Packing, Final Cuts and Cleaning Day

Tuesday was a day full of packing for the trip home that starts on Wednesday.

Difficult final decisions had to be made as to what to take, what to donate to charity, what to ship home via the Swiss Post Office and what to just flat out throw away.

Once all of this was sorted out and a new smaller carry-on suitcase was purchased to replace my old one that was just a bit too large for the newer European airline regulations covering such things.

I had to pay a whopping 70 Euros in Madrid to stow my old, slightly too large by Swiss Airlines standards, carry-on in the cargo hold on the flight from Madrid to Zürich last February. Facing two such flights from Zürich back to Madrid Thursday morning and from Madrid to London a week later, the new carry-on made financial sense.

The evening was filled with a few more good-byes as we went out to dinner with Stephan Pulver, Cyril Imadjane, Daniel Gygax and Nico Leibundgut. They hosted us at a nice restaurant near Lake Thun's shoreline that specializes in an all-you-can-eat meat and potatoes affair called Tartar Hat.

Tartar Hat

Tartar Hat is a cook-your-own-meat-at-your-table on a small wood/coal burning contraption that is shaped like a Tartar's hat with several mini-hooks to hang your meat and vegetables on until properly grilled.

The communal meat plates came with beef, veal, chicken, pork and horse. You begin with slices of bacon at the top of the hat.  The bacon grease drips down the hat, creating a non-stick surface for the meats. 

And it is SO good for me too.

Since we will soon be back in the USA where you can not buy horsemeat, I definitely cooked some copious amounts of equine flesh on my side of the hat.

Once back at Helvetica, we shared one last bottle of delicious Italian red wine with Ueli and Cindy.

Thanks to all of them for making our last night in Thun a good one.

Reading is FUNdamental

My last book courtesy of the

Thun Library

Like many who follow this blog, I suspect, I have seen many of the James Bond movies (Sean Connery is the best Bond, PERIOD), but until now had not read any of author Ian Fleming's books about the master British spy.


It is considered by Bond critics to be the best of the Bond books and I found it to be thoroughly entertaining.