24 Hours is Still a Full Day in Europe PART 1

DISCLAIMER:  You will now begin to read posts from Erik.  Please do not associate the sarcasm, cynicism, and downright foul attitude to Megan...she is a beautiful woman with a warm heart, glowing personality, and generous spirit.  However, she completely lacks any ability to stay awake when sitting still, so you are stuck with me.

DISCLAIMER to the DISCLAIMER:  I really do not have foul attitude about being here, but getting less than 10 hours of sleep over the last three days tends to alter the focus 

of one's perspective. 

We have finally arrived and settled into our hotel room in Celerina, Switzerland.  We are still not far enough removed from the whole travel ordeal to just think of it as a bad memory.  However, on the bright side, we made all our connections and really had very little downtime, which of course meant we have been continually on the move for just under 24 hours.

I will allow you the wonderful opportunity to share in the travel woes in an attempt to distribute the tribulations and thereby easing our burden.  Our US Airways flight to Philadelphia boarded on time, and we happily boarded the plane and readied ourselves for the first leg of the journey.  Then, the intercom crackled.  They had overbooked the flight and were looking for volunteers to take a later flight.  When no one jumped up to volunteer, we were given a sob story about their screw up and the stranding of a family of six.  It kept up, and people began to start asking questions about their later flight and/or round trip voucher...and as luck would have it the solicitors did not know the answer.  They spent what seemed like an eternity running back and forth to find answers and provide confirmation.  All the while, they kept asking for more volunteers.  At one point, it seemed inevitable that we would reach the point where the US Airways personnel would stamp his foot and scream, "This plane WILL NOT take off until I get more volunteers!"  All of this activity took seemingly massive amounts of time, and we did not pull away from the gate until at least 30 minutes after our scheduled departure.  With the memory of my parent's debacle fresh in mind, we kept calculating our arrival and postulating our possibilities of making the connection in time.  We were hopeful because we would still have 30 minutes to sprint across the Philly airport to make the connection.  We were OK until we heard that there was a  back up with flight control.  Our delay at the gate caused us to lose our place in the queue, and we were waiting our turn.  In the end, we lifted off over an hour late, and the reality that we would repeat my parent's adventure slowly sank in.  Now, we turned to simply wishing that at least our luggage would not get lost.  As we brooded and cursed everything US Airways (almost to the point were we going to disown the Suns), we heard the pilot's voice crackle over the intercom shortly after take-off.  "Ladies and gentlemen, even with our delay at the gate and on the tarmac, we are looking to get to Philadelphia right on time if not a little early."

Now, I am an educated man.  I understand mathematics.  I understand time.  (Notice: I did not say I know how to BE on time, but I understand how to tell time and calculate elapsed time.)  But, for the life of me, I do not understand how leaving an hour late results in arriving five minutes early.  So, we looked at each other quizzically and chalked it up to good luck.  Of course, I had more sinister ideas...I need to figure out how they do it.  I have always tried to practice this concept of time management, but it has never worked out in my favor this way.  Usually I just end up arriving late and having to calm down a beautiful woman who takes enormous amounts of pride in her atomic clock-like promptness.

Anyways, we made it to Philly on time, which turned out to be extremely fortunate because they fail to tell you that the international terminal is actually located in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.  In the end, we made it to the gate about 10 minutes before boarding.  We wolfed down a slice of pizza and got on the plane.  Unfortunately, the bad weather in Philly and the resulting rerouting of planes saw us sitting on the tarmac on for an extra hour again.

After a pretty much sleepless flight, we arrived in Zurich.  We quickly bought our train tickets and got down the the platform.  (Megan will not like this...but she took a trip to the bathroom and made us miss the earlier train.)  We had to make two transfers.  The only one of note was the one at the main station in Zurich.  It was completely decked out in Euro 2008 signs.  Fans were chanting, singing, and waving a their national flags.  It is neat to be someplace where soccer is the mainstay.  Anyways, after a somewhat uneventful 4 hour train trip we arrived at Celerina.

The train trip provided us with our first glimpse of the beauty of the Swiss landscape.  The green was overwhelming and the high alpine peaks were incredible.  Intermittent waterfalls flowed from the snow pack and fed the regular raging chalky white rivers.  We attempted in vain to take some pictures, but the speed of the train coupled with the reflection from the window made the pictures terrible.

When we arrived in Celerina, it was steadily raining and in the mid-50s.  The hotel van picked us up and wound through narrow streets similar to the Knight Bus from Harry Potter.  We arrived at the hotel and were taken promptly to our room.  The first picture shows the entrance to the hotel.  It is off a narrow cobblestone/brick roadway.  The hostess took us to

the room.  

The room is a two-story loft with a hide-a-bed on the bottom floor and a "master" bedroom upstairs. (See picture to the right.)  It is really cozy and pretty.  For as quaint as the hotel appears, they are really on tops of things.  Each hallway has motion-sensor lighting.  For ease of typing and picture inclusion, this will be continued in the next blog entry.