trip report: Urnäsch

We're back in Zurich (I mean, we've been back since Saturday), AND we are already booked to go back to Reka-Feriendorf Urnäsch for the same week after Christmas next year.

This seems a little silly. Surely we could think of something else to do, like, go visit family? or, see Europe while we have the chance? What is even the appeal of this place?

Somehow, it just seems to work.

Caroline loooooves the stall, which is built right into the apartment complex (!) and has horses, ponies, goats, rabbits, and guinea pigs.

This year: baby guinea pigs. Also baby bunnies and a relatively new pony. Caroline was here at least twice a day, every day.

Christopher loves (at least the idea of) sledding, and while there was no snow to be found anywhere around Urnäsch this year, it's not even half an hour on the bus to the base of the Säntisbahn, and there you can sled or (even better, apparently?) pretend you're an intrepid mountain explorer. Also, the "alpine coaster" toboggan-on-tracks in Jakobsbad, one train station away, turns out to be super fun.

Can you spot him? Barely, because he's gone where no kid has ever gone before.

Daniel likes...let's say the cheese. Often in small towns like Urnäsch, one store is allowed to be open on Sundays and holidays, and usually it's the grocery store. But in Urnäsch, it's the cheese factory. As in, oh darn, it's New Year's Day and we're out of milk, we'll have to go to visit the cheese counter again... Also, the apartment always comes stocked with Appenzeller Biber, which are soft gingerbread cookies filled with marzipan that came in Christmas care packages from Switzerland when he was a kid.

Cheesy.

I love the adorable red trains at the station right next to the apartment complex that converge on Urnäsch with typical Swiss punctuality one minute apart, every half hour, all day long. And Silvesterchlausen, which is what brought us to Urnäsch in the first place, but more on that in another post I hope?

As you can tell by the snow, I'm cheating: this is a picture from last year. But isn't that train just adorable? The whole thing is like a storybook.

Meanwhile, my uncle in Australia may or may not still have a house, Trump is starting a war with Iran and...oh yeah maybe it's clear enough what the appeal of a vacation in Appenzell is...