Gurten Brewery- Wabräu

Gurten is basically on the outside of the city of Bern, and there is a big old brewery that has been bought out and closed, and the Gurten beer is now brewed elsewhere.





But.. some cool guys bought parts or maybe all of the old brewery for their own little club where they do their own micro-brewing. On the first Friday of the month you can go there for a little party at which they tap their 'Wabräu' kegs to the public!

Going up and back and around the brewerie to a little house built into the side of a hill:

Locarno/ Ascona

We had a day pass for the rail system... and you have to get your money's worth!!! So we took a trip to Tessin, the Italian speaking part of Switzerland on the other side of the Alps. Specifically we visited Locarno, and Ascona.



When it is cold and rainy in Bern, you can depend on it being warm and sunny here! They even have the palm trees:



Grapes!:

Street cafés in Ascona:

View out onto the lake

train ride

Some pictures I took out of the train window going through the mountains...



Rainbow #2!!!



And another blog toilette featurette! :

New Guitar

A project laying around for quite some time... It turned out fantastic! A strat-style guitar assembled from high end 'replacement/ upgrade' parts So good I'm really itching to do another one. Maybe a telecaster... ...


This picture is before I had knobs :(

Garten-Rettich

Besides making homebrew and cornhole sets, shelly made some radishes in the garden!! We also have some corn coming up. Slugs ate our pumpkins. Carrots worked too but were pulled a little early. Tomatos are coming in.. and Zuchini too!

Roo

Usually after day trips Roo is pretty much toast, and sleeps for like 3 days.

Neuchâtel/Neuenburg

We just went to Neuchâtel for the first time last month. I think it only took like 20 minutes!!! It's really beautiful there, a nice lake (lake Neuchâtel), and looking across the lake you can see the Alps in the distance. I suppose the reason we had not come here sooner was that it's in the French speaking part of Switzerland (In German its name is Neuenburg).



Going into the city:




and they have a nifty little micro-brew resteraunt!!


and tiny plastic cars!

I thought a did a pretty good job of taking some pictures of the castle. nope. This guy did so much better:

http://www.swisscastles.ch/neuchatel/neuchatel_d.html


View of the city from the castle:

Climbing around the defensive walls of the castle, and here is the prison tower in the backround:

Climbing the stairs in the tower, here's an old wooden cell:

to the top! facing opposite the lake:

See me?:

Fresh eggs.

These eggs must be really fresh!!!

Thun

Day trip to Thun. Its a really nice place here, great for great weather. We packed some sammiches, the dog, some wine, and came down on a nice Saturday.



I've been in dumber pictures...



We walked along the mouth of the Aare River, only to find out that we were on the wrong side... although we were not planning on doing any sunbathing, there is a man made beach to the right with sand and everything. Its like the beach... with mountains!!

The mouth of the river going into the 'Thunersee'

There is actually a good sized town here, you can see a little bit of it in the last picture. From here it looks like a Disney Resort.

First Cornhole Game!

A few weeks ago:
Shelly finished up one set of bags real quick in preparation for some visitors from the New World, while I worked on my throw indoors!



My Swiss apprentice instructor Fred, and his family were in Switzerland to visit relatives, and they came and saw us for a grill out and to break in the cornhole game! It was great to see some familar faces from back home, and they remarked it was pretty weird seeing us in Switzerland! As for the game, as if there was any doubt, I need to practice!

Fred and his daughter Jessica:

Myself and Fred's wife, 'Franny' or Vreni:



This is along the side of our apt. building, thats Shell's garden, the patch of dirt there, in case you were wondering where we were.