I named the new calf Gilbert

I left Friday night to head to Bern. The bus driver from Hemberg to Wattwil and I engaged in a conversation in German and I found out he knows all of the trainees that have been here. I went to Bern this last weekend to visit Eliane and had a pretty fun time. Basically a lot of time was spent catching up and planning ahead. She has lots of ideas for things to do in the future and that's great. Saturday afternoon she had a business meeting so I took public transit into Bern and spent that time wandering the streets and into different record shops. In the evening, we met up with some of her friends who were having some sort of dinner party, I didn't catch the occasion. I, however, did take the opportunity to have rosti. It was some of the best rosti ever, covered in raclette cheese with some sort of bacony meet on top. I was soooo full after it! Then in the same restaurant, we moved to the bar and one of her friends was operating a karaoke operation which took up the rest of the night. On Sunday, we went to her parents house for a lunch of schnitzel, beans and fries. Always tasty! Before I left, we had coffee with some homemade apple schnapps and then I was on my way back to Hemberg.

My train route back from Langnau had me switching trains in Luzern, with about 40 minutes to get from platform 4 to platform 5. I decided to take a little walk through the city. Here's what I found:











I came back to a normal day of work on Monday. I made a potato casserole for lunch. The sauce was a cream of spargel soup and it was tasty.

One of the cows was pregnant and began the birth process last night. Unfortunately the calf was large and had to be pulled out by it's hind legs this morning. Gilbert (my name for him) won't even drink any milk. Dirk is thinking he won't last through tonight.





Salome decided to help in the stall tonight. It lasted for about 20 minutes:





This afternoon I made bread. Here are the untested results:



Beginning yesterday I've been getting cards in the mail. Of course, I'm waiting to open them until Thursday. I'm not taking them with me to the committee meeting up in Germany and I don't want to wait until Monday night to open them.

Happy Mardi Gras! I'll be celebrating Basel's version of it, which you can read more about here. Particularly, we're going to the Morgestraich at 4 am. I'll definitely have pictures and a better description.

Until next time,
Jon