SCHWEIZERDEUTSCH AND THE ALPS

 Dear friends,
This mission just keeps on getting stranger.  This past weekend we completed an assignment to take pictures in Switzerland of the scenery and of the Swiss members.  These images will go into the media library and be available for the Swiss Country Newsroom webmaster to illustrate webpages and news stories. We traveled 4 hours south to Bern on Friday and attended the temple in the evening on a French session.  The temple is very large and on a large and beautiful piece of ground, as it once served all of continental western and eastern Europe.  It has 4 session rooms and patron housing.  Always fun to be with the Saints in the Temple.  Saturday we got up early and headed south about 45 minutes to the shear, awe inspiring, larger than life, majestic Swiss Alps with their valley chalets complete with manicured fields, bell clanging cows and life-size Fischer Price cog trains that crank up the steep switch-backs to get nature lovers closer to the mountain.  We have decided this is the most beautiful place we have yet to see and feel just a little bad we didn't bring the kids here on their visits last summer.  Guess you will just have to come back.

 We could drive up past Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen where we parked the car and boarded the cog train to take us to the base of the glacier field below the monster mountain legends of the Eiger (ogre) Moench (munk) and Jungfrau (young woman).  Our plan was to follow Rick Steve's recommended mountain top hike over some fairly flat terrain for about an hour, with unspeakable views of the mountain peaks and valleys in every direction, then hike down the mountain to a train station lower down the mountain since the aerial tram at the end of the hike was out of seasonal service.

 I was only a bit nervous as there were no other hikers on our trail.  We had the place to ourselves and had to keep pinching ourselves that this was for  real. (Ok, there was the one other guy who took this picture)

 These are the three mountain legends and this picture does them no justice - just one of those things where you have to be there.  A plaque at the bottom of the Eiger (far left) shows the different first routes taken by climbing teams that successfully scaled the face to the summit.  I studied the face and could not imagine any route being possible.  It looks literally straight up no matter how you approach it.

 This is where it got tricky.  At the end of our hike we had to descend a few thousand feet to catch the cog train back down to our car.  The slippery narrow trail zig-zagged down between these snow fences,( an engineering feat in themselves), so we were comforted that if we fell, a fence would catch us about 50 feet further down.  The mountain was so steep you could walk along and hold on the hill on the uphill side for balance.  Again, we were the only people on the mountain, so I was a bit apprehensive about what it was we didn't know about this trail.

 Only ?  kilometers to go, don't sprain an ankle now.

 Ok, we made it alive.  If you look carefully at the horizontal brown lines drawn on the tops of the mountains, above the trees.  Those are the snow fences we snaked down between for about 2-1/2 hours to get to Wengen and the train back to Lauterbrunnen.  We count this as one of our great adventures and a highlight of our P-day experiences here.

 On Sunday, Elaine took hundreds of pictures in the Winterthur Ward just outside of Zurich.  We were hosted by our Swiss Public Affairs Director, brother Mattias Weidmann.  He and his wife Doris are parents of eight children. The youngest 3 daughters are still at home.  They will be in Utah next summer for a trip as a last outing before the oldest here goes on her mission. They have friends in Midway that live on Winterthur street, so we hope to see them and maybe take them for a ride in the boat.

 We had fun at the Shroeder family home (see below) taking pictures of their family home evening.  Their children were so darling, it made me tear up a bit thinking of and missing my own grandchildren.  Our special FHE treat was a Swiss Sundae with Chestnut paste spaghetti (see above) over ice cream with extra cream on top along with chocolate syrup and a meringue kiss.  What a cute family. The oldest is Emily in the second grade and already learning English.  Most in Switzerland seems to know at least 3-4 languages.  They speak a native  "Swiss German" here too that Elaine had great difficulty deciphering.

  We spent a few hours in downtown Zurich before heading home.  This is one high-end town of luxury and premium products.  The pictures here are of an amazing candy store.  Just like the movies.

 When we saw the fun clothing in the windows down town along the river, we thought Spencer would like this town.  Wild plaids, checks, knickers and bow ties.  Elaine was particularly taken with the leopard skin house slippers in this window.

A FALL WALK

Here's a less-than-flattering photo of the senior missionaries having our after temple dinner at a warehouse that had been converted to a medevial castle/bowling alley.  Elder Craven is way in the back and is chuckling that he alone is aware a picture is about to be snapped.

 Ha, ha.  On Saturday we took our BYU intern couple the Wisners to Rudisheim a quaint little town about 45 minutes from Frankfurt.  This time our GPS took us a different route and we had to board a ferry to cross the Rhein over to the town.  Pretty interesting when out of the blue the GPS chimes in with "turn right and board ferry".

Rich and Nat may remember riding in a gondola up the mountain above Rudeshiem.  We hiked up this hill through the grapevines on a beautiful fall Saturday afternoon.

This is statue "Germania was dedicated about 1883 to celebrate creation of the Republic of Germany.  We had a our picnic here with the Wisners as it is at the top of the hill above the vineyards.                               

The Rhein River valley below with Rudesheim off to the left.

A fall walk in the leaves in the forest above Rudisheim.  When the wind blew, we would be pelted with hundreds of acorns and a blizzard of falling leaves.

We (us and the Kagels)  helped Dinis and Sylvie Adriano unpack their moving boxes on their arrival in Frankfurt.  They are from Portugal and Dinis will start work for the Church as Assistant Public Affairs Director Nov 1.

The highlight of our week was helping the missionaries teach Sasan, a religious refugee from Iran caught distributing copies of the Bible to friends.  He loves Jesus so much, loves the Bible - sleeps with it.  He came to church for the first time today then came to our house for dinner with the missionaries. His dad had to pay $10,000 to get a fake passport to get Sasan safely out of Iran.  Sasan is reading the small Persian Book of Mormon - the parts that have been translated.  His English is minimal so communication is hard but he believes Joseph Smith really saw God and Jesus and he feels good when he reads the Book of Mormon.  All the missionaries had investigators at church today and the German ward has a baptism scheduled for next week.

VIENNA

Our most recent assignment took us to Vienna to take pictures of members for use in producing an Austria Country Fact Sheet and for illustrating articles that are posted on the Austrian Country Newsroom website.  These assignments are some of the most rewarding as we get to meet members in their home wards, enjoy dinners with them and go to their homes to take pictures of Family Home Evenings in progress.  We have many more friends this week than last as these members enthusiastically support our efforts and share their lives with us for the short time we are there. 

Elaine does a great job shooting pictures under a fair amount of pressure and under conditions where the lighting is often poor and the ability to compose the picture extremely limited.  She is grateful for the Lightroom software the kids gave us last Christmas and is really developing her picture editing skills.  

Although the real seats are often sold out far in advance, for the cultural part of our assignment we attended the Vienna Opera on Saturday night, paying 3 euros each for stand-up places in the gallery.  The opera was Giuseppe Verde’s “Don Carlo” and it was a treat to enjoy the beautiful vocals and the dressed up Viennese in attendance from our bird’s nest view of the theater. We had little electronic English subtitles at each place, but still had go home afterward and read the synopsis to get the story line straight.

Our local public affairs specialist, Gerda spoiled us with arranging all the details for taking the Sunday photos. 

Elder Kagel celebrates his 70th birthday with us by enjoying a traditional German chocolate mousse cake

Our dear friends Gretel and Swen Swenson have dinner with us before we take them to the airport headed to home.  Dr. Swenson was area medical advisor and gave free home visits to the Senior Missionaries.

Brother David Cunia was our Saturday city guide in Vienna.  He is a charming, warm and kind man and I am ashamed to say.about 5 years my senior. A retired banker, he is locally famous for his Elvis impersonation show.

Need I say more?

Expressive Viennese sculpture 

Atlas on the roof of the Habsburg winter palace

Only 343 identical steps to the top of the St Stephan cathedral tower.  We came out dizzy from coming down too fast.

A fuzzy selfie at the Habsburg summer palace - Schoenbrunn

Palace guard budget cuts

It's good to be king - Hapsburg summer palace Schoenbrunn

The king's hunting grounds - he was a great hunter as nothing but squirrels and pigeons there now.

MUENCHEN

Fall is a beautiful time in Germany. It is getting colder and seems to rain just about every day for at least part of the day.

Visited the BMW plant in Munich this weekend. Their corporate headquarters is the "4-cylinder" building. Friday evening we visited Marienplatz and the Hofbrau Haus and had a Bavarian dinner in town.  Saturday we visited the Deutsches Museum which is Germany's Smithsonian with 10 miles of museum on the history of everything.  Elaine's camera died so we spare you pictures of ancient sailing ships, early flight machines and demonstrations of paper making, etc., etc.  We could have spent a month inside and were overwhelmed with the cleverness of mankind.

This is the artsy inverted cone part of the BMW World showroom featured in advertising.










Pretty

Somehow after seeing all the super fancy fire-breathing monsters featured in the showroom, a white station wagon seemed like a more reasonable German souvenir.

 Did we tell you how happy we were that our apartment halls were painted - used to be the brown cave.








 
 Our apartment building parking lot - full of mission  and area cars.  Everyone else parks out on the street to save on parking fees and fill Germany's roads with cars parked everywhere.

We discovered a fresh squeezed apple juice only available for a few weeks in the fall.  It is like drinking an apple :)



Flowers in October

OKTOBERFEST

Dear Friends,

This week we worked hard in the office as we were, for most of the week, the only ones on duty. We updated directories, mailed materials, counseled with an area authority about PA work and finalized our Christmas card list  for the 11,000 Christmas cards sent out by our Public Affairs directors. Elaine photo-edited the many member pictures taken by Elder and Sister Foote during their assignment in Albania.  Albania is on track to have their first stake this next March and the District the Footes visited has 35 missionaries out from their families.  These are a faithful people who are receiving the reward of their sacrifice. Those of you who can deal with us taking pictures of our weekend outings and not make insinuations about dedication, please read on.  If not, please stop reading now, and have a nice day.

___________________

For the rest of you, at the request of our missionary buddies, we did an outing on Germany's national unity day holiday Thursday because our office was closed and the country was closed and because  they were carpeting the floors in the office so we could not get in, and also the wash was done and it only takes 30 minutes to clean our apartment and we need a break sometimes and it can be boring to sit in our apartment all day long.

 Elaine organized a quick 3-dorf day trip with our friends the Eyres who came from the MTC with us, our new friends the Footes, from Las Vegas, who replaced the Livingstones, and with our cute newly-wed intern couple, Casmin and Jordon Wisner.  Here we are in front of the lake/moat of the castle at Mespelbrunn.  This 1100's castle escaped the destruction of the 30-years war and has stayed in the family with the current inhabitant a descendant of centuries of Lords and Ladies.

Royalty had to prove their nobility back 4 generations to claim a right to reign.  This family made fun stained glass coats of arms of their ancestors to remind visitors of their blue-blooded parentage.  This castle is so well hidden it escaped all wars unscathed.

                                                                                   

Our next town was Werthiem with the largest ruins in southern Germany since they did not do as well in avoiding the the 30-years war :( The ruins sit above the confluence of the Tauber and Main Rivers.

More coat of arms plaques on the castle entrance to remind people of the nobility they were about to encounter.










This statue is unique because it is the resurrected Christ holding the cross.  Christ's foot rests on the skull of Adam often seen at the foot of the cross representing Christ's victory over the fall of Adam.

Very possible these flags are being flown because it is Germay's National Unity Day.  We will never get over the beautiful healthy window flower boxes we see in many places.  Sure wish we could do this in Utah.

You can tell you are in a historic part of town when you encounter these beautiful ornate and detailed iron sign displays.  This one belongs to the oldest hotel in Germany - the Hotel Riesen in Miltenberg on the Main River just above Frankfurt.

 Unlike last, this year we are getting some fall colors.  This is our view from the apartment balcony.

Sisters Stoker and Smith with one of Elaine's primary girls, Avery Ebert, who was baptized on Saturday.  Missionaries here are incredible dealing with much rejection and disappointment they smile on with the best attitudes.  They invited us to come teach Saturday but the appointment fell through.

New carpet in the Area Offices this week.

Elaine keeps the deck swabbed in our happy missionary apartment and its little toy kitchen.

Luckily we happened to visit the Wertheim Castle the day the Queen was at home and we were able to get her picture up here on the ramparts.