International Meals – Malta

Posted on September 6, 2025 by Dan

Hooray Malta!

(Checks notes)

OK, I am informed that Maltesers have nothing to do with Malta. Dammit.

OK, what DOES have to do with Malta?

Well, lets see – the island has at various times been ruled by Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, Rome, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights Hospitalier, France, and Britain. It became independent in 1964, and is so small and densely populated that the entire country is essentially considered one big urban region. Its capital city, Valletta, is the smallest capital in the EU by both population and area.

Also, it’s real pretty:

Like last week, I’ll point you to an Overly Sarcastic video for more information.

But let’s talk food. The most commonly named option for the national dish of Malta is Stuffat tal-Fenek, a rabbit stew made with red wine. Well that sounds tasty – lets get us a rabbit. That’ll be photogenic, right? Sure would have been, if I had remembered to take a picture BEFORE dismembering it.

A bowl of rabbit parts with some bay leaves and garlic is less impressive, but trust me, it was a whole rabbit before I got started. Thanks to Jamie Oliver for the instructional video on the deconstruction. This got marinated for most of the day in “cheap and cheerful” red wine.

But before we get on to dinner, there’s another rabbit bit to talk about:

This is the rabbit liver, and it’s considered a delicacy in many quarters. A traditional thing to do with it is to scoop it out of the stew and use it to make a pasta sauce which is served over noodles as a first course. That sounded like a LOT to do all at once, so instead I made a pasta sauce with it that we had for lunch.

First you sweat some onions while the pasta is boiling:

Then you brown the livers, and use this as the base of a tomato pasta sauce. This sauce calls for a number of ingredients for which we had to make substitutions. For example, it calls for a “Maltese Cheeslet.”

I am informed that I am no longer allowed to use that as a pet name for Leigh.

So failing that, I just got some feta cheese.

It also calls for a fancy sounding ingredient called “Cucina d’Oro Cooking Sauce.” I can find LOTS of hyperbolic language describing this product online (largely from the manufacturer) but very little about what it is actually intended to DO in a dish. It appears to be powdered buttermilk in a matrix of palm oil and starch.

I just used heavy cream.

There’s also some chili powder and fennel seed in here. It’s actually quite a delicious sauce when you get done making it.

And that was lunch.

Moving on to dinner, the first step is to take the rabbit out of the marinade and sear it on all sides.

That accomplished you then, (what else?) sweat an onion with some garlic and bay leaves.

This being a stew, the cooking process from this point forward is “put stuff in the pot, cook it for a while, put more stuff in the pot.” That included the marinade (which, recall, is basically just red wine), carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, more bay leaves, and salt and pepper. Then it just… stews for a while.

Despite the fact that this stew CONTAINS potatoes, the suggested side dish for the recipe we found was… potatoes.

So – slice the potatoes medium thick, layer with onions and olive oil, and cover with foil. (Foil not pictured)

The idea is that you steam them for about 45 minutes in the foil to get them nice and soft, then take the foil off and let them crisp up on top. The former happened, and they did crisp up some but we were hungry and the stew was done, so we popped them out when they looked like this.

They were pretty good, but for leftovers I’m going to add some cheese.

And here’s the final spread:

Not bad, right? The rabbit was nicely cooked without being tough, and the stew was quite flavourful. That flavour being basically “red wine,” but we LIKE red wine. The potatoes on the side had quite a different texture than the potatoes in the stew, so they didn’t feel redundant.

And it was good! The rabbit was a bit pricey, but we got a TON of leftovers out of this meal, so no worries there.

Next up – The Marshall Islands.

Recipes:
Stuffat tal-Fenek (Maltese Rabbit Stew)
Patata fil-fom (Maltese style potaotes)
Rabbit Liver Pappardelle

International Meals – Mali

Posted on August 23, 2025 by Dan

I feel a little bad about this one.

There’s a dish that’s mentioned on a lot of sites as the national dish of Mali, which is a stew called Tiguadege Na. I found a recipe with a reasonably promising looking source.

But – I feel like we just didn’t quite DO enough.

Also, it’s remarkably similar to the dishes we made for Chad, the Gambia, and the Central African Republic, so I wonder if we should have tried harder to find something a bit more unique? There’s lots of reasons why the African countries are frequently challenging, and also somewhat problematic, which I talk about a bit on the CAR page.

So anyway, Mali. Fascinating country with a lot of really interesting history. Timbuktu is in Mali. You can learn more about that in this video.

All that said, here’s the dish.

Brown some meat, then add onions and garlic until they’ve softened. Our local Save On Foods had some wildly varying sizes of stew meat on offer, but since we were going to braise it forever, it didn’t really matter.

Add tomatoes, broth, peanut butter, and Herbes de Province. I’m assuming the latter is due to the fact that France was the colonial aggressor in this part of Africa.

Finally, toss in carrots and potatoes and stew forever.

It ended up being tasty, but much more watery than in the recipe photos. If you try this one, I might consider doubling the peanut butter at least.

And that’s Mali. They can’t all be huge production numbers, I suppose. Next up, Malta!

Recipe:
Tiguadege Na

International Meals – Maldives

Posted on August 10, 2025 by Dan

It’s been a few months since we did one of these meals. Can’t imagine why.

Oh wait – see the preceding 24 entries on this blog for the reason why.

But we’re back, and it’s time to get back on our nonsense. Heretofore unfamiliar specialty ingredient?

Chec… oh no wait, that’s tuna. OK, as I said – unknown specialty ingredient?

Chec… no, hang on, also tuna. One more try.

OK, this is ALSO tuna, but it is, nonetheless, a heretofore unfamiliar specialty ingredient. Specifically, it’s dried tuna flakes.

I’m sensing a theme here – where IS this country?

Ah. That explains all the tuna.

The Maldives have a population of half a million people, concentrated on a surface area the size of Fresno, making it the second most densely populated country in Asia. (after Singapore.) On the other hand, that surface area is spread out over a region the size of Maine, making it one of the most spatially dispersed countries in the world. So that’s neat.

Also, they apparently eat a lot of tuna, because the two plausible dishes I could find as the most iconic are (checks notes) a tuna soup, and a cold tuna salad.

Good thing we LIKE tuna, then, innit?

OK, let’s make the salad, which is called Mas Huni. It is frequently eaten as a breakfast dish. You can find a bunch of different versions of it online, but some of them are so simple it didn’t feel like we’d be putting in sufficient effort. This one at least meant I had to get in the car to go get the dried tuna flakes. (While I was at it, I also got some South Asian spices I’d been meaning to pick up, and then I went across the street and got donuts.)

And even for this, maximally complicated version, the process is “put everything in a bowl and mix it up.” Everything in this case being canned tuna, tuna flakes, coconut, grated onion, green chilis, coconut milk, and some cilantro.

Bam. Done. What next?

The tuna soup is called Garudhiya, and there’s basically no difference in the recipes I found online. First you poach the tuna for a bit, then you toss in some onions and curry leaves and poach it some more.

Salt to taste. Is that all?

Well, we did one more thing, and it was the most time-consuming, but only because it’s a flatbread, so you have to cook them one at a time. To make these Huni Roshi, you make a simple dough of flour, water, coconut milk, and shredded coconut, and then you just cook them in a pan.

Like any batch cooking item (looking at you, pancakes) the first couple didn’t turn out so great, but they got better as we went along. And that was it. Here’s the full spread.

Tuna, tuna, and bread for eating tuna. And you know what? It was pretty good. The tuna soup was subtle, but that meant the tuna and curry leaves got to speak for themselves. And the Mas Huni was extremely flavorful – the lime juice, coconut, and chilis really perked up the tuna to make something really tasty. The leftovers got polished off for lunch on the next two days, which says something.

And that’s the Maldives! They were tuna-riffic.

Next up, Mali!

Recipes:
Mas Huni and Huni Roshi
Garudhiya

Switzerland, July 16: Zurich

Posted on July 16, 2025 by Dan

Our last day in Switzerland! Also my last day in Europe after five weeks abroad. That’s a long time! It was not our most efficient day by any means, but we did see lots of stuff.

To start with, we decided to head down the shore of Lake Zurich to check out a famous statue by Jean Tinguely, the artist whose work we began our Swiss adventure by admiring in Geneva.

Unfortunately, the statue had been completely surrounded by a temporary screening complex for a summer film festival.

The fact that we could see any part of the sculpture at all is a testament to how big the thing is, and how impressive it would probably have been if we could actually see it.

From there we headed up to visit the Pavilion Le Corbusier, one of the last works by the famous architect. It was closed. Very impressive from the outside, however.

After two semi-strikeouts (we did, after all, get to LOOK at the big building) we headed back up the tram line to visit the Kunsthaus, which is a major art museum. Absolutely phenomenal collection – we took one look at the map and realized we were going to have to be very diligent about picking our targets if we didn’t want to just spend the entire rest of our trip at this one museum.

A prospect we seriously thought about, to be honest.

From an exhibit sampling the history of computers being used to make art, this is a clock consisting of four displays – a mechanical flip-dot display, LED, LCD, and then TFT, showing the evolution of display technology over time.

This is a piece by Alexandra Ekster, a name I’m going to have to try and look into more.

And so much more. Leigh and I could have easily spent the rest of the day in the 20th century collection alone.

One other extremely thought provoking exhibit had to do with the history of the museum and its collection as it related to a man named Emil Georg Bührle. Bührle was an extremely wealthy man, an avid collector of art, and a passionate supporter of the museum. Problem is, he was also an arms dealer who used slave labour to make weapons for the Nazis.

Which raises the extremely complicated question – what are the implications for works in the collection that were acquired by Bührle? In particular, works looted from their rightful owners, or works of dubious provenance, for whom there is no obvious inheritor today? Or even works that were more or less legally purchased, but in a massively coercive environment? (Picture from Wikipedia)

Renoir didn’t cause the holocaust, but this work is now inexplicably tied to those events. What are the implications of displaying it with, or without, giving that context?

The exhibit thoughtfully presents a number of perspectives on these issues, without necessarily resolving the questions – it seems to be at least partially intended to be the next step in the conversation over what the next step AFTER the conversation should be.

OK, that’s pretty heavy. Without downplaying the seriousness of the issues, (and seriously, go look into the online version of the exhibit – it’s very good) let’s continue our day in Zurich.

We grabbed some lunch, and then headed back DOWN the lake again to see the interior of the now-open Le Corbusier pavilion.

The building was just as cool on the inside as it was on the outside. Lots of neat midcentury stuff going on.

And then we decided we hadn’t seen quite ENOUGH modern art yet, so it was off to the museum of design, helpfully labelled in my favorite font that tells you you are in the future:

There weren’t a lot of exhibits on display, but we enjoyed the hallway of movie posters, (none of which I remembered to photograph,) and an exhibit on the influence of club legend and event organizer Susanne Bartsch

By this point, museums were starting to close, but we still had energy left, so what else can we see? How about the Polybahn?

This is an extremely short funicular railroad (under 600 meters) designed to take students up the hill from the area of the main train station to the ETH Zurich university. (Which used to be called the Polytechnic, hence the name.) It’s short, but it’s also almost straight up, so definitely a good thing to have. And the view from the top is nice, too.

As a bonus, it was located about half a block from our AirBnB. Given that the total travel time is 60 seconds, the next morning it made perfect sense to grab a coffee and ride up to the top to enjoy the view while drinking it. I’ll post that picture here, because the weather was nicer than on the 16th.

Once we took in the view, we decided to nip up the street a few tram stops to pair our earlier trip to Einstein’s apartment with one formerly belonging to Schroedinger. Now, this one is still someone’s home, so you can’t go inside or anything, but you can check the current status of the cat.

Alive. Excellent.

It wasn’t QUITE dinner time yet, but there weren’t a lot of other sights we were desperate to see, so instead we decided to go hunt down one more destination geocache. We found it, but we also found a pretty nice view while we were there.

That’s a pretty nice shot, innit?

At this point, we WERE starting to get hungry, but no so hungry we didn’t have time to wander around a bit and consider our options. We poke our heads in the door at the surfing restaurant (i.e., there was a wave pool, and you could watch people surf while you ate), but ended up at a delightful place that seemed primarily populated by locals called “Les Halles.”

And with that, we headed back to our AirBnB to pack and crash. Maybe we got ice cream, but then we definitely packed and crashed.

The next morning, after my little jaunt up the Polybahn to drink my coffee, it was off to the airport and home. This was an absolutely amazing set of trips, but after five weeks, hoo boy was I ready to get home.

Now we can just go back to posting about cooking for a while.

Liechtenstein and Switzerland, July 15: Vaduz and Zurich

Posted on July 15, 2025 by Dan

For having the longest post title of the trip, this will nonetheless be one of the shorter posts. Leigh covered our morning in the hills of Liechtenstein, so once we finished our llama walk, it was time to take the bus back down the mountain to the bustling urban capital of Vaduz.

We made our way to the nearest bus stop, where we were presently joined by a local woman to wait for the bus. When it arrived, we all boarded, the doors closed, and then the woman suddenly started saying something to us that seemed extremely urgent, despite our minimal command of German.

Then we looked out the window and saw our bag of bars from the chocolate making class sitting on the bench of the bus stop.

Much frantic gesticulating and shouting at the driver ensued, and I did manage to get released before the bus left to jump out, grab the chocolate, and hop back on.

When we arrived in the capital, we stuck our luggage in a locker and went for a walk about the downtown area to see what we could see. There’s a few interesting sights, but we didn’t remember to take pictures of many of them.

You can look up the hill at the Prince’s castle, but since he lives there, you can’t go inside. We decided to just look at a model instead. (You can see both in this shot.)

We went to the postage stamp museum, that was cool. Pity we didn’t take any photos. There’s also a statue dedicated to Liechtenstein’s most famous composer, Josef Rheinberger. (Who I initially confused for the ever so slightly marginally more famous Jaromir Weinberger, author of Schwanda the Bagpiper. I am not making this up.)

I did manage to remember to take one picture of this exhibit in the modern art gallery above the postage stamp museum.

The shoes were part of a different work, but I was really taken by the collection in the back. While they may seem to be a number of different objects, the entire set is actually a single work of art, designed to look like a cultural exhibition on the history of a fictitious country. It includes artifacts and artworks from the Neolithic period up to the present day, but all from a place that doesn’t really exist. Neat.

However, at that point it was starting to rain pretty hard, so we decided it was time to depart the principality and head back to Switzerland for our last stop on the tour – Zurich! But here’s one last shot from the train station in Sargens that encompasses a pretty substantial chunk of the entire country.

In Zurich, we were staying in our first AirBnB for the entire trip, above a jazz club in a busy downtown neighborhood. It was pretty nice – it had vinyl records, a French press, a whiteboard to write messages to future guests. Needless to say – we weren’t anything LIKE hip enough for this room.

We walked around the neighborhood a bit, had some tapas, then walked around some more. Saw this dude in a crypt:

And this lady at the train station:

And then we went and crashed. One day left!

Liechtenstein, July 15: Triesenberg

Posted on July 15, 2025 by Leigh

What do you think of when you think of Liechtenstein?[1] If you’re like most people, the answer to that question might be “Where?” Or maybe “Um, stamps?” Or maybe even, “Tax haven banking?” These are all valid answers. But another valid answer is, “Somewhere that Dan and Leigh have been talking about going for 20 years.”

See, dear reader, when we got married (20 years ago next week, as of this writing!), we had a grand plan for a honeymoon. We wanted to go to the tiny countries of Europe – Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City, and Liechtenstein.[2] Why, you ask, even though you should know better than that by now if you know anything about either of us? Um, because they’re tiny and you can walk across them before lunch?[3] Because probably nobody else in the history of ever has come up with that as their honeymoon plan?

Anyway, the opportunity to have that particular honeymoon (or really, any honeymoon) never materialized.[4] However, in 2010 I was invited to a town really, really close to Liechtenstein –right on the border, called Feldkirch, Austria – to give a talk at a conference there. While I was there, I took a free morning to take a train from Feldkirch to Buchs, Switzerland (just on the other side of Liechtenstein) and walk back. Why? Because I could.

Here’s how that went: at about 9 am, I stopped at the front desk of my hotel and asked if they had an area map I could use for the morning, because I was planning to take a train ONE STOP to Buchs and walk back from there.[5] The front desk clerk was horrified by this idea, and kept saying, “But this is very far! You will get tired.” Reader, it’s three miles from Feldkirch to Buchs. I’m hoping that her concern was predicated on assumptions about Americans and their fitness levels in general, and not about this American’s fitness level in particular,[6] but she seemed to have some serious concern about whether or not I would be able to drag myself 3 miles across a completely flat portion of Liechtenstein without requiring medical assistance midway. Eventually she relented and handed me a map, but she also handed me the business card of a taxi company, saying, “When you get tired, you can call this company and they will come pick you up and bring you back here.” Yes, with emphasis on the word when, as if to highlight the inevitability of this occurrence.

A picture from my walk in 2010

So I took a five minute train ride to Buchs, Switzerland, got off the train, and walked a completely flat route of approximately 3 miles across Liechtenstein back to Feldkirch and my hotel. I recall that I got back about 12:30, which was probably because I stopped to have lunch and stare at goats.[7]

Historic Liechtenstein goats

I walked into the lobby of my hotel in Feldkirch to the apparent amazement of the front desk clerk who probably was worried that I was dead somewhere on the side of a completely flat road.

Anyway, that’s been my primary experience with Liechtenstein, which to be completely fair is still a lot more than most people’s primary experiences with Liechtenstein, and has resulted in a story that I have told more times than I can count.

But that means that Dan still hasn’t experienced Liechtenstein, so since we were in Switzerland, we thought it would be great to nip into Liechtenstein so that we could finally say that we had been there together, even if we weren’t actually able to both walk across it together.

While we were in the process of researching “things to do in Liechtenstein,” the option for a llama walk came up. You can probably imagine the glee with which we immediately signed up for this.

[insert Fry “take my money” image here]

Turns out, it’s not just a llama walk experience. Or, at least, it doesn’t have to be just a llama walk experience. If you want, it’s a stay-in-a-literal-yurt-on-the-llama-farm-and-go-on-a-llama-walk. And we wanted. Oh, did we wanted.

And we did.

Was this the most convenient part of our trip? The most on-the-way part? No. No, it was not. The llama farm was in Triesenberg, Liechtenstein. To get there we had to take a train from Lucerne to Sargans, Switzerland, and then a bus to Triesen, Liechtenstein, and then another bus to Triesenberg (which was basically up a mountain, so I’m not complaining that there was a bus there), and then walk a non-trivial way out of Triesenberg to the llama farm. (While being threatened with an oncoming rainstorm, as it turned out.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We arrived into Triesenberg, and Dan had found one of the few restaurants that was open that evening – in a hotel that was right near where we got let off. We walked in and tried to go into the restaurant, and the front desk clerk was VERY confused that we were walking into the hotel with luggage but we weren’t checking into the hotel and only wanted to go to the restaurant.

After dinner, and narrowly avoiding what looked like an imminent Alpensoaken, we arrived at the llama farm, where we got the first glimpse of the majestic creatures we would get to hike with the next morning. In eager anticipation, we spent the evening in the yurt, where our primary form of entertainment was trying to kill flies that wanted nothing more than to experience a non-llama lifeform. With that accomplished, we yurted ourselves to sleep.

The next morning, we emerged to find Marc, our human host, preparing the llama herd for the day’s excitement. We also met our walking compatriots, who were all adults accompanying children – because what rational adults would want to do this without children involved? (Oh, wait.) There was an older Swiss couple who were there with their granddaughter and her friend, and a French couple who were there with their daughter. And … us.

Marc gave us the safety briefing for how to walk with llamas, and then assigned us llamas based on their – and our – personalities.

This is how Dan ended up with Willie, who was described as a “teenager” who was somewhat volatile and unpredictable, and I ended up with Pius, who was the “leader” of the flock of llamas.[8]

Willie the Llama

Pius, we were told, needed to be at the front, because his presence as a leader calmed the other llamas. So Pius and I forged the path for the other ridiculous creatures, and I will say that the view as the head llama is probably better than the view from behind the head llama.

Leigh and Pius the Llama (left)

As foretold, at various points of the walk Dan’s llama Willie determined that he should be the one in front, and Dan was somewhat forcibly coerced into something resembling a leadership position until Pius had enough of the teenager and resumed his rightful place at the head of the llama parade. But then Pius would get distracted by dandelions, which were apparently his very favorite snack.

The walk itself involved rather a lot of going uphill, and also involved a copious amount of sweating and a fair number of mosquitoes, the latter of which was increased by the former. But I got to spend time with one of the most regal llamas I’ve ever met, so my joy was boundless.

[1] I mean, if men can think about the Roman Empire on a regular basis, why can’t we think about Liechtenstein?

[2] Luxembourg doesn’t qualify – it’s huge compared to these countries!

[3] Well, some of them. Some of them have really big mountains and it might take you until 3 pm.

[4] Don’t feel too bad for us. As this blog demonstrates, we’ve gotten to go some amazing places together; they were just a lot larger.

[5] There are only four train stops in Liechtenstein, one of which is abandoned. Tim Traveler talks about this here None of the three working ones were in any way convenient to the llama farm, for some reason.

[6] Canadian, now!

[7] Not at the same time. Well, okay, maybe.

[8] Google suggests either “flock” or “herd” as the collective noun; I feel like we’re missing out on the grandeur of “cavalcade” or the implied hilarity of a “business,” but fine.

Switzerland, July 14: Lucerne

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Dan

Before this summer, I had only been to Switzerland once, while I was an undergraduate. I was helping chaperone / play as a ringer for the Cleveland Youth Wind Symphony. That trip included a single day excursion to Switzerland from Germany and for some reason, the destination that day was Lucerne.

I even dug through my box of old pictures and discovered that I had some pictures of Lucerne’s most famous sight, the Lion of Lucerne.

This is not one of THOSE pictures, however, because THOSE pictures were taken on a 35mm point and shoot potato by someone with no idea how to operate it. The lion is recognizable, but only just. 31 years later, the Lion looks about the same, but my phone is a lot more forgiving of my photography skills, which probably haven’t advanced much.

At any rate, the Lion is an anti-revolutionary monument, dedicated to Swiss mercenaries who died trying to protect (checks notes) Louis the XVI. Definitely not as inspiring a story in 2025, that’s for sure. But the sculpture’s pretty cool, and it’s in a quiet little grotto in the middle of the city.

OK, Lion, tick. What are the other must-see sights in Lucerne? The two wooden bridges over the Reuss.

The first is the Chapel bridge, originally built in 1333, but substantially restored after a fire in 1993. It has wooden panels along the entire length depicting scenes from Lucerne’s history.

But those panels aren’t NEARLY as cool as the ones on the Spruer bridge, just downstream. Built in the late 1500s, the panels in THIS bridge all feature Death. Not just the abstract concept of death, but the anthropomorphic personification, doing all sorts of spooky things.

Sometimes it’s even wearing a hat.

Tag yourself! I’m the kid in red leaning on the table.

There’s DOZENS of these panels. They’re amazing.

Having looked at the major sights downtown, we decided to go check out a very different type of history, in the form of the Swiss Museum of Transport, which is, as it turns out, the most popular museum in Switzerland.

It’s set up as a number of different buildings around a central courtyard. One for trains, one for boats, one for planes, etc. This one was, unsurprisingly, for cars.

There were also a number of entire airplanes, submarines, and boats scattered about.

There was a lot of extremely photogenic stuff, but for some reason we didn’t take a lot of pictures. I’ll blame it on being late in the trip, and we were getting tired.

But pictures aside – this museum is well worth a visit. It does an excellent job of striking the balance between “entertaining for children” and “not boring for adults.” Plus, trains and planes and boats are just inherently pretty cool

One more picture – this time of a “vending machine” that would pluck a car off of the wall periodically and bring it to a turntable for people to gawp at.

After a solid few hours in the museum, it was time to set off for our next destination, and we wanted to allow plenty of time, because we had to get to an entirely different country.

Leigh and I have had a running joke ever since we were married that at some point we wanted to take a honeymoon trip to the tiny countries of Europe – Liechtenstein, San Marino, the Vatican, Andorra, and Monaco.

And just a few weeks shy of our twentieth anniversary, we were finally going to tick off ONE. At this rate, I don’t know that we’ll ever finish. But it’ll be fun trying. Especially if everywhere is as pretty as Liechtenstein.

To be pedantic, only the parts of this picture on the LEFT side of the river are actually Liechtenstein. But on the other hand, we LIKE being pedantic.

An absolute must do on this visit was to try the national dish of Liechtenstein, which we have previously attempted to make right here on this blog. And at a restaurant in Triesenberg, with this amazing view of the Rhine valley, we had the chance to do just that.

My heavens. This was fantastic. Big pile of cheesy dumplings with crispy fried onions. What is not to like, I ask you?

We each ordered a serving, and neither of us was able to finish, although we made a valiant effort.

At this point it was time to walk to our evening accommodations. It was about a mile, and we were growing increasingly concerned by the weather.

You could SEE the rainstorm walking down the valley towards us. It was really spectacular. It was going to feel a lot LESS spectacular when it started dumping water on us…

…except it never did. It passed slightly higher up the mountain and spared us, allowing us to arrive perfectly dry at our yurt.

But why were we at a yurt in Liechtenstein? Well, that’s a story for the NEXT post.

Switzerland, July 13: Interlaken

Posted on July 13, 2025 by Dan

We had allowed ourselves two days in Interlaken to slow down a bit and enjoy the Alps, so the second day we took another cogwheel train. This one left from immediately next to our hotel, and took us up to the lower region called Schynige Platte.

This train is very slow, but that’s because of the incredibly steep grades it hauls itself up.

Because of the old-fashioned wooden seatsness of it all, I was put slightly in mind of the romantic train ride we did in Kyoto, but this was was actually a bit better than that – you didn’t have an announcer shouting at you the whole time, and no one attempted to sell us photos of ourselves. I still wouldn’t necessarily call this “romantic”, per se, but the views were pretty great.

The point of coming up here was to go for a hike. There’s an alpine garden and a trail along a fairly narrow ridgeline. There’s also a picture frame, so you can take a properly framed photo of the Alps.

We tried to do a Magritte, but I don’t think we quite got it right.

At any rate, the hike was very pretty, and especially once you got up to the ridgeline, very narrow.

Normally I don’t just throw in a bunch of pictures without saying something between each one, but – come on.

The one difficulty, as can be seen in these pictures compared to the one from the day before, is that it was threatening to rain. And shortly after we took this one, it went from “threatening” to “raining pretty damn hard.” Of course at the maximum distance from the train station on the out-and-back loop we were on.

So was slogged our way back in the rain, skipped the alpine garden, and squished on to the train for the ride back down. At which point, of course, the weather turned gorgeous.

I mentioned that we had mostly skipped the town of Interlaken, the center of which feels very much like the Virginia Beach of Switzerland. However, we HAD signed up for a chocolate making class that afternoon.

The shop where we did the class was promising. Lots of interesting decor, funky hipster vibe. The class itself was… fine. Really. We got to make chocolate, and we got to eat chocolate. But you could tell it was geared towards the 12 and under crowd who made up most of the rest of the attendees.

We ended up with six chocolate bars, which we then carried around with us for the remainder of the trip in a little white paper bag, which had to be maneuvered on top of our other luggage the whole time. Keep Chekhov’s bag of chocolate in mind.

While we waited for the chocolate to set, we had some time to walk around and see some of the less touristy bits of town along the river, which were really quite nice.

And then it was zoom zoom again off to our next city – Lucerne! We arrived in time to have a nice evening walk along the lake there, and then off to bed.

Switzerland, July 12: Interlaken

Posted on July 12, 2025 by Dan

This post title is a touch misleading, as the one place we didn’t go was the city of Interlaken. Instead, we explored (spoiler) both of the two valleys above Wilderswil – Grindlewald and Lauterbrunen.

Honestly, it would have been a spoiler for us too, at the start of the day – there’s no way we would have SET OUT to travel quite as far as we actually did.

We started the day by catching the train up to Grindlewald, an impossibly picturesque town located, well… here.

But this view CLEARLY wasn’t scenic enough, so we boarded a gondola to the summit of First, (pronounced “feerst”) a peak just north of town.

Getting there. But how scenic would it be if we got those two knuckleheads out of the picture?

Pretty goddamn scenic, that’s what. The whole day was basically like this – the weather was perfect, the views were stunning. Easily my favorite day in a trip full of amazing ones.

One of the reasons you go up First in particular is that there are a lot of super fun ways to get back DOWN, the only one of which I managed to take a picture of is the one we didn’t use.

Instead, we first took a zipline from the summit down to the FIRST gondola stop below the summit, Schreckfeld. Then at Schreckfeld we boarded a mountain tricycle. This is an amazing experience where you barrel down a narrow mountain track while trying to keep your eyes on the road and off of, you know, the Alps.

It would have been slightly MORE amazing, however, had we not ended up behind an exceptionally timid rider who moved at an incredibly slow pace, and frequently came to a complete stop. And since the track is way too narrow for passing, that meant that she managed to collect over a dozen riders all poking along behind her trying to to lose all of their momentum on a flat stretch.

The cycle ride takes you to Bort, where we sadly did NOT stop to buy a souvenir license plate, but happily boarded our THIRD means of transport down the mountain, a trottibike! I almost got a picture of this one.

I mean, you can see the handlebars. A trottibike is basically a scooter with souped up brakes. And the brakes were needed. I kind of can’t believe they let us do this.

From Bort back down to Grindlewald is quite a ways, and they just handed us scooters and helmets and said “Have fun, see you at the bottom!” (And by “just handed” I mean “in exchange for quite a lot of money.”) But still – it’s a fun ride! Nearly two and a half miles, and easily the best of the three.

Arriving in Grindlewald, it was time for a nice hearty lunch. (And “hearty” is definitely the watchword with the Swiss cuisine we tried.)
And with that, it was time for more gratuitous theme park rights on the side of the Alps. We headed up a gondola on the opposite side of the valley to Pfingstegg, which boasted both a mountain toboggan ride and a “fly-line”, which is kind of a slower zip line that curves around through the forest.

The fly line was fun! The mountain coaster would probably have been MORE fun if I hadn’t gotten stuck behind a Spanish grandmother who kept bringing her sled to a full stop. It was kind of our day for that, sadly. We also photographed an extremely patient cow.

All the cows really do wear the stereotypical Heidi-ass cowbells, by the way.

Having fly-lined, mountain-coastered, trotti-biked, zip-lined, and tricycled, we realized it was only about three o’clock, and what should we do next? Well, why not take a gondola up to the high point that separates the Grindlewald valley from the next one over?

Absolutely no reason, that’s why.

And once again, the Swiss rail app proved invaluable. Drop the pin on top of a goddamn mountain, press go, and you have your bus ticket and your gondola pass all set in your phone.

This peak is called “Mannlichen,” and has a very nice 90 minute hike leading deeper into the mountains. Why not? Let’s do that!

Dear lord. Also, don’t forget you can click on these pictures to make them bigger.

The end of the hike was a spot called Kleine Scheidegg which had a quaint little train station and a historic cogwheel railway down the far side of the mountain into the Lauterbrunen valley. And since the last train was fairly early, we opted to hop onto that rather than having dinner at the top of the mountain.

So – now we were in Lauterbrunen. There was still one cheese-related dish I wanted to try, and that was raclette, which is basically the cheese of the same name poured over potatoes, and often pickles.

And it was everything I hoped for. We also got a nice light Caprese salad just to have some (checks notes) cheese with our cheese.

AND we had a view of this amazing waterfall right from our table.

(The view was actually substantially BETTER than this from our table – I took this from the train station later.)

One train back to Wilderswill and we had a chance to think about what we had actually done that day. Google isn’t great for plotting maps of routes where you use multiple modes of transport, but here’s approximately what we did:

We started at the upper left, took a train to Grindlewald, a gondola to First, zip-line to mountain cycle to trottibike back down to Grindlewald, gondola up to Phingstegg and back down, bus to Grindlewald terminus, then a gondola up to Mannlichen, hiked to Kleine Scheidegg, cogwheel railway down to Lauterbrunen, and then convenional train back to where we started.

Google wont let me plot a route all the way down from Kleine Scheidegg to Lauterbrunnen no matter WHAT I do, because apparently it thinks the last bit just isn’t possible to do at all on foot.

But more to the point – this is an objectively nuts itinerary. We would have been crazy to plot it intentionally. When would we have time to even look at the scenery?

Friends – we looked at a lot of scenery. Maybe it was a bit accidental, but my goodness – it was great.

Switzerland, July 11: Bern, Baby, Bern

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Dan

I have been avoiding punny titles for these posts, but… come on.

At any rate, we did indeed start our first full day away from Geneva in Bern, the “de facto” capital of Switzerland. (Switzerland has no officially designated capital, but since Bern is where the parliament is located, that’s what we’ll go with.)

And since there’s a big concentration of historic buildings, museums, and other cool stuff in the city center, we immediately boarded a bus out of town. We’re nothing if not contrarian. To be fair, we didn’t go very FAR out of town, but we really wanted to go here:

This is the Zentrum Paul Klee, a museum dedicated to the iconoclastic artist who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The building itself is pretty interesting, and was designed by the same architect who did two other buildings I encountered on this trip, the Centre Georges Pompideau in Paris and the modern art museum in Istanbul.

Klee was a fascinating character. The primary gallery shows some of his early drawings from as young as 11 years old. And in his youth, he was perfectly capable of doing both highly realistic work and impressionism. But then he decided that wasn’t really his thing.

Klee’s work is fun, and it’s the sort of thing you can stare at for hours. Leigh and I tend to divide works we see in galleries into two categories: “I’d have that on the wall” and “Nah.” Klee has a lot more of the former.

One interesting feature of the exhibit is that they have an entire room full of textbooks that have used Klee on the cover, including in some cases, over a dozen books with the same artwork.

And in many cases, the actual artwork is hung on the wall just a few feet away. Very cool.

After our morning at the museum, we headed back into town to check out two smaller museums before continuing our travels. The first was the apartment where Einstein lived during his annus mirabilis of 1905, when he wrote five papers that would each have been a career-defining masterpiece for any other scientist.

The papers were a lot more miraculous than the apartment, which was basically just an apartment. Still, it was cool to be in the room where it happened. Also, there were some exhibits about how Einstein was a jerk to his first wife.

We almost noped out of the second museum, but it turns out that would have been a mistake. The museum in question was the wind instrument museum, and it’s a basement room that you walk into and think – “Oh, there’s not that much here, and it’s quite expensive.”

BUT – your admission gets you the use of a tablet and a pair of headphones, and there’s a LOT of extremely well executed video to go with the exhibits on display. This is pretty cool when you’re listening to it at the same time.

Also, there’s this bicycle.

Why is there a bicycle in a wind instrument museum?

Why indeed.

We also wandered over to the Bern Cathedral which is impressive, although we opted NOT to climb to the top of two cathedrals in three days.

And it’s cool for another reason in that we had just watched a whole video at the instrument museum about the building and playing of an experimental modern organ, which we could then go gawp at in person.

And at this point, it was time to bring our time in Bern to a close and head to our next destination, the Interlaken region.

The Interlaken area is one of the places you go to get your Alp on – hikes, views, gondolas, all that fun stuff. We had chosen to stay in the small town of Wilderswill, outside of the relatively touristy Interlaken city proper. And we did not regret this choice, at all.

Our evening walk made clear that we had made an excellent choice for our home base for the next two nights.

Yowza.

Everything But a Mule

In Which Dan and Leigh Occasionally Go on Vacation or Make Dinner