Miscellaneous Observations

Charlene and I have had some pretty funny moments throughout the trip that put each other in stitches.  One saying that has stuck with us is that whatever we are seeing on a particular day is a "different pretty" from the previous day.  Its So pretty, but different pretty from what we already saw...

While I really liked the SSB train app to check travel routes and timing, it let us down multiple times when we purchased tickets.  The first time was on our return trip from Jungfraujoch.  The ticket person asked for our tickets.  When we showed her, she asked if we had half price cards.  I was puzzled and said I didn't think so and showed her our regional passes. She said they didn't count for Jungfrau line and had us purchase the other half of the ticket.  She was very nice.  Two days later, we were on the Lauterbrunnen line headed home and got the same question from the ticket guy.  He said we had purchased 1/2 fare tickets.  I said in exasperation "again?"  I had been very careful not to click on any ticket option that indicated a discount.  He also sold us the other half of the tickets without a problem.  The third time was on our way into Zurich and the guy was not as nice.  He said purchasing half price tickets when not eligible usually required a 70 CHF fine AND the purchase of the other half.  He let us off with a 10 CHF fine and the other half.  So annoying.  I will be purchasing our final tickets to the airport from a kiosk, not my app.  

We've noted a lot of wood piles along houses.  The design of the houses allows for lots of wood stacking/sheltering - they all have large overhangs. 

This was a particular pretty, creative stack of wood in Murren.

No wasted space.

I took a picture of this roof because it was the third or fourth that I had noticed that had a metal / PVC pipe strung across it.  At first I thought it was guttering of some kind, then just a pipe stored up high, then I realized it must have some other purpose.  Not sure if it breaks up snow coming off the roof or what...

There have been several places where we've noticed this fish scale wooden siding.  I can't quite tell how its installed.  There were not any obvious seams to it.  It gives a pretty cool look to the buildings. 

After seeing all the beautiful architecture everywhere, this eye-sore of a hotel really sticks out.  Boo!

Our airbnb host gave us a lot of well meant instructions, but one set that we heard twice and still didn't catch was about the recycling.  They clearly sort their recycling and there are drop off points at the grocery store.  He said he'd take it over.  But he went into a lot of confusing detail about the plastics.  Yes to PET (# 1 and 2), but not to PDH (??) I'm not sure sure if he was saying they only recycle #1 and 2 plastics or that we need to separate them all or that he would separate them so don't bother, just put them in a different bag than the glass and metal.  We ended up putting everything in separate bags for him to worry about.

Local kids gathered at the school soccer field each evening to play.  Last night we saw grown ups there (sitting at the time, but clearly planning to play). 

I haven't seen a single traffic light in Interlaken.  All of the intersections have lines for the flow of traffic, but no signage about yielding or stopping.  There are a few roundabouts, but mostly not.  I guess this is Polite-driving 101. 

They DO have street lights in Zurich however (population 400,000).  We noticed in our short walk to the hotel from the train station that when there is a marked crosswalk (but no pedestrian light), that pedestrians can step into the cross walk at any time and expect busy traffic to yield to them.   A little disconcerting to simply step into the busy street, but the traffic clearly yielded. 

We have multi-plug extensions at home, so I don't know why I found this so intriguing, but its shape is so funny. 

We've seen quite a few people out in the fields (particularly at high elevations) cutting grass and bundling (baling?) it.  I had to laugh today because most of them have been using rakes to pull it together into rows, but we saw one guy using a leaf blower!  Semi-effective. 

After noticing so many different flags in different locations and realizing many of them are cantonal flags (and some town flags), license plates suddenly caught my eye.  This vehicle appears to be registered in Bern canton. 

The navigation on this street caught my eye.  It's kind of one and a half lanes with the half lane for bikes, but its a two way street. The truck driving down it is about to cross over to the left side and drive to the next set of cement barriers and then swerve to the right again, literally weaving down the road.  If there is car coming the other way, you yield to each other to let the other get around.  I didn't see this anywhere else. 

Bare feet seem to be a kind of shameless thing here.  I even noticed this on the train.  People would take their hiking boots off and just sit barefooted/sock footed on the train.  I was astounded the stinky feet smell was not more prevalent.  The guy below was drinking at a bar (on the street).