Trains, Trains and Trains

Day 109
I was up early, I had to be. It was going to take me all day to get to Nice, France. I would have liked to spend more time in Switzerland but it was really expensive and my budget had already taken enough of a hit. Switzerland was just about my favorite place so far and I know that I will return some day.

To get to Nice I needed to spend about 10 hours on five different trains. All the quick connections were booked up so I was stuck with local trains. I spent the rides to Bern and Geneva writing in my journal.

When I got to Geneva I had about 6 minutes to connect to my train to France. I was really sore from the day before and just not able to move quickly with all of my bags weighing me down and I missed it. I figured that it wouldn't be a big deal, there is always a later train. After checking with the reservations people I found out that I might not be able to get to Nice because everything was booked up. I was told to check in Marseilles.

I wasn't really nervous, I had begged my way on trains before and I was pretty sure that this would work out too. Still, it was in the back of my mind as I waited for immigration to open up. While I was waiting I met an American guy who was obviously very hungover and still drinking. He had lost his passport and was hoping that they would let him in with just a copy. In the end, they told him to get lost or show them him passport. My scheduling issue didn't seem so bad.

In Lyon I went ahead and checked to see if there was anything that had opened up. Fortunately a train was about 10 minutes late and I could get on it to Marseilles and then pick up the local train I was meant to get from the beginning. It's a miracle in France.

When I got to Nice it was still light out and I had no problems finding my hostel. Well, that is the restaurant that I was told to ask for the pink lady at. The pink lady (who always wore pink dresses better suited for a night club) and her friend (the blue lady?) were first hand witnesses to the French revolution. Coincidentally, that was the same time that the hostel was last cleaned. This place was gross, the dirtiest I'd been at yet. I was too tired to try and find a solution though and knew that I would rather pay the smaller price anyway. It was only 7 nights, how bad could that be?

Maseltov

Day 108

Around 3:30 am two of three very drunk girls came very loudly into the room. They seemed to have lost the other girl and had no idea where. Some friends, at least they were not too loud for too long and I was quickly able to get back to sleep.

Around 5 am I felt a heavy pain on my face. The girl in the bunk on top of me had dropped her bag on me, literary on me. The shock caused me to sit up and ask her what the hell was her problem, she was still to groggy and drunk to care. She did apologize though and went right back to sleep, as the pain subsided so did I.

As it turned out the three drunk girls were now the three hungover girls (the 3^rd one had turned up) and they were all going canyoning with the same group as me. During the ride up to the canyon one of them puked in her purse. Fun.

The first order of the day was to somehow get on a wet suit. No one had done this before and we all seemed to struggle the same way. Everyone's helmet had a name on it, my nickname for the day was Maseltov. When we were all geared up we drove a short distance to the beginning of our trek. I thought that it was odd that we were just on the side of a road. Then I realized to get to the canyon we had to climb down. Not just climb, we had to repel 50 meters, or 160 feet down a sheer rock face. Holy crap.

Once I was hooked up I started to walk slowly down backwards. Somehow I even managed to take a pictures with my arms off of the rope. About halfway down my feet went out from under me, I don't know how I managed to stay in the correct position while I tried to get my feet back on the wall. Just a bit further from that I thought I was at the bottom, but it was just the ridge that we had been warned about. At this point I started to get really nervous and the rope just kept moving faster. I started to count, telling myself that I only had to take 100 steps before I would hit water. I was right, I found land, not very gracefully might add, around step 60. I figured that if I could do that the rest would be cake, the worst had to be over.

After just a bit of walking we got to our first and biggest slide. We had to slide down about 30 feet of rock into the icy water. I didn't know if I could do it, but after some hesitation I did, plus, there was no way I would be climbing back up! I think the whole thing would have been easier if I had not ended up last. It was exhilarating but also incredibly scary. I was concentrating so hard on closing my eyes and keeping my contacts in place that I forgot to close my mouth and I inhaled a whole bunch of water. I came up sputtering and struggling to catch my breath. One of the guides grabbed my hand and helped me get to a place where I could stand quicker.

The next one was a bit easier, just a ten foot or so jump. I still managed to inhale about half of the river, but I recovered much more quickly this time. There were a few more slides and jumps of various heights, and I was completely terrified the entire time, terrified and exhilarated. Harder than the sliding and jumping was climbing over the slippery rocks. I have very little coordination on a good day, and slipping the wrong way here could have really bad results. At several places we had to attach ourselves to ropes and balance on very thin ledges. On one of these the guy in front of me unhooked his carabiner before he was at the end. The guide yelled at him for it. At the same time my feet went out from beneath me. I wasn't scared of falling, I was holding on and hooked on but I was nervous that my slip would cause the other guy, now unattached to fall. I waited to get up until he was ready for the slide and not going to fall. I didn't have any problems pulling myself back up.

Whenever you slid or jumped you were supposed to do it cannon ball style. This slowed you down when you hit the water and if (when on some jumps) you hit the bottom it would be with your butt and not hurt. On one of the slides about half way through my body simply wouldn't listen and I hit the bottom hard with my right knee. The cold water kept the pain and swelling down. I figured that even though it was sore, it wasn't anything more than badly bruised. Luckily I was right, and I could send you the pictures of my rainbow colored knee if you are interested. It did, however, bug me for the rest of the trip especially when I was climbing over the rocks.

I had never put a wet suit on before and was surprised at how warm they actually keep you. I felt cool, but not cold when I was standing waist deep in water. The only part of me that was cold were my hands when I was in the water, they were so cold that I thought they might fall off.

The last big thing of the day was a rather large drop off from a zip line. Essentially the guide would tie a knot that you would then hold, the knot would hold until you let go. You spent about 4 seconds on the zip line before you would hear “let go” at this point you either let go, or crashed into the rock in front of you. I went with the former. This didn't scare me though, I'm not really sure why. I still looked terrified in the picture though.

The next slide was not high, but it was a bit complicated. We had to jump sideways over a crevice, land on our padded backs and then slide down. I have no idea how I actually pulled this one off, but I did it.

The last slide was short and curvy, like at a water park. To get out of the canyon we had to spend about 10 minutes scooting over rocks. I was really exhausted at this point and absolutely famished. Included in the trip was a traditional Swiss lunch of cheese, bread and beer. It was really refreshing after all of the exertion.

I was exhausted, I think everyone was. Cole (who was kind enough to give me a hand each time I swallowed half the river), Mel and I decided to be lazy and spent the rest of the day watching movies. I left only to grab dinner and pick up my pictures from the trip. I looked absolutely petrified in every single one of the pictures, on top of that the wet suit was none too flattering. I didn't care though, I was just proud that I had done it and I had enjoyed all of it, even the terror. These pictures, and the growing bruise on my knee were proof of it.

I was exhausted and I had to be up early, so after saying goodbye to my new friends and exchanging contact info I headed off to sleep.

On the Wings of a Bird

Day 107
When I woke up I was disappointed to see that it was cloudy. When the booking office opened up at 8 I spoke to the girl there. She told me that the weather was meant to clear, that I should just give it some time. I went inside to watch a movie to kill some time.

By 11 am the sky was mostly clear and I went back to book my trip. While I was doing that I found out that if I booked more than one exclusion that I would get a 5% discount on both of them. I like the word discount. I asked the girl if canyoning was fun, she told me that it was. Mel, one of the British girls I had watched movies with the night before was already booked. I decided to go ahead and book it as well. How scary could walking along the bottom of a canyon and occasionally jumping into the water be?

About a hour later a group of us, including Mel, were picked up at the hostel and taken about 3 minutes to downtown Interlaken. There were 6 people going up all together and in the van we were told to pick our guides. No one could pick, I think its a bit awkward to just point and say “I'm going with you” anyway. Kinda like picking teams for recess. In the end we picked names out of a pile. I ended up with one of the younger guys who also happened to be incredibly attractive. I would really like to tell you his name, however I was so nervous about the whole ordeal that I completely forgot it. For the purpose of this blog we will call him RHTSG, really hot tall Swiss guy.

The way this works is that the passenger is attached to the front of the driver, the parachute is placed behind you. You both then run a short distance and the parachute picks you up. Very quickly you are flying.

Just a few steps into our run I felt my feet leave the ground and the parachute pull us back. RHTSG told me to keep running, I don't know how though, my feet were already a good foot off of the ground. In no time we were in the air and over Interlaken. We were climbing higher and higher. The ride was smooth, but I kept waiting for us to suddenly drop. This was seriously pee your pants scary, but also so fabulously wonderful all at the same time.

I had been able to bring my camera up with my by attaching it to the rigging. I was too petrified though to take my hands off of the straps, not that they would have done any good if we fell out of the sky. I am really happy that I went ahead and paid the sort expensive price of having RHTSG take pictures instead.

For almost half an hour we floated over the city, the mountains and the lake. At one point a bird even flew beneath us. That was really cool. RHTSG kept asking me how my stomach was doing. To my surprise it was perfectly fine. He then asked if I liked roller coasters and I said yes, because, well I do. I just haven't been on one in forever. All the sudden he started doing all sorts of turns and spirals in the air. I shut my eyes and hung on for dear life. My stomach was no longer happy with me. Even once the turns were over I didn't get back to normal. I was actually pretty happy when it was time to land, I didn't want to puke in the sky, that would be really embarrassing.

When we got close to the ground RHTSG told me to stand up, I tried, but my legs wouldn't listen and I ended up in a heap under the ropes that connected the parashoot. Once I was untangled RGTSG gave me the memory card from the camera with my pictures. I was so happy that I had bought them, especially since I was unable to take any of my own. I checked them out on my camera right way and was really happy with them. I thanked RGTSG and wandered dizzily back to the hostel with Mel.

My stomach was pretty much livid with me for the rest of the day. I tried Dramamine, eating, not eating, water, everything. I even tried reading in a hammock. That just made me feel like I was about to fall over. The only thing that sort of helped was lying in front of the tv watching movies.

When I no longer felt like I was going to puke at any moment I went to the supermarket and picked up some cottage cheese, a melon and some prosciutto. I figured that if my stomach couldn't be made happy, at least my taste buds could. I tried to get a half melon, but when I went to pay for it I was told that it was just an example and that I had to go back and get a full melon. Everyone in line laughed at the silly tourist. I guess thats just what I have to be sometimes.

After watching a few movies with some equally lazy people I headed off to sleep early. I was going to need all of my energy for canonying, whatever it was.

Vorwärts Hat Gebunden

Day 106
I was up early and packed my stuff up quickly. After saying goodbye and thanking Stu for letting me crash I was off to the train station. My next base would be Interlaken. Interlaken is where people go to do adventure sports. I don't do things like that and was just planning on using it as a base to get to other cities around Switzerland. When I saw the prices for the different activities I decided that there was just no way I would be taking part in any of those things.

By the time I had gotten there and checked in I was feeling a bit tired and didn't really want to get right back on the train and walk around another city. Therefore I just sort of wandered. Interlaken is small, so this didn't take a whole lot of time. While I was walking around I saw a bunch of people paragliding. It looked like fun, more fun than I would have thought.

By the time I was back at the hostel and watching a movie over dinner I had decided that I would go paragliding in the morning. You only live once, well, that is until you go paraglding right? I also wanted to try and challenge not my fear of heights, but my dislike of adventure sports. Then it started to rain, hard. I was worried that it will still be gross and cloudy in the morning. Paragliding would be a waste of time if this was the case. The whole point would be for the view.

After watching tv and then Orange County with some Brits I headed down to the night club. The Germany verses Turkey game was on and I wanted to see it. I was happy, and not at all surprised when Germany won. When this happened the night club turned into an actual night club and I lost interest in it. It was late anyways and if I was going paragliding I would need to be up early.

The Lion of Luzern

Day 105
Stu and I both happen to be morning people and we were up early. I used this to my advantage to go and visit Luzern. On the train I tried to update my woefully behind journal, but didn't get very far on the short ride. I hate when I let my journal get behind. I wish that my journals for my past trips were more detailed and I am determined to make sure that I record everything this time around. I don't mind so much if the blog gets behind, at least that's all written down so I won't forget when I finally do post it, but the journal needs to be up to date.

After grabbing a map and a rather large amount of information I was ready to hit the town. Luzern is beautiful, its surrounded by mountains and it is just so Swiss. I started exploring by walking across the zigzagging Chapel Bridge. Before even crossing it I could tell how pretty it was, the sides were lined with flowers. While I was on it I admired the 17^th century paintings in the rafters that focused on local history.

My next stop was the Hof Kirche, Luzerns main church. This was meant to be the most important Renaissance building in all of Switzerland. It had clean lines and wasn't ornate like the Italian churches I had become used to. I quite liked it.

Just a few minutes away was the Lion Monument. This was carved into the side of a rock wall. It is of a wounded and dying lion. Mark Twain called it “the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world.” I don't know about that, but it definitely was beautiful.

I surprised myself by visiting the nearby Glacier Garden. From the description and the ads it looked like a roadside attraction. It kinda was too, but in a good way. It advertised that a visit was a journey through 20 million years of Luzern's history with a few extras thrown in.

Essentially, in 1872 Josef Troller wanted to build a really big wine cellar in to the side of the mountain. During construction he stumbled upon a geological anomaly from the last ice age. Once the area had been dug out it was opened as an attraction. As time went by more and more additions were made. The park was pretty cool, I hadn't seen anything like it before. There were deep holes carved out by water and ice as well as a lot of fossils. Plus, I was given a brochure that explained everything and that always makes me happy.

The museum was very detailed. There were several all miniatures of the area depicting various times during history. There was even a stuffed woolly mammoth. A film explained that Luzern had begun as a tropical beach area, but this all changed with the ice age and glacier formation.

Upstairs there seemed to be a lot of random Luzern related things. There was old furniture and a lot of different types of rocks. I particularly liked the room with some intricate wood carvings on the walls.

The next attraction was the Alhambra Hall of Mirrors. It was created in 1898 for the Swiss National Exhibition, and moved to Luzern in 1899. I took my time walking through it and managed to get some really cool pictures with the mirrors.

Next up were some really cute bunnies. I could have watched the all day. However, I had to take a short climb up to the viewing tower. On the way I passed a cabin, and out of date “glacial mill” and a gnome. From the top I had a great view of Luzern and the mountains. I had it to myself and just enjoyed it for a bit.

Luzern still has a large part of it city walls and you can walk along the top of this. This took me some time due to the heat, there was very little shade up there. It was nice to get lots of different angles of the city and the mountains.

When I was back in the old town I took pictures of the fabulous painted buildings and decided to grab some lunch. I ate at a place that overlooked the Reuss River. I had one of those “I love my life” moments as I watched the river go by the Swiss background. I just couldn't believe that this was my life, and had been my life for over three months now!

My next stop required traveling over another painted bridge, the Spreuer Bridge. The pictures on this bridge were called the dance of death and were a bit more morbid than the other ones. This lead me directly to the Luzern History Museum, which had just recently been redone. I was really surprised when I was handed a bar code reader with my ticket. The museum was set up like a warehouse. Each object had a sku, to read information about it I just had to scan it. I hated it. I don't like history museums that are set up in uber modern ways. I feel like it further removes history from the present and makes it more difficult to connect with. Despite that complaint, they did have a ton of information on all of the objects and I could have spent years there. They even had games and specific itineraries dependent upon interest that you could set up with the scanner. There were displays on everything from telephones to undergarments for the last few centuries. Well, the telephones only covered about 100 years, the underwear was older. The special exhibit was on Luzern's lake and tourism there. There were loads of old swimsuits to look out and a large collection of beach towels. I didn't really get the whole thing. It was pretty weird.

After stopping by the town hall for a picture I headed back to the train station. I passed the ride journaling. At the Zürich station I took a picture of the super sized football players that were hanging around. Stu had told me earlier that it was quite eerie when they were being put together because there were body parts lying around everywhere.

That night for dinner Stu was staying in with work so I headed out to a Jamaican place. The people were friendly and the food was good. It also gave me a lot of time to write and finally get pretty much caught up.

Back at Stu's place I fell asleep reading a lot earlier than I had intended. But what could I say, it had been a fabulous, but long, day.

Regrets I have a Few

Day 104

Stu and I were up early and just sort of looked at each other across his apartment to confirm that we both felt positively awful. I tried to force a speedy recovery with advil, water, and reading, and Stu watched movies for a cure.

Eventually the pills kicked in and the hangover went away. I also convinced myself that I would be irritated later on if I wasted the entire day just laying in bed. Around noon I got my act together and headed to St. Gallen.

St. Gallen is a cute little medieval Swiss town. After studying the map over Strarbucks I headed to the cloisters. There was some sort of event going on and most of it seemed shut. Or perhaps I just couldn't figure out how to get into the church.

Instead I headed to the beer bottle museum at the Schutzengarten Museum. The hundreds of bottles from the last couple of years were interesting, but they certainly did nothing for my almost gone hangover.

I decided that learning some local history would help me out and headed to the relevant museum. As it turned out it was a Monday and the museum was closed. Bummer.

My map told me that the funicular was the best route to the Mulener Gorge. I went up it thinking I would have a fabulous view, but instead I just got a concrete wall. On the way back down I met a friendly German guy named Julius. We ended up getting some ice cream and walking to the train station together. He was also in the area for a day trip.

By the time I had gotten back to Zürich and walked to Stu's place I was in desperate need of a shower. It was hot out. When I was ready to go we headed out to a local place to meet up with Stu's friend Pamela and fellow Bootie Madhu. Pamela wasn't able to stay long, however, she was moving back to Hong Kong and offered to let me crash with her when I get there. It will be really nice to see a familiar face at that point.

Madhu was a lot of fun and the three of us ended up at a pizza tent set up for the Eurocup. There weren't any games going on though and it was pretty quiet. When the tent shut down, not very late, we took the tram together to the train station and then parted ways with Madhu.

After my seemingly long but really kinda uneventful day I was definitely glad to be getting some sleep.

Football and Beer

Day 103
I was excited to be heading to Zürich for a bunch of reasons. I was getting tired of Italy and was ready for a new country. Over a few different trips I have spent about 7 weeks in Italy. I have seen a lot of this country, even though I know there is still a lot more to see. I was just really ready for a change and something that would not be so very familiar. Secondly, I really liked Zürich the last time I was there. And, most importantly, I was looking forward to seeing Stu. Stu is a Bootsnall friend who also met up with me way back when I started this trip in London.

The train ride was easy, I read and slept for most of it. There was basically no border control, and once again I didn't get any new stamps in my passport. That's fine by me, the less stamps, the slower it will fill up and more pages will be needed.

Stu even met me at the train station. This was the first time during this trip that someone was somewhere waiting for me that I already knew. It was kinda nice. What was also nice was Stu's shower. It had lots of water pressure and hot water, things that I hadn't had in quite some time.

Once I had cleaned up and dropped off all of my things we Stu and I went to an American pizza place called Uncle Sam's for lunch. The pizza was good, and the American theme was a nice taste of home. Afterwards Stu gave me a walking tour of Zürich, even though it was familiar, it was nice to have a local (Stu has been in Zürich for about 7 years) show me around.

I've mentioned before that the Eurocup is going on. I've seen a ton of games at this point. The series was being hosted by Austria and Switzerland. Zürich was set up for a huge party and as there was a game on that night we decided to check it out. We also grabbed a couple of beers to walk around with. As I am American and this is allowed basically no where in the States it is quite a novelty for me to do this.

First we checked out the lake, the people swimming, and a park. We both watched the game out of the corner of our eyes while we caught up over beers.

Around 10 pm we realized that the alcohol consumption was a bit more tan either of us would have liked. We headed back to Stu's place and spent a bit of time chatting on his balcony before heading to sleep.