Thursday morning we had to say goodbye to Oma. That is the one bad thing about having visitors, eventually they have to go back to where they came from. There were many tears shed, starting the night before. That morning she went to cuddle one last time with Alexandra and it turned into this.
She was rocking Alexandra and singing a little goodbye song, and then Sophie and Sarah came and joined the group. Alexandra was holding on to Angie very tightly, and didn't want to let go. So sweet, and so sad at the same time. Eventually, though, it was time to take her to the airport. Alexandra came with, while Amelia and Nick joint babysat the others. When I got back, everybody piled in and we were off on a new adventure. After all, what better way to beat the blues than drown them in chocolate!?!
We have been to this chocolate factory before, but it had been a few years. Several of our friends had never been, so we decided to tag along and show Amelia the advantages of living in Switzerland. She was a bit disappointed that the free tasting chocolates were mostly milk chocolate, as she is a dark kind of girl. But the fact that there were no restrictions on how many you could eat, made them all taste that much better. :)
It always surprises me how fascinating, almost mesmerizing, it can be to stand and watch chocolate roll down the assembly line. The tour area is not that large, but we still managed to spend over an hour looking at everything. I really like this particular factory because you can move around and see different parts of the factory as your leisure. They have built a plexiglass (I guess, I am not an expert on such things) walkway that is suspended from the roof, over the actual factory floor. You can spend a few minutes watching the Minor bars getting made, then wander over and watch the chocolate bananas getting wrapped, and then mosey to the other side and watch the chocolate ladybugs (not made with actual ladybug parts) being coated in their final layer. There is even a back room where you can watch the giant machines "conching" or mixing the various ingredients into the three different kinds of chocolate; white, milk, and dark. Technically, white chocolate isn't chocolate, as it contains only cocoa butter, not actual cocoa. (a fact we learned on the tour) But since they use it and make it in the factory, it also gets a place of honor on the chocolate board.
There was a rather funny incident, involving a tour group in front of us. I don't think it was a school group, because there was quite a wide variety in their ages, but they had an actual tour guide spouting the same information you could basically read for yourselves on the handy monitors they had stationed all along the walkway. They were kind of blocking our entrance into the next area, so we were waiting for them to pass before going in. She stopped, though, and started talking to them again, so we were kind of bottle-necked in this passageway with them. Our group was bigger than theirs, and as it was made up mostly of kids hopped up on the free chocolate samples, it was also louder. We were trying to keep the kids under control, but it was taking a rather long time, even to me, and I am a grown up! At one point, she interrupted her spiel, and said, "American mothers! (talking to us, who were actually not all American, but were all native English speakers) I love Americans. I love America. I am going there tomorrow on holiday, but please, keep your children quiet."
I suppose we should have felt mortified that we had been told off, but under the circumstances, all we could was cover our mouths, turn our heads, and snicker. I mean honestly, I am not one to ignore my childrens' outrageous behavior. In fact, some people would say I am too harsh with them, but they were not being loud, and her group was totally blocking our way! They could have easily scooched to the side, let us walk past into the other room, and they wouldn't have had to listen to us at all! But instead, we had to endure another ten minutes of standing there waiting for them to finish, trying to keep the children quiet because we had been reprimanded. Actually, what we ended up doing was going back to another part of the factory we had already seen to give them more space and peace. So, we didn't ignore her, we just had fun mocking her for the rest of the day, and well into the next week, if I recall correctly. 🙂
When we had seen everything we wanted to see, we want back to the sample room, which funny enough also was the factory store where you could buy seconds of chocolate. You know, the ones where the wrapper got put on funny, or the label is crooked. We filled up a rather large bag, I like to think of it as our year's supply, much to the delight of the children. By the time we had all gone potty and posed for a group photo, it was getting kind of late, and I still wanted to stop at the grocery store. So we said goodbye to our friends and the wonderful piece of heaven on earth that is Schoggiland and headed home.
