31/5/94

Your letter arrived today and both Lex and I sincerely hope that Jaki’s recovery is proceeding smoothly. What a terrible fright you must all have had and we were so sorry to hear about it. I particularly appreciate your taking the time to write. I fully understand that you can’t at this stage be sure that your help won’t be needed by Jonathan and Jaki in September and there is no need to let Mrs. Mueller, the owner of the flat in Kandersteg, know. We have sole use of the flat and she agreed that we could have an extra person there at the very reasonable charge of 20 Swiss Franks per night. I promised to call her a few days before we arrive so that they can make up the right number of beds. As you know, our booking at Kandersteg is 15-25th Sept. It would work out very well if you arrived about half way through that time and then also joined us on our trip to Avignon. We will be travelling everywhere with our Eurail Pass both in Switzerland and France – that is actually 1st class, the only way we can buy it here. You’ll probably know all the tricks of Rail travel in Europe. Some of our friends buy a “Senior Card” in Switzerland and France and then get their rail travel at half price. Because of all the long distances we will cover, the full Eurail Pass is the most economical for us. I suppose it will all work out alright for the 3 of us and our various ways of ticketing. Please do let us know if there are any particular things you want to do in Switzerland so we can save them for when you arrive. – We haven’t planned to make any bookings in Avignon in order to leave our choices as open as possible. What do you think? I am sure it will all be very interesting and great fun.

We will be in Melbourne all of June and are then going to Queensland, to check the house and enjoy the sun, for 3 weeks in July. After that we will be firmly here, till we depart on 20/8. After that it might be hard to make contact with us, but if things are still uncertain for you, we could ring you when we first arrive in Kandersteg or you could write to us – Kandersteg – Dorfstrasse 3718 – Berner Oberland.

I do hope that Jaki will make a good recovery. She sounds to be getting some very good care.

We are very much looking forward to sharing some of our holiday with you.

Love from Rita.