Cheese and Chocolate

Europe is famous for Cheese and Chocolate, and when you travel around, you do see cows everywhere. Some of them even have some pretty nice views .

We have often been treated to the sound of cowbells as we climb the slopes, and one wonders how the cows are cared for so high in the mountains. In fact, the farmers come up to milk them, and make the cheese right on site. Sometimes one sees the old-fashioned metal milk cans cooling in the rushing streams up there.

The mountains here are so tamed that you'd never see a cougar or a bear as you might in the Rockies - here you'd be lucky to see a marmot! Much of the farmers' incomes comes in the form of government subsidies, and they say those days may soon be over, due to the shrinking population of Europe. Then farmlands will be abandoned, the land likely becoming wild again. Already, wolves have returned to parts or Eastern Europe where the population of humans has slowly died out.