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You’ve Been Chronicled
The thing about
relatives coming to visit is that all the details of life are
magnified. From the time you get up in the morning to what you
eat for dinner. From the number of bathrooms you have, to the
creaking floor boards. Logistics have to be totally revamped:
will 6 liters of milk fit in the refrigerator; who can you
borrow blankets and pillows from; what is the back-up plan if
Skye has to go to the bathroom right now and Grampy is taking a
shower. When I heard that the population of our apartment was
going to double for half a week, I did the only sensible thing I
could think of: I booked hotel rooms.
My children, my parents,
my older brother and I packed my in-laws’ van with as much
unnecessary luggage as would fit and drove off towards the
snow-filled horizon. We were headed for the unknown slopes of
Heimenschwand in the Emmental. Not as random as it sounds. My
dad posits that this is the area of his ancestors. It’s
practically like being on our own stomping grounds, albeit a few
generations removed, and much less work for me.
Heimenschwand is about
1000 meters above sea level. According to the tourist office, it
is “off the main road in a quiet, sunny altitude with walking
paths that lead you past “flower-laden houses, through glorious
pine forests or the idyllic Wachseldornmoos nature preserve”.
The accompanying web photo shows cows grazing, of course, in
emerald green fields with red-roofed houses and blue mountains
in the distance. The intense color combinations could have been
an advanced lesson in color scheming.
It will probably not
surprise you to learn there is but one hotel in Heimenschwand
and we were the only guests: Hotel Rohrimossbad. The hotel
description is almost identical to that of the town, presumably
because they are practically one and the same.
Getting there was
another matter entirely. All we had for directions was an
address that I had searched and searched for until I finally got
it, not off the hotel’s own homepage, as one would assume one
could, but from the tourist office*. We had the hotel address
from the tourist office and the map directions that I printed
off the hotel’s connect-the-dots homepage. It sounded like
Heimenschwand was a very small town; how hard would it be to
find the hotel? Surely there would only be one main road (beside
which, the hotel description told me, the hotel rested) and only
one main road going into town.
There was. Only one
main road, that is. But there were small side roads going
into town too. Traveling at night, in the snow, with two small
children, two people who are almost officially considered
elderly, and an older brother who is most famous for his
affirmative response of “sounds good” and you are bound to hit a
side road.
My dad wasn’t concerned.
He’s accustomed to driving a few tons of metal, air and
vegetables across country a couple times a month and knows how
to use a map. We also had a navigation device. We dubbed it
“Heidi”. But Heidi, true to character, quickly displayed an
affinity for mountainous, un-heretofore (at least in the past
few hours since it started snowing) traveled roads. We would
have turned around but that would have involved hitting a row of
pine trees to the left or tipping down the ravine to the right.
Good thing my father-in-law had put the snow tires on the van a
week earlier cuz it was all uphill...
From
the Winter 2007 Issue
Free!
Want to know the convoluted ending? Send me a
mail and I'll
beam it over.
Another Sample:
Witch's Brew
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