Three Months Left and Counting Down
Sorry it's been so long. I've had some technical difficulties with the computer and the blog, but all seems to be resolved now. Speaking of which, if your browser won't play the short videos below, try using Google Chrome. Blogspot apparently doesn't play well with Microsoft Edge.
Leesa and I have been here over 18 months now, and we are beginning to make preparations to return home. We are two of the old hands at this point, and it seems like we just got here. Everybody had been around longer than us, but now, everybody is looking to us to help them along. We're seeing the mission as a giant revolving door. All of the missionaries who greeted us are long gone home, and have been replaced by ever-fresh faces. Martin and Donna Bates, our president and his bride, have only a very few left who got here before they did. We preceded them by only three months, and now the days dwindle down to a precious few.
We have cherished everyone we have come to know: the young missionaries, the committed and faithful members, the absolutely delightful fellow senior missionaries. In addition, coming to know various folks around town has also been a lot of fun. Since I do the grocery shopping, I'm on a first-name-basis with a lot of the crew at the local Edeka supermarket. Manny, Mario, Andrea, Jessica, Liz, Maria, Jürgen, the list goes on an on. The first three work the meat department, and sell me a lot of ground beef, rump roast, and chicken breasts. Manny, in particular, always jokes with me in English, making fun of my job of cooking Wednesday-night Institute dinners for whom he calls the "Juvies." Then there's my barber, Ibrahim, who comes from Iran, but has visited Florida and Toronto, Canada. He has family all over, and is one of the nicest men, and he gives a quick, but thorough, haircut. Most of these people now have Books of Mormon in their respective languages.
The fun part is running into somebody who doesn't look like they smile a lot, and getting them to open up. Case in point: Toward the end of July, Leesa and I served as the KP (for those who never served in the military, that's Kitchen Police) for a church summer camp for 12- & 13-year-olds in Switzerland. So we had most of the food in our little Hyundai I30, and nobody told us about Swiss Customs laws. About 20 miles into the country, the Customs had a checkpoint set up. Turns out you can only bring a certain amount of Swiss Francs worth of food without getting charged import fees. I had a huge slab of beef, a bunch of chicken, and ground beef. I had no idea about these laws, but I made a point of not trying to hide anything, even showing them my shopping list. I just made sure that they knew I was there to comply with the laws, and explained that nothing was being sold, but used to feed kids at a summer camp, and that we were volunteers.
One of them made a remark how, in their experience, it was unwise to trust Americans, and there was my opportunity. I replied that that was also my experience not to trust Americans too much, and once they started laughing, I knew it wouldn't be that bad. Their attitude changed, they became more open and good-natured. The agent in charge said I could be fined up to 1000 Swiss Francs for that much food, but at the end of it, I wound up paying only CHF 471. We all shook hands, and off we went to the camp.
This is what the customs agents saw in our trunk.
This is where the summer camp was held in Schelten, Switzerland.
Spaghetti Bolognese for the campers. That week also featured grilled steak, Chicago-style pizza, and Belgian Waffles.
But the summer camp is getting ahead of the story. We had our first travel adventure of the year in May, when we drove to Parma, Italy. Years ago, Leesa gave me a copy of a John Grisham book, Playing for Pizza. He normally writes courtroom thrillers, but this was a light departure from his norm. The story centers around Rick Dockery, a third-string NFL quarterback who, after a horrible performance in a conference championship game, gets drummed out of the league. His agent then finds him a place in NFL Italy, with the Parma Panthers.
Well, there really is an Italian football league, and there really is a team in Parma, called the Panthers, who, in fact, just won their third Italian Football League championship in four years. Most Italian players are unpaid (American football isn't really a money-making proposition in Italy), and they play for pride, and for the free pizza after games, hence the title. What really attracted me to the book was Grisham's description of the food. On Rick's first night in Italy, his coach takes him to a restaurant, owned by one of the players on the team. Grisham then went into great detail of the meal, served in five courses, and I was enchanted. Two famous culinary examples are made right there in Parma: prosciutto, a cured but uncooked ham taken from the thighs of specially raised pigs, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, some of the best cheese in the world. So we just had to pay a visit to Parma.
We scheduled a weekend in May when the Panthers were playing, hoping to see a home game of American-style football, and we booked a good restaurant for dinner downtown, one which is mentioned in the book. To appease Leesa's need for good music, I was able to get tickets for an opera at the famed Teatro Regio, Parma's opera house, built in 1829. The opera was Tosca, with music written by Giacomo Puccini. Opera on Friday, May 17th, and football on Saturday, the 18th. We were excited. We visited the Panthers' stadium, Stadio Lanfranchi, on Friday during the day.
Enter Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a much-beloved speaker in General Conference. He was a highly-respected pilot for Lufthansa Airlines, and often tells stories involving his former profession in his Conference talks. He notified President Bates of his desire to hold a mission-wide conference in Zürich on, you guessed it, Saturday, May 18th, thereby wrecking our plans to see the Panthers.
It's about six hours by car from Parma to Zürich, and to make the conference after a late night at the opera left us about three hours' sleep. So we left about 2:30 a.m. in order to make Zürich by 8:30, and of course it would have been galactically stupid to try to head back to Parma for the game. So we came home to Freiburg.
Stadio Lanfranchi in Parma
Trattoria del Tribunale, in downtown Parma
Ciabatta, prosciutto, and Parmigiano-Reggiano! Que bellisimo!
Teatro Regio
Inside the opera house with my sweetheart
Dieter and wife Harriet Uchtdorf at the mission conference
But back to Friday night! The food at Trattoria del Tribunale was exceptionally good, especially the appetizer of ciabatta, prosciutto, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. We'd never tasted cheese so fresh and flavorful, to the point that we can't ever look at a jar of Kraft Parmesan ever again.
The opera was, for me, a bit anticlimactic. As mentioned, the house opened in 1829, and not a lot of thought was given to creating good views for all of the patrons. It is beautiful, but our seats (among the last available) had a severely restricted view of the stage. Leesa had the seat closer to the edge, but she couldn't see much. She did comment to me that the tenor was bigger than I am. I stood up for a quick glimpse, and muttered, "the soprano, too." We enjoyed the music, then took an Uber back to the hotel for a short nap, before heading to Zürich.
Our next adventure was having our daughter Esther and her husband Gibson, with us in Freiburg, from whence we all would travel to a nice resort in Iseltwald (near Interlaken), Switzerland.
Gibson and Esther Mmagu with us in Freiburg
Esther was a bit apprehensive about traveling to Europe, in that she stressed a lot about planning things such that they would maximize their enjoyment of their vacation. For my part, I was just as worried that they'd be bored moving at the old folks' pace. In addition, she wanted to do things which Gibson would also enjoy. So each of us had anxiety 6000 miles apart.
As it turned out, less was more. They landed in Zürich, and had had some delays getting their room even as they were dog-tired. The next day, they took the train to Freiburg, and we picked them up at the station. What they needed was a bit of rest and home cooking, and fortunately, that kind of thing is right up my alley. Some Rotolo di Pasta, a dish out of the Playing for Pizza book first off, followed in the morning by Belgian waffles for breakfast, and they felt just fine.
Getting ready for the alpine coasters
You may have seen videos of alpine roller coasters on YouTube. Those are the ones that are usually built into ski resorts to generate income in the summertime. You get into a little wheeled cart on a track, and ride downhill, with lots of dips and curves along the way. Freiburg has one just an hour south of town in the small town of Todtnau, and the drive to it is just beautiful. Leesa was the one who was the speed demon, rocketing around the curves and whooping like a Comanche. You think you know a person...
So the pace slowed a little, the kids were able to catch their breath hanging out with us in town, and then we piled in a rented SUV (I wasn't about to ask them to travel to Switzerland in the back seat of a subcompact) and headed for Iseltwald. I'd booked us a couple of rooms, right on the lake.
As we got to Iseltwald, this is when I knew I'd hit a home run with the kids. They were oohing and aahing with embarrassing regularity at the beauty of the landscape. The lakes are so blue, yet clear, and the valley is breathtaking. Esther and Gibson were very happy, indeed, to spend a few days in these surroundings. In fact, we went home after three days, but they loved it so much, they kept the room for another few days. Eventually, they moved on to Vienna, and caught their flight home from there.
We stayed in contact with our beloved missionaries who'd served in our district. In my last post, I wrote about Elder Mitch Maddix, and the courage he showed when his family suffered severe challenges at home. After he came back to the mission to serve his final four months in Vienna, he was paired with another Freiburg alumnus, Elder Hutch Friend. Together they formed a super missionary companionship, and brought the Lord's message to a lot of people in their area. Hutch is a rather interesting young man, a curious mixture of Clarence Oddbody (George Bailey's guardian angel in the film It's a Wonderful Life), bodybuilder Jack LaLanne, and Dennis the Menace. He is absolutely fearless when it comes to sharing the Gospel with strangers, and it's wisest to simply get out of his way in this regard. Dennis the Menace showed himself when he and Mitch were passing a fence with a sign on it, and they couldn't resist. The small sign to his left reads "A.S.S," (Anlagen Service System), but
the Elders' intent was a bit less savory. They texted me the picture, and I immediately named him Captain America, citing a reference from the movie Avengers: Endgame. So to me, he'll always be "Cap."
Last Christmas, I wrote about our adopted granddaughters, Bethan and Carys Hoggan, twins from London. We'd had them and their parents for dinner in our apartment, at which they invited us to spend a few days with them at their home in Farnborough, a western suburb of London. So August rolled around, and we were liberated from cooking duties for Institute for seven weeks, and we climbed aboard the Eurostar train, passing under the English Channel through the Chunnel.
Paul and Lucy Seal, the girls' mom and stepdad, received us warmly, even though it was Bethan who met our train. They have a motor home in their driveway, and we spent four comfortable nights in that. Days were filled with sightseeing and laughter during mealtimes, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
Bethan and Carys with stocking caps knitted by Leesa
Lucy took us to Jane Austen's house in Chawton, about 20 minutes southwest of the Seal/Hoggan home. Gorgeous day!
The house proper
Jane's bedroom
Where Jane did all her writing. That's a pretty small table!
Leesa, Bethan, and Lucy don period costumes.
And I get into the act. Not easy finding a hat that'll fit a size 7 7/8 head.
Our last full day in London meant a train into town to have lunch at Fortnum and Mason's, a sort of seller of English delicacies since 1707. Right after that, we squeaked just in time into William Shakespeare's Globe Theater for a performance of A Comedy of Errors.
In front of Fortnum's
Inside the open-air Old Globe Theater
Finally, on our way to our train out of town, Leesa wanted to stop at famous Kings Cross railway station, home of Harry Potter's Platform 9 3/4, which is actually just a brick wall more or less out of the way of people doing actual traveling. But there was a long line of folks wanting their picture with the sign, so I took this shot from a bit further away.
Check this one off Leesa's bucket list
Three more months to go! We'll get back into the swing of cooking for Institute, and see what the last few days bring us. We have one more Senior Couples' Conference in Garmisch, Germany next month, at which we'll begin to say our goodbyes to our good friends, whom I have affectionately named the Senior Reprobates. Until later!
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