A language lesson

Well I’m exhausted and I’ve got nothing today. Luckily for me, Trish asked in comments to this post how one pronounces Chlyni. Yay, a topic for today’s post! Thanks, Trish!

Chlyni Ma is Swiss for kleiner Mann, which is German for little man. The German klein is pronounced like Calvin Klein, or Kevin Kline. The Swiss is pronounced like clean. Or sometimes drop the final -n. The Swiss also drop the final -n in Mann and just say Ma . Actually that last sentence should read “The Bernese Swiss also drop the final -n in Mann” because there are, depending on who you listen to a few dozen Swiss-German dialects or almost one-hundred of them. Anything I say about “Swiss” should be taken to mean “Swiss as spoken by German-speaking Swiss born and raised in the Canton of Bern (but not coming from a small mountain village or valley because they kind of have their own dialects too) and I can’t be held responsible for how people in Zurich or Basel or heaven forbid the Wallis might pronounce this.”

(Yeah, this is why I speak what is called written German - the German learned in school, the German as spoken by (most) Germans in Germany and not Swiss. Though I do understand Swiss.)

So Happy Birthday Chlyni Ma translates to Happy Birthday, Little Man and is pronounced Happy Birthday klee-knee ma.

Running on empty

This is all I got for you today.

Family

One of the reasons I’m glad we’re living in Switzerland right now - and on any given day there are many reasons I’m glad to be living in Switzerland - is that I have family here to lean on. My husband’s family lives on their family farm fifteen minutes outside the city. (And yes, the fact that there are family farms fifteen minutes outside the capital city of the country is one of those many reasons I enjoy the Swiss life.) This is the farm my husband grew up on, the farm his brother has taken over, the farm my older son loves. He spends one day a week with his grandparents and uncle on the farm and it often turns into a sleep-over. During a regular week, the fact that I can count on grandparental childcare is a relief; during these times R is away doing this degree program he’s doing it’s a life-saver. During the thirteen night-times R will be gone we’ve got four sleep-overs at The Farm planned. Tomorrow when the big one goes to Spielgruppe (sort of like pre-kindergarten) R’s mom will come and look after the little one and I’ll have THREE! WHOLE! HOURS! during which I do not have to worry about small children. When we go to hockey on Saturday, R’s mom will stay at the apartment taking care of the Boychen. We’ve got a weekend lunch at The Farm planned after which grandparents and grandchildren will go for a walk in the woods and I will retire to the guest room to catch a nap. So I’m grumbling a lot about these two weeks in London, but in truth I’ve got a lot of help.

If we were living in the US I imagine we’d be somewhere along the East Coast, far from what remaining family I have. And even if we were to live near my brother and sister-in-law, they have young children of their own, they’re not like my retired (mostly - farmers never quite retire, it seems, even when somebody else takes over the farm) in-laws who have time to take Small Boy for the day. We’d spend time together, but they would not serve as child-care. Even if my parents were alive I wouldn’t trust my mother alone with my children. I’d barely even want them to spend time with her under my supervision. In terms of having a support system to rely on, I’ve got a better one here in Switzerland - in this foreign land - that I would have in the land of my birth.

And my sons have a good life here. They have grandparents here, and they’re growing up having a real relationship with them. When I see them together I see what a gift my boys are getting having grandparents in their lives, these very grandparents who are so good to them and who love them so. When I first moved to Switzerland R and I had a plan about when we would move back to DC. But now? It would take a lot to get me to leave here now. I can’t think what would be worth taking these boys away from their grandparents, and these grandparents away from their grandchildren.

I can’t think what offer would be good enough to break up this family.

Bundeshaus (Swiss Parliament)

Arosa

It occurs to me that I didn’t post any pictures of the actual town of Arosa. I didn’t take that many. I had intended to do it Friday and Satruday, but on Friday the weather was awful and on Saturday a combination of bad weather and two sick sons sent us home early. So I do not have many pictures of the village from this trip, but here are a few.

The train from Chur to Arosa (here in front of the Litzirüti train station):

Looking down the road from in front of my hotel:

Looking up from the Obersee (my new favorite view of Arosa):

Arosa from across the valley:

Not nearly as many pictures as I wanted to take, but I know there will be many more trips to Arosa to come. It’s good knowing that.

On the fifth day

The weather turned on Friday, low clouds and rain. At breakfast we couldn’t see past the grey eiderdown wrapping the windows in a damp chill. Both boys had colds with wracking coughs that woke each other up at night. Instead of riding the gondola to the Mittlestation and walking the smooth wide walking trail that is as easy as a road we walked around the lake, fed the ducks,

and looked at the old-time classic cars that were in Arosa that weekend, inexplicably, for a race. (Check out that fog!)

And everybody went to bed early.

On the fourth day

Wednesday night at dinner we decided to cancel the yoga sessions for Thursday so that we could start out early on the hike that would turn out to be the highlight of the week: a five hour (walking time) hike from Arosa to Medergen to Sapuen Dorfli (which, may I say, is the cutest Dorfli in. the. world.) to Langwies. From Langwies we would take the train back to Arosa.

Our path took us past the Stauensee

and up through the wooded hillside on the other side of the See.

Once out of the trees, we passed by an Alp. In English, when we speak of “the Alps,” we’re thinking of the of the Swiss Alps, the French Alps, the Austrain Alps. We mean the whole horizon-swallowing mountain range. In Swiss, an “Alp” refers to the summer home of sheep and cattle and the small cluster of buildings, the Alpenhutte, required for their care. So we passed by eine Alp: one woman tending one hundred and twenty eight cattle through the summer.

The cattle were friendly - a hiking trail passed through their grazing grounds, they were accustomed to people - and well-cared for and remarkably clean. It is these cattle and sheep, these summer grazing ranges, that make the Swiss mountain meadows - the Wiese - so beautiful. The cattle graze down the grasses and scrub which then allows the meadow flowers to bloom.

Our path leveled out as we headed towards the moutain village of Medergen where we ate lunch - crisp green salads from the local gardens and Bergkaese (mountain cheese) - from the cows we had just walked past.

We sat outside in the sun. We ate mountain cheese and hand-made bread and drank coffee topped with whipped cream.

We lingered too long, because it was all too perfect, and finally tightened our laces and continued on our hike with a backward glance at Medergen that had fed us so well.

Between Medergen and Sapuen we passed through Alpine meadows and saw, at a distance not worth photographing, a cluster of elk.

And then we crossed a river, passed through a field, and entered the tiny village - the Dorfli - of Sapuen. There were four children playing in front of the school when we passed through and refilled our water bottles at the village fountain though the school was closed; Sapuen is not inhabited year-round anymore.

And two minutes later we had passed through the entire village and Sapuen was behind us.

We rested one last time at the edge of a meadow, drinking our mountain water and crunching fresh sweet apples. We were about to start the climb down to Langwies, back through the woodlands, out of these high meadows and unobstructed views of the mountains. We knew we had to press on to make the train in Langwies but we were all reluctant to rise. Reluctant to say goodbye to this view.

On the third day

On Wednesday I slept through the morning yoga sessions and took an easy walk on my own so that I could stop for as long as I wanted in order to take some pictures.

On the second day

We hiked from the Praetschli at 1908 meters to the summit of the Weisshorn at 2653 meters through alpine meadows holding on to the latest blooms of summer, bees search for every last golden dusting of pollen.

Butterflies, two dragonflies dancing over a grassy alpine pond. Weather out of a post card, unbelievable summer weather even though autumn is making her entrance through the reddening leaves of the Alpenrosen, the dried thistle starbursts.

The last hundred meters – in altitude, not distance – is a blasted granite landscape, the aftermath of a rock slide or simple geology. At 2600 meters I am suddenly walking on a dried out riverbed, the rocks sliding and rolling under my feet, not a plant to be seen. This is what it looks like when a glacier recedes, the wasted ground-up trail I do not, cannot, stop to get the camera out of my backpack.

I am at my end these last 30 minutes winding up around the summit, the rocks shifting beneath my each foot fall. Regina, 62 year-old Regina two years out from a hip operation, shames me with her steady methodical pace. She finds her rhythm and never needs a break, never stops to put her hands on the small of her back to widen her ribcage and so expand her lungs and take in deep gulps of fresh cool delicious air. Her friend Isabelle, too, marches on. At the top we slump into the restaurant, order big bowls of hearty Bündnergerstesuppe and glasses of Rivella Rot and take in the view from the picture windows, this view that we earned today. I have been here before, at the peak of the Weisshorn. I have come up with the gondola and skied back down. Today I climbed up on foot, through alpine meadows with tiny treasures and across a wasted moonscape.

And the view, it was more beautiful than I remembered.

On the first day

Certain places speak to me. Over years, over decades, a small handful of places continue to lay claim to my heart. The list of places I want to see is as long as the atlas itself, but for all my wanderlust I find myself returning, like a salmon to its spawning grounds, to the places that speak to my heart.

I am in Arosa for the week, my favorite place - mein Lieblingsort - in Switzerland. I have been coming to Arosa since 1996 and I never tire of it. My heart has put down roots here. This place has become part of the story of my life. My husband wrote his first letter to me – a scant days after we met – sitting at a hotel bar in Arosa. I have come here as his girlfriend, his lover, his fiancé, his wife. I have come here as the mother of a son, as the mother of two. There are so many places in the world to see, but my heart calls me here. Here, where I spent my first Swiss New Year. Here, where I can walk past the restaurant where my older son tasted his first black olive. Here, where I can sit in my favorite café and in the moment before my cup of cappuccino with whipped cream reaches my lips the taste of it comes flooding back to me.

Here, where I’ve been coming since 1996 and yet today hiked to this waterfall for the first time.

We passed cairns at whose existence I never guessed

and ate lunch in a village I’ve passed through scores of times without stopping. I could come here the rest of my life and never reach the end of it. I hope to. Come here the rest of my life. And never be full of it.