Category: Trip to Switzerland (Page 1 of 2)

It is Friday now and the kids and I have been in Chiang Mai for the last three nights. I try to get our sleeping habits into order, feed the family, do the washing, getting my work life started. I miss my wife. Not so much for the working part, but for the debriefing. Sharing about the experience in Switzerland. I know that for the first days in Switzerland it felt the same. I felt out of place. The same I feel here right now. Out of place. I guess I have not fully arrived yet.

So time to get the washing in and do the dishes 😉

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We just arrived in Singapore on our journey back to Chiang Mai. It is half past twelve in the night for us, but here it is morning. We will probably be home around lunch time. The kids doing fine. They are just very tired. We left Lillian back in Switzerland for another week. We will miss her for sure.

My soul is still in Switzerland and hasn’t made the journey yet. I will miss the late Summer evenings, the wine, the Alps, the chocolate and all the friends. It feels weird being disconnected again. I am not allowed to think to much of it because traveling puts me in this twilight zone mood 🙂

Looking froward to our house and some sleep. Next time I will write from Chiang Mai. To everybody we know in Switzerland:" thanks for all the hospitality".

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It is Friday and there are a view more days we will be in Switzerland. Four days ago my ibook gave up on me. I went to the MAC shop here in Bern. There are some start problems, but the data is still on the hard drive. I won’t be able to solve the problem before I go back to Thailand. I think again about buying a new Mac book. Mine is slowly but definitely falling apart. I just can’t decide. There are rumors of a new Mac book coming out soon.

Yesterday we were up in the mountains to Engstlenalp with our friends. It was just what we needed. I even went into the mountain lake. It was freezing cold and I thought my heart would stop pumping. I must say I like when the water is more the 25 degrees.
Later we went to a waterfall. Switzerland is soo beautiful it takes my breath away. Unfortunately I can’t post any photos yet because I use someone else’s computer.

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This morning I went down to the river Aare jogging four kilometers. In Chiang Mai I would have collapsed of the heat. It is sooo beautiful here. The air is clean and dry. The river, the trees. I think we Swiss sometimes forget the blessing we have here living in the most stable, rich and beautiful country of the world. There are countless possibilities and opportunities here.

I sometimes find myself thinking about coming back and leave Thailand behind. Many people also ask us how long we are going to stay in Asia, most difficult to answer. Our place is still there though, but every two years we come back to visit there is a tension of being in two cultures and countries. The most difficult I guess is relationships. Living oversees is a coming and going of people, making friends and loosing them again (at least geographically) It is draining.

This year here is more relaxing and we are taking alot more time as a family. Tomorrow we will spend the whole day in the museum for transportation in Luzern.

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Monday morning in Switzerland and the rain hasn’t stopped. It is kind of cold even though I got quite used to the cold here. We are talking about 17 degrees here 🙂
We had our last meeting where we shared about the lahu work in Brienz on Saturday evening. It was a great week. We met many old and new friends and interesting people. I am glad that we have now time to relax though. Our "official" work is done. The rest of our time here we will spend letting our kids experience Switzerland. We will meat alot more people in the next four weeks. It is the only chance where we can see people every two years and there are many relationships I would like to refresh. My only stress is not to be able to do that.

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Today is a rainy day in Switzerland. On our schedule we have a stop in Interlaken to meet my mother and then in Brienz in the evening for our last presentation.
The meeting Yesterday evening went well and we met alot of nice people who were very interested in the work we do.

I think my soul finally has arrived. I feel alot more comfortable. Still it is a strange thing to live in two worlds. Our lives are quite different from the Swiss live. But it is difficult to explain. We learned over the years that it is more important to understand then to be understood. Understanding seems to have to do with experience or also with maturity that comes with experience. The thing is that the soul wants to be understood and craves for it. To let that desire go and to put that need on the bench for a while helps to speed up the process of integration. Still I believe that people who lived oversees for a long time lost some of their identity back in the other culture and will hardly be the same. I know I ramble on here and I don’t know if it makes any sense. Thanks for bearing with me.

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Yesterday afternoon we spent time with friends in the "deep" Emmental where the famous cheese with holes comes comes from. In a small village called Affoltern there is a "Käserei" (cheesmaker) where they show you how to make the cheese.

In the evening we had our fourth presentation of our work in Thailand. It went well. It is very nice to see that there is so much interest about the ministry with the Lahu. Two more evenings where we share what we do with people here in Switzerland.
Time will pass quick. Specially when I think of all the people I would like to meet. Well I have to live with the thought of having to meet some people in two years from now.

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We touched down in Zurich and finished the last leg of our journey to Bern. It is 14 degrees Celsius here and it feels like being in a under cooled office. I guess Switzerland is such a rich country that it can cool the whole country and not just a building. At least that is what I say to the Thai people.

I had a nap and a shower and feel ready to go and do stuff… kind of like having a energy induced flash. Honestly after drinking all this coffee and having my first few "Schoggistängeli" (swiss praline chocolate in form of a stick)

On another note. I was informed that Roger Federer lost against Nadal at Wimbledon. I know he won so many times and some people don’t really care, but Switzerland has not to many heroes and I think in sports Federer is one of them.

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Soon we will be on our way. Last Post on Thai soil for a while. Switzerland here we come. I really look foreward to breath swiss air and cullture, eat lot’s of chocolate and cheese.

….have to go back to packing….

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Like every two years the whole family will travel to Switzerland. We will be gone for five weeks. Mainly to reconnect to our home country. My children need this even more than I. But to be honest I miss my family and my friends. I also need a doses of western culture again. I am very tired and kind of overworked. Overworked is maybe the wrong term. Perhaps more like an overdose of the cross-cultural setting. We will fly Sunday evening over Singapore and I really look foreword to it. If there <wouldn’t be all those things to be done before we leave.

I haven’t written for a while because I was so busy in the office and at home. There was also an outreach team with the villages in the mountains. I was busy here with Visa preparations, re-entry permits, finishing a video for the presentations, managing a project crisis in the mountains and saying goodbye to many friends  leaving Chiang Mai. Again I feel like my soul is dragging behind like a camel.

I was checking my stat-counter and saw that over 80% of the people reading this blog are from Switzerland. Plus 2% from Germany. Now I am thinking of changing from writing in English to German. But I am not sure yet. I guess I could increase the amount of people reading the blog. Still I would have to write more often.

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