation platform at the height 2,052 meters. It was really very cold here, the wind was blowing. We enjoyed wonderful landscape, made photos and went down to a warmer place. It was a very comfortable place, where we had drinks and food. A big store of souvenirs gives us a lot of fun, Julia buys red tee-shirts with national symbols for the whole family. We descended and landed the earth. We continued our way to Appenzell, a town of wonderful colored houses to the north-east of Rappersville. A street for tourists, souvenirs, café.

Maybe it would be much better to stay in Zurich for several days in one of comfortable hotels like Lugano Hotels, but we decided to do so another time. So, in Zurich we walked, took the tram, watched the view of the city from the observation landing. Not far from a railway station we found a Tea-room, a wonderful place, where you can have tea or coffee with cakes and various sweets.
31 of August. We are going to Reinfall. It is a nice sunny day. We are going by train, it is not far from Ruppersville. The sight is very impressive. The height of the fall is about 23 m. The roaring waters move with great speed, the river is very wide here. Most of the visitors are children with their parents. We walk along the river bank to the restaurant and the booking office, buy the tickets to a boat, that takes the passengers to a cliff in the middle of the river.

The cliffs, that seemed dangerous when looking from the bank, are simple to ascend by stairs, and the sight from here is very impressive. Julia makes a lot of photoes, and without any haste we return by another boat. After that Julia and Rachel decide to walk to a nearby castle, I remain on a bench in the company of Indian women in picturesq saries, whose husbands took photoes of them. Then we walk a little about the town of Schaffhausen.

The  journey  was planned beforehand: two months earlier but it proved to be very late: there were no tickets already,  but we could order the return tickets. At last, the tourist agent informed us, that we could have tickets for Saturday, four days earlier the scheduled date.  After some hesitations, we agreed. So, we had two weeks and a half. 
Our group consisted of my daughter Julia (head of the group), my granddaughter Rachel and me. We had a flight to Munich to continue by a train to Switzerland. Early in the morning we landed at the Munich airport. We moved a very long road, indeed, consisted of many moving tracks, which was rather tiresome after a sleepless night. There was nobody to ask, if we moved in the right direction, but at last, we stepped in a large hall  with a map in the centre, where it was possible to learn the number of the underground train to Munich railway station.  Julia had bought one ticket for all of us for the whole day in Munich for all kinds of transport. We took the train to the railway station. The railway station was a very big building, but thanks to numerous indications we found our way to luggage cabins and booking office, where we asked about the train to Rappersville in Switzerland and decided to go by a four o’clock train. Now we had about four hours in Munich before us. The city appeared not very hospitable. There were vagabonds in the park, and the lady in a café hardly agreed to give us the key of the water-clozet to wash hands. But it could be understood considering the former fact. I understood after two visits to Munich that the city needs to defend itself from the strangers of certain kind. After a cup of coffee we started to look around and went to Marienplats.

It was a gay sunny day of July and at the square we found a crowd, listening to a group of young singers. We stopped to listen and continued our way to a walking street without traffic, then we took a tram and moved three or four stations about the neighboring streets.

It was time to return to railway station. It was still day-time and it was wonderful to look from the train window at endless green valleys and rare red-roofed huts, decorated with flowers, growing from the window-sills, cows and sheep were feeding on the grass. A nice ticket-collector sold us the tickets to Rappersville. We changed the train in Saint-Gallen, Switzerland, without difficulty and it was quite dark, when we reached Rappersville. My cousin Natasha and her daughter Lena met us at the station and took us to Lena’s house.
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