The last day of our trip consisted mainly of driving back home. Knowing this, we took our time at breakfast, and then all went for a nice long swim in the indoor pool at the hotel. Even Oma and Papa took the plunge. The kids had a lot of fun showing Papa all their new tricks, and since we had the place to ourselves, we didn't worry about volume control too much. :)
After checkout, we got in the car and headed for home. We had originally intended to stop in Eichberg, the little Swiss village right by the Austrian border where Chris and family had lived when he was a teenager. But we had also stopped to do our "big shopping" before we left Germany, so we decided to go another time while Amelia was here. Besides, we still needed to get home in time to celebrate Swiss National Day, which commemorates when the three original Kantons, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden , "at the beginning of the month of August 1291" swore eternal allegiance to one another, promising mutual help and assistance. The alliance was mainly formed against the Habsburgs, who were striving to strengthen their position in the strategic region leading to the Gotthard Pass at the time. The rest of Switzerland was built slowly around that core group over the next 500 years. Typical Swiss, do something so important, carefully and methodically. 🙂
Anyway, it is traditionally celebrated with lots of good food and tons of fireworks. And not the little ones you can sometimes find in the States. No, no, if you know where to go you can buy professional, huge, ear-drum splitting fireworks right off the street. And since there is usually so much precipitation year-round here, (hence the beautiful greenery) there is very rarely a restriction on shooting them off. It did happen once a few years back, but I believe, even then, it ended up raining that afternoon, so they lifted the ban in a lot of places at the last minute.
We didn't buy any huge fireworks, as they scare our kids, but we did get a lot of fun little ones. I had wanted to meet up with some friends and go watch the big fireworks in Zurich from the mountaintop, but our kids were just undone from so many late nights and full days in a row, that we decided to just celebrate at home. They had a blast playing with the sparklers and throwing the little snap darts on the ground.
Noah had trouble throwing them hard enough to make them explode, but he eventually figured it out. If not, we just stomped on them with our shoes and that worked, too. :)
After we were all firework'ed out, we cleaned up the mess and went to bed. The neighbors set off their big guns later that night, which kept the kids awake a while longer from all the noise, but at least they were lying in their beds resting. Everyone was very tired the next day at church, but it was worth it. What a fun holiday. Happy Birthday, Switzerland!
