The Chur(se) of Covid

Seems someone must have taken a bite out of this goat's butt...

June 25: The day began with a fine Swiss breakfast at a cafe close to our apartment. We then wandered the very quiet streets, enjoying the morning light and the art it shone on.

This house seemed to reflect a number of residents, with family coats of arms and other unnamed artwork.

Frogs reigned in this fountain.

As visitors to Chur, we had been given passes to some of the museums in town, so we walked up to the Rätisches Museum, thinking we'd spend some time there and then check out the art museum.

This museum had a thorough and fascinating deep dive into the Roman and subsequent history of the area. We hadn't seen it handled better anywhere else in our travels--but of course we hadn't been particularly looking for this focus elsewhere. The best comparison we could make was to the York Castle Museum, which was also a regional history museum that had focused for part of its exhibits on the Roman presence there. In this, and in every other exhibition throughout, the Rätisches Museum was head and shoulders above the York. Really an excellent institution. Cindy and I spent more than a couple of hours happily exploring the small museum and its collections, gaining insight into the area.

Isn't she a picture?

And of course we found more than one goat there...

But as we neared the end of our visit there, I found that I was feeling a little...off, I guess I would say. We went back to our place and I thought I should just do a Covid test. Sure enough, the result was positive. Aarrgghh.

I didn't feel sick, so after taking my first Paxlovid dose, I masked up and Cindy and I went on the hunt for a place where we could get some lunch to eat away from other people.

We actually spent part of the afternoon in our apartment, resting. By that time we had also figured out that Sunday is a day of rest in Chur, and we needed to find non-commercial entertainment for ourselves. So we went for a walk, expanding our area beyond the old town.

We found a goat in the paving, so Cindy thought she would try the Milan good luck exercise with this:

I can only hope this won't become a popular trend...

We discovered a really easy route to the train station, very direct and a much shorter walk than my map app had provided the day before--and it went right through the main shopping area. Not that there was any shopping to be done, given that it was a Sunday, but there were also a number of cafes along the way, so it seemed a good time to have some ice cream. And then we also had an opportunity to enter a nearby church...

Despite the number of churches and cathedrals we saw, I never failed to be amazed at their beauty. And because I work for a chorus, I'm always looking at the spaces in terms of how they would work as concert spaces. This one seemed especially accommodating.

We managed to find a place for dinner--just 15 minutes before they stopped serving! We ate and watched them close down the patio around us.

After that, there was really no more exploring to be done, so we headed back to our place for the night and went to bed early with visions of the red train dancing in our heads.

We left early in the morning so that we could have breakfast at some cafe along the way. It was great to sit there and watch everyone heading to work, and see the garbage trucks come through to do their pickups. I have never seen such clean garbage trucks!

As we walked from breakfast to the station, I noticed that a big department store was already open... Cindy had wanted to purchase a Swiss watch while in Chur, but of course we didn't know that nothing would be open on Sunday, so she had given up on the idea. But we had 15 minutes to spare, so I suggested that we go in and see what they had. The watch section, happily, was just inside the door, and they were having a sale! Cindy found a watch in the sale section she wanted, but the only salesperson in that area was busy with another customer. I saw a woman coming down the stairs and commandeered her services. Within that 15-minute timespan, Cindy did in fact get her Swiss watch! Mission accomplished.

Arriving at the train station, what did we see but that beautiful Bernina train, preparing to head to Tirano. We, however, were off to Munich, so we had to catch a train that wasn't quite as pretty. But the scenery along that route more than made up for it.

We arrived in Munich in the midafternoon, providing us with plenty of time to see some of the sights and have dinner.

Munich was the beginning of a big change as far as our lodging was concerned. From this point on until we got to Italy, we would be staying in hotels--one of the bonuses with these was that breakfast was either included in our reservation or we could purchase it. This hotel had a traditional breakfast buffet, and we would try that in the morning.

Here was our bed at the Kings Hotel Superior:

Pretty fancy--but that did not mean that the pillows were adequate. An aside: We'd discovered that Europeans seem to like wimpy thin pillows that provide next to no support.

We made our way to the heart of Munich's old town, where Cindy had some pleasing surprises for me. But more on that in the next chapter.