A morning im Wald

This week I was rostered on to join DS and his classmates for their monthly excursion to the local forest, or der Wald.

So after a quick Swiss sing-along accompanied on guitar by Frau Amazing Kindy Teacher we loaded up the wagon and headed off, observed by several chocolate-y sheep (who incidentally looked - 3 hours later - as though they hadn't moved a muscle).


The day was freezing and grey, and the forest looked distinctly dark and ominous as we approached, but the children and the robust Frau AKT were undeterred. The children took turns hauling the wagon, and were given free rein once on the path down to the clearing where the action was to take place.

Apart from the obligatory mud-sliding and rolling in the soggy-like-cornflakes leaves, the kids were organised into finding pictures of 5 different kind of owls, which I and the other accompanying parent had 'hidden' around the forest floor.

Frau AKT then talked with the children about the differences between the types of owls, and then the children got into pairs and one of them put on a blindfold and was lead by their partner around the forest - to see what it might be like to find your way through the forest at night, like an owl.

By this stage I was pretty chilly, since the reliable puffy jacket was still in the wash after the Great Compost Debacle, but luckily Frau AKT had started the children on a hunt for kindling (even though she brought most of the wood on the wagon since the forest was very wet after a week of rain and snow).

I was charged with the job of whittling sticks into pointed skewers with - you guessed it - a Swiss Army Knife, and the children started skewering sausages of all shapes and sizes, and helping to make 'snake bread' (dough wound around a stick and cooked over the fire).

After more mud-sliding down the embankment and general frivolity, Frau AKT and I boiled the billy and served up hot apple tea to the by now somewhat dishevelled troupe.

And before we knew it it was time to pack up and head for home, shedding children along the way as we encountered their houses or older siblings.

The only down-side to this excursion was that DS, who had been a little under the weather the last couple of days, finally succumbed to croup and spent a good deal of the night barking like a dog. A visit to the local children's doctor tonight sorted him out.

Here's an interesting fact, though: all children here see children's doctors rather than family GPs. And believe it or not there is only one kids' doctor in Horgen, which I found hard to believe when I first found out. What's also amazing is that this one doctor clearly loves his job, and speaks fluent English. Incidentally, he also looks like he just stepped off a yacht, like his counterpart in Zürich city, whom we encountered not long after arriving.

PS. One more fact, which for some obscure reason made me laugh like a lunatic (it doesn't take much these days) is that the taxi service here has no less than nine taxis for our convenience. Unfortunately the guy who owns the service speaks zero English, so I was forced to plunge in and request a taxi in German. (I would normally walk, but DS was too sick to be out in the cold.) I have no doubt that I sounded like a dumb foreigner, but Herr Taxi turned up at the requested time, and even understood that I might call him once we'd finished at our appointment.

I can't tell you the relief when The Taxi Plan all worked: when you have little trusting faces looking up at you and asking, 'Where are we going, Mummy?', sometimes you just have to smile and cross your fingers and hope like the blazes you end up in the right place.

Or if you end up in the wrong place that it looks like you were hoping to go on a bit of an adventure anyway.