Switzerland - Appenzell

1 September

It was pouring rain in the morning, but luckily we were mostly on trains.  We took a train from Zürich to Gossau, and then switched to an older train that would take us the rest of the way to Appanzell. The scenery was what I would call “classic Switzerland” with rolling green hills, red roofed houses, little onion dome churches in every little dorf, and cows grazing in every pasture. We even passed a Swiss cattle drive, where I jumped up to get a photo and it ended up out of focus. They were even wearing the traditional outfits! By the time we got to Appenzell it was 12:15.  We had read there was a bus that would take us to Stein, which was where the cheese demonstration factory was located.  However, when I asked about it in the train station, the lady told me that wasn’t possible but we could take a public car through Die Post. So, she booked us on a 12:45 shuttle and a return 2 hours later (we didn’t know how long it would take). We had a little bit of time to wander around the sleepy town of Appenzell, which was even more sleepy due to the fact that everything but the cafes close down from 12-13:30.  It was still neat to look around and see all the buildings and signs.

The Postal car was just for us, and was 5 Francs each with our discount with the Eurail pass. It was about a 10 minute drive through very scenic countryside.  When we got to the Appenzell cheese demonstration factory, there was a tour in progress with people milling around everywhere. I tried to get the attention of the people in the info booth but they ignored me.  As such, we decided lunch would be the first order of business. We ordered two beers from Appenzell (not liters, but pretty large nonetheless).  We ordered toast with tomato and pear with cheese melted over the whole thing, and a sampler platter of 5 of their cheeses (aged differently, organic, etc.).  It was really good, and felt very Swiss. We got a little confused about how the tours worked (seems they needed to be booked in advance) so we didn't get on one but did get to explore some exhibits and got so look down on the curd development and first press. We also saw all of the cheese aging in the cellar, and were fascinated by the machine that would pull out three cheese wheels at a time, flip them into the brine bath, then reload the slot and proceed down the column. Just like they’ve done for hundreds of years, I’m sure. We had booked a return car for 2 hours later so that limited the amount of time to explore the cheese factory.

We were the only ones in the first class section of the train back to St. Gallen and it was really hot and stuffy before we realized that we could open the window. Good thing we did because we heard the cow bells as we rode though the hillside! It was a very picturesque train ride, but the heat and afternoon made us a bit sleepy. We switched trains in St. Gallen, where we had a brief layover. Back in Zürich, we got a little confused and got on the train to Affoltern am Amp instead of just plain “Affoltern”, which is the one we needed to get back to Cathy and Martin’s, but in the end we figured out our error quickly and recovered. We had purchased a SIM card for the unlocked 3G iPhone that morning. It hadn't been able to get on the Internet all day, so Ryan went into an Orange (a local mobile phone carrier) store, got up the confidence to ask "sprechen Sie English?" and turned out to have gotten a lady with a very thick Scottish accent! It took a bit of time and several reboots but it did eventually start working. 10 CHF for the SIM card and 2 CHF per day for the internet isn't bad.  We stopped off at the store to pick up some food to have at Cathy and Martin’s (and see the grocery store). We only got a little lost trying to get back to their apartment from there... They made a very delicious dinner of pork tenderloin, polenta, and a mâché (apparently called Nussli (?) in Switzerland) salad (I was very happy to have the vegetables!) and we had good wine and prosecco. We also threw in some laundry so we would be ready for our trip over the weekend to Geneva.

I was having a hard time understanding people in Switzerland, we we happy to hear that is because Swiss German is very different than hoch Deutsch or even anything in Southern Germany due to the influence of French and to a lesser extent, Italian.  So it’s not just that I have very poor German skills that I’ve forgotten over the last 10 years, but more that I speak very formal, prissy German!