One of those days where some things go wrong

Actually it all started yesterday evening when Mr. Swiss was making a coffee. We have one of those electric jugs for boiling water (my mum would probably have called it an electric kettle). Anyhow it sort of had an internal explosion - no flames or sparks, but just made a noise and died. The light was still burning on the outside to show a little bit of life was left, but no heat was being produced. We went back to the stone age method of boiling water in a saucepan and decided that today a new water cooker must be bought. Mr. Swiss said he would go into town to get one as it would use up too much of my (precious?) time to get one at the lunch hour. Things never turn out as you think they will.

Here is the next bit of the exciting catastrophe events. I was driving to work this morning as always. I dropped my oldest son off at his workplace and carried on to my company. Just as I was approaching the village where I work an ominous light bulb lit up on the car dashboard, signalising that one of my lights was not working. As a Volvo is equipped with many lights it meant having a good look when I eventually parked my car. Luckily a colleague turned up and parked next to me so she did all the checking for me. We eventually found that it was the back left hand brake light. I phoned Mr. Swiss from the office. He suggested going to one of the garages opposite our company, but I was not too keen on that. Eventually I left work an hour earlier at lunch time and drove home. Picked up my other half and we drove off to the garage which is in the village of Attiswil. Whilst Mr. Swiss was dealing with the re-installation of our brake light, I decided to take some photos. I won't mention what Mr. Swiss said about this good idea, but he did shake his head.

This is the view across the road from the garage. Attiswil is a small village, has no industry but some farms, a post office and of course the usual restaurants. It also has a Volvo garage which also sells Nissan.

This is a view of the main road looking towards West, the mountain in the background is part of the first chain of the Jura and known as Balmfluhköpfli (a "köpfli" is a small head translated from Swiss German).The Jura chains of mountains stretch from East to West of Switzerland, starting near Zürich and ending up in Geneva so they are always in the background of most of my photos.

Eventually we made our way off to the supermarket where we decided to eat something and buy our missing water cooking machine. On the way we passed through the village of Flumenthal - this photo shows the local railway station on the left. Nothing special about the village really except that my mother-in-law was born in this village and grew up there. Her father actually spent a few years in the French foreign legion before returning to Switzerland and getting married. She had 5 sisters/brothers, a few of whom I did get to know. My mother-in law died a couple of years ago at the age of 91.

This was the next catastrophe that we met. He was chugging along in front of us blocking the way until he eventually turned off. As if this was not enough, when we approached our village, there was one big traffic jam. We did not see what was causing it, but as the roads are fairly narrow, it was probably an accident or a large transporter. Luckily we have permission to drive up the castle grounds, so could turn off at the back doubles and avoid all the traffic jam.

We arrived at the supermarket in good time and had a meal together. We then embarked on the quest for our water cooker. Surprisingly they had got cheaper over the years. The one we bought does not really look much different that the one we had, but we can now cook our water in a civilised way. As we left the supermarket what did we see. A wonderful car collision at the parking lot. It looked like that someone was backing out and didn't see that a car was driving along the exit path. The cars were still entangled whilst the people were writing the details, plans and all the rest of the insurance stuff. How do I know how that works - that would be a never ending blog, perhaps for when the ideas go out.

I eventually delivered Mr. Swiss back home and drove off to work. Now that was an eventful lunch hour.

If anyone is interested in seeing all the photos, you can find them on Flickr here or in Multiply here.