sey085

Greetings faithful readers, if there are any of you left.  You are undoubtedly asking yourself why (after so much silence) there would be an update to this blog, what with the fact that, I left Switzerland long ago and thus could not have much more to say about the country.  You would be right about me leaving Switzerland (nearly three months ago, now), but you would be wrong about me not having anything to say.  Mainly, as I was incredibly busy before I left and have not really been too motivated to work on the blog once I got back to the States, I have a little bit of catching up to do before I can comfortably put this blog to bed.  I figure that I have about three more posts in me (this one included) and that'll be it. Mom's Final Visit After the great success that was my father's solo visit ( see here , for details), it was decided that eventually my mom should have her turn to hang out with me, and thus plans were set in motion.  She came out at the beginni...

After hanging around Switzerland for a couple days, I decided that it was time to hit the road. As we have some friends of the family in Paris, that was our first destination. First, though, a couple general notes about driving in general. We rented a car from Europcar for about a week and a half, and although I requested a VW Golf (I thought it would be about the right size), what we got was oh so much more. Imagine, if you will, the ultimate driving machine -- the ultimate conduit between driver and road. Now, make it a station wagon. And have it built in the Czech Republic. Behold: the mighty Skoda. Fig. 1: The Skoda keeps a cat cool on a hot summer day. What can't a Skoda do? Power windows, power doors, power mirrors, an adjustable armrest, two (!) glove compartments, and a bucketful of class made this car a pleasure to drive for the nearly 3000 km that I put on it in 11 days. Really, my only complaint was that it had a diesel engine. On the one hand, this was pretty c...