it’s sunday…yesterday we attended a full day workshop on “aufatmen und frei sein” (roughly translated as “breath again and be free”) which was organized by the united methodist church of switzerland and took place in zurich. it was rather refreshing and provided lots of encouragement not only to take a positive, christian view of the world but also to try and make a difference in other people’s lives. the workshop was done by robert seitz (contributing excellent texts, giving much food for thought) and christof fankhauser (accentuating and amplifying seitz’s texts through his musical meditations and songs). excellent stuff.

today, we are off to take a winter walk. originally i wanted to take a walk on top of rigi — to which my beloved wife objects on the grounds that it takes too long to get there…hmm…the argument that there’s a very pleasant boat ride from lucerne to vitznau included somehow does not find a lot of purchase — instead an alternative is proposed: zugerberg. at first i’m quite sceptical. “zugerberg” sounds like a lot like “üetliberg”, the favourite local mountain of all of zurich (with good weather up on üetliberg and bad weather down in zurich, that is quite often in winter, you almost have to queue to take a walk)…but: it only takes 1 hour 10min to get there by public transport. as my wife (as always :-) has a point about the travel time required to get on top of rigi, we finally agree on zugerberg.

so, after a nice sunday morning breakfast we take the train at 10:55 to sihlbrugg, change into the train from zurich to zug, take a local bus up to the ground station of the zugerberg funicular railway and then the funicular railway up the mountain. while it’s all grey in grey down in the plain, once we pass the 900m mark we break through to the sun! up at the mountain station we have a fantastic view across the alps, with pilatus to our right, followed by rigi and a bunch of other mountains (sorry, pilatus & rigi are about the only ones i can identify — unlike mr r who knows the silhouette of every swiss mountain from any direction at any time of day).

we take the large walk combining winter walks #2, #3, and #4 into one long walk. quite a number of people are up here, but it’s not crowded yet. part of the high plateau up zugerberg consists of moor land: and the vegetation looks rather like the moor land of northern germany transplanted to the alps! cool! :-)

all in all a very nice day — thanks to dorothee!