Appenzell

A few weeks ago, when we were writing up our Switzerland bucket list, we'd sketched out weekends for different adventures: according to our calendar, today we were supposed to visit Appenzell.  I wasn't counting on it, with Dennis having felt so awful, but all that rest did him good, and he felt ready to get out of the house.  The fact that our lazy stroll around Appenzell was going to be flanked by two quiet, two-hour train rides helped as well.  So Dennis made the coffee and I coaxed the kids into packing their day bags, and we were headed out of town by 9:30.

I love seeing what the kids put in their little train bags. Alex's had only a deck of Uno cards: he insists that's all he needs in this world.  Joey's was overflowing with cars and puppets and Mr. Men books, and a little plastic barn filled with tiny plastic pigs (Gretchen, guess where he got it! Best party favor ever.) that he's been toting around for over a week, now.  His great-grandpa was a pig farmer, after all.

And Ella's bag...excuse me, purse...has every rappen and franc of her hoard (which I just know we'll lose one of these days!) and a couple of novels (one is certainly not enough) and her complete collection of make-up: four fluorescent bottles of nail polish and a little container of eyeshadow that she got for her birthday.  She never wears any of it, but isn't a girl supposed to carry makeup in her purse?

While our tickets were being checked, the conductor told us that there was a playground in the back of the train. We sent Ella to scout, and she came back, breathless, beckoning.  And Dennis and I were more than happy to move: we were sharing our car with some teenagers, drunk at 10:00 AM. Ah, yes. It must be time for Oktoberfest.

Ella and Dennis, getting
homework out of the way
on the train.

A new in-train playground, jungle themed, with a slide, a
wee boat, and plenty of cubbies to hide in.  Ella pretended
she was a tiger and chased her thrilled mouse brothers
around the car. 

Appenzell is in the northeast of Switzerland, and, apart from being famous for its cheese, it's known for being home to the Swissest of the Swiss.  The most staunchly traditional.  For example, in Appenzell, each year on the last Sunday in April, the citizens of the canton gather in the Appenzell square to vote on their local issues.  The voting in this Landsgemeinde ("cantonal assembly") is open-air, and, after a question is debated, citizens cast their votes by raising their hands. It's a very festive occasion: sausages are frying, and you'll hear hammer dulcimer songs floating through the air.  The adults will be wearing their Sunday best, with the men sporting one extra accessory: a sword.

These swords have been passed down through the generations, and they are worn as proof of the man's right to vote.  And yes, I do mean man, specifically. Switzerland as a whole was one of the last democratic countries to grant women the right to vote: it didn't happen until 1971.  But Appenzell, which clings to its traditions, actually continued to refuse women that right until forced by the national government in 1991.  According to one of Dennis's coworkers, the men were more than a little grumbly that year: "But how can they vote? They don't have a sword!"

Misogyny aside, we found Appenzell charming. The outlying areas are a very popular place to go hiking: it's all rolling hills and pretty mountains and small, tidy herds of cows and goats, keeping the brilliant green grass clipped between the widely spaced farmhouses, which have flower boxes of bright red geraniums in every window.  It couldn't be prettier.

But Dennis wasn't feeling up to a hike, so we stayed in the town, which, as chance would have it, was humming (and yodeling) with the activity of a national choir festival.  On the outlying corners, tour buses were pouring forth groups of men or women, identically dressed, down to their broad smiles.

Dennis asked around and found that the festival would be picking up after lunch, with groups performing in a high school auditorium and a church on the far side of town.  So we decided to walk around the little pedestrian zone for a bit, have a peaceful lunch, and then maybe hear some music.

Early on, we began to get the sense that maybe Appenzell
catered to tourists

A little toy store, covered with beautiful,
fanciful paintings. And they had bubbles
outside for the kids.

Downtown Appenzell was just as Walt Disney would imagine Switzerland to be: sweet little painted buildings flanking pristine streets, with the shops selling cheese, or folk costumes, or chocolate, or hiking gear, or more cheese.

As we were walking down the main street, Joey, for some reason, was incredibly taken by a rack of children's shirts.  Specifically, shirts of the cloth and cut that is traditionally worn as a Sunday dress shirt for farmers.  I've seen this shirt in exactly two different fabrics: a blue and white fabric with small red dots, and a black and white design...it seems that all men of a certain age in Switzerland own one or the other.  They had tiny versions of each shirt for sale, and Joey, he desperately wanted that black shirt.  So much that he stripped off his own shirt and gave the one for sale a huge, huge hug.

Dennis and I certainly weren't going to say no. Joey looks adorable.


I think Joey's purchase might have been inspired by the fact that we bought Ella a little dirndl at one of the stores. It had been over a year since we'd gotten her any fun costumes, but I'm not sure she views it that way. Said Ella, while swishing and admiring herself in the mirror, "I think I'll wear this on my first day back to school in Kirkland."

With two of the three kids costumed, we tried to nudge Alex into picking something, too. Think of the adorable Christmas card photo we could get.  But no. Alex said he was just fine with his Super Mario Brothers shirt, thanks anyway.

For lunch, we followed the recommendation of a city map to a garden restaurant.  Dennis had a hankering for schnitzel, and theirs was divine.  The menu was a funny mix of traditional Swiss foods (rosti, schnitzel, wurst) and a few things the chef had obviously thrown in for his own sanity. I decided to give him a vote of confidence and ordered a soup, described as a "pumpkin amaretto latte." And I agreed with the chef: it was a nice change from rosti.

The boys joined Dennis in eating schnitzel, and Ella ordered the cheese plate, figuring "when in Appenzell..." Dennis had a choice among mild cheeses, strong, or mixed, and he chose the last, which was most certainly a mistake.  We all decided we're not fans of Appenzell cheeses, Ella most resoundingly.

After lunch, we made our way, first, to a beer tent, where a high-school aged trio was playing (beautifully) some folk music.  I never expected to see a teenager rocking the hammer dulcimer.

A departing choir, led by their flag

On the playground

After a beer and a plate of fries there, to fill in the corners after disappointing cheese, we followed the herds of identically dressed adults to the edge of town. First they led us to an elementary school which, we finally realized, they were using as a place to meet up and warm up.  We used it as a place to burn of some energy, letting the kids run around on the playground for a bit while Dennis and I sobered up with coffee.

And then, finally, we found the festival halls.  We were confused for a bit: we saw large groups of people waiting outside the church where the singing was happening, and initially thought that the church was too full, and that they were waiting for seats.  But no: they were just blockading the doors during performances, each of which lasted exactly fifteen minutes.

But we didn't know that yet, and took the kids inside the high school, hoping for better luck in the auditorium venue.  Ella was deep into her book and opted not to go inside; Dennis and I were a little nervous about taking in the boys, worried that they'd make noise.  We gave them the option of staying out, but both said that they'd rather go in and promised to be very quiet.

They were perfectly behaved.  In fact, they were so quiet that Joey fell fast asleep, at which point he became significantly louder, snorer that he is.  The only time Alex made any noise was when one of the singers gave a high pitch at the beginning of a song.  Alex, who apparently has seen Music Man too many times, started singing softly, "Ice cream, ice cream, i-i-ice cre-e-e-am!"

We only stayed for one short concert, not wanting to press our luck, but Dennis kept the kids for me while I listened to a second men's chorus sing in the church.

It's so interesting to me, how important music is to the Swiss.  It seems most Americans abandon their music after high school: church choirs seem the main outlet for adult musicians.  But in Switzerland, the marching bands in parades are all adult.  And there were dozens of adult choirs here today, and I know that there are dozens more, across the country.

After the groups did their singing, they retired to the bars and pubs of Appenzell: we'd come across groups of them, out on the sidewalk cafes, lifting their pints and breaking into enthusiastic song. It was adorable.

Here's a two-minute video of some of the music we saw today: the trio, the men's choir, a group of mentally handicapped adults who were singing joyfully in the beer tent, some singers in one of the bars, and a concert band that had set up in the street.  In the last, you'll see a man, waving a flag off to the side: this is very typical for here: all of the music groups have their own banners, which they post or wave while they're performing.

Unexpected garden features: vice grips and anvils.

Since the kids had humored us so nicely, we took the kids back to our lunchtime restaurant for the sundaes they'd been eyeing earlier.

And, lest you think I let them have all the fun...




Unfortunately, that was about the last fun that we had of the day.  Just as we were gathering our things to leave, Joey revealed that he'd just done the silliest thing..."Ella, Alex, look! I have a BB in my ear! Ha ha ha!"

The kids had been busy all day, searching for stray BBs in amongst the cobblestones.  I don't know what the youths of Appenzell are like, but those things were everywhere.  And now there was one in Joey's ear.

Dennis and I cringed, and I pulled the tweezers out of my Swiss Army knife. (Don't leave home without it.)  But Joey cried out in protest as I held his head steady and Dennis tried to get a grip.  We both felt uneasy: what if we pushed it further in? We also tried sucking the BB out with a small straw, but Joey cried out at that, too, and we were afraid that we were somehow hurting him.  Dennis soon resigned himself to taking Joey in to the emergency room.

And what a thing that turned out to be. We didn't get back to Zürich until almost 7:00.  Dennis took Joey straight away to the closest hospital, where Alex had his stitch, but it turned out they didn't have the right equipment. They called around, and then advised Dennis to take Joey to a hospital across town, near ETH.  But they, too, were wary of treating Joey.  They didn't normally deal with kids, they said, and they certainly weren't equipped to handle writhing, wriggling, exhausted Joey.  The ear specialist on call took a look, but Joey was too determined to make his job difficult.

By this time it was about 10:00.  The best thing to do, they said, was to take them to the Children's hospital, the Kinderspittal, about a kilometer away.  They don't have an ear specialist, but they can bring one in, and they'll be able to sedate your son.

So Dennis carried Joey there next, and unfortunately they couldn't call a specialist in, after all; the doctor who ended up trying to help Joey gave him a mild sedative.  But the sedative just made Joey sort of drunk. And it turns out Joey is an angry drunk. The doctor only ended up pushing the BB further in.

By this time it was so late that Dennis was worried about getting a tram home: most of them stop running at night.  He told the doctors that if they couldn't help us tonight, he'd better leave now: they told him to report back in at 8:00 AM tomorrow, to see a surgeon.

Dennis headed home, still carrying Joey, who had been crying and calling for his mother and begging to go home all night.  Dennis saw his tram approaching down the hill, hoisted Joey over his shoulder, and started running, only to hear little Joey's voice in his hear: "Daddy, I feel sick."

But Joey didn't throw up all over his daddy, the tram, and his fancy new shirt, probably since he hadn't had anything to eat or drink since his ice cream.  And he won't get anything until about lunchtime tomorrow: poor Joey has to go under.  But he was still awake, and stumbling around, when Dennis brought him home at midnight, sobbing about the hospital.

I suspect Joey would agree that maybe it wasn't such a good joke, after all.