Tuesday 30 October

We awoke this morning to find the car blanketed from overnight snow. Since Rita grew up in Switzerland, and I lived for five years in north-east USA we are not unfamiliar with snow, but it’s still a magical feeling when you wake and look out the window and see snow softly drifting to the ground.

While we were used to seeing snow, the same could not be said for Sarah&Albon’s new kitten who was experiencing  snow for the first time. He was hilarious as he raced around watching and trying to catch the falling snowflakes.

Around 1000h, we headed off from Besain to drive to Bern through the Jura mountains snow. By now we were grateful that Albon had got the snow tyres fitted for us; the narrow back road we took looked pretty.

We arrived in Bern around noon, and a while later went to visit Mutti at her new nursing home. She has a nice studio apartment for independent living, with good views from her corner balcony...

… including a great view of the Swiss Alps when the weather is fine.

We then went back to her old apartment, where we would be staying for this visit, and found Frank (Rita’s brother) at the flat when we got there to chat about how Mutti was doing and the plans for cleaning, clearing and handing the apartment back to the agent.

Later in the afternoon, Rita went for a short walk with Mutti, while I worked away on this blog.

As sunset approached, the autumn colours on Dentenberg started to really show.

Wednesday 31 October

The temperature dropped to zero overnight, but luckily the heating was still on in the old apartment, and hence it was relatively cosy. As the day wore on, the temperature warmed up to about 12 degrees.

While we’ve never been able to bring Mutti to Taggerty, we settled for second best by taking her to lunch today at the restaurant in nearby Tägertschi, just a couple of train stations away from Bern.

Today the weather was much clearer, and the view of the Alps from the restaurant was spectacular.

The two Rita’s had a great time at lunch, although after an hour or so, the older Rita was feeling a bit tired.