Say Cheese!

As Switzerland is the cheese capital of the world (sorry, Wisconsin), we thought a trip to a genuine Swiss cheese factory was in order.

[NUDITY ALERT:  This post contains nudity.  It appears suddenly, with no warning.  Skip the entire post if this will alarm or offend you.]

So we headed to one of the most famous cheese towns of all:  Gruyére, which is only about a 45 minute drive from Lausanne.

We started the day with a tour of the Gruyére cheese factory.  This was a really fascinating look at cheesemaking from beginning to end.  They provided all visitors with a headset tour in the language of their choice (our second experience of this technology here).  We learned that what the cows eat is important, and we looked into giant vats of milk and watched the milk curdle and be molded into cheese.  We even got to see the cellar where thousands of wheels of Gruyére were aging.  A computer-controlled cart rolled endlessly up and down the aisles, pulled out one cheese wheel at a time, gently turned it, and placed it back on the rack.  And they gave us free samples of cheese!

Say Cheese!

Next Gruyere ad campaign?

We then traveled the short distance to the medieval town of Gruyére.  This is a pedestrian only, super cute village with lots of cafes, shops, and museums, just like in medieval times, we're sure. 

Hanging out in Gruyere

And, of course, a medieval castle was around the corner at the end of the block. The castle, the oldest parts of which date to the 12th century, was home to a long succession of Gruyères counts.  They had the usual castle stuff: tapestries, armor, swords, a video that explained the history of the castle, a dungeon, a chapel with 15th century (I think) stained glass windows.  Like many Swiss castles, it was a private residence in the 19th century, and many rooms had 19th century furniture and art, which hardly seems at all old in this context.  As we've commented before, the layers and layers of history at sites like this -- sites that have been more or less continuously occupied for 1,000 years -- add to their fascination. 

The guys on the Gruyere Castle rampart walls.

Both the cheese factory and the castle, by the way, were free in the sense that, like almost every other museum or museum-like place we've been, they were covered by the (not inexpensive) Swiss Museum Pass we bought on our first day in the country.  Definitely a worthwhile purchase, mainly because it means we don't ever have to think about whether or not it'd be worth the 8-12 franc per person admission fee to visit places like this.  We just show our passes and go in.  If it's boring (which few such places are) we leave quickly, not feeling like we have to stay to get our money's worth.

But if you asked Christopher and Matthew their favorite part of this outing, they'd say a place that was not covered by our Museum Pass:  the Moleson-sur-Gruyére "fun park" -- a ski mountain in the winter transformed for summer fun, including helicopter rides, mini-golf, and ski lifts that pulled you up the mountain on a go-cart or scooter that you then rode down.  We decided to try out the bob luge: a two-person bobsled-like contraption that you rode down on a winding track they built on the side of the mountain.  A good time was had by all.

We then rode the funicular up the mountain (a ride covered by our other excellent first-day purchase:  the public transport half-fare card).  Here, almost at the top of the mountain, we enjoyed another spectacular vista, ice cream, and beers.

For the fun (and exercise) of it, we decided to walk rather than take the funicular back down the mountain.  The signs at the top said it would take 50 minutes to walk down.  In our experience so far, these signs (which are everywhere there is a walking path, which is nearly everywhere) are accurate plus-or-minus 2 minutes.  Still, as we do not have proper hiking shoes, doing a 50 minute walk down a pretty steep slope may not have been our wisest decision.  Matthew wiped out in the first 50 yards of the walk.  But we brushed ourselves off and kept going.

And the boys needed a pit stop about 50 yards after that.

This photo gives us a chance to share our observation that the Swiss seem more comfortable with public nudity than Americans are.  We sort of expected the topless women at the beach (which by the way isn't that common, maybe 1 in 30 women, not that we've been counting, and the boys haven't even noticed or, if they've noticed, haven't cared enough to comment on it).  But we did not expect the old man at the beach to change into his suit right in front of us (no photo available).  No one seemed to mind.
Back to our walk down the mountain:  All in all it was a lovely walk on a beautiful day, complete with cowbells ringing in the distance. And, as we sometimes do to pass the time, I told one of our favorite stories (Gingerbread Man) as we walked, and we played name that tune.  We made it down in one piece, and we made it back to Lausanne before dark.  It was a school night.

First Day of School

Yesterday (August 22) was the first day of school for Christopher and Matthew.

We had quite a time finding the right school for them in Lausanne.  We did not feel great about enrolling them in the local public schools.  While we heard good things about the Swiss public schools, we were worried about sending them to a French-only school. Several people advised us that, if you immerse your kids in a foriegn language school, it will take 3 months before they are not miserable.  It would be worth it if we were going to be here a full year, but not for half a year.  They would just be getting their feet under them when it would be time to leave.

There were a couple of other options.  There is an International School in Lausanne.  This English-only school looked quite similar to their school in the US. While we did apply, we did not expect to get a spot. The school reserves spots for business sponsors (large corporations with lots of ex-pats in the area).  As we have no corporate affiliation, we were told our application would be at the bottom of the pile. (An interesting note here is that just today we received an email from the International School letting us know that the boys did get a spot for the fall.  What does this say about the economy?)

This reality did force us to look hard at other school options, leading us to the Ecole Bilingue de la Suisse Romande.   This is a bilingual French-English school.  It is very small--about 90 students in K-5.  We felt this would be the perfect option for us--some French, some English, small school, downtown location.  Perfect!  As I kept telling the boys, this was the perfect spot--half the kids would be English speakers like them and the other half want to be English speakers (like them).

So, after some email correspondence with the very friendly and welcoming headmistress, we signed up, sight unseen.

And today was the first day of school.

We all had the usual start of school jitters.  What would it be like?  Would they make friends?

Here are some photos of the kids on our way to school today.  We caught the bus downtown a half block from our apartment, rode it downtown, and walked to the school down the steepest street in the city.  Twenty-two minutes, door to door.

 

At the bus stop.

Past the Swedish Embassy and other official looking buildings.

Down the steepest hill in Lausanne.

We made it!

As might be expected, Matthew bounded into his class and said "bonjour!" to his classmates.  Christopher was a little more hesitant.  He entered the class with a simple wave.  We expect Matthew to learn more French than Christopher.  Being younger makes him less self-conscious and way more willing to just babble in an effort to communicate.

We will see how this all pans out, but there are a couple of interesting/attractive features at the outset.

First, there is no homework.  Zero.  None.  Frankly, we are not big proponents of excessive homework, so this is a welcome respite for all of us. However, we of course have not left all of our anxieties at home, so we will be keeping up on their Durham school activities and will be assigning them homework of our own.  Oh well, some habits die hard.

Second, they are served a snack and (hot) lunch provided by the school.  So I'm free until January of the daily chore of preparing and packing school lunches.  Let me repeat:  I do not have to make school lunch or snack for 5 months.  Bliss!

Third, we were not expected to purchase ANY school supplies.  Zero.  None.  Not a pencil or a pencil case or a set of think colored markers or a set of thick colored markers or a three-ring binder.  Nothing.  It's all built in to the tuition.  So we did not have to find the Swiss version of Target or try to figure out if we really needed to search longer to find the prescribed 18-color marker set when we could only find the 10- or 20-marker sets.

This combination -- no homework, no supplies, and school-provided hot lunch -- explains why, in the photos above, the boys are carrying nothing on their way to school.  It's a strange experience to walk out the door on our way to school carrying absolutely nothing, but it's also very pleasant.

One other thing:  Today, the second day of school, the entire school went on an all day surprise outing.  They told neither the parents nor the kids where they were going.  We were just told to drop them off by 8:30 and pick them up at 5:30.  When we dropped them off this morning one of the teachers let slip that they were taking the kids to something special in Fribourg, a city about an hour away, which means they are driving, though in what vehicle(s), with what driver(s), we don't know.  I guess we'll learn the details when we pick them up tonight.  It's hard to imagine this happening at a U.S. school.

 Mark and I have been back at work for two weeks now.  As you can see from the photo below, we share a table in our apartment, sitting a few feet from each other, with our laptops nearly touching.  This is a whole new level of togetherness!  Mark's class at UNIL in a few weeks, so that will add some intrigue to our work situation.

We are likely to have setbacks, but school is off to a good start.

Daytripper

One of the wonderful things we have discovered about Lausanne is that there are a large number of day trips one can take from here.  And, by day trip, I mean an hour or less drive or train trip.  There is certainly much more to do outside this range.  We'll be discovering that in the weeks to come!

We've been taking advantage of that luxury and getting out of town fairly regularly.  Here are some of our recent exploits:

Chillon Castle.  I know we've already written about this trip (http://nagle-chaves.blogspot.com/2011/08/thanks-for-party.html ) but I could not resist putting up one more photo.

Avenches.  Since our guys have a deep love of all things Ancient Rome, we made our way to Avenches.  Avenches, we now know, was the Roman settlement of  Aventicum, the capital of the Roman province of Helvetia. By 15 BC, Aventicum had developed into a major commercial center with 20,000 inhabitants.  The city has gone to great lengths to preserve and restore the ruins.  Here are Christopher and Matthew at the ancient Roman amphitheater that is still used for concerts today.

Lake Neuchâtel.  After visiting Avenches we drove to Lake Neuchâtel.  We let the GPS guide us to a little Plage Communal that was very, very far off the beaten path. After a convoluted drive on very narrow roads through farmland, everyone was a little skeptical of what we'd find.  As we walked down a long boardwalk through a marshy area Mark wanted to give up.  He thought we'd never find the beach.  Alas, we did!  We changed into our suits and went for a dip.

Related to swimming, we've been surprised by how hot it is here.  One doesn't normally associate the phrase "unbearably hot" with Switzerland, but it's been 90+ degrees and very humid, day in and day out.  Nothing, including our apartment, is air conditioned.  We have fans, and it cools off at night, but we look forward to a break in the heat wave.

Geneva.  We took the train to Geneva on a Friday after lunch.  We made our way from the train station (in the sweltering, 90 degree, heat) to the Jet d'Eau.  This tremendous fountain is at the juncture of Lake Geneva and the Rhone River.  It pumps 123 gallons of water into the air per second.  The water rises more than 450 feet into the air.  They let you walk on a narrow jetty right out to the fountain.  The spray is incredible.  We all got soaked!

We made our way to the Saint Pierre Cathedral (Calvin's church) and headed right to the basement to see the ruins.  There we found an incredible museum that showed the archeological roots of the Cathedral, and even of the city itself -- buildings built upon older buildings, which were built on still older buildings.  The space under Saint-Pierre Cathedral contains the remains of the many churches that preceded the current structure, the oldest of which dates from the late 4th century.  And even that structure was built on top of a second century BC tomb that seemed to be used for ceremonial purposes.  It's not unusual here to be at sites that have been continually occupied for thousands of years, but that deep history was especially well presented in this museum.

After a long visit to the museum, we went upstairs to the modern day (meaning dating from the 12th century or so) church.  Here is Mark by Calvin’s chair. 

We even made it to one of the oldest homes in the city and the location of the museum of the history of Geneva.  All kinds of cool things here.  Perhaps the display that most caught our attention were the remains of a guillotine from the time of the French Revolution.  It was surprisingly small.

Grandson Castle.  Another drive in the Swiss countryside to see a castle.  Grandson castle is a  medieval castle (11th to 14th century) overlooking Lake Neuchâtel.  This castle came to our attention becuase Matthew was asking about all the people buried in the Cathedral at Lausanne.  After doing a little research, Mark found out that one of the most famous people buried there was Otto of Grandson, a 13th century knight. We thought we should check out his home.

Our visit to Grandson Castle was particularly fun as we happened to go on the day of their annual medieval festival.  There were lots of folks in costume doing exhibitions of medieval archery, cooking, sword fights, juggling, dancing, etc.  They even had costumes for the kids to dress up in so they could be part of the action.

I wonder where our next adventure will take us?

Futball

The last two weeks the boys have been enrolled in a futball (that's soccer to you folks stateside) camp.  I knew that we needed to get them in some kind of camp so that Mark and I could get back to work.  So I put a lot of time into finding something for them. 

Just as I do every year, in January I started to look for summer camp options. The big difference was that I was looking for a camp in a foreign country.  I came across a group called Intersoccer that runs English-language camps all across Switzerland. 

It turned out to be a great find.  Christopher and Matthew had a really great time these last two weeks. 

Here are some shots of the guys in action.

Matthew as goalie

Christopher on attack

They had a lot of fun and learned some great soccer moves.  Me?  I learned that it is really hard to take good photos of a soccer game!

Best of all, we came home with some loot.  In the first week of camp, Christopher won MVP and was awarded a mini-soccer ball.  This has been great since we did not bring a soccer ball with us.  In week two, Matthew won the "wacky hat" competition and won a water bottle.  Also critical as we brought no water bottles with us. 

And, each guy got a special Intersoccer shirt EACH week of camp.  This increased their play-shirt options by 66.7% as we packed pretty light (see http://nagle-chaves.blogspot.com/2011/07/and-away-we-go.html).

Turns out this English camp was a bit more of a bilingual camp--some kids spoke English, some did not.  But that was OK.  It was a good opportunity for the guys to pick up some French.

They learned a few key phrases such as:

Joues, joues, joues -- play, play, play.  This was often yelled by the coach when he wanted to keep the ball in play.

Ballon rouge (or blanc, or vert...) -- Red ball.  Yelled by the coach to indicate which team needed to get the ball back in play.

Scooooooore -- score.  Some words need no translation.

Cityscapes

Here's some images from around Lausanne.

View from our balcony.  Really.

 

Heading down our street to the train station.  Kids on scooters.

An intersection near downtown.

The Lausanne Cathedral.  A 12th century church that's the most famous building in town and (according to all the guidebooks) the most impressive Gothic church in all of Switzerland.

Inside the Cathedral. The Cathedral was a major Catholic church from the 12th century until the Reformation.  It was filled with statues, tapestries, and paintings, and it had a gold Virgin Mary near the altar where Mark is standing to take this shot.  During the Catholic period the seats would have been facing the altar.  On the right hand siide, about half way down, you can see the raised pulpit that the reformers built after the Cathedral became Protestant in the 16th century.  The reformers stripped bare the interior, whitewashed the painted walls, melted down the gold virgin to make coins, and reoriented the pews to face the raised pulpit.  Today, organ recitals played on the Cathedral's magnificent organ draw the crowds.  The organ sits on the floor at the far end of the photo.  There's someone playing it, and the seats now all face the organ -- backs to what once was the altar.  So this shot illustrates three epochs in European religious history:  from Catholic Sacrament to Protestant Word to Contemporary Aesthetics.

Lausanne is basically built up a steep slope from Lake Geneva, so you can see the lake from most anywhere in town.

Not everything is beautiful and charming.  There's lots of graffiti.

One of the oldest streets in town.

Downtown has several pedestrian-only areas.





We bought lunch in this little store.  That's Matthew standing in the doorway.

Eating lunch by this 13th century fountain in the oldest (not counting the Roman ruins down by the lake) part of town.

Lost in Translation

Switzerland is a land of many languages.  To be precise, there are four official languages:  German, French, Italian, and an ancient Swiss Rumantsch language.  Alas, I speak only a little bit of one of these (French).

Before we arrived, we had it from several reliable (we thought) sources that most people we'd encounter in Lausanne would speak English in addition to French (the dominant language in this part of the country).  That has not been our experience so far.  People from cafes to government offices speak French to us.  If they speak English, they are not letting on.

To be fair, we are initiating conversations in French and trying our best to speak to them in French.  So perhaps they know English but are trying to humor us, or perhaps people feel as nervous about speaking English (which would be a third langauge for many people here) as we feel about speaking French.
Starting with our first day here, we've had to do all kinds of important tasks in French (and by important, I do not mean ordering food in restaurants, which we can handle reasonably well).
For example, we needed cell phones.  Now, most of you have had the experience of purchasing a cell phone in the US.  And, if you are like me, you find it a confusing and painful process even doing it in your mother tongue.  Imagine doing this in a foreign language!  Did we need a plan focused mostly on Switzerland, or will we need to call other countries?  Did we want to pay in advance?  How do we pay when our minutes are up?

We made our way to the cell phone store (which, interestingly, is also the post office) and, fortunately, the clerk at the store was very, very patient (she had relatively few customers as most of Switzerland seems to be on summer holiday) and we got it figured out.  We were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.  After all, we had managed to get cell phones! 

Alas, then we got home and plugged them in and realized all the instructions were in German.

All I can say is: thank goodness for Google Translate!

[Note from Mark:  I can't help intervening here to say that Ami is dramatically understating her ability to speak French.  She's a pro!  She handled the cell phone transaction without serious difficulty, and she has communicated effectively in French in lots of other situations as well.  So don't let her fool you into thinking that she's struggling to communicate here.]

French is a fun language.  And, I do think our ability to communicate will improve.  Here are some of our favorite French phrases so far:

Voila -- used in all kinds of ways like "here you go"  or "there it is."

Prochain arête -- next stop (very handy when riding the bus or train).

Action -- this means sale.....critically important when shopping, especially with a Swiss franc that last week reached historic highs against the dollar.

Glace -- ice cream.

Chien -- dog.  This is particularly good to know as the people of Lausanne deeply love their dogs and take them everywhere (including parks, shops, cafes, grocery stores, and on the bus and train -- though dogs need their own tickets).

One of our most important tasks this week was to find out how to get a parking permit.  When driving around we noticed that parking is either metered or there are signs that indicate permit parking.  In addition, we noticed that most cars parked in permit areas had a blue cardboard sign they put on their dashboard (the parking permit).  After driving a few places and being unsure if we could legally park or not, we were determined to get our very own parking permit.

Mark and I decided to start at the central tourism office.  Surely, they would know what we needed.  With confidence (and in English!), they directed us to the police station down the street.  The officers behind the desk (in very fast French [which Ami understood and responded to!-MC]) said we needed to go to a different police station.  We returned to the tourism office for more advice, and this time they suggested that we go to the main tourist office, in the train station.  We found our way there, and I tried, in very poor French, to describe to the agent what we were looking for. 

After a few confused moments and some back and forth which included pointing to a map and doing some sign language, the agent said "le disc!"  And from behind her desk pulled out the blue cardboard parking permit.

"Le disc!"  I cried.

Success!  And, to boot, it was one of the very few things we have encountered here for which there was no charge.

Another kind of cultural encounter:  We of course hope that Christopher and Matthew learn things living here that they wouldn't learn at home.  So far, though, the main cultural practice they've noticed and want to emulate is smoking.  The Swiss have one of the highest smoking rates in Europe, and the boys have noticed.  (The Swiss also have one of the longest life expectancies in Europe.  Other aspects of their lifestyle must compensate for the smoking.  Almost as noticeable as all the smoking, for example, is how little obesity we see here.)  I guess the lesson is that, when you go for cultural enrichment, you can't control which parts of the culture your kids will pick up.  Let's hope they also learn some French.

Thanks for the Party!

On August 1st we arrived in Lausanne. 

After researching, planning, worrying, and anticipating this journey for about a year, if feels good to finally be here.

And the city threw us a celebration complete with fireworks upon our arrival!

Naw, not really.  August 1st is the national day in Switzerland (a la July 4th).  From our balcony, we could see fireworks across the city.  Then, to top things off, our downstairs neighbor lit off fireworks in the backyard.  Note, these are not run-of-the-mill-backyard-sparklers.  These were the real deal, exploding just over our heads.  Quite exciting.



A quick word about our apartment. AWESOME.  It definitely exceeds our expectation.  As you can imagine (and as some of you heard about in depth),we had to find an apartment via the internet, sign an agreement without ever meeting the owner or seeing the place, and just cross our fingers that we weren't renting a flophouse disaster.  Quite the opposite.  Our apartment is more spacious and light-filled than we imagined and has a magnificent view of Lake Geneva and France across the lake.  And it is wonderfully centrally located with quick access to bus routes, the train, and downtown. 

Here we are on our balcony, toasting our first night in Lausanne.


And, to boot, our landlady is super nice.  Upon arrival, she walked us around the neighborhood, pointing out shops and parks.  She brought us three bags of English-language books for the kids.  And as a welcoming gift left us a bottle of wine, two beers, and some Pellegrino in the fridge.  I think we're going to like it here.

While most of this first week has been taken up with getting-settled chores (more on that later) we have squeezed in a few fun outings.

Here are the boys on their scooters.  We bought them at a bargain price from a Chapel Hill family just leaving Lausanne as we arrived (thanks, Raquel!).  Perhaps the best purchase so far. We take them everywhere.

Our main outing this week was to Chillon Castle in Montreaux (a town mostly famous these days for the Jazz festival), a great historic site built in the 12^th century and written about by Lord Byron in the Prisoner of Chillon.

We also discovered a new favorite hangout--Ouchy (oo-she).  This lakeside area is one of the happening places in Lausanne, with docks and boats and fountains and outdoor cafes and restaurants, and wide open spaces (great for scootering).  And it also seems to be the local equivalent of NYC's Washington Square Park (where people go to play pick-up chess).  The local talent was impressed with Christopher’s play.

He won this game.

Not a bad first week.

A Week in the Country-Part 3

Theme 3:  Water

The Bernese Oberland has lots of water.

We visited the Aare Gorge.  Here the fast moving Aare River has carved  a dramatic gorge that in some places is only a few yards wide.

We visited the Reichenbach Falls, site of one of the most famous scenes in English literature.  It's the place where Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty fell to their deaths.  A star marks the spot on the trail where they fought and fell.  Holmes fans were so upset about this that Arthur Conan Doyle had to bring Holmes back from the dead to solve dozens more cases.  There's a Sherlock Holmes museum in the town near the falls.  Kind of an interesting concept -- a museum focused on a fictional character.  I wonder if, in a 1,000 years, people will forget that Holmes was fictional. Back to the falls, it seems to come straight down the mountain, but leaves some places untouched.

There are public fountains everywhere.  Mostly these are for human use (thank goodness, because we seem to be thirsty all the time).  But they are out in open areas and constantly running.

As someone who lived in the dessert for 9 years, I still find flowing tap water surprising and a little unsettling. I instinctively look around for the handle so I can turn the tap off while simultaneously lecturing whomever might be listening on the importance of conserving water. I guess when you’ve got glaciers up the mountain (for a little while longer, anyway), conserving water is not so much of a concern.

A Week in the Country-Part 2

Theme 2:  Public Parks and Play Spaces

There are many things that Switzerland does well.  Public play spaces are surely one of them.

Everywhere we go, we stumble on great little parks.  These are places with a slide, a couple of swings, a see-saw, and often a ping-pong table (with a metal net) and a zip line.  And benches.

These parks seem to appear just as Christopher and Matthew have had enough walking or monument viewing.  As if someone said, "well, by now the parents are going to need to sit for a stretch and the kids will need to run around.  Good place for a park."

The ping-pong tables were especially fun to see.  I guess we should have packed our paddles instead of our tennis racquets.  Instead, we bought paddles and I suspect we'll be shipping our racquets back home, unused.  Live and learn.

The ping-pong gear now goes with us on almost all of our walks.

Play spaces have even been incorporated into serious hike areas.  On our journey down from Alpen Tower we discovered a kids 1-hour "fun trail" which told a local folk tale and provided various play spots along the route.  Including this cool maze.

And, of course, we even have found some chess opportunties.

What the Swiss know is that a little park goes a long way.

A Week in the Country-Part 1

We have just emerged from a week in the Bernese Oberland.  Heaven!  Or, as close as we can get! 

Snowcapped mountains in the distance, with lush green fields dotted with cows and goats and wooden houses with lots of flowers out front.  (They say they keep the flies away.  Maybe it's true.) That was the postcard-like venue we had the good fortune to visit.

We were staying in the house of an aunt of Mark's colleague and friend.  Many thanks!  This is a picture of the house in Hasliberg Reuti and the view from our front window.

As it was an action packed week, I can't go into detail about all the places and things we saw and did.  Take it from me.  There we no rest days.  So rather than go day by day, I'll cover some interesting (to me, anyway) themes.

Theme #1:  Walking:  The country was made for walking.

We did more walking this week than in the past 10 years combined. 

At home, our kids have been known to complain about walking from our driveway to the front door.  These are not kids who are used to doing a lot of walking. 

Not so this last week.  We put some serious miles on our shoes.  We walked on beautiful mountain trails with switchbacks and steep grades, and in valleys with grassy fields and gurgling streams, past cows shrouded in haze, up paths to the top of waterfalls, and in the pouring rain.

Our longest walk was a 3 hour 50 minute journey from the top of Alpen Tower down to Bidmi. 

At the end of this journey, when Mark and I had completely run out of gas, we still had to walk another 10 minutes uphill from the cable car station to the house.  At this point Christopher and Matthew RAN all the way up the hill.  They have some deep reservoir of energy that I wish I could tap!

Speaking of shoes made for walking: unfortunately, we just brought our sneakers, which are not really trail gear.  In Switzerland, even the children have specialty trail shoes.  And for good reason! We figured this out when Mark busted a hole in the toe of his shoe towards the end of one particularly long, rocky downhill hike.  Almost 4 hours of walking downhill puts a lot of pressure on the toes.

Still, when it comes to walking, do not let anyone tell you otherwise:  down is much easier than up!