Grinberg exercises

Mikael keeping himself amused in the University while Liya does her Grinberg exercises.

 

Hotel bed

Mikael is enjoying his first hotel bed. I hope you understand that this is going to be a very Mike-centered view of Switzerland. Mostly, you're just going to see him, and if any mountains or beautiful lakes happen to wander into the frame, that's more of a random side benefit than an intentional effort to document Switzerland in any way. By the way, you can also see some of the familiar toys we've brought along to help Mikael feel more at home. The sea horse and the chimes are definitely his favorites, but the floppy red man is starting to really gain popularity.

 

 

 

Oh, and one more thing: we don't have a bath here so I gave Mikael a sort of hand washing while sitting with him in the shower. He screamed bloody murder, but it was really sort of fun. We'll need to perfect the technique, and then maybe we can send a picture (if I put on a swim suit or something ...)

Travelling to Tete-de-Ran

Mikael's first day of international travel was a bruiser. It started with breakfast at 3:40, followed by a taxi ride to the train station in Tel Aviv at 4:05 AM. From there, we took the 4:29 train to Natbag, arriving 4:40. We met Liya's friend Smadar who works in security, and she got us past the security line, but we still had to wait in the check-in line. It went very slowly, and it was 5:30 before we got to customs, and 6:00 when we got to the main departures lounge. Mikael had second breakfast, and Opher and Liya had their first. After that, we bought a camera case and some batteries and Whisky for Hava and it was pretty much time to board the plane. We took off almost promptly at 7:45. Here is a picture of Mikael just after boarding.

Mikael was great, unbelievably great, during the flight. He sucked a pacifier during take off and he sucked a teat during landing (that's his third meal), and he generally was all smiles and light the rest of the time. The El Al crew were also great. Just to give you a sense, both Liya and I saw most of Spiderman III during the flight, and I even got some work down correcting some english for Yoel. Here's where I need to put a picture in of Mikael getting changed right after landing.



After we landed, at 11:15 Zurich time, we spent some time exploring Zurich international. They have very cool luggage carts in Switzerland that know how to ride on escalators. Of course, we didn't get a picture of that, but we did get a picture of Mikael on his first airport train ride.

We decided to take the train into Zurich because it was so close. That's a twenty minute train ride. We arrived Zurich at around 13:00 and put our luggage in a locker and headed out to explore. Unfortunately, we also put the camera in the locker, so you won't get to see any pictures of Mikael at the Biergarten (where Liya and I had coffee and a beer, respectively, and Mikael had his fourth meal) or on the bridge overlooking the river or meeting the strange but interesting Nina and her baby boy Noah in park or exploring the Kinderspielplatz. After thoroughly enjoying how picturesque the city is and how picturesque we were in it, we caught the 16:04 to Neuchatel with strict instructions to change at Biel at 17:13 to the Neuchatel train (leaving 17:17 across the platform) and then again at Neuchatel at 17:32 for the Le Hauts Geneveys train that leaves a few platforms over at 17:37.

A number of unfortunate things happened on the train ride. One was that Mikael suddenly realized he'd been travelling for around 12 hours, and wanted to let everyone on the train know that he was ready to go home and crawl into his nice warm familiar bed and get some sleep. The train was a little crowded, so we couldn't quite put him down. The cabin was treated to about 20 minutes or half an hour of Mikael's attempts to make them undertand just how unhappy he wa about the whole situation. Eventually, I took him to the bicycle and stroller storage area near the front of the train, and we found some free carpet space and spread out all of his favorite blankets on top of one another to make a bed. He didn't quite go to sleep, but he did calm down a little. After about 15 minutes of that, surprising all of us, he was all smiles again and ready to play.

The other unfortunate thing that happened was that the conductor on the train told us that we didn't really need to change at Biel because this train also went to Neuchatel. What we realized only after it was too late was that it was true that both trains got to Neuchatel, but the one that started from Biel got there at 17:32 while ours was three minutes behind. If you've been following our complicated plot, you'll quickly realize that this left us 2 minutes to get off the train at Neuchatel with all of our luggage and run to the Le Hauts Geneveys train a few platforms away. Luckily for us, a nice guy from Geneva (well, his parents are American, but he grew up in Canada and Switzerland and he lives in Geneva today) helped us get our luggage off the train as quickly as possible and we ran for our lives (Mikael bouncing along happily in the awesome Ergo carrier) and actually managed to make the train. Here are a couple of pictures of us happily on the Neuchatel train

We got to Le Hauts Geneveys at 18:04, as scheduled of course, and from there we were picked up by the hotel's driver and driven up to Tete de Ran. It's very near the French border, and if you're curious, this is a link to the driving directions from Zurich to Tete-de-Ran. The scenery is gorgeous and the hotel room is also very nice. More on that, of course, to follow.

Guardian writeup about Grinberg

This isn't strictly about Mikael, but I still wanted to put in the link. The Guardian has a highly complimentary writeup about Grinberg:

The Stress Buster, by Natasha Reid

Oh, and while we're on our brushes with international fame: Tom Friedman of the New York Times interviewed me during a brief visit he made to the annual Project Day at Ben Gurion University when the 4th year students present their final projects. He wanted us to know that he was no longer a free market advocate, but had become a radical free market advocate. He also wanted us to know that in his new book, he would explain how in the current flat world, everything that could happen would happen, and that you just had to decide whether you would be the one doing it or the one having it done to you. Finally, he thought it was important that we realize that the power gap between Israel and its neighbors was growing, not shrinking, because of the increased importance of technological innovation in the world. He said these things in exactly the same way three different times to three different people, so he must feel them very strongly.