We awoke this morning to a chorus of church bells or so it seemed, a
quick glance out the window, and we saw 200 sheep, all wearing bells,
being herded right past our sleeping spot. Crazy!
After getting some good photos of that and 'little' red Pat sticking
out like a sore thumb amongst all the big flash white campervans, we
headed down the hill into Livigno. It is easy to see that not long
ago this would have been a sleepy little mountain village, now it is a
duty free oasis with flashy brands and their overpriced shoes,
clothes, perfume etc.
Then it was into a one laned tunnel, with an unexpected €15 toll,
straight through a mountain range and into Switzerland - where finally
we had to show our passport to someone!!
With not much idea of the exchange rate our first task was to find
that out, then figure out how many Swiss Francs we'll need for the
next 5 days.
The Info centre wasn't much help, as in Italy, everyone takes a
siesta between 12 and 2! After backtracking when we took a wrong turn
which would have got us on to a 'car train' we headed once again into
the hills.
Our destination is Buchen a little 'six house' village in the Prätigau
valley near the Swiss/Austria border. We have organised to say with
some more Verry family friends. When I say organised, this involved a
phone call to New Zealand (thank you very much Hans & Stephanie),
because our hosts Annj and Bartli don't speak English, and we don't
speak German! It will be an interesting experience:-)
We arrived in Buchan with directions to the house with the New
Zealand flag outside - easy!!! There we were greeted by a very
hospitable Annj and Kirstin. Kirstin had been invited for dinner, and
acted as translator for the evening. Luckily there were a number of
English/Deutsch dictionaries available and we spent the evening
cramming our heads with suitable German nouns and adjectives, which
would enable a level of communication, beyond charades, between our
hosts and us.
We had a most enjoyable evening playing with traditional Swiss
raclette. This involves preparing you own food on an electric hotplate
and grill which in located in the middle of the table. Alpkäse
(alpine cheese) from this region and the local speck (bacon) is
grilled then poured over baked potato. Yummy!
Towards the end of Arbengessen (dinner) Bartli arrived back from his
deer hunting reconnaissance, and joined us for homade cherry scnapps.
Again... yummy!
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