After we left France our highway took us into the mountains of Switzerland and through long tunnels one and two miles long. Half of our trip seemed to be spent taking the wrong turn and having to find our way back to the right road again so we arrived in Zurich late in the evening.

Being an intense reader of the book Heidi when I was a child I expected to find myself in the midst of tall Swiss peaks, but there were none. I had forgotten that when she was sent to Zurich to live Heidi was homesick to see her beloved mountains.

Our room on the 10th floor of the Holiday Inn in Zurich seemed like heaven to us because we had the luxury of elevators, a bathroom in the room and a wonderful ice machine. Now we didn't have to carry luggage up steep steps or run down the hall when nature called. Surprisingly the hotel cost no more than the guesthouses.

Bells outside of the hotel serenaded us with haunting ringing melodies. Our American breakfast of sausage and eggs was delicious after eating so many European morning meals of hard rolls and cold cuts.

That day we drove outside of Zurich and found Heidi's Swiss mountains when we visited the walled City of Regensdorf. Built in the 13th century it sat on the side of a mountain surrounded by charming and colorful flowers.

When lunchtime came I found that the Swiss cheese that I had read about in Heidi didn't taste as good as I had remembered it from the book. It was very strong. A soft tinkling touched the Swiss air as a herd of cows with big bells on their necks was led down the street.

Innsbruck, Austria was our next destination. Because the roads were bad and we had several long delays due to road construction, it took us the entire day to travel 150 miles from Zurich to Innsbruck.

Passing through the principality of Lichenstein we saw elegant castles located majestically on the tops of high peaks ruling over the surrounding countryside.

Austria had magnificent mountains that rose towering and exalted far up into the heavens. Great water lilies grew on the side of the mountains. Fascinating houses were decorated with window boxes filled with bright red flowers.

Innsbruck sat in the midst of lofty mountains. Through our window that night glimmering lights of a seemingly unending bridge lit up the dark.

At supper in the Inn my youngest daughter Lois was hungry for a good American hamburger. She hesitated because it was so expensive but finally ordered one. It was an unheard of price, $5.00 - a lot of money in that day.

The van by that time was filled with dirty garments. The next day we had to go shopping to buy clothing for my 17-month-old grandson, Larry. The poor kid was out of clothes because we could find no place to wash. I tried rinsing a few things out by hand and hanging them in the bathroom but they didn't dry.

That morning I tried to make coffee and when I plugged in our transformer it blew the fuses. An angry electrician came to our room and gave us a stern lecture. We didn't understand a word he was saying, but he pointed at our little hand iron and waved and shouted "Nix" at us. He never did notice our transformer and it was still plugged in when he went his way sputtering because of those "Americans."

Riding a ski lift we traveled to the top of the mountain where the view was spectacular and the air cool. Tame wild sheep begged food from us as we sat on the terrace. Larry Earl called them kitties and hid behind his mother when the sheep came near him.

A trip to the swimming pool and a session of relaxing under a sunlamp gave my son-in-law, Larry a bad sunburn. He spent the rest of our tour itching.

That evening we went to an entertainment in the Holiday Inn. A group of Alpine singers and dancers, the Tiroler Ensemble, brought the music of the mountains to us as they played cowbells and xylophones, yodeled, sang and danced. I bought a record and played it many times in the following months.

The next day, short of money, tired and finding ourselves with no clean clothes we decided to start to West Berlin where Linda and her family lived. It took us all day and into the night.

Driving through East Germany it was as if someone had turned off the brightness of our journey and we were surrounded by darkness and rain. What a sad country it was. Although the highway was four lanes it was very bumpy and the black of night was nowhere penetrated by any illumination. We wondered where the people or houses were.

We got to Berlin at 2:00 a.m. on that morning. It was a long and wearisome journey.

The trip through the dreary land was another grim reminder of how precious our freedom is. We could only imagine what it was like to live without liberty. We would find out much more about it in the next few days.