Gimmelwald to Hallstatt

The saying in Gimmelwald is ''If heaven isn't what it's cracked up to be send me back to Gimmelwald.'' Nothing could be more true. Rick got this place right and apparently no one else read the section on Switzerland. Gimmelwald is a small town of less than 100 Swiss. It is accessible only by gondola. All the houses are made of wood and all of the ground is covered in grass. I don't know if Switzerland has a patch of barren ground. The earth is either covered in grass, moss, snow, or glacier. We spent two days in Gimmelwald hiking to glaciers and remote pastures. We missed the Cow Parade this past Thursday. The local farmers wash their cows, put the fancy bells on the cows (all livestock in Switzerland wear bells) and parade them down the main street every fall. We regret not staying for the festival. I think I could have gotten paid to wash a cow.

Jessica met a friend in Gimmelwald. Hauns is his name and cheese making is his game. He greeted us as we walked by his farm and invited us into his cheese shed. He made us taste all his cheese and explained the differences in the taste. The older the cheese the sharper the taste. Jessica bought a lot of cheese and eats it every day for lunch. Her staple foods are still bread, cheese and chocolate. She's stayed away from Gelato, convinced she got sick from it in Florence.

We picked up a rental car in Interlaken, just down the mountain from Gimmelwald. We scored a great deal on the car over the Internet for $27 a day. I learned that Visa covers you for additional car insurance on rental cars which saved us several hundred dollars. We have the rental until November 9th at which time we have to return it to Switzerland. We plan on making a counterclockwise loop of Austria, Germany, France, Spain and back to Switzerland then flying to Ireland.

From Gimmelwald we stopped in the boutique country of Liechtenstein. It rained the entire time while we were there. Liechtenstein is a country of 35,000 people one Prince and a grumpy hostel manager. We pulled into the hostel around 9:00pm. The hostel could accommodate several hundred people. However, there were currently seven people staying the night. We were unsuccessful in convincing the manager that we could have our own dorm room. He was insistent that we sleep in the segregated dorms for €80 by our selves or pay €100 for a double room. He didn't want to give us our own dorm room because he would have to clean it in the morning. Jess was furious so we left. By then it was 10:00pm and we were planing to leave early so we folded down the seats in our rental, a 2007 Toyota Corolla hatchback, and slept in the car. It was cold and the floor was hard. Jessica negotiated staying in a nice hotel in the future for the night in the car. The next day we paid two franks to have our passports stamped, drove up the mountain and watched it snow then left.

From Liechtenstein we went to Innsbruck Austria. It rained and snowed the entire time we were there. We spent the night in a campground, we rented a trailer. I promised Jessica another night in a nice hotel. We had planed on hiking outside of Innsbruck but just like Liechtenstein the rain hampered our plans. We headed for the lake district of Austria and spend the night in a nice hotel outside the town of Hallstatt in Bad Goisern. The hotel included breakfast. Jessica, again, astonished the local population with her appetite. We planed on hiking, or kayaking the lake but it has snowed a foot since the previous night. This was the fourth time Jessica has seen snow fall. She likes to stand in the snow and catch flakes in her mouth. She is surprised every time that the snow is cold on her tongue. I don't understand her sometimes.

We are going to leave today for Germany and some lower elevations...