Daley Ponderings

While looking at a dollar coin, Jonathan said, "I think it has a picture of Obama or something", (really, it's Andrew Jackson).

"Switzerland laughs and American laughs are the same; only the language is different.  I made my silly face at people in Switzerland, and they laughed like a regular American."

Mydad had mentioned a news article story a month ago about some company charging a whole bunch of people $.01 each on their credit cards; presumably with the thought that no one would complain about a $.01 charge, and since they charged a million people or something, they made a bunch of money.

It seems to me that the credit card companies should simply remove those charges automatically, once the fraud is discovered, but Citibank Business (AKA worse service than Citibank Personal) didn't, and I had to call to get it removed. (More)

Very early in the morning, we got up, had breakfast and said goodbye to Sarah (all the other Dutlers said goodbye the night before.) Janet and Stephan came to pick us up and we crammed all ourselves and stuff into the mini-minivan. They took us to the Basel airport where we spent quite some time trying to figure out our seating arrangements. The week before when Jon called, they said he'd better call within 24 hours of the flight. When he called then, they said he should have called earlier. Finally they worked out something but Jon would still have to talk to the boarding desk people in Frankfurt.  (More)

I thought I had written about this before, but I can't find it, so maybe we just talked about it over email.

We purchased health insurance through Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield when I first started working for myself. It was the same plan as we had when workingfor Dynavox, though since there wasn't a co-pay any more, it was actual cheaper for regular visits, because some things are covered at 100% and some at 90%, and the 10% is cheaper than the $20 co-pay, which I hadn't realized would happen. (More)

We missed our intended tram for the morning, but the next one got us to church just barely in time.  In fact, we met the Dutlers coming up the sidewalk.  It was nice to visit Janet's church.  This is, in fact, where she met Stephan.  Jon told Jonathan he could go to Sunday School if he wanted to, and he did.  This was his first time. (More)

In the morning we once again took an early tram to the train station. This time we boarded the train by ourselves and rode to Bern. As soon as we got off, we were greeted by Reto, “You must be the Daleys!” Reto is a programmer that Jon met through the LifeType project. He lives in Bern and this is the first time we met him face to face.  (More)

Once again we took an early tram to thetrain station, meeting Janet and Stephan there. Then we rode to Zurich and the first thing we did was walk to the historical museum. We saw ancient gold, medieval and more modern weapons, and costumes, elaborately panelled rooms, banners and medals from Reformation times, battle reenactment scenes, giant globes and more. There was something wrong with the heating system that day and the museum was cold! While we decided what to do next, we sat in front of a working radiator to warm up. (More)

I was in need of a break from sightseeing and catching trams and we were out of clean clothes.  Jon started a wash as soon as we got up.  I asked him about his eye and he said it felt fine.  Praise God! (More)

We intended to get up early and go back to Richard's to finish vacuuming and do a wash (Wednesday - Mittwoch - being his assigned wash day.) However, we spent a while eating breakfast with our hosts.  It turned out that Richard had come home late the night before so he had started a wash first thing in the morning.  This was a good thing because we only had time for one wash.  We finished cleaning up there and then walked to Stephan and Janet's apartment.  We passed the zoo on the way and got to see some mountain goats from the bridge that crosses over the zoo.  Jon knew how to get there except didn't know the building number.  We looked at the names on the doorbells but did not find the right one, so eventually called.  It was a doorway that had no bells because you had to go through a courtyard to get to his buildling.  Their apartment is at the very top. The elder Stücklins and Wightmans were discussing July plans when we got there. (More)

The morning got off to a slow start, but we did more packing and I believe Mom and Dad came to Richard's so we could all go together to the heart of Basel.  We were originally going to see some sights and then meet Janet and Stephan for lunch, but we ended up just getting there in time for lunch.  We ate at the Stöckli restaurant which is one of Janet's favorites.  A bunch of us ordered these potato things, which will have to wait to be named until a commenter-in-the-know can clue me in. (Röschti) Stephan ordered raclette and let me have some, which I enjoyed much. (More)

The Swiss prefer to drink their water with carbonation and it's hard to find bottled water without it.  The tap water in most places (including the public outdoor fountains) is perfcetly drinkable but you have to ask for it.  At the castle, they served us the "with gas" kind most of the time, though a few glasses managed to be "without."  (This included one miracle glass for me.  Jon asked the server for no gas, but did not manage to communicate that this request was for me as well, so the lady poured some into my glass and went to get a no gas bottle with which to fill Jon's. Then I took a sip and exclaimed that it was regular water.  It had no hint of carbonation, which seemed to rule out the possibility that it was a leftover bit from a bottle that had been standing around for a while.  So Jon rushed up to the lady with his glass to ask her to fill it with that bottle.  However, his was perfectly fizzy.  We have not found an explanation.) (More)

I woke up around 6am (with alarm) and got ready to go to Valda's to get my hair done.  I got myself some yummy muesli with yogurt and sat down in the living room to eat, only to see the clock and note that I needed to leave in only a few minutes.   I gulped a few more mouthfuls as I put my breakfast in the fridge and ran around getting Faith in her carseat and my coat on.  Somehow I miscalculated the time, and I even had to rush to take the next tram.  With the diaper bag on my back, Faith in her carseat over one arm, and the garment bag in the other hand, I walked quickly to the tram stop that I had never been to before. I got to the intersection and could not see the tracks.  Thankfully, I saw the electric lines above and with only a little more confusion, stepped to the correct platform just a minute or two before the arrival of the tram.  I caught my breath during the ride and got off at Neubad.  This is a five-way intersection, and I knew that the entrance to Valda's apartment was across the street to the left of the grocery store.  So I headed that direction and did not find the entrance. In fact, the whole storefront looked wrong.  I looked around the intersection and found that the other grocery store is one street over, and then following my directions from that store, I successfully entered Valda's apartment. (More)

We interrupt the story of the trip with a special news bulletin.

After much fussiness in the morning as we were preparing to leave New Hampshire, Faith's lower left front tooth broke through the surface during the car ride home.

Waking up at the above mentioned 2pm left us just enough time to get ready to go to the Renaissance Dance Rehearsal at 3:00.  Janet wanted us to dance to medieval music at the wedding reception and thought it would be a good idea for us to practice ahead of time.  About 20 of us were there, and had a very fun time.  It's group dancing, like English Country Dancing or Contra Dancing. Each person has a partner, but all the sets of partners dance together as a whole.  Some of the dances did not use partners, but were all holding hands together in a circle.  We did many different dances and often were quite clumsy at it, but it was fun nonetheless.  The boys were not very interested in dancing, and even took a little nap.  Noah did join in during a couple of the simpler dances, but was intimidated by the more complex dances (if only he knew that we didn't know what we were doing...).  Jonathan was sad that he was by himself, but there wasn't much to do about it since he didn't want to dance, even during the simpler ones - I suspect it was more a pride issue of not wanting to change his mind after saying that he didn't want to dance earlier.  I think it might have been different if we started with the simpler dances earlier. (More)

Barbara drove us, with our two big suitcases, three backpacks, computer suitcase, and small/hand bag, to the bus station in Concord.  We got there just in time to buy tickets and get on the bus that took us to Logan airport in Boston.  Check-in went smoothly and our biggest suitcase was just one kilogram shy of the weight limit.  There was some issue with our seating (a recurring problem you will find out) and Jon went to the Lufthansa help person to try to work it out.  We ended up with me and Faith in a bulkhead/bassinet seat, and all the males one row ahead of us.  It turned out those two rows were separated by the kitchen so we saw very little of one another during the flight.  Getting through security went relatively smoothly for five people.  (More)