Hallenbad Altstetten

Joey and I set off this morning for my Integrationskurs: the rest of the women in the other language groups were going to be listening to a guest speaker, a gynecologist, but since all of us have already had our babies, our teacher decided we could talk about something a little more fun.  She polled the class for ideas and decided to humor my request to talk about tips for vacations, local and far-flung.

Stopping to say hello to the swans on the way to school

I learned a few things, including one disappointing bit of news: apparently two-thirds of the mountain passes in Switzerland are already snowy.  I was planning on taking the kids on an Alpine hike during their fall break, but apparently if I take them up, it'll be our ill-fated trip in March, all over again.

I also learned that the most famous sightseeing trains, such as the Glacier Express, which feature train cars with panoramic windows, and which travel to Switzerland's most famous peaks–Zermatt, Davos, and St. Moritz–are included in the exceedingly inclusive train pass that Dennis and I purchased.  (Usually, the tickets are well over a hundred francs.) However, I also learned that the train ride is really hard on little children: not only is it a very long, but the rapid change in elevation is really rough on the kids, apparently. So I don't suppose we'll be seeing the Matterhorn this year. Dennis and I added it to the list of things we'll do in ten or twenty years.

Instead, we'll enjoy some of the smaller pleasures in life, like the arrival of a box of gifts from Grandma Joani and Poppa Dan.  Dennis's parents sent a Halloween-themed box, filled with silly things from the dollar store that just drove the kids wild with excitement.  They're particularly thrilled with some most excellent disguises:

I have strong genes.

Joani also did me the wonderful favor of stopping by Lakeview Elementary, our school in Washington, and registering Ella and Alex for school. When we left on this trip, the one thing that made me the most uneasy was the question of whether Alex would be able to attend Lakeview when we returned. It's a smaller school, and often in the past they've had to send Kindergartners who registered too late to other schools in the district, bringing them back for first grade, and no one could promise me that the same thing wouldn't happen to Alex.

It would have been inconvenient in so many ways, having my three kids at three different schools, especially since Joey's preschool starts and ends at exactly the same time Kindergartens.  And Alex has some really good friends in the Kindergarten at Lakeview, not only the kids in our immediate neighborhood, but also some friends from his preschool class.

But today the secretary accepted our papers and told Joani they have a spot for Alex. I'm putting him in the half-day kindergarten class, which is only two and a half hours long (and, on Wednesdays, only two hours), so he'll be having significantly less class time than the four hours he's getting here.  And I'm really cool with that: it'll be nice having a little extra time with my sweet boy.

Having heard that good news, Alex and I snuggled up at bedtime and looked at the scrapbook that his preschool friends gave him when we moved to Switzerland, and we talked about which of his friends would be in school with him, and dreamed about throwing ourselves a welcome-home party so that we could see the rest of them, too.


There were other really good parts to our day, too: since the kids had a half-day and Ella had scarcely any homework, we went on a trip to the closest indoor pool, Hallenbad Altstetten. Ella had told nochElla about our plans, and the two of them successfully campaigned to have her join us.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a convenient way to get to this pool: the best I could do was two buses and a tram and a half-hour ride.  I'd say it was worth it, though: it was a pretty sweet complex.

They had three largish indoor pools: a diving well, a shallow pool for the kids, and lap pool, half of which had been cordoned off and was filled with an enormous bouncy structure that the kids scrambled around on.  They also had a long, twisty water slide in one corner, and, just beyond that, a large wellness pool, heated to 93 degrees.

And the best part about the wellness pool, aside from lovely temperature and the the submersed chairs with whirlpool bubbles, was the fact that the pool had both an indoor and an outdoor section, divided by plastic flaps.  Pools with plastic flaps are my favorite!  They brings back wonderful memories of family vacations at Holiday Inns.

Apparently this pool is usually only for adults, but on special days, particularly Wednesday afternoons, when kids across Zürich have no school, they invite adults to take their (quiet) children in with them.  So Joey and Alex and I spent a lot of time floating in the bubbles, looking up at the pine trees and the hedges, laced with mist-covered spiderwebs.

And when we weren't doing that, we spent a lot of time on the water slide, which also had bathtub-temperature water. The boys were huge fans, especially since the slide was blacked out in most parts, with stripes of light shining through in designs.

When I'd agreed to take Ella, I promised I'd have her back by "half-five" for a tennis lesson.  "Half-five" means halfway to five, or 4:30...and I knew that!  But somehow, still, my brain twisted my return time to 5:30, and I didn't realize my mistake until after our leisurely stop at the restaurant for an ice cream snack.  We had just barely enough time to make the trip home, but only if we didn't miss any of our connections, one of which was about a block away.  We really had to rush, and the kids did an amazing job of hurrying, although I don't think I'll ever forget watching poor Alex, his face a frantic mask of concentration, trying to run as fast as he could without dropping his ice cream.

We made it.

After the excitement of our first transfer, my ice-cream-coated Joey curled up on seat in the bus and promptly fell asleep, not even murmuring when I moved him into the stroller.

I think that means it was a good day.