Published Monday September 13th, 2004



H'm.. seconds tick by, hours roll along, days come and go and here I am at a point in time writing another entry. I really did not want to start of this entry with the usual, "Hey, well then! Long time no entry! Welp, here's another one! *bam!*" So, instead I'm being a bit more.. something. Obviously i'm failing. I'm kind of tired as I sit here on my bed typing this. I'm not really in the mood to write, but i'm forcing myself to do it anyway..

Saturday I got up at an early 08.20 to catch a bus at 09.06. I got on a train after the bus brought me to the train station, and after an hour and 15 minutes or so i found myself to be in Olten. Here I met up with Claudia, a cousin.. Or, more accurately, a cousin of my father. Funny thing about Claudia is that she seems to act young, she looks younger than she is even though she is comfortably into her thirties. Anyway, from Olten we drove via car for around 90 minutes into Germany to some place called Mainau where we went to visited an island filled with flowers. Sort of an island park type place.. We walked around a bunch around the island. Saw things, and so forth. We went into this butterfly-house where I took photos of cool butterflies. After this, we had lunch, strolled about some more, and started to leave again.

Again, we drove around 90 minutes back to Olten, in Switzerland. We went to some hotel/restaurant on a hill and had some ice cream. I had a strawberry-milk shake. Yummy. After this, Claudia dropped me off at the main train station in Olten, and I headed back into Wasen and returned home. It was a fun day of a lot of sarcasm. We made sarcastic jokes and sayings all day long. Was great. I love being sarcastic and using sarcasm. Haven't been that sarcastic in a long time.







Sunday I got up early once again (08.00). We grandparents and I drove to Interlaken where we got onto an old restored steam engine driven train. As we rode in the train, people lined up all around the streets to take photographs of the old train. I wondered, "What is it about a train that is really old (from 1910) with coaches from 1886 that is so fascinating to people? Some form of historical nostalgia?" Not as many people are ever fascinated as much by the passing of a more modern train. Perhaps, because it is not as common to see an old train as it is a new one? An old train fascinates because it is a piece of history which still operates as it would have historically. New, modern trains don't yet have any history to them.. Perhaps.

The coaches were open on each end. One had to go outside to get to another coach. I stood outside the coach and pieces of coal fell from the sky. Rather interesting. The amount of smoke and steam in the air was awesome. We rode from Interlaken up into the mountains nearby Brienz. There were a lot of young boys and their fathers riding on the train, which was amusing because.. What a perfect father-son outing. *shrugs* www.dampfbahnen.ch

We ate lunch, and then got back on the old train heading back towards Interlaken. The organisation which maintains the train and had the train-drive made reservations at some restaurant where most people went to go eat including my grandparents and myself. We returned back to Interlaken at around 17.00 (we left Interlaken at 09.45 that morning.) It was quite interesting riding in an old train. Sitting on wooden benches. The train went pretty fast. When we reached Interlaken again, we drove back home.








The red hose to the right was used to refill the train with water.








Once again, red hose was used to fill the train with water to create steam with because, after all, it was a steam engine. We seemed to stop a lot for this process.

After two days of getting up rather early (for me without having to go to school) i slept until 11.30 on Monday morning. Once i woke up i went to my other grandparents (Sommers) where i ate lunch with them. I then chatted with my grandma into the afternoon. At one point we went and picked apples, and then also picked up fallen apples from the ground because my grandma could not wrap her mind around just leaving them there on the ground. Ha ha. So we did that for a while. When we finished, we went into the living room where she ironed and we chatted. She told me various little stories from her and other's lives from when she was younger. That was very interesting to listen to. I always like hearing such stories. At around 17.00 i left and headed back home. Ate dinner at around 20.00 and here i am.

Heh.. I'm in one of those moods where i feel empty.. void of things to say.. I've already left out numerous things from this entry. Small little things which would require a bit more effort than i really feel like expending at this time.. Quite sad. Meh.. Thusly.. this is the end.

* Photos have not been altered and could probably use some white-balancing, contrast, brightness, saturation, and hue adjustments.