It's "Mountain Cheese" - okaaaay?!

So I've never done this before, but I DELETED all my pictures off my camera BEFORE I saved them to my hard drive. I am SOOOOO mad at myself! I thought I was just going to have to tell you guys what happened but one of the other hikers, Paul, sent me all his photos! Yeah! Like I said - we have met some really nice people on these hikes!

For the last 2 Sundays we went on hikes about 1 hour from Zurich. The first one last Sunday May 24th was beautiful! We hiked the "Walenseewanderung" from Quinten to Walenstadt

Our route: Wanderung: Quinten 434 m - Au (0.15 h) - Josenhab 434 m (0.30 h) - Garadur 829 m (1.15 h) - Engen - Frachtina 800 m (0.25 h) - Walenstadt - Hafen (1 h) - Walenstadt Bahnhof 427 m (0.20 h) : Total (3.20 h)

The whole thing was along the Walensee. It was sooo beautiful! The water was the most gorgeous blue! I HIGHLY recommend this hike! Here is a pic from the start in Quinten.

Paul also sent me the link to his flickr account -he is a much better photographer than me! Here it is if you want to see the rest of the photos -http://flickr.com/gp/swisszurich/685e7y

Yesterday, May 31, we went on a hike from Haldi to Schattdorf. It was very cool b/c about 3 hours into the hike we came upon a house (you know the ones you see from the road that are WAY up on the top of the mountain with no other houses in sight and you think - Who the Hell lives there? - one of those houses) where the man made cheese in his cellar. Not sure how Sabine (the person who organized the hike) knew he had cheese and that he would SELL us some of his cheese, but she walked right up to his door, knocked on it, and said something like "We would like some of your cheese" in German. He was happy to show us his little cheese cellar and how he made it - he even introduced us to his cows!:)

Really nice guy even though I have NO idea what he told us. So as he was weighing and selling us the cheese - I asked the stupid question of "So what kind of cheese is this?" I mean - I thought it was a legitimate question - right? But after all the "It's Swiss Cheese" jokes - when I asked "No, seriously can you ask the man what kind of cheese he makes" - Sabine looks at me rolls her eyes and says "It's mountain cheese!" in her German accent. Well - okay then. Thank you for clearing that up for me. Mountain Cheese! Duh -you dumb american:). So anyway, Nathan and I bought a kilo of this "mountain cheese" for 14 francs - very cheap and VERY good!

Here are two pics from the hike. One is of the mountain man cutting us his mountain cheese and the other is a scenery pick of the trip.

Paul also gave me the link for the rest of the pics from this hike - http://flickr.com/gp/swisszurich/M2KVe2

So my only question remaining is - Can you ask for "mountain cheese" at the grocery store? B/c this stuff was awesome!

~Mandy