Mary Shannon: Back again, another eventful and long week. It is passing SO fast over here that I feel like I already miss Europe! Now that we are travelling so much on the weekends it feels like the work week is only a short recovery period, then we are off again!
Last week, during the recovery period haha, I decided to slow down a little. I took one afternoon and dedicated it to doing absolutely nothing outside in Florence. I didnt want to walk 5 miles or shop, I just sat in my camo hat on the front steps of the Duomo by myself. I didnt even try to figure life out, I just sat and watched people walk by. I looked at how they dressed, their shoes, their interactions, the venders, the tourists, the locals, the pigeons. It was nice to be lethargic and lazy in the sun. I also tried to count in 3 hours how many actual overweight people I saw: 4. A little different than in Arkansas... Then I decided to take pictures of the 'every day life' in Florence. It made me realize a lot of details-there are bikes everywhere! Men wear scarves and dress very metro! You can tell a tourist from a European based on their shoes. Still, there are Asians everywhere! Giselle the model is just as popular here if not more. They also love Demi Moore. Pharmacies and supermarkets are seperate businesses with different atmospheres than say at Wal Mart or Brookshires.
Thursday night Kelsi, Kate, Chrissy, and I met the bus2alps group at 7pm at the Santa Maria Novella train station (where Kelsi and I got McDonalds no.7 since its our train-station-tradition)! The guy in charge of this student-travel group is Simon O'Keefe, a guy in his late 30s from Australia. He LOVES his job from what I can tell haha! He actually lives in Interlaken, Switzerland and has been taking students on these weekend trips for almost 10 years. We got on charter buses with almost 200 other students from Florence and Rome of all different study abroad programs from all over the USA. On the way to Switzerland we passed Lake Como, the vacation home of George Clooney - from what we saw even in the dark it was breath-taking!! (If you ever have a couple mil laying around, I would suggest a vacation home here too)! When we got to Interlaken, Switzerland it was 3:30am! We checked in to our hostel, Balmers Herbage, thinking it would only be us four...wrong! There were four other students from NYU, 3 girls and a boy! Sara, Megan, Francine, and Mark. (They had this very northern lingo, always saying, 'Thats wicked cool')! Francine, or 'Frenchie', and Mark went skydiving the next day!! I bet almost 100 of the kids went skydiving. They also offered canyon jumping, paragliding, moped 4-wheeler or car rentals, night sledding, and ski\snowboarding! Friday morning at 7am (yes, even less than 2hrs of sleep since two of our new roomies SNORED) Kelsi and I had to get up to get ski rentals, left tickets, and rental pants and goggles. Outdoor Interlaken's , the store running all the activities, employees were pretty much all English or Australian. They were so friendly and laid back! Then we ate our included breakfast consisting of either 1. bread, roll, butter and jelly OR 2. oats cereal and a piece of fruit...mmm (not). I was pretty disappointed in the choices until they said coffee was free. I was excited, that is until I walked up to the hot water dispenser and a large ceramic pot full of powder labelled coffee. I had no idea, and still dont, of how coffee is supposed to come from this. I drank it anyways with 2 scoops ?? and A LOT of sugar!! haha. To get to the slopes, Kelsi and I had to catch a bus for a 10 min drive to Gridswal train station. The bus ride was fantastic bc it was the first time we saw Switzerland in the daylight...and wow! Everything was green, but when you looked up the valley we saw we were enclosed by large walls of pure rock covered on the tops by snow. The mountains are more like cliffs compared to the rolling Rocky Mountains. We also passed Swiss homes which looked like homes pulled right out of the movie Heidi, or gingerbread homes ready to be displayed. There were creeks and windey roads and stacks of firewood everywhere. (I continue to struggle with the feeling I am in a large, surreal theme park bc of how cliche these countries are to what I formerly thought). At Gridswal we climbed on to this small three-car train which then headed straight UP the mountain (Kleine Shredigg??) At the top Kelsi and I realized that the mountain was actually known as 'the top of Switzerland', and a small train travelling even higher (for a fee of £80 so we didnt do it) you could reach 'the top of europe'! We skied for over 2 hours before lunch. It wasnt great snow to ski on, but there were such dazzling panoramic views that we didnt care! We ate at a restaurant on the mountain for lunch where we had the soup of the day (who knows WHAT it was but it was good) in a roll and a piece of bratwurst! MMM, that really was good! We sat outside in the sun on a deck looking out over the valley below! Exhausted a few hours later, we decided to resign from our physical yet memorable adventures of skiing and get the local beer Rugen Brau (YUM!) Back home, Kelsi and I took a quick yet powerful nap on our floor mattress bunk beds with no sheets, a dusty comforter, and our less-than-a-couch-pillow pillow. yes. Then we took showers with no flip flops and shared towels (bc we didnt bring one, and the hostel ran out of rentals), where you had to keep re-pushing the shower nozzle to keep the water running every 30 sec (like in those public restrooms with the push-on sinks). That was a nice experience too... For dinner Kelsi, Kate, Chrissy, and I made reservations and ate at The Little Thai Restaurant which was ABSOLUTELY MOUTH-WATERING GOOD! We hadnt had flavors or spices like that in a long time and it was truly pleasant. Plus, even for American-everyday standards it was amazing. Under Balmer's is Interlaken's club (very convenient I know)! All night they showed the videos of the students who had skydived that day, it made skydiving seem so much less scary, different, or unimaginable...now, sorry parents, I really want to do it before I get married or 'grow up' haha.
On Saturday, us four met with Simon and the other students who signed up and took a charter bus to Zurich. It was also a great drive even though we were all still SO exhausted and sleep deprived! We got to see the lake (interlaken is between two lakes) which was more aqua blue than most skies I've seen on a clear day! We also passed through the mountain pass. In Zurich it was rainin as we stepped off the bus! Us four then set off on our own to discover this town. We were dropped off in the metropolitan\shopping section which was actually really Americanized (we walked into a Claire's)!! We finally found this chocolate store (my favorite food\dessert in the whole freakin' world) with a caffe above it. Kelsi and Chrissy got the club sandwich made with three toasted pieces of bread, tomato, grilled chicken strips, mayo, egg, lettuce, and bacon. I definately had a piece and it was just as delicious as you're thinking right now. After, I went downstairs and bought milk chocolate pieces, dark chocolate with caramel, and peanut butter chocolates! (The terrible part is that I gave up chocolate for Lent so even though I can cheat on Sundays, I still had to carry that bag around all day-like a million dollars that you've won in the lottery but you arent allowed to spend it)! Then we walked across the bridge to other side of town, like 500ft away, and the town was completely different! (By this time, it quit raining for awhile). It was much older, with cobblestone walkways and no cars and just vasts amounts of stores and restaurants. Like Italy, only everyone was so much friendlier to American tourists, everything was in German, much more laid back, and all the restaurants were different: Italian, Mexican, Asian, McDonalds, etc all right next to one another. It was a melting pot, a clean, relaxed, and eye-satisfying melting pot. Kate and I stopped at this heated tent in the middle of a square where Jamaican-sounding music was being played and bought what we 'thought' were hot dogs. They gave us these huge pieces of pork off the grill and a big roll (with real Heinz ketchup)!!! It was actually one of best meals I'd had (I always say that dont I)?? Well, it was really good! When we got back to Interlaken (1hr 45min drive) Kelsi, Kate, and I had to run upstairs, throw on more layers, get snowboard shoes from Outdoor Interlaken, and climb back onto the bus to go nightsledding! For some reason when I signed up for this I pictured sitting back on a big sled, cuddled up in a warm blanket, with hot cocoa, maybe even dogs pulling us?? Ha ha. Definately wrong assumption, though this was MUCH more fun! We took the bus to Gridswal again, and were sent up the train with big plastic sleds! At the top it was pouring snow! The guides showed us how to ride our sleds, turn, hang on, and most importantly bail! There were two groups, our group had about 25 people and we all took off down this paved path down the Alps! It was curvy and bumpy and downhill and one of the BEST times of my LIFE! I screamed the whole way down, got soaking wet (had jeans on!!), and laughed so hard at Kelsi flying down this mountain like a pro..except for when I came up fast behind her and she couldnt move and caused my sled to fly off in a ditch with Kate following me haha! So, of course, we did it a second time! Then, with our new guide pal, Elliot we went into this restaurant and ate really great cheese fondue with bread and potatoes and a glass of white wine. Elliot is from England and is the head of the skydiving branch of Outdoor Interlaken. He was the main guide jumping with all of the students, and has been skydiving for 18yrs!! He has only been in ONE bad jump, which was actually base jumping like 10yrs ago. He's 38yrs old with long hair, newly married, yet very professional when it comes to talking about his job and being a boss. This weekend we met so many people like that...Elliot said a large portion of the population is made of tourists who were passing through, fell in love with Interlaken and just never left. We met some Australian guys who were like 23 who were living in Interlaken to snowboard for like 6 months, then were going to move on to another town and look around for where work is needed, then when that was done move on again! I think that kind of lifestyle is so intriging bc I could never ever do that. I would die of stress!
On Sunday, we had to check out at 11:30am. We walked into the center of Interlaken and ate at HOOTERS! They had real American food: chicken strips, french fries, and more real ketchup!! How could we say no? Then we took a short chocolate tour at this famous little chocolate store\cafe. We got all these free chocolate samples. They, Switzerland, won the worldwide competition for best milk chocolate and he was just handing it out to us!! YUM! (When the head chef wasnt looking I took handfuls of the pieces and put them in my bag...yay)! And lets remember, it was Sunday, so I actually got to eat it all!
The other things I loved about Interlaken\Switzerland: SO clean! Clean air. Interlaken has about 10,000 population, like at home. You could really tell bc everyone knew each other, they would drive down the street and wave at one another, hang out in the restaurants with the owners bc they were all friends, Simon knew everyone on the pal level. I loved that part! No traffic! Zurich had normal-sized cars...and they were all Mercedes, Lexus, BMWs, Porches cars and SUVs!
Also, figured out that Switzerland is not a part of the European Union. We had to use Francs instead of Euro. Our bus was pulled over for speeding I think on the way back home. Swiss knives were everywhere since they are known well for that, along with watches, chocolate, and crystal. The picture of the clock is in Zurich, and is the largest clock in Europe!
Love you all, miss you all