Month: September 2018

All good things….

Posted on by kwundrow

We have arrived in Switzerland and tonight we dine in Lucerne.  The Alps form the backdrop of most of our pictures and rise straight up out of the flat plains that surround them.

But let’s go back to yesterday and our farewell to the crew, the boat and new dear friends.  We have spent the last seven days doing pretty much everything together and saying goodbye last night was very difficult.  We have promised to stay in touch and have made some preliminary plans to visit each other’s homes.  Our friends are from Atlanta so this will take some dedication to make the journey either way.

When you travel in a group as we have these last seven days, it becomes quite easy to share our stories and suddenly find ourselves becoming bonded over common likes and plans.  This is a side effect of the travel but really one of the most important aspects of it.  There are river ships and ocena ships but the greatest are the friendships.

So this morning, we left the boat headed for our stay in Lucerne, without our Georgia friends.  They had left much earlier and caught their flight for home.  Though strange, we were still looking forward to our extended stay in Switzerland.

After our city tour and a quick lunch of local cuisine, we were on a bus headed for Stanserhorn and the long ride to its summit.  We start with a cog railroad ride for the first leg.  The train is the original train from 1893.  As we climb up the open meadow flank of the mountain, we see Lucerne and the surrounding villages drop away below us.  But this is just the first leg and the real climb waits at the end of the rail line.  At about 1/6 of the way up the mountain, we switch over to the cable car.

I have been on cable cars before.  I have been higher up on mountains out west, but this was clearly different.  Not sure whether it was the steepness or just the seeming singleness of this peak, but the sense of vertigo was overwhelming.  One can only wish the pictures could adequately display the view and somehow create the same sensation of floating, but only being there can have you truly appreciating the majesty of the Alps.

As if the sheer power and magnitude of the mountain and our precarious ride up its face were not impressive enough, there was a surprise.  Nearing the top, in a clearing hanging on the side of the mountain, we could see the switchbacks of a trail and then, to our surprise, the appearance of cows grazing at an incredibly impossible angle.  And where there were cows, there were farm buildings perched on the terraces of the mountain.

Switzerland has, by law, no corporate farms.  The average farm in Switzerland is a postage stamp fifty acres.  What shocked me, was that even here, high on this mountain side, farmers and their families were harvesting meadow hay for the cattle.

After a white knuckle hike to the final summit and a cliff walk back to the top of the cable car, we were headed back down.  Our cameras were full of the shots we could only hope told the story but the views and the sensations we experienced were etched in our memories and would travel down the mountain with us and then back to our homes as our journey was coming to an end.

We are comfortably seated at our restaurant on the edge of the canal.  Our waiter is bringing us more drinks and food as we listen to an impromptu concert break out across the canal.  The Alps are bathed in the waning sunlight as evening closes in on us.

One more day in Switzerland.  One more chance to record the memories of a country I never thought I’d see.  One more day to be the traveler.

We were just strangers when we met

Posted on by kwundrow

The sign read “There are no strangers here, just friends you haven’t met.”  This turned out to be pretty prophetic.  By the end of one month of travel, we had met many strangers who by the time we had to part ways, were new friends.

August found my wife and I on a trip up the Rhine in Europe.  It started with us meeting two couples from Nebraska, Mureen and her husband Murray and Gayle and her husband Larry.  We shared stories and drinks and continued those conversations all week long.  Now we also met another couple the very first day and bravely introduced ourselves.  Through the next ten days, we shared walks and talks, dinners and stories of our lives.  But eventually we were saying goodbye to our new friends, Polly and Stu, but knowing we would make a mutual effort to meet again.  Strangers had turned out to be friends we just hadn’t met.

And then there was Lucerne.  We had boarded a paddlewheeler for a trip around Lake Lucerne.  Knowing no local dialects and completely on our own, we took a seat across from an elderly women.  As the boat moved away from the pier, she leaned over and asked if we were from the U.S.  Over the next hour we carried on a fascinating conversation learning things about our new friend, Lucerne and Switzerland.  When she had to disembark at her stop, the women next to her, not knowing any of us, leaned in and said “I’ll take care of them from here.”  And she did.  No language barrier was going to thwart the effort of strangers becoming friends.

My wife and I just returned from a short trip to the North Woods.  On day two of our stay, I headed out to an area golf course.  I was going to squeeze in a quick nine holes somehow hoping I could just play alone and practice my game undisturbed by any semblance of competition.  But this was not to be.  Instead, I was paired up with two gentleman, Gene and his son-in-law, Ryan.  As they had never played the course, I turned out to be their guide.  The three of us shared a very beautiful fall morning and what turned out to be one of my best scores of the season.  As I finished on the ninth hole, we all wished each other well and where we had been strangers just two hours earlier, parted as friends.

The next day, Deb and I took a long bike ride on a trail near our cottage.  When we returned back to our car, which we had left parked at a local pub, we decided we needed some lunch and the pub looked inviting.  It was while we were there that I discovered the sign I quoted at the beginning of this piece.  It was placed prominently above the bar and in the patrons soon proved how true it was.  In no time at all we were in conversation with two local construction workers, the bartender / owner of the pub and two other couples who were traveling like us and had decided to drop in, because that’s what you do at a North Woods pub.  The sign was true, there really were no strangers there.

The next day found us again at the end of another bike ride exploring yet another local pub.  Before you start worrying about my drinking habits, remember that we are on vacation, wait even better, we are retired.  Earlier, as we were locking our bikes and walking downtown, a woman crossing the street had overheard us pondering about this new place, well new to us, and told us it was a great place and that we ought to stop back later when the place opened.  Well it was later and we heeded her advice and entered the establishment.  To our surprise, the women, it turns out her name was Margaret, was not only working there but was in fact the co-owner.  We ordered our drinks and retired to the warmth and coziness of their backyard patio.  There Margaret waited on and conversed with us, sharing her story and getting ours in return.  Within the span of half an hour, we felt like friends.  Hopefully Margaret is reading this blog and is approving my story.  There is no doubt that The Vine in Minocqua will be a new favorite stop on our stays up North and we will look forward to more conversations with the owners, Margaret and Scott.

Our trip was coming to a close when we got one last chance to make a stranger a friend.  It was Saturday and we had just finished golfing.  Not wanting to miss the Badger’s football game, we stopped in the Sayner Pub, yes, I know this is starting to sound like a North Woods pub review but it’s just a coincidence.  We seated ourselves at the bar, best viewing position, I swear, and began watching the game.  We were soon surrounded by strangers who through the comraderie of a sporting event would become our new friends of the day.  Bob on our left, recently retired and living up North and Ryan on our right who turned out to be from Madison.  The Badgers won, we all celebrated and after sharing our stories, parted with the memories and emotions of another well spent day.

This piece would be pointless without a message, okay moral.  One never knows what interesting story resides in the stranger sitting next to you or maybe waiting in the same line.  That is unless you take the step to find out.  To maybe even introduce yourself.  What’s the worst that could happen?  They might just turn out to be the friend you haven’t met.

First Days

Posted on by kwundrow

This week our children and in my case, grandchild are headed back to school.  Summer is over in some sense and play time is being replaced by school time.  I came across this quote by The Prophet, Khalil Gibran that my sister had shared in a post.

“Your children are not your children, they’re the sons and daughters of life longing for itself. They come through you but they are not from you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you. You can give them your love but not your thoughts. They have their own thoughts. You can house their bodies but not their souls — for the souls are in a place of tomorrow that you cannot visit. Not even in your dreams. You can strive to be like them, but you cannot make them just like you.”

As I read these words and felt them resonate within me, I knew I had to write about my version.

Twenty two years ago this week, I prepared to walk my daughter Kathryn to her very first day of school.  At five years old she was our stubbornly independent challenge.  There was seemingly nothing she didin’t feel she could do on her own.  As we prepared to leave the house, she declared that she did not want me walking her to school.  She was fully intending on taking the five block walk on her own.  As I insisted that it wasn’t going down that way she dug her heels in harder.  After some intense negotiations, I managed to carve out a compromise.  I would be allowed to walk with her to the end of the block before her school but there would be no hand holding.  I accepted this compromise fully believing that she would soften on the way and allow me to go that last block to the school doors.  And with that folly in my head, we set off.

There was no hand holding and as we approached the last block I was being allowed to walk, she informed me she was going to say goodbye and I needed to go home.  The look on her face told me there were no further negotiations to be had.

Now before you think badly of me leaving my precious daughter to walk that last five hundred feet all alone, I at least had one last trick.  As I turned back toward home, with a handshake goodbye, I ducked behind the tree that would hide me from her view.  From my vantage point I was able to watch as she approached the school.  My heart ached as I saw the line of parents standing there with their children, holding hands and hugging them close.  And there was Kathryn, in her first day dress and that Pretty Pony pink backpack.

And then it hit me.  What was the one thing I had wanted for her as I held her tiny body in my arms just moments after her birth?  I wanted her to be independent, to have her own mind about things and the courage and determination to follow her dreams where ever they would take her.  And now, watching her from my hiding spot behind that tree, I realized that she was going to be just fine.

All of this leads me back to the words of the prophet.  We can try to relive our lives through our children. We can try to mold them to the form we would have them take but the truth is they really aren’t ours to keep.  Our role is one of slowly moving away from center stage and back to the wings, where if we are wise, we quietly observe the wonder of life through their eyes.  We understand that we can bring them into this world but it is their world from that moment forward and they belong to it.  They will carve their path and leave their mark and if we trust them to walk that last block alone, the mark they leave, just might be great.

So as you take those first day photos and bid your children goodbye, trust them, trust yourself.  They will succeed if you let them and they will flourish if you encourage them.  This is their first day.