Beautiful Switzerland

So after a long pause, I check our blog again to see that Yana has cheekily hacked my
password and added herself as an admin on the blog... That earned her a month computer ban.

In other news, we are now (and have been for the last 4 days) by Lake Geneva in Switzerland where we have found a rather pleasant campingground with a beach nearby and the neccesities of modern living - power and internet access ;-)Kerstin has been using this to make some serious progress on her Information Design assignment while Lindsay and Yana have been making sure nobody causes any problems on the beach.














Before coming here, we spent our time in the following way:

We visited our friends Julian and Jana in Freiburg and organised a survey that was testing the correlation between price and taste of 10 different pinot noir wines. Julian invited some work mates of his and we all sampled the wines (without knowing which was being tasted)that ranged from €1,50 to €16. There was a slightly positive correlation between taste and price, but some people had pretty random results. Most of us realised that the wines started tasting better, the more we had.

We did several walks in the Berner Oberland (or Jungfrau) region of Switzerland, making use of the incredibly nice, sunny weather. We stayed a couple of nights in Interlaken and a couple of nights in a small place in the Lauterbrunnen valley, called Stechelberg. Our walks took us from Stechelberg to Lauterbrunnen, from Stechelberg to Gimmelwald and Mürren, and from Grindelwald up the hill to no particular destination. Yana was such a great companion, either sleeping or being a quiet little angel in the backpack. We did make her do her share too though: she had to crawl parts of the way, especially up steps, which she loves to do (crawl, because she still can't be bothered walking).



































On our way to lake Geneva we found two less touristy, but still really nice places: Saanen and Leysin. In Saanen we stopped off for a day to do a bike-ride to the neighbouring town of Gstaad and in Leysin we spent two nights on the carpark of an sports complex. From Leysin we did a walk up to a mountain called Berneuse and took the cable car down. It was quite a long way, rather steep and hot, but we had amazing views and Yana behaved really well again.

More from Yana

Because my parents have been too slack to write an entry recently, I thought I should write another one. I'm now almost 13 months old and I have the feeling that my parents understand me a little better. They still don't let me get my way enough, but they do get my point in a lot more cases. For example, when I make chewing noises, they know I want their food. I think they are a lot more careful what they eat around me now, because they know they have to share their food with me. Even though I only have six teeth I can chew pretty well.

I'm not too keen on walking by myself yet. After all, I get everywhere I want to by crawling and it's a lot more fun to climb than to walk anyway. I can get up and down stairs, low couches and sometimes even ladders. I can shake my head, put caps on bottles and eat from a fork, when Mama puts something on it for me. Spoons don't really work for me, because the food always falls off them.

I better go, Mama and Daddy want to go tramping with me here in Switzerland, where we are staying at the moment.

Here are some more photos of me...

Me and my friend Tim:

































Me at the swimming pool/lake:



















Me in one of my crazy sleeping positions:














Me climbing around one of the many playgrounds we have found:



















Next time I might have the results of the test I'm doing on Mum and Dad - I'm sleeping till 7:30am at the moment to see what they are like when they aren't sleep deprived ;-)