Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
SSOOO Monday, I went out to dinner with the stonehill girls, we just went to al mangiere bene again, ya know. Think I got a salad, potatoes, and chocolate mousse…and maybe some wine. Tuesday night me and the roomies (and katy) went out to dinner. We were supposed to go to “the wall” but we wound up at La Taverna. I had a reaaalllly good lentil soup in a jar, Kelley and I split tagliatelle pasta with pepper and cheese and we had good house red wine. Wednesday Alex and I went out to see Pietro dress up and dance like Justin Timberlake, but he wound up changing it to this upcoming Wednesday. So alex, katy, and I just hung out at merlin for a bit and saw the guys.
Thursday I skipped my American Foreign Policy class at 5 because I had a train to catch. I took the train to Florence, where I met my Orientation leader friend from stonehill, her name is Brooke. We ate dinner in the train café and got on an overnight train at 10pm to Spiez…Switzerland! We slept in a cabin with 4 other people... on each side there was three layers of beds... i got top bunk. the old woman in the middle of the other side was adorable and thought brooke was 15! and when the old man, who i assume was her husband, passed gas in the middle of the night, she just laughed and shook her head. i only hope to be that in love. We got into Spiez at 6 and found a train to Interlaken. At 6:30am we walked to find our hostel. We would stop in the middle of the street in amazement gasping at the Alps that were hidden in the dust. I thought it was really dark out, but it was just because I was looking at the black base of an Alp and not at the dark blue sky. I was amazing. At the hostel, the woman told us we couldn’t check in until 8am but we were more than welcome to sit in the lounge, as long as we didn’t sleep there. At 8 we checked in and took a nap until 10am. It looked like camp hazen, where the orientation leaders go for a retreat in conneticut. After we napped, brooke and I talked to the man behind the desk who was very nice to us, and tried speaking Italian with me, even though we both spoke English better. It was raining out, but he told us how to walk to the center of Interlaken. So brooke and I being the champs we are, started walking in the pouring rain without umbrellas. Half way there, we stopped for lunch. We had Thai Food at a place called little thai that offered laundry services, internet, and thai food. Switzerland apparently likes to combine things, we saw places like that everywhere. We got chicken satay, pad thai, some veggies and rice, and some swiss beer. Once the rain had calmed down, we started on our way again. It was BEAUTIFUL. They started decorating for Christmas so there were snowflakes, and trees, and all sorts of Christmas fun around. So while we were walking… we found a Chocolate Store! Slabs and slabs that looked like chocolate beds next to pyramids of truffles of every kind. Brooke and I spent an hour and a half in the store… and I bought 50 franc worth of chocolate…50 franc.
Speaking of franc, the bills in Switzerland are more like monopoly money than euros. I really felt like I didn’t spend anything in Switzerland. So we bought chocolate…and some for ourselves on the side. And we shopped some more in the rain and looked around, finding our way through Switzerland. Eventually we decided to go into a grapperia/vineria where we tried to order hot chocolate with baileys. But they were out of baileys, so we tried to order coffee with frangelico, but they were out of frangelico. So they women let us try Cointreau, which we ordered in swiss hot chocolate. Warmed us RIGHT up! Well at least enough to brave the winds that had picked up. By the time we got out it was dark. Kayla, Ben, and Christine said they would be at the hostel at 4. So around 5 when we hadn’t heard from them, we headed back to the hostel. We changed into our sweatpants and ordered a coffee while we sat by the fire that the bartender lit for us. It was so cozy in there! Everything was wooden, and the ceilings were high, it just felt like Christmas town, right out of a story book…exactly what I had hoped Switzerland would look like. By 7 o’clock we were hungry and lonely. So we ordered another swiss beer with cheese bread, which wound up being bread topped with a lot of cheese, ham, bacon, and a fried egg on top. While we were eating it and conversing with the Australian girl we met traveling by herself, our friends came in!! We all changed and went to dinner at like 8:30. Ben, who is studying in Geneva, informed us that places in Switzerland close at like 9pm…which is unlike Italy where restaurants don’t open until 9pm. So Brooke and I wanted to go to this swiss pub place we saw in the center…but they wanted to go to an “Italian restaurant” …which we did, I had a salad and scoop of ice cream, and wine because it was Kayla’s birthday weekend!!! Everything was closed after dinner, so we just went to the hostel…where I proceeded to burn myself by turning off the cold water before the hot water.
Saturday morning we all woke up and packed up because we had reservations to go skydiving. Yes, I made a reservation to go skydiving over the alps. But apparently it decided to snow and the winds were going faster than the plane would have, so our guy Beet told us we couldn’t go. Brooke wanted to go so badly, that one of the men who worked there brought out a toy airplane, and the two of them stood on a chair and jumped off imitating what it would be like to skydive…it was hysterical. So it being Kayla’s birthday, and with all of them but Brooke and I leaving at 1pm, we went for breakfast. In the center we struggled to find breakfast, because apparently the Swiss don’t “do breakfast” as we were told. We finally settled down and had cheese, bread, toast, eggs, and coffee. We did a little more shopping, I bought a pair of slippers and a swiss army knife for myself, that I had engraved at Swarovski…it now says Switzerland 2008. We walked everyone back to the hostel and said goodbye. Brooke and I sat in the warm lodge for almost 2 hours just talking, it was so good to really get to know who she was, she’s amazing p.s. We decided we needed to do something, so we walked BACK to the center. We grabbed some pastries and hot chocolate.
Then we walked around and found streams and lakes where ducks and swans swam with the Alps behind them…breathtaking. And a store that sold carved wooden sculptures. Then as our fingers froze again in the snow…remember it’s snowing this whole time, we went for another warm drink. We sat down at Café di Paris and had a coffee with baileys, and talked for another hour. Around 6 we went to the swiss pub we wanted to go to the last night. A man in cow print pants greeted and sat us at the window seat. He was very funny and very personable. He told us to order cheese fondue and a brautwurst. So we did what he said. He was dancing and singing while raking leaves on the porch and then would come talk and joke with us. He showed us how to eat the fondue and fed it to Brooke. Then he would ring the cow bell, and brought us our two swiss beers. Then he, Bebbi his name was, brought out a HUGE horn that he played the national anthem on. When our dinner was gone, he then had us try to produce a tune from this instrument, which we both successfully did between our hysterical laughter. Bebbi took a picture with us and gave us his card that has his picture on it, he is the owner of the restaurant, and said that if we ever got lonely, we should put it under our pillow. We laughed all the way back to the hostel. We picked up our luggage and got on a train to Spiez. From there, we took another overnight train to Florence, where I left brooke and went to Perugia. I came home to only Carson in the house, and I think I did nothing all day.
Today is Monday, and my last class got cancelled. I’ve done a lot of work today, but still need to finish that 8 page paper before Christina and Daniel come on Wednesday! I probably won’t blog until after they leave, but tonight the girls and I are going out to eat. It’s not that we are lazy, it is that we have made it a goal to eat out once a week to try all the food around Perugia. We also agreed awhile ago on a family night once a week…this week it will be a thanksgiving meal on Wednesday.
So I hope everyone is well, and I will blog after I see Christina and Daniel… I am SO excited!
Love, ang
- comments