Atzmännig

The Alps are covered with tiny ski destinations that often consist of little more than a lift, a locker room, and a working bathroom.  Sometimes, to bring in a little summertime income with their lifts, these operations add Alpine slides to their property.  The toboggan runs, or Rodelbahns, are metal chutes, usually more than a half-mile long, that you can ride down on small wheeled carts.  Equipped with handbrakes, of course. (Although Alex would rather they weren't)

The more ambitious of these operations add other activities, as well: the one we visited today, Atzmännig, had a small amusement park, high ropes courses, a large restaurant, and several hiking trails. Man, we had fun! 

Yep, that's my son, inside a giant stein.

We had to take 75 minutes of public transportation to get there, but our bus wove into up into the mountains and dropped us right in the parking lot of this funny little place.  We arrived right around noon, but it was still fairly quiet: the kids made a mad dash for the playground while Dennis tried to figure out what we'd gotten ourselves into.

Coin-operated waterslide

I'd read that the park was free entry, with several coin-operated rides, and so we'd scraped all of the change off our dressers before leaving Zürich.  But I hadn't anticipated just how elaborate coin-operated rides could be.  They had coin-operated go-carts, an adult-sized coin-operated mechanical bull (Texas rodeo-style), a coin-operated parachute ride that glided across the park, coin-operated trampolines (with a cover that slide over after three minutes of jumping), and, most impressive, a weird water slide that hauled you up on a chute and then sent you flying off a jump a plastic sled, for the low, low cost of a two-franc coin. Of course, everything was completely unattended.

We let the kids go on a couple of the lower-key rides: the little circular swings and the tiny merry-go-round, while we finished up deciding how we wanted to spend our day.  We decided to start it with lunch, and then continue with a hike in the hills before rewarding the kids with some more rides.

Lunch was a little fraught.  We got the kids chicken nuggets, two plates to share, and the were Extra-Value-Meal–huge.  I made the mistake of putting one of the plates in front of Joey, who decided he was entitled to the entire portion.  When Dennis and I tried to nip some fries, he lost his mind, screaming "NO! MY FOOD!" We've faced this before, Dennis and I, and we always think of that episode of Friends: "Joey doesn't share food!"

So I had to haul my screaming toddler ("WHERE'S MY FO-O-OD?!") out of the restaurant for a while, long enough for Ella and Alex to claim some lunch as well.  We wrapped it all up and let the kids finish eating as they rode the ski-lift up the mountain.

The ski-lift (which was attended, incredibly) had a stop half-way up the mountain for the Rodelbahn, but, if you ride it all the way to the top, you're dropped at the head of the Frechspatz Männi trail, which you can follow downhill, all the way back to the amusement park.

The ride was so beautiful: Dennis bravely took angsty Joe, Ella rode on her own, and I had the pleasure of Alex's company.  All the way up the hills we could hear clanging bells from various small herds of cows.  Dennis said that, as they were riding up, he and Joey played that favorite toddler game, "What does the animal say?" Joey reported that sheep say "Maaaa," ducks say "quack," and, as of today, cows say "Ding-dong."

Hi, Ella!

Those cows are wearing some serious bells. You can hear
them in the video.

If you look search for theme trails in Switzerland, you'll find dozens: child-friendly hikes through the Alps with frequent playgrounds along the path and, often, an accompanying storyline.  I suspect the Swiss do this to propagate their tradition of being a nation of hikers. We tried to visit one of these in Bannalp; today we had much more success.  

Reading the Frechspatz Männi story

The entrepreneurial Atzmännig management, published a children's book to accompany this particular hike, the story of a fresh little bird, Frechspatz Männi, who decides to fly in the face of authority and rewrite all of the posted rules in his kingdom, eventually becoming king himself for proving himself brave and true.  At the trail head they have a large facsimile of the book posted, which Dennis heroically translated for the children.

Then, all along the hike, we found the little playgrounds depicting scenes from the story.

A sign, altered by Männi

Ella, clanging the gong at the "Lärm ist lüstig"
(or "noise is fun") station

The most ingenious of these had a target made from the upended legs of a hunter (whose shoelaces Männi had tied together). It was placed in a little grove of pinetrees, and the kids were instructed to let the pinecones fly ("fliegen," altered by that cheeky Männi from "liegen," or "lie"). So the kids had a fun time gathering pinecones and chucking them through the target.

The hike was supposed to take an hour: according to my Integration teacher, any trailhead approximation takes elevation into account and calls for a brisk walk. We took well over two hours to make our way down the mountain. But it was beautiful.

It was a little hazy, but the hills were gorgeous

Playing in a field of dandelions, with Ella pretending
that they're magic wands tipped with fairy dust

There was plenty of evidence that goats and cows grazed along our hiking trail.  There were lots of gates along the trail and much of it was fenced off with wire, probably to keep these animals from bothering the hikers, but a small herd of goats proved, time and again, that these barriers were no match, and they followed us a good ways down the mountain. The boys have learned, from the many petting zoos they've visited, that goats can be bossy and mean, so Alex, particularly, made a point of running far ahead of our travel companions.  But I thought they were pretty funny.

In the spider canyon, where Männi (and
mommy) proved brave

Ella, proving herself worthy of being crowned
queen of Männi's kingdom.

Joey appointed himself the new Tafel-Meister
(or sign master) of the kingdom.  And he was
mighty angry when we made him descend
his throne, crying himself to exhaustion,
poor guy. It probably didn't help his mood that,
despite the 80-degree weather, he refused to
take off his favorite choo-choo train sweater.

Joey fell asleep in Dennis's arms at the end of the hike, which gave the grown-ups a little time to sneak off, by turns, to take Alex down the Rodelbahn.  Ella was a little too afraid, but she had a lot of fun on the trampolines and a set of smaller metal slides, all except for the free-fall slide, which Dennis gave her a little nudge down.  She forgave him...eventually.

And Joey woke up, refreshed and in a better mood, with enough for his big brother to take him on a few trips around the go-kart track.

The bus home left every hour, and we took the five o'clock one home, arriving back, finally, with a daughter hungry enough to devour her first Swiss-style sausage.

I wouldn't say she was tired, though: when we got home, I saw her friend Paul and another boy peeping through our blinds, hoping they could find Ella to play.  Ella was, of course, was halfway around the building when I called her back, telling her her she had to eat dinner instead.  "Meet me at the fountain at 10:00 sharp tomorrow," she called to the boys.

Incidentally, Jeremy Templeton and Edward Feng, when my daughter was born, you promised me a shotgun.  I might be needing that soon.