Hmph. It's raining. I am sitting under an awning at the restaurant of the hotel. I have been watching the sky grey and the people change dress as the rain approached. It is raining very hard, with lightning and thunder. Engelberg has tiny curbs but an amazing sewer system that even last night was running torrents under the streets.

Here the flowers are beautiful and geraniums decorate most every balcony. At Luzern's lake, where there was no wind today for sailing (and so withered a great adventure) there are types of ducks I had never seen or heard before. New birdsong was in the little park across from the hotel this morning, when I did my Tai Chi.

At the beginning of this book I copied Ulysses because so much of it is true for me, especially while travelling. The past two days I've been thinking how much more so it must be for Pop-Pop. Today I realized how he and Bubba never age. Mom has seen them change. One day, hopefully a distant one, old age will start causing change. But for all my twenty-one years I've never noticed them age. They have age, but age does not have them.

Just a brief something before I go to bed. Pop-Pop and I spent after dinner in a wonderful conversation about all the important things in life: happiness and success, what makes us who we are, worries and thoughts about other family members, less serious bits about the other people on our tour as a way to affirm our common thinking, truth and certainty, conflict and violence and vegetarianism, independence and needing people but not hurting others, race and religion, and humanity. We think so alike I learned surprisingly little. But I do want to write down one phrase of Pop-Pop's, to share with you: when discussing success Pop-Pop said, "whatever happened, if I hurt no one then I was successful." The real lesson of tonight was that with such different experiences we have learned the same lessons about humanity.

I suppose for completeness's sake I should write that today my tonsillitis did not bother me at all. My appetitie is returning (with all the chocolate around I cannot blame it). I am well.

And also worth saying is a start about my reaction to Luzern's churches, which I have not had finalize yet. The differences were interesting on an intellectual level: the use of marble, paintings more or less common than stautes by what amount, symbols used differently, and so on. Perhaps more important was that the spiritual feeling I discussed earlier was missing. Overhearing a tour guide (perhaps a teacher) I learned the builders of these churches wanted attending services to be enjoyable; the coloring is light and cheerful and there are many windows and chandeliers. The churches seemed works of art instead of a striving to be closer to God, perhaps because the builders were thinking of men as they worked.

What a fitting day in a city of bridges.