Another couple days in paradise

Yesterday we hopped onto a train to Bellinzona to hang out, see the one castle we didn't see before, and to get a kebab! One of the main differences I continue to notice between Switzerland and Italy is that there are so many fewer pigeons here and I love it! Yesterday I was able to sit on the church steps with my friends and eat my kebab instead of standing far away watching the pigeons attack them!

Today after class I relaxed for awhile and eventually made my way down to Coop, a new find for a grocery store in Lugano! Coop has more American products than Megros or Manor so it might be my new staple food store. After grocery shopping, Shelayne, Claire, and 2 of her friends from back home and I went back down to Spaghetti Store for dinner! I just love that place, its so good.

Tomorrow I am off to Cinque Terre with the other SMU study abroad girls. Cinque Terre was definitely on my list of "Things to see before leaving Europe" and I got a little concerned it wasn't going to happen when it didn't work out 2 weekends ago! But the future is bright and we are hopping on a train right after class tomorrow! I can't wait. Beautiful pictures and good stories to come on Sunday! Have a good weekend!

Spaghetti Store

Tonight, Franklin College treated the study abroads and transfer students to a delicious dinner at the Spaghetti Store in downtown Lugano! It was wonderful to get to see some of the kids I haven't seen in awhile and have yummy free food. It is weird to me that Turkey is so close, in 2 more weekends I will be in Turkey for 2 weeks! I can not believe this semester is going by so quickly! First paper due Monday, and a bunch of midterms in 2 weeks.. Let the studying begin!

Also, Mallory Nutt has requested a shout out, so here it is! As for everyone else in Dallas (Happy birthday yesterday to Lyssa) I hope everything is going well and I will see you all in 3ish months!

Zermatt

Last weekend was spent in the beautiful town of Zermatt with the majestic Matterhorn constantly in sight! I can not describe how incredible this town is. Hillary, Esther, Jen and I left Friday afternoon after class and took a train to Andermatt. At Andermatt we foolishly got onto the glacier express, which prides itself in being the slowest express train in the world. The entire car was windows which made it nice to see the scenery, but I bet a turtle would have gotten to Zermatt before us. Miserable! We finally arrived in Zermatt at 6:45 and the first thing you see when you get off the train are oversized golf carts that take people around town because it is a carless city!

There was only one main street in Zermatt which gave it the small town feel, but when you look at the city from above it is a lot bigger than it seems. We walked to our hostel and got there in time for the free dinner. They served the most lasagna I have ever eaten, salad, soup, bread, and ice cream! It was definitely a bargain.

Our original plan was to go rafting, but the guy at the front desk told us that water levels were too low and it would be too cold and the only thing to do in town was hike. So we decided to go up to the top of a mountain to see the Matterhorn better, and go inside a glacier! The Matterhorn is something else. There are mountains in Colorado, but this mountain is just wow.. It demands your attention and asserts its authority! We had to take 5 gondolas in total to get to glacier paradise and in the middle of the journey we stopped and hiked around the base of the Matterhorn for a bit. The view where we were was slightly obstructed by that lovely brown mountain but the best view was yet to come! When we finally got to the top of the mountain next to the Matterhorn, we were above the clouds on a ski resort! Absolutely incredible. We took this opportunity to take a lot of picture with the Matterhorn. Some were serious, others just goofy!

    

After we took picture with the mountain,we went inside the gift shop and bought tickets to descend into a glacier! It was totally work the 8 francs it costed.

Inside the glacier there were many different ice carvings, an ice slide, and even a chandelier! 

We spent 20 minutes freezing in the glacier, and then went back down all the gondolas to Zermatt. We walked around town and bought souveniers, but most importantly we got a german pretzel, and I ate a veal brautwarst! I was so proud of myself for stepping outside of my food comfort zone, and it was actually pretty good. Walking around town, we found flowers that were named Erika! Close enough to my name that is was picture worthy.

 

Before we left town, we had one last mission. We noticed on Friday night that there was a bar that was having a pretend Oktoberfest, so we decided since we aren't going to make it to Munich due to costs, we should at least participate in fake Oktoberfest and all got a stein in celebration of it! We got back late Saturday night and had all day Sunday to catch up on homework and sleep which was much needed. 

Zermatt was definitely a good place to see as it reminded me of a ski town in Colorado and made me feel at home for a little bit! If only I was able to snowboard, the weekend would have been vastly improved! 

  

Family Dinner

After a long day of school, I got to sit back and enjoy a family dinner with all the SMU girls and Claire! Shelayne could not join us because she is currently in Zurich! Hillary made us all chicken piccata and a caprese salad with bread and I made chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Chicken piccata is my new favorite food, or maybe it is still eggplant parmesan, but they are both delicious! I tried capers for the first time (they weren't too bad) and actually ate raw tomatoes with mozzarella cheese on top! Cookies here however, are a little bit of an issues. First problem, vanilla is "vanilla sugar" that you add to the ingredients, and the brown sugar is really grainy. Next problem, we don't have bowls big enough to mix the ingredients in, nor do we have measuring cups or mixing spoons! So we used a giant pot for stew, and a spatula and spoon to mix the ingredients. They were not very good cookies, but after not having cookies for a really long time, they were much appreciated by everyone!
Off to Zermatt tomorrow to see the Matterhorn, and go rafting on Saturday morning in glacial water- should be fun! To avoid the stress of last weekend, and make up for some lost sleep we are coming back to Lugano Saturday night to write an english essay and do a couple hours of homework for my other classes!

Monthaversary

Well folks, today is the day- I have officially been in Switzerland for a month and I couldn't be happier! I might be a little biased when I say this, but Switzerland is by far the best country (in Europe) ever! It's clean, the water is yummy, they have fountains everywhere, there's the alps, and lakes, and everything is on time and I am just happy. I think yesterday it finally hit me that I still have three more months here, and it feels like home. I know my way around, I know people, and I know how to travel. Besides grocery shopping, laundry, and a lot (and I mean A LOT) of homework, nothing exciting has happened. Shelayne and I have decided to lock ourselves into our room and not leave until we have made sufficient dents in our to-do lists, it's proving difficult but together we will conquer this mountain of homework. Whoever said studying abroad is so easy was very wrong- I have never read this many books, or written this many papers in my life while trying to travel to a different country every weekend.
So tonight I will sit back with my newly received residency permit, light a candle, celebrate being a resident of this country with my bottle of... Arizona blueberry white tea.. and do some more homework! Li vedra' in tre mesi gli Stati Uniti!

Under the Tuscan Sun

Friday:
I don't even know where to begin for this weekend. It was incredible! We left Lugano around 1 on Friday and got to Pistoia (a random small town in Tuscany) at 6:30. The hostel we stayed at was 20 minutes outside of town, out in the country and the only way to get there is by car. Luckily, our hostel had a shuttle service from the owner himself! Guido, a wealthy  man who used to make loads of wine, and now only makes olive oil, has a farm out in the country side with an infinity pool, 23 places for guests to stay, and the most incredible view ever. The hostel was $25 a night, and the 5 of us had this little house thing to ourself. When you walked in there was a door on the left and on the right and each one led to a kitchen, a bathroom, and 4 beds- basically it meant we were all spread out and there weren't any strangers with us, which was perfection! The first night we got there, Guido gave us welcome wine and we sat down at dinner with 3 other people, 2 Australian girls, and an Irishman. They were great company for us at the hostel because they were basically the only other people there!

Welcome Glass of Wine!

Guido's shuttle

Saturday:
We woke up early in the morning to begin our day of what we thought would be Lucca and Pisa. We got to the train station at 10 am to find out that the next train to Lucca was at 11, and we didn't want to stay in Pistoia for that amount of time, so we did what any rational person would do- jump on a train to Florence for a couple of hours! We had plans to do wine tasting at 5:30 that night so since we weren't planning on doing anything major, we had planned to have Guido pick us up at the train station at 2 so we could hang out by the pool for a little of bit. My first impression of Florence was that there were so many people there. Switzerland looks like a deserted country compared to the mass of people that was walking around that town! We picked up a map and started on our quick tour of Florence. After we saw the Duomo, we saw a couple famous plazzas, and then stumbled across the fake David and grabbed some pizza!

Duomo

Pizza and Calzone by the Duomo

After our quick sightseeing, our group split up. Two people decided to spend the rest of the day in Florence, while Shelayne, Claire, and I decided to go back to our quaint little town to lay by the pool and go wine tasting! The infinity pool in itself was an experience. It was beautiful and so relaxing and quiet, but the only downfall was we were required to wear swim caps that Guido gave us at arrival. They made for lovely pictures though!

I was the Yellow

 

We got to stay there with our Australian friends for a couple hours and then had to go get ready for wine tasting. As a bonus to wine tasting, we got to stop by the place where Leonardo da Vinci was born. The house was so anti-climactic. It was under construction and was just a giant brick building. After we saw it, Guido informed us that he doesn't believe it was the actual birthplace of Leonardo but rather a place that the town of Vinci made up to get tourists. His reasoning behind this was that he used to be an architect and he believes the house was built in the 800's while Leonardo was born in the 400's.. Quite the controversy!

All of us at wine tasting

At the Vineyards

Wine tasting in Italy consisted of going to one person's farm, and eating all their grapes and eating wine! So amazing! The harvesting didn't start until Sunday, but we were there Saturday so we got to pick grapes and eat them, even though we didn't get to see the wine actually being produced. The 6 of us and Guido then sat down at a table with cheese, ham, bread, bruschetta, cantaloupe, and 4 bottles of wine. We got to try all the different types of wine, and Guido explained the difference between each one and then the woman brought out dessert wine and we got to dunk biscotti in red wine and then drink this dessert wine that tasted like apple juice. It was so delicious! I was going to buy wine from that woman but Guido was very sure to point out that his wine was way better and I need only to buy his. Apparently there is a famous wine that comes from Tuscany that costs 100 euro a bottle, but Guido managed to steal some of these grapes once and now makes the wine for 10 euros per bottle! I bought a bottle of this wine (we tried it on the first night there) and he gave me an extra one. So mom and dad- there is some good wine coming back to the states! After that lovely evening, on the way back to Guido's farm we got to stop at a random castle in Vinci! It was completely dark so you couldn't see anything, but there was a sculpture of Leonardo's perfect man, which was cool to see.  

Another sunset in Tusacny

Castle in Vinci

Sunday: 

This day started out wonderfully, we got an early start and were ready to go to Lucca and Pisa. The three main travel goals were to see the marble walls of Lucca, and take a picture with the leaning tower of Pisa and of course make it home! 

One important thing about the region we were in is it is a very popular place for cyclists. There were so many hills and little towns and gorgeous views there were always hundreds of cyclists on the skinny mountain roads. Guido hated the cyclists as they believed they owned the road and they had the Saint of cyclists, San Baronto watching out for them. It was actually kind of scary to see how close Guido would get to the cyclists before he would find an opening and zoom past a couple of them and squeeze his way back into the pack! He definitely has had experience driving with the cyclists, but there were so many of them and we got stuck so many times behind them that we actually almost missed our train to Lucca! Something that frustrated me was that very few of the cyclists were wearing helmets. With the way Italians drive, and the cyclists not wearing helmets, I am scared for the number of accidents that happen on this road! One last thing about that, I maybe saw 3 women out of the hundreds of bicyclists, so I decided my mom needs to get to Italy and show these men that women can ride too! 

Loads of cyclists!

After we barely caught our train, we got to Lucca at 11:30 and began to walk around the town. Back in the day, Lucca built giant walls of marble to keep enemies out, but when enemies never came, they just left up the walls and built a city inside the walls. 

Marble castle in Lucca

We dropped our bags off at a place inside the walls and began to walk around. We got to see a couple churches, a market, some plazzas and ate wonderful kebabs for lunch! The only issue with Lucca, was there were a lot of birds! 

Where I ate lunch due to too many birds
on the church steps!

After lunch we bought some bread to split between the five of us that was supposed to be bread that was famous to Lucca, but we couldn't eat it because it tasted like black licorice. Disgusting. It then started to rain, but not just rain, it poured. We had to make it back to the tourist information place where our bags were and to the bus station where we could take a bus to Pisa. Sprinting in the rain- so much fun. Not. 

We then took a 30 minute bus ride to Pisa so we could take the classic pictures holding up the tower. My favorite part of walking into the plazza where the tower is, was seeing all of the tourists with their hands sticking into the air to get their own pictures holding up the tower. It was priceless. 

Ever wonder what's behind the tower? 

I held up the tower!

We made it back to the bus station with plenty of time to spare, or so we thought, in order to get back to Switzerland at a reasonable hour. Then the panic struck- we figured out Tren Italia was striking. The man at the ticket counter laughed at us when we told him we needed to get to Switzerland and told us to go talk to information. After another 20 minute wait, the woman in information told us she could get us back to Lugano at 8:15 Monday morning (if we were willing to stay in the Milan train station between 1am and 5am).. That almost worked except our classes were at 8:30 and are 30 minutes away from the train station! We were not ready to give up hope, so we jumped on a bus to the airport to see if we could fly into Switzerland! The woman at the airport laughed at us too. Bummer. After throwing around many ideas, taking a private car to Lugano, spending the night in Milan, taking a train that would arrive at 5:30, or winging it, we decided to wing it! We noticed there was a bus to Florence leaving at 7:20 that night that would get us there around 8:30 in time for the strike to end at 9. We then looked up trains and saw if we got on a 9 o'clock train from Florence to Balogna, we could take a train from Balogna to Lugano that would get in at 5:30. Perfect. We bought our bus tickets, and our train ticket to Balogna (there were only first class seats available, but desperate times call for desperate measures!) When we got to Florence the train was a little late so we got some pizza for dinner, and then we got on the train! The train stopped in Balogna like it was supposed to, but we hopped off and saw that the next train we were going to take was cancelled! Claire ran over and asked some train dude if we could just hop back on and he said "sure, get on." Since we were already in the first class section we decided to just hop back onto first class and we learned a very important lesson- if there is a train strike in Italy, just hop on any train because they won't check tickets, and when you hop on- just jump into first class! The train took us to Milan but when we got there we were kind of at a dead end. We tried to see if there was a bus from Milan to Lugano, but it was too late for that (it was now 11) so we considered taking that 12:38 train from Milan to Chiasso, which is a small town south of Lugano. We would have gotten into Chiasso at 1:45am and had to hope for a taxi to be there that late on a Sunday morning. We figured that wasn't too safe of a bet so we just got a taxi in Milan and took it all the way to Lugano. Yes, it was expensive- but split between 4 people it was not nearly that bad and it was the cheapest option we truly had! After the hour-ish taxi ride we made it back to Lugano safe and sound at 12:45! Needless to say, I am kind of over Italy and their striking and plan to stay in Switzerland for awhile now! 

Kiwis and headstands!

Sometimes when we get really bored in our room, and don't want to do homework- strange things happen!

Putting that awkward column to a good use. Ha! That was an exciting moment in the life and times of Switzerland! Today I went and got my kilogram of kiwis to eat so I don't get sick! Manor is my new favorite grocery store.. Way better than Megros, and I bet they don't have disgusting chicken nuggets! It's almost equivalent to the Whole Foods of Switzerland. We ate at the Manor restaurant the other day, and used the grocery store today! Next step, buying clothes from there!? I will never get over the concept of grocery shopping at Saks 5th (kind of what it feels like to me!)

This weekend, 5 of us are going to stay at a hostel in the Chianti wine region of Italy and explore Tuscany! The hostel is in the middle of nowhere- a shuttle is picking us up from the train station and taking us there! There is a pool at the hostel which is going to be wonderful for relaxing, and one day we will hopefully go on tours of vineyards, or travel to other parts of Tuscany- maybe Pisa, Florence, Lucca, Bologna.. The list is endless!
I am not going to bring my computer this weekend, so Monday I will have lots of lovely pictures and good stories! Hopefully my parents don't get blown away in the Puerto Rico hurricane while I'm away! (Love you guys!)

Bellinzona v.3

Class. Homework. Homework. Lunch. Homework. Nap. Dinner!

Quite the exciting day. The other day we had a major craving for a kebab sandwich, and everyone says the best kebabs are in Bellinzona! Thanks to our after 7 pass, we were able to go hop on the 7 o'clock town to Bellinzona (30 minute ride) and got the most delicious kebabs for dinner and then came back to Lugano! We got to sit on the steps of the church in the main square of Bellinzona with a view of the castle and just enjoy the sandwiches. It's amazing how relaxing it was just because there were not cars zooming past and loud motorcycles every 5 minutes. That is one thing I am not going to miss about Lugano- how loud it was. It would be so much nicer here if it was a little quieter and I could just relax in my room and not worry about waking up at 5am every morning to the street sweepers and loud cars! I guess I'll just have to keep taking little vacations to get away from the noise! That is a-okay with me!

Blueberry Piecake

Tonight was the first Blueberry Piecake of the semester- basically an open mic night for Franklin students.  It was in one of the common areas up the hill and was surprisingly packed! There were about 100 people there, which is officially 1/4 of the college population and it was actually really enjoyable! The idea of blueberry piecake is it is a place to do whatever you want without judgement and it started in Portland, Oregon and is now in a couple places around the states. To give you an idea of how free it is, 2 boys got up and had a pushup competition.. literally anything passed as acceptable! My favorite act was when one person sang, and another person rapped at the same time and it was so off and original that it was actually amazing! I have never seen anything like it before.

Bad news though: I think the Franklin plague is quickly approaching. Apparently since the school is so small everyone gets sick at the same time so they call it the Franklin plague. Tomorrow Shelayne and I are setting out to the grocery store to buy as many kiwis as we can and just nom them all so we don't get sick! Apparently kiwis have twice the vitamin c of an orange and twice the fiber of an apple! So excited.
Hopefully I will get out of town and to Italy this weekend without getting sick!

Laundry Room/Bomb Shelter

Basically every building in Switzerland has a bomb shelter, and the one in my dorm is very similar to what our laundry room looks like. Needless to say, it is creepy down there! Oh, and along that line of safety and being prepared I learned the other day that all of Switzerland's tunnels, for trains and cars, have dynamite in them in case of invasion! It is really creepy about when going through tunnels on the train and being in them for a really long time! I was also told that Switzerland can have all of it's borders protected within 6 hours, and after graduating high school every boy is required to do about 4 months of military training, just in case! Anyway, back to the bomb shelter laundry room- doing laundry in a foreign country is not fun because every button on the machines is so confusing and different and I don't like it! To change the amount of time to dry your clothes, you either hit a button with 2 or 3 water droplets, which makes sense, or a button that shows 3 different stages of a sunrise... which doesn't make sense! 

Other than doing laundry in the creepy basement, nothing out of the ordinary happened today. My favorite thing of the day is a toss up between the crepe I made myself earlier or the fried rice Jen made me for dinner! Quite a cultured day of meals! Yum. 

Lesson Learned

Never buy budget brand chicken nuggets from Megros.
The end.

Ponte Tresa Market

I am trying to figure out how to phrase this without scaring my mom to death, but there is no way! Last night while I was all cozied up in bed, one of the scariest things happened! Just know, everything is a-okay now and an integral part of this story is in our dorm, you can buzz people into the front door and then we have doorbell type things on each of our doors. At 3:30 in the morning, I was woken up by a group of Franklin students yelling and having fun outside my window.. Nothing new its a Friday night right? So then around 5:00 I heard my door buzz and I am assuming it was the buzzer from outside so someone could get in the building. I ignored it and kept laying in bed. About 3 minutes later the same quick buzz. Annoying. So I tried to fall back asleep assuming whoever was buzzing either got in through someone else, or had given up. False Assumption. They were now at my door knocking! I decided that I was going to take the "pretend I'm asleep approach" and they will go away so I still didn't do anything but try to fall back asleep. And then the knocking and doorbell ringing started going off every 1 or 2 minutes and the knocking turned into pounding and the ringing turned into a continuous loud obnoxious buzzing. This lasted until 5:15 when I finally decided to get up and see what was happening because I had decided that it was one of my friends that was locked out. Nope- wrong again. Two huge (6'4'ish) scary looking black dudes were standing there.. Not a single person of that description goes to Franklin so I got freaked out and just started cussing at them like "What are you doing" "Who are you" blah blah blah. Turns out they were looking for a girl named Erin who used to live in either my room or the one above me last year and they thought she would still be there. I assured them that I was not Erin, I did not know an Erin and they needed to get out of the building right away! They left without problems, I emailed the RA, and I was so thankful it ended easily and nothing else happened. I talked to my friends upstairs this morning and the same people were up there knocking on their door, but Claire did the smart thing and just talked through the door.. Definitely a dumb mistake on my part! But someone else told me he knows the guys that were pounding on my door through Erin because they were always here last year.. Still not okay!

Now onto better things! We went to Ponte Tresa market today in Italy. It was only a 20 minute train ride and right across the border. When you think of classic farmers market, this was it! Everything was so cheap and delicious and the place was giant!

One of the vendors we went to, his deal was 1 chilo for 1 euro! I got a chilo of nectorines (about 6) pears (about 5) and apples (about 4) for 3 euros! So cheap and so fresh and delicious! No wonder it was such a popular place to be. 

My bag of goodies that was 2 euros. Then we tried out the cheese- best cheese in the world, got some bread that was as big as our heads for 3 euros and I got some dried mangos and bananas! 

Not only was all of the food really cheap, but wine was 10 euros for 3 large bottles! Needless to say, we bought some of that to split too! On our way back we stopped at a grocery store just to pick up a couple last things and I got a thing of crackers that is usually 6 francs in Lugano for 1.5 euro in Italy. I don't know why Lugano has to be so expensive but it is really getting annoying! Tonight I'm going out for a bit for someones birthday, but first we are having eggplant parmesan and then I need to do some more homework! Tomorrow I will charge my camera so I can actually take pictures when we take a boat over to Gondria and explore the little town on the other side of Lake Lugano! 

And by the way, I learned my lesson about not opening the door at wee hours of the night and our RA sent out a message to everyone telling them to make sure they pick up the phone and see who is buzzing in from the outside before letting them in! 

Kebab Pizza

Today was a day full of good eating! After all of my classes I came back to my dorm and we decided we were going to go eat at Manor Ristorante. It is basically an Italian version of Whole Foods/Central Market. One thing to know about the grocery stores here is they are in the "basement" or floor -1 of department stores. Megros and Manor are 2 of the larger ones and Manor is 6 floors with the basement being groceries, 0 floor is cosmetics, 1 is designer clothes and so on. Therefore we were not surprised when we found this Whole Foods type market in Manor either! So exciting and it was so delicious. We then walked around downtown for a bit until it was time to head back to our dorm.
For dinner, we had a dinner for everyone in our dorm but it was at the pizza place in the bottom of our dorm! Best pizza I have ever eaten. Claire and I split a kebab pizza and after we put the spicy sauce on it, I don't think I have ever tasted anything so delicious in my life. To put things in perspective, I hate lamb with a passion so for me to say something I ate had lamb and was amazing.. Big deal!
Tomorrow we are going to a farmers market/open air market in Ponte Tresa, which is right past the Italian border. Tomorrow I will start taking more pictures again when more exciting things are happening than walking to and from classes!
The picture of the day just for fun is still from last weekend in Gimmelvald!

And here is half the study abroad population at Franklin struggling to balance spoons on our noses:

Ice Cream Cures Everything

Today was rough. For starters, I couldn't get out of bed! Don't know why I was so tired but it was so rough! In between classes I was trying to do homework and then got tree sap all over my arm! I got an email from school saying a package had arrived but I had to go pay 47.75 francs to pick it up. Cool Switzerland- thanks for the import taxes! But when I got to the post office it was closed until 2 so I went back at 2 and found out I can't pick my package up until tomorrow even though I received the package slip? Confusing. I did get a lot of homework done, but then the bad luck continued! I ruined dinner for a bit.. who knew you don't cook gnocchi like spaghetti? not me! Big pile of mush. So thankfully we had more to recook but then the gellato store was closed! So we ended up walking to a little store by the train station and got all sorts of ice cream and goodies to eat to end the day! Currently trying to figure out where I am going and what I am doing for my weekends. This weekend is full of homework and perhaps an open air farmers market type thing on Saturday! Time for me to cheer up and realize these petty things don't matter! Yay for being in Switzerland!

All of our yummy goodies : )

 

Travel Meeting

We had our first academic travel meeting today for my trip to Turkey. It was pretty basic but I now know a little bit of the agenda. We will spend 7 days in Istanbul, 1 or 2 days in Ankara, 1 day in Konya and then 3 or 4 days at an all inclusive resort in Antalya just hanging out! It should be a lot of fun and I am really looking forward to it, but just like every other class at this school I will have to write a 5 page paper! Grr!
Other than grocery shopping and the yummy spaghetti we made for dinner, it was just a normal day in paradise!

Swiss Resident!

The most exciting thing today was I went to Bellinzona (again!) and got my picture taken, my fingerprint taken, and a signature so I can receive a residency permit. I am officially a resident of Switzerland.. until I leave in December!
I also got to skype with a couple friends back home and in Texas and my mom which was nice because at the 2 week point, I am still loving Switzerland but I am starting to miss people! The best line I heard (and Shelayne's friend said the same thing) was "just know that we will see you again, it's not like your never coming back, Switzerland will go fast, so just enjoy it while your there!" True fact. Tomorrow will be a new day in this beautiful city and I am looking forward to it!
Since nothing too exciting happened today, here's a picture of the most beautiful town we passed on Friday on our way to Interlaken somewhere between there and Lucern.

And a picture of Murren from our hike.

Tomorrow I get to meet the professor and all the other kids on my Turkey trip during our first academic travel class period!

The Weekend of Cows

I had the most wonderful weekend ever in Gimmelvald/Interlaken. I don't think I could have asked for a smoother weekend as we never missed a train or bus or gondola and there were 6 of us! Impressive if I must say so.
The train ride to Intrelaken was long but it was during the day so we got to see all of the views of the alps and fields and meadows. We passed the most beautiful lake and town and so many mountains I can't describe how great it was! When we got to Interlaken we had about a 15 minute walk to our hostel with all of our bags but our hostel was nice so it was worth the walk. It turned out that they had a room of 6 empty so we all got to stay in the same room without any strangers. We went downstairs and ate dinner outside at the hostel (they had American food!) and then went for a walk around town. We met some study abroads from Virginia Tech and as we were talking to them I heard a bunch of bells start coming down the street. Confused as to what it was I turned around and saw this...

A parade of cows with christmas trees on their heads and bells around their necks! People dressed as pilgrims or something walked with them and led them through town. So crazy. Little did I know there would be a recurring motif of cows throughout the weekend. The next day we got up early and took a train to Lauterbrunnen, a bus to another town, and then a gondola up to Gimmelvald!

At the bus station! The gondola held at least 70 people in one car and had to go up the steepest cliff, it was cool but kind of sketchy thinking about how high you actually were. We dropped our bags off at the hostel, planned a hike and set off on our 5 hour hike. We had some of the most incredible views and passed through so many cows that were 2 feet from the path and at one point we even had to walk through the cow pasture to catch another path. So crazy. Also walking through the town of Murren (along our walk) people were always able to spot out that we were Americans and yelled because they were too! Was it really that obvious? Probably.

The 6 of us in Murren.

The view from one of our stopping points. About 2/3 up the tallest mountain there was we stopped for lunch (we had packed peanut butter, jelly, and bread, and just made pbjs on the trail and offered them to some nice people passing by!) and then we decided we needed to turn around and head back home. But the views were absolutely gorgeous. We got back to the hostel and ate a huge dinner at the hostel and had a good time hanging out looking at the alps and pretending to do homework but really just being loud and obnoxious.
The next day we went back down to Interlaken because it was rainy and cold and we thought it would be better at a lower elevation, but we were wrong. It actually was worse. We walked around downtown Interlaken for awhile in our hiking clothes and rain coats and there was some sort of wrestling going on in the main square, we called it a human rodeo! Quite exciting to see but we didn't stay out for long because it was so cold but it was such a pretty place I would love to go back sometime! The only hitch was we were ready to go around 4:30pm but we had to wait until after 7 so the train ride would be free since we have passes. Probably one of the most interesting things at the train station in Interlaken was there was a line for the men's bathroom and not the women's! Everything is backwards here.

We finally got back at midnight last night and then had to stay up to do some homework for class today!

Quick embarassing moment of today, I have been trying to find these books for my history research paper and could not manage to find them in the library so I kept asking people and they kept telling me "go back downstairs they are there" so finally someone walked downstairs to show me where they were and there was a door that I had seen but I thought it was just a mirror reflecting other books so I didn't even try to walk through but it revealed 1000 more books.. and my books were there. Ha I struggle at libraries. Oops.

Swiss Chocolate

Today we went grocery shopping for our weekend adventure! I am very excited for this trip but the most exciting thing ever was on the way back from downtown we stopped at a little Swiss Chocolate Shop and got the best chocolate I have ever tasted. The picture above is actually a picture from the shop! Now I really don't know if I can go back to the states. Too yummy. I had to speak Italian to get us through the shop because they didn't speak English- it was ugly but we walked out of there with chocolate which was the main goal! 

I tried the lemon chocolate and cappucino chocolate and I now know what I have to bring home to my mommy! Wish I would have found this last week. Chocolate once a week. Totally worth it!

And maybe even more exciting than chocolate is I have officially read 40 pages of my history textbook.. That is the most history reading I have EVER done! So proud of myself. Not really though.. Boo.

Next post will be on Sunday/Monday when I get back from one of the best weekends ever! Interlaken/Gimmelvald. Look it up- so pretty! 

Have a good weekend :)