The Whole Switzerland Experience- Part Two

Bob and I got up at about 5:30 Sunday morning, picked Cathy up at 6:45, my mom at 7, and headed to the airport. We got there about 7:30, three hours before our flight, as recommended. We had to walk Mom over to the Delta counter, but from then on it was wheelchairs all the way. There was no problem with the check-in. Thank God Bob has such great skills, booking us, and getting us through all of the on-line check-in the day before. We had to include a date that my mom would be leaving Switzerland for the online check-in. I told the truth, which was she would be leaving Switzerland on April 16. If I’d had to say where she was heading, I’d have been at a loss.

The wheelchair person took us through TSA with no problems and then to the gate, about a 20-minute span so more than two hours before our flight. I got some walking in and Cathy and Mom got some walking in as well. Really the whole travel experience went so smoothly—it is handy having a person in a wheelchair. I had the option to check my bag free, all the way to Switzerland, and I’m so glad I did. Managing Mom, her things, and the wheelchair was more than enough.

From St. Louis, we flew to Detroit with a two-hour layover. The Detroit wheelchair person dropped us at the gate and the three of us took turns going to the restroom and taking walks. We also had lunch at Leo’s Coney Island, a sit-down restaurant. We could’ve done carry-out, but we had time to sit and relax. Cathy and I both had gyros, Mom had a chef salad and all three of us had the fluffiest pitas ever. It was quite reasonable for airport food- under $50 for the three of us, and that sit-down meal was much appreciated piece of normalcy.

From Detroit, a long flight to Amsterdam on KLM. We left Detroit at 2:30pm Eastern time and got into Amsterdam at 6:30am Central Europe time, about seven hours flying time. It’s impossible for me to sleep on a plane, but I shut my eyes a lot and meditated and zoned out. At some point Mom got up to go to the restroom and got lost. I was nudged by a flight attendant asking if this was my mom. I said yes, and walked her around to her seat. I told her “If you need to go, shake one of us and we’ll go with you.”

In Amsterdam, we rode in a cart instead of having a wheelchair. Mom managed to get in on the left side, get one leg over the center barrier into the right side and then couldn’t move her left leg over the barrier. We did end up getting her sorted out, but I was tired and frustrated and a little snappish. The cart people rolled us past the passport checkpoint and dropped us at the gate for the regional flight down to Basel. We were talking with the young African-Dutch person riding shotgun and training with an older African-Dutch driver training him. He was in college, intending to go into economics. Mom tried to tip him, but his trainer shut that down pretty quick. Again, we got to the gate with plenty of time.

That boarding was a bit of a hassle because Amsterdam did not have a jetway for the flight to Basel, Switzerland. We were escorted into an elevator, and out to a van which took us to the regional jet, part of German Airlines. It was tough for Mom to walk up the stairs into the plane and then walk down the aisle, but we made it. The flight attendant gave Mom and me each a cheese sandwich as a snack. Lucky Cathy, on the other side of the aisle, got a slice of cake.

In Basel, they meant to put a lift at the rear of the plane to lower Mom but put an extra set of stairs there instead.  Mom ended up walking down the stairs, holding the hands of a handsome flight attendant, and then into a van with a wheelchair in it, which took us to the terminal.

By then, my bag was the lonely, only one going around the baggage claim. After collecting it, the wheelchair person took us out through customs. We walked through the “nothing to declare” lane and to a cab.

Our cab driver was a sweetie. She spoke some English, but not a whole lot, drove competently, and dropped us off at the designated hotel in Liestal, 40 minutes south of Basel. It took a minute to figure out the entrance to the hotel—an elevator to the second floor of a parking garage, and then a walk on a patio to the hotel door.

Our room looked out over the garden area. Liestal is a very hilly town and the buildings and roads are placed based on the lay of the hills. Looking out our window past the little garden area, I could look down into the interior design firm in a small brick one-story building. Past that, I looked up into the terraced apartment buildings on the hill beyond. This added to the surreal experience, seeing people living their lives, a woman clearing her table and doing dishes, an architect sitting down at a design table, while we were in town so our mother could die.

The room had a single bed, which I took, by the window. Mom and Cathy each had separate sleeping spaces on a queen-sized bed. The room had a TV, but since everything was in German, it went on only once and off pretty quickly. The man at the front desk showed us how to access the electricity, inserting a room key into a slot next to the door and leaving it there. The front desk person, and everyone else at the hotel was so kind and friendly. Thankfully, they spoke English. Once we got settled, Mom lay down for a nap. She slept two hours, woke up for about 15 minutes, and then slept another two hours. Cathy and I went for a walk, exploring the little pedestrian mall just across the road from the hotel. We walked that area frequently. Sometimes I walked there by myself.

For lunch, we had snacks from home- Bel Vita breakfast cookies, mixed nuts, and granola bars. For dinner that evening, we went to a small outdoor café, just across the road from the hotel. It was close enough for Mom to walk, and we held her hands the whole way. It was a beautiful evening, perfect temperature, sunny.  I took the last picture of the three of us, at the open-air café, our hotel in the background. Mom and Cathy both had ham sandwiches. I opted for tuna salad on top of julienned vegetables, having seen it on the plate of a person near us and asking him what it was. His wife came back to the table shortly after we talked, and she spent the rest of their time giving me stink-eye and giving her husband the cold shoulder. I promise I was only interested in the tuna salad. But that explains why he seemed a little scared talking to me. The tuna salad was delicious.

After the three of us finished, we went back to the hotel and vegged out either reading or looking at stuff on our phones. Thank goodness for hotel Wi-Fi.  By that point I had discovered that, even though I had the international package from ATT, I had, at some point a few years ago, turned data-roaming off on my phone. I wasn’t able to figure out how to turn it on, so I was only able to access the Web through Wi-Fi.  I was unable to access Google Maps when we were away from the hotel, which made navigating on the hilly, winding streets an interesting challenging.

Tuesday was a day to relax. By the time we’d gotten to the hotel on Monday, Mom was wiped out. After her four-hour nap and dinner, she slept twelve hours on Monday night. By Tuesday, she had recovered, but she hurt too much to walk, except to go down to breakfast. Cathy and I took a couple of really nice walks, and I took a couple nice walks by myself. It was sprinkling a little in the morning, but the afternoon was beautiful.

Without roaming, I had no way to translate anything I was looking at while walking around, which was frustrating, but it also kept me mostly off the phone. I got out for a nice early morning walk Tuesday after our breakfast. It was a continental breakfast in the true meaning of the word – smoked salmon, cold cuts, the most wonderful seedy dark bread, homemade jams, with bacon and eggs as a bow to the American staying there, yogurt, croissants, fruits, and some vegetables and coffee (thank God).

While Mom was napping in the afternoon, Cathy and I walked through the pedestrian mall, then jogged left at the main street, ending up in a little park with a walking path going by a creek. I’m grateful we managed to find our way back, and it was so beautiful—green, lush springtime in Switzerland.  Tuesday afternoon, I went to the grocery store downstairs and picked up a carton of milk and some Swiss chips similar to Sun Chips in the US. Cathy and I had vetted the store on Monday, just wandering through. I paid for my purchase with Swiss francs, and the checkout went well. It was exciting to wander in the store looking at people and products. I’m glad that people there all spoke some English, my German being nonexistent, and Google Translate unavailable. Cathy and I also took a walk up the steep hill south of the hotel, past an elementary school and one of the apartment buildings that we could see into from our room.

Tom called Tuesday afternoon before dinner, about eight in the morning St. Louis time. The four of us talked for 40 minutes on speakerphone. In the first part of the conversation, Tom was pretty bummed out and Mom was trying to make him feel better. By the end, though, we were all laughing and talking and sharing hair-raising stories about the harebrained escapades that each of us three siblings pulled while teenagers.

Mom had never heard any of these stories, and each of us told stories that the other two siblings had never heard. It was a sweet time. Tom’s wife Vicky chimed in a little bit in the background and we were glad to hear from her too. I’m so glad Mom and Tom had that last call.

That evening, we had dinner at Mad Angel, the city’s top-rated restaurant. It was probably one of the best meals I’ve had in my life. Mom and Cathy had petite fillets with the house-made fries. I had rib tips with risotto and vegetables, and it was all so delicious. The wait-staff was so attentive and let us sit and enjoy our time there, for almost 2 hours. It was a lovely last dinner for Mom. I do have one big regret, which is that I didn’t leave a tip. Having read that it was not done there, I didn’t, and I really regret that, since I’ve since read otherwise. The service was so wonderful, and the food was outstanding.

After dinner, we went upstairs and chilled out, looked at phones, and read. Mom slept like a rock.  Cathy and I both had a hard time sleeping, due in part to the change in time zones, and in part to the strangeness of the situation.

Mom and I had one last squabble- I told her I was taking away the four extra trazodone from both her night time and middle of the night medications. She told me “Maybe you could just let go of trying to control my medications”. And I told her “Maybe you could quit fucking around with your medications.” And she backed off. I think she snuck an extra Tylenol in there, but I let that one slide. Cathy noted that the trazodone was definitely affecting her cognitive ability, which she would need to have to get the procedure done.