Silvester

That's what they call New Year's Eve here--"Silvester". Someone explained it to us this morning but I'm still not entirely sure we get it (other than that it came from Italy). Anyway, we may not be able to stay awake until midnight, but it was a great Silvester regardless. Yesterday morning we took the train to Interlaken, where we had booked last-minute hotel rooms (Interlaken itself isn't terribly exciting, but its in a great location at the base of the Alps). Anyway, we split up and a few of us took the train up to the charming ski town of Grindelwald while a few others went all the way up above 11,000 feet to the Jungfraujoch, the so-called "Top of Europe". This morning we all headed back up to Grindelwald so the kids could try skiing and Gretchen and I could try sledding. It was a blast trying to sled on those old-style wooden toboggans with runners where you're sitting about a foot above the snow and have minimal control over where you go. We never entirely got the hang of steering or stopping except for dragging our feet, so our legs were coated in snow from crotch to cuffs by the time we got to the bottom (my brilliant idea of the day was to wear corduroy pants for sledding, although at least I had long underwear to cushion--literally--the cold). Gretchen took the lack of steering and stopping to an extreme and pretty much wiped out whenever she wanted to stop (and sometimes when she didn't). At one point she crashed spectacularly right in front of me and almost sent both of us hurling over the edge onto a black-diamond ski run. It was a beautiful two days, especially since they had received fresh snow earlier in the week and there wasn't a cloud in the sky either day, which was a welcome break from perpetually-gray-these-days Basel. Given the great weather, perhaps it's not surprising that: (a) we forgot our camera (although the grandeur of the Alps is difficult to capture in a picture); and (b) when we got back to Basel it was raining.

Anyway, happy Silvester (or however they say it here)!