Can you believe I’ve been out here for seven months? Time flies. In any case, my Californian spirit has been dealing with the cold. I suppose I can’t complain. It’s cold, but not like -50 degrees cold. We’ve even had a few snow days here in Basel. The snow doesn’t last long here. It’s just long enough to short-lived pretty winter wonderland views, but doesn’t last long enough that I have to slosh around in the snow. It’s perfect.

The thing about living out here is that it seems like people were born skiing. The thing about being a born and raised Californian who is married to another born and raised Californian is we are somehow awkward around snow. Neither of us ski and neither of us were going to suddenly learn how to do it this year. Nevertheless, we thought we should take advantage of the fact that we are significantly closer to snow than we are back home and decided to have a snow day.

The plan was to head out to Luzern so we could make it up to the nearby Mount Pilatus and do something in the snow. At minimum, there would be fondue consumption involved.

We got to Luzern and immediately found out that the weather conditions would prevent us from making it all the way to the top of the mountain. We could still make it part of the way up, though, which was what we intended to do. So, we took the bus out to Kriens so we could take the cable car as far as we were permitted to go.

When we got our tickets, we were asked if we wanted to get sled passes. We briefly considered it, but wanted to wait it out because we didn’t think we could get 25 CHF worth of sledding in. Now, my image of sledding is buying a cheap plastic thing from the store and sledding down small hills. It’s the extent of my snow-related activity given that I don’t ski or snowboard. As we rode up the cable car, we quickly learned that sledding here is actually involves pretty steep slopes and is a little more intense than what I’m used to back home. Given that we came out dressed in our jeans and are not remotely as outdoorsy as we might think we are, we were glad we didn’t go with the sled passes. Ultimately, it probably would have been a funny story to tell, but the adventure to get there would not have been pretty.

What this means, though, was that there wasn’t much for us in this area intended for sledding. We failed at eating at the restaurant too because it was so. crowded. Instead, we walked around and took in the snow.

We then took the cable car to the next stop down the mountain and walked around for a while in the snow. This proved to be difficult without dedicated snow shoes, but it meant that things were slippery and we couldn’t go too far. We started making a snowman, but really only ended up throwing snow balls at each other before getting back onto the cable car to get back down to town.

Once back in Luzern, we walked for a while in search of food. Since we failed to get our fondue in snow-covered surroundings, we found a restaurant in town and got it there instead.

After lunch, we walked around town a little to digest all the melted cheese. They’re in pre-carnival preparation, so you could see some carnival-esque decorations throughout the town. There was also a collection of carnival floats on display in the train station.

We caught a train back home shortly after that point so we could use the rest of the Sunday to recover from snow and soccer. The snow day was fun, but I think it ultimately may have proved that we are not snow people.