Swiss parks and play grounds

You know, before we moved here, I was scouring blogs on the internet of American moms living in Switzerland.  I ate up every bit of information I could find on anything about kids and the Swiss culture.  I remember reading one sarcastic blog post about being a parent in Switzerland, and regarding playgrounds, she made the point that there's not much at most said "playgrounds" and usually there quite dangerous for U.S. standards.   (From here-"You realize the one and only swing at the park is always taken...You realize no matter what park you go to, it’s designed for 7-year-olds and the one and only swing is still taken)

I can confirm that in part, those things are true.  Many play grounds are really meant for older kids and scare the heck out of toddler moms since the toddlers are of course wanting to do everything the older kids are doing (zip lines at some play grounds?! tall metal slides with maybe 4 inches of lip on the sides?! No baby swings?!).   When we first got here, I went to a couple parks and felt slightly disappointed compared to some of the parks we regularly visited in the States (or really, just Cook Park which was a half mile walk from our house).

BUT now that I've been here for over a year, I've explored more and I've found that there are many amazing Swiss parks for kids.  Some are similar to the parks in the States, I'm sure, but others are quite different.

First, you've seen plenty of play areas up in the mountains.  I think in general (except for most indoor sit-down restaurants-which we avoid-), Switzerland is quite family friendly.

[This may be a completely odd post to you, but for a mother with two toddlers, this is my life...visiting and finding new parks, the closer to home, the better.]

They have tons of these big swings which the kids love.  The below photos are from the town pool here which also happens to have a fun trampoline thing.

Blackberry picking 2015

A summer just isn't complete without some berry picking.  Bryce would say that a summer isn't complete without blackberry pies.  We had at least a berry pie each week for a month once the berries were ready.  We rode our bikes to the woods about a mile away and picked (for free!) as many berries as we could carry (as long as the kids were content).  Anyways, just wanted to share some photos since I couldn't believe how much bigger Maddie looks since last year when we first moved here and found the berry patches.

Day trip: Golzernsee

A couple weeks ago, we went on another beautiful hike not too far away.  We're squeezing in as many hikes as we can before the cold creeps in!

We didn't think much of this hike when we looked it up on our favorite website for hiking.  But once we were there, it was just perfectly Switzerland.  It had a steep ascent in a teeny gondola, striking views of the Alps, the path cutting through alpine meadows, passing cute houses with people drinking coffee out on their porches, a small church, a couple restaurants, and eventually, the alpine lake, Golzernsee.  

We stopped for lunch and the restaurant had a nice kids play area so we weren't stuck trying to entertain in a small space.

The lake was in a gorgeous setting and was actually quite warm!  We brought our swimsuits and swam while Carter snoozed.

Can you spy Carter?  He's nestled in the shade of our backpack and miraculously slept for almost an hour!

You can see the little red cable car coming up.  The town up here was so small and remote that the cable car stop here had all the post office boxes for these people who lived here.  I don't think there were any cars up here either!  Can you imagine taking a cable car down to get to your car to go to a big (bigger than a gas station size) grocery store?! Amazing.

This may be one of my all time favorite pictures of her.

She amazes me.  It wasn't a very long walk to the lake, but she walked almost the whole way (and with ice cream in hand on the way back)!  She is in her element when we're outside in the forest or hiking in the mountains.  

Swiss trash

Have I ever mentioned that Swiss trash is complicated and very serious?

This is random, but important for any person living here.  Plus, this is a daily part of our life now.

For the first 6 months, we were trying to figure out how things worked.  As a true American, we threw away almost everything in a trashcan.  But as a disclaimer, living in the Portland area, we improved at our recycling skills since they made it easy to recycle.

Here, you don't pay a utility or trash bill.  You buy official trash bags that comply with the area in which you live.  They're 18 Swiss francs for 10 bags (35 L....which is almost half the size of a kitchen trashcan in the USA.  You can also buy 60L bags, but no one has a 60 L trashcan in their house here.  With this whole buy-your-own-bags thing, you want to put the least amount of trash in one bag, which means it encourages you to recycle anything and everything that you can.  However, that can be quite inconvenient.

At the grocery store, there's a recycling center that looks just like this (below).  You can recycle plastic bottles including PET, batteries, light bulbs, CDs, and cleaning bottles like detergent and soap.  BUT, you cannot recycle plastic egg containers or plastic fruit containers (think strawberries) here.  I think they probably put the NOTICE sign up for me at our grocery store because I was always throwing all my plastic stuff in there.

(image)

Maddie sometimes helps me sort through our trash.  So fun!....