Sometimes everything just goes right. 

For months, we’d been planning for my parents to come over and spend Christmas with us in our place in Switzerland.  I booked their flights on Lufthansa, connecting in Frankfurt and then onto Basel.

About three weeks before they were supposed to fly, I got a phone call from Lufthansa telling me their initial flight had been cancelled and that they’d been reaccomodated on a flight via Munich.  What a saving grace that ended up being.  Flights across Europe were cancelled due to the heavy snowfalls, and Frankfurt airport ground to a standstill, but Munich was open and operating as per normal.  My parents managed to arrive in Basel about 15 minutes behind schedule, but otherwise without incident.

We brought them back to the house and a week of gluttony began!  On the 23rd, the snow arrived and it continued snowing until Christmas day, about 8” in total and the first white Christmas in Basel for many, many years.  It was the perfect setting for a traditional Swiss Christmas dinner – roast goose, spaetzle, and red cabbage.

The next morning, the sun came out and it was a spectacular day for walking, so that’s what we did, before heading off for two days in Germany to visit old family friends.

And then it was time to send them home again, this time via Frankfurt.  While the airports in the north of Europe were all buried in snow, Frankfurt was open again as the snow had melted off.  They got back home right on schedule. 

I should have such luck every time I fly!