Switzerland

I'm sorry that this has been taking a while, but I was away this weekend.  Anyway, here's part 3 of my vacation.

On Tuesday, I took the train to Schaffhausen, in the northern part of Switzerland.  I wanted to visit partly because my great-grandfather came from there.  After I arrived, checked into the hostel, and got some Swiss francs, I wandered around the city.  It is an old city, with many Renaissance-era houses.  Many of these buildings are very richly decorated.

There are also a lot of bay windows.

There are a bunch of fountains with attached statues throughout the city, including this one of a particularly important Swiss:

(For anyone who does not know, that is William Tell.  He is a Swiss hero who, according to legend, was forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son by the cruel Austrian who was in charge of his part of Switzerland, then later assassinated the Austrian ruler, sparking a rebellion that led to the foundation of Switzerland.)

I also found a little walkway with an interesting name:

Note: That is not the side of the family that has connections to Schaffhausen (that I know of)

The next morning, I went to the Rhine Falls, the largest waterfall in Europe (although it doesn't have much on Niagara Falls).

I was able to take a boat to the rocks in the middle, where I was able to get a very up-close view of the falls.

On a second trip that went around the area below the falls, I saw a platform coming from the other side of the river.  Unfortunately, you had to pay for it, and I felt like I had already spent enough on the boat tickets, so I didn't go to the platform.

After visiting the other side of the river briefly, and questioning my judgement abilities when looking at the upstream part of the river and thinking, "I could probably canoe through that" (because, you know, it's totally safe to canoe down waterfalls), I took the bus back to Schaffhausen.

Definitely easier than Chase Rapids?

When I went back, I went through a self-guided tour of the city.  Part of this included going on the Munot, an old fortress overlooking the city.

There was a pretty good view from there.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get though everything, and had to frantically run back to the hostel, grab my stuff, and catch my train.

More mountains!

Eventually, I met with some relatives who live in northern Switzerland, Urs and Anita.  It was Urs's birthday, so a group of his family members came over for dinner.  I felt mildly guilty for not recognizing all of them from when I visited Switzerland 10 years ago.

The next day, I went on a bike ride with Urs.  We visited the physics research center where my cousin had worked, went along the Aare river, visited a town that had existed since the middle ages, and stopped by a lake with a lot of birds.

That night, I joined Urs at his yodeling choir rehearsal.  It was fun, although it was a struggle to sight sing and read lyrics in Swiss German at the same time.

The next day, we went to Aarau, the capital of the canton of Aargau.  We had lunch on an island, wandered around and looked at some buildings with well-decorated undersides of their roofs, and visited their nature museum.

A few things I noticed about Switzerland:

• I have absolutely no ability to understand Swiss German.  As in, Urs frequently had to translate what someone said into standard German.
• Switzerland is really expensive.  As an example, I saw a sign saying you could get a double cheeseburger from McDonalds for CHF 4.50 ($4.70).  I feel like most food was at least twice the price I would expect to pay in Germany.

All in all, I had a wonderful trip.