Birthday in 8 Parts

Well, Reto's birthday is finally over, and various points can be made.

1. I am an excellent and thoughtful girlfriend. I got him an excellent present (it's a board game, which is testament to my powers of patience and self-sacrifice, because I don't really like board games. Or are they called bored games? Hmm. Anyway, it seems quite a good one and I don't hate it yet, although it is only a day later and we have only played 3 times) and I made him a birthday cake. Which was both delicious and fairly childish (and as you can see I didn't make enough icing to cover all the sides. Note also that he did not turn 5. My boyfriend is a sensible age, but I didn't want to turn the cake into an angry echidna with all the candles we would have needed to make it numerically accurate. Actually, I don't think we would have had enough candles, hahaha).

2. Mountains are nice. We went bushwalking on some mountain near here and it was lovely. The weather was nice (sunny but a bit cloudy and with a bit of wind so it wasn't too hot), the view was super, the whole thing was invigorating and outdoorsy and wholesome.

3. Mountainy Switzerland looks a bit like mountainy Australia (if you squint a bit and don't pay too much attention to what the altitude is. It also helps if you are above the tree line in both countries). Sadly I don't have the photos of our trip to Mt Kosciuszko here to prove it, but I might look into adding some later. For now, you'll just have to take my word for it, unlikely though it seems.

4. The Swiss are very civilised. While up on this mountain (and we spent basically the whole day at a higher altitude than the highest point in Australia) we went to two restaurants. There was another that we could have gone to, but we couldn't be bothered walking the few hundred vertical metres to get to it, and so we missed out on another overpriced coffee and piece of cake or sausage or similar). It actually reminded me quite a lot of many of Reto's stories of being in the army ("We went for a 6 hour hike. Well, it was 3 hours to a restaurant on top of a mountain and then we had lunch for an hour and then we walked back. The next day we went to a water-slide park").

5. Orthodox Jewish people are funnier than you might imagine. They always seem to wear such sensible hats for not-getting-sunburnt purposes, but up on the mountain apparently baseball caps are the headwear of choice. As well as white sneakers (which was sensible), plus all the normal orthodox Jewish attire. Possibly there were some undercover orthodox Jews up there too, but they weren't as noticeable as the ones who only traded in the hats and shoes.

6. I have unfortunate skin. I embraced my usual "spending time in the sun" ensemble (which basically means an umbrella and long pants, as well as several generous slatherings of 30+ sunscreen. "Australian standard" according to the bottle)

and still ended up kind of red at the end of the day. Sigh.

7. Samedan is tiny

(which wasn't news, but it was reaffirmed with a semi-aerial view) but the airport is super. It's just over the river from the bulk of the town (as you can perhaps tell from the pic) and there aren't really any fences keeping you from wandering about in it. In fact, there is a walking path leading to it and a bench so that you can sit there and look at it. We watched a few planes take off and land there the other day (which is NOWHERE NEAR AS NERDY AS IT SOUNDS, because they were all small planes and gliders, which was unusual and wobbly and fraught with potential danger), which was a welcome change from the mini golf debacle.

8. And finally, Swiss cows are very shiny and clean. And apparently potentially dangerous.