As always when we're having fun, the days pass way too quickly -- and that is exactly how we felt when we awoke on March 30 knowing that our 7 days in Williamsburg were ending and we would not sleep again until we arrived in Switzerland a day later.
After a breakfast and good-bye's in Williamsburg we boarded a flight in Norfolk, VA enroute to Frankfurt, Germany via Philadelphia, PA. Frankfurt was just an interim destination as well -- chosen as a less-expensive routing than other choices -- to get us to Locarno, Switzerland -- a beautiful holiday destination for many, but for us, the nearest large city near to the birthplaces of my grandparents in the nearby villages/towns of Someo and Gordevio, Switzerland (described in a prior blog posting) - where I have 3rd cousins.
We left Philadelphia at 4:20pm on March 30 and arrived in Frankfurt at 6:10am on March 31st: a combination of a 8-9 hour flight and a 6 hour time change. Then using an inexpensive "Europe Special" train ticket that I had purchased and printed directly from the German rail site, we travelled on 4 trains over 8 hours to arrive in Locarno. It was a routing that was familiar to us from our prior trips to Locarno -- and the most recent reminder of how pleasant, convenient and easy it is to travel by train in Europe. In addition, the scenery -- especially through the Alps is always spectacular -- and this trip was no exception.
It was wonderful to arrive to the beautiful southern Switzerland weather (70 degrees) -- but it was disconcerting to know that we were facing the first mix-up of our trip. In the email exchanges and wire funds transfer to arrange for an apartment in Locarno (again through homeaway.com: http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p527718# ), we hadn't received the promised phone number of the "maid" who was to be our contact to get access to the apartment (owned by a Swiss German couple in another town). Last minute emails and phone calls had not been answered. We were hopeful that the apartment entry/door might have the needed phone number but after walking the 5 minutes from the Locarno train station to the apartment, all we found was a well-secured building.
At this point, the "play it by ear" part of this adventure began: Getting no answer to our calls to the owner, I proceeded to (1) ring the door intercom for the neighboring apartment -- only to get several "no capisco" answers to my contact, including when I took a photo of the intercom name listing and showed it; (2) walk the circumference of the secured building looking for possible access/people who could give me access to see if there might be a phone number on the actual door; (3) call out to a woman several floors up who was vacuuming her deck -- and whatever language barrier we suffered, she at least pressed a button that buzzed the entrance door and got us inside the building; (4) find no information on the actual apartment door, we were standing there when a neighbor returned -- and even though she had no helpful information about her neighbors, she agreed to leave a message and our phone number on the door; (5) make one final call to the owner's before leaving to find a room for the night -- this time getting an answer by the owner's husband who explained that he didn't have the maid's number but if I would call back in 10 minutes, he would try to get it from his wife who was traveling elsewhere in Germany. When I called back, he explained that he had gotten in touch with the maid -- and before we ended our conversation, the maid appeared at the condo complex door. The adventure continued because the maid spoke absolutely no English (only German) -- but we slowly were able to find adequate props and hand motions to make the final arrangements/payments for her service, a deposit, parking and wifi access. We even were able to successfully arrange for her to return on April 7 to refund our deposit in time for us to catch our departing train.
After all that, we collasped into the lovely surrounds of a super-nice, fully equipped condo with peak-a-boo views of the nearby, beautiful Lake Maggiore and walking distance to Locarno's downtown plaza. We made sure we could get the internet working -- had a fun video chat with Neal -- and crashed into the wonderfully comfortable bed for our first sleep in 34 hours.
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