Hibernation Over – Reload Your Jealousy

On 12^th November 2015 we were back to Laufaburg for hibernation.

This especially due to the omniscient prediction of some of these famous East Siberian meteorologists competent to forecast weather for the next 6 months – at least. They definitely predicted an extremely cold winter which would even turn a Mediterranean Grizzly Bear hibernating in its well protected cavern into a piece of frozen meat.

So we prepared for this terrible scenario imaging our friends on the shore of the West African coast exercising ice skating between the waves of the ocean.

In Laufaburg we started to heat our flat, bought some high energy nutritious stuff – mainly rotten grapes – and prepared our metamorphosis into pieces of frozen meat.

Fortunately reality was pretty different. In December we thought about having a nice swim in Lake Lucerne and in January we had constantly foggy, but rather warm weather. In February we finally had some snow. Immediately we took some pics as a proof of this rare phenomenon. So definitely too warm for hibernation; and in March when it started freezing outside – too late for it.

We used the time for a check up for Prado. Replaced the injectors – sincere thanx to Georgian diesel – and other minor stuff and hided again the African bush doctor’s repair works. Time for the Swiss road worthiness ceremony. Prado got another 2 years officially being worth driving on Swizzie’s and other roads.

Not being able to hibernate we used the time to learn some more Russian – not very successfully; and to bring to further perfection the route of our 2016 trip towards Punta Arenas. Well, we were convinced we should not visit twice the same countries. So we developed the idea to pass thru Iran and Turkmenistan on the way to the East.

Unfortunately the commissioned travel agent was not too capable to organise the visa – even within 6 weeks – and he was neither too communicative to admit this fact. So everybody interested in Iran visa better avoid König Tours in Bonn – even if they claim a good reputation in the internet.

No problem, currently we plan to pass thru Poland, Ukraine and Russia to Kazakhstan. Maybe less interesting than Iran’n’Turkemenistan. Nevertheless a great opportunity to exercise our Russian.

Of course we also carefully observed the local customs of the tribes in Laufaburg. Especially this noisy affair they call Fasnacht (carnival) – same as last year.

Further we followed closely the local politics. In this important field of Swizzy citizen’s daily life we made some interesting observations:

The socialist party was able to buy some 2456 red socks for its most faithful members. Hopefully they’re not fading in the sun. The conservatives in the center did some actions – unfortunately we don’t really remember them.

Finally H.E. Blocher’s right wing family owned party still did not correct the orthography of their party’s name. Still they claim to be the SVP, which as far as we know means Schweizer Vüdli Pürger – Swiss Fuddy Duddies. We could see on their posters that they continued to promote their sheep eradication program. Obviously they still hope this heroic act would avoid some migrants to seek asylum in Swizzyland.

To get a broad national front against sheep they even organised a referendum. Of course, asking everybody led to a huge confusion of the Swizzy citizens. Some of them realized that the Fuddy Duddies’ initiative was not exactly about sheep. Poor sheep just had to serve as a kind of symbol for people – strange, but could be the truth. Somehow following a historic idea of a former US president they even distinguished between the good’n’brave sheep and the ones on the axis of evil. Some further investigation showed that the bad ones might be people living in Swizzyland without the honour of a Swizzy passport having committed any slight minor offence.

After having detected this hidden agenda of the Vüddli Pürgers – a huge discussion started. We did even not know that Swizzies could speak that much. Anyhow, whether sheep, offenders or foreigners, the Swizzy citizens did finally not support this Swiss Vüdli Pürger’s Initiative. 56% of them were against it – congratulations. 41% were in favour of it – shame on them. 3% voted maybe or wanted to continue the hooey.

Back to real life. Currently we are seriously preparing our trip. Most things we will need or rather not need are packed. We are waiting for our last visa – Usbekistan and then hopefully we’ll start again in the 1^st or 2^nd week of April.

So, hopefully soon more about our trip in the next post.

cu soon

Monika’n’Martin