The Anderson Clan: Switzerland

And now, for the last and final post of our summer 2013 trip...

There are some seriously heavy traffic days throughout Europe during the 6 weeks that most kids are out of school. They have these "black out days" that you could potentially be trapped on a freeway for hours because there are so many vehicles in transit. At the very beginning of our trip, Ryan planned carefully, checked the ANWB website, and we left at the crack of dawn to miss the black out traffic. I thought he was being a little paranoid and a LOT crazy.

At the end of our trip, we got a little more casual. We rolled out of bed in Italy and headed up to Switzerland hoping to spend at least 1/2 the day in Zurich...and then we hit the black out traffic. So our 6 hour drive took 4 extra hours. Some of those hours were spent sitting. SITTING. Sitting on the freeway, with the car turned off, looking around, waiting, needing to pee, starving, and so on. FOUR HOURS. At one point, I thought we would definitely run out of gas waiting before the next station. Alas, we made it to the station and so did the 4,546 other cars that were also in our same situation. The bathroom lines were killer...but unlike the many other drivers and passengers around us who just hopped right out and relieved themselves in front of everyone on the side of the road, for me the proper stall and running water was worth the wait. At least we were surrounded by this lovely scenery...

Coca Cola had this ad campaign going on during the summer that went something like, "Coke is love, share a coke"...okay so I don't exactly remember the point of it. But what I do remember is that each bottle had a different name on it. So it said, share a coke with...whoever. Well, Ryan, Carrie, and Dawn have been known to consume some serious amounts of coke. So it became this kind of game when we'd go into gas stations and stores in each country to see if we could find any names that we recognized. They were usually pretty weird names, depending on the country. My mom and I found Thomas and Nicole at one point (I think in France). In Switzerland, Ry hit the jackpot with this one...

We had to explain the Arrested Devolopment reference to my mom, but I laughed and laughed. (As a side note, Elsie has this kid in her Dutch preschool named Tobias - pronounced "toby-us" and it is hilarious to hear her talk about him. I'm sure he has some little denim cutoffs under his pants).

Once the traffic finally got moving, we could really appreciate how gorgeous this country is. It seemed like we were always surrounded by mountains, and the kids made a game of spotting waterfalls. We pulled over and snapped some pictures by this lake. Look at that water...

When we finally made it to Zurich we were in for another dreaded surprise. We had just finished reading all this info about how clean and modern Zurich is - one of the cleanest cities in the world, etc... Well, all the major roads were blocked off for this HUGE gay pride parade. The entire city was trashed - seriously, litter along the side of all the major roads, at least, the ones that weren't blocked off. The plus side is that everyone in site was either dressed in drag or some crazy body paint or costume...awesome!