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10th Oct: Left Munich and had a service stop in Leichtenstein, world's 4th smallest country and I'm fairly sure it's the smallest one with a capital city, which is Vaduz. Known for stamps. Also, our tour manager Rob told us how it was one of the few European countries where you could get your passport stamped if you wanted to pay 2 or 3 Euro, which of course we pretty much all did as we're all upset we couldn't get heaps of them in Europe.. only to find that once we got there the place that does it was closed for the season!! Typical.
Then crossed the border into Switzerland. And I have to say this is quite easily the most beautiful country I've been to. I was just staring out the window, amazed. Lots of mountains, grass and cute little houses. Some houses we saw even had grass growing on the roof!
Known for banking, time keeping devices, swiss army knives. An indicator of how big the banking sector is, in 1977 (so bear in mind, that lovely little thing called inflation) 60 million Francs got stolen. The banks were able to refund everyone's money who went missing and this didn't even create a blip on their profit margins. WOAH!!!
Went to Lucerne and saw this lion memorial which was really interesting. It was a memorial for the 799 Swiss Guard that died fighting people who were trying to get Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, not knowing that the pair had secretly snuck out of the palace. Needless to say the Swiss were cut, especially cos they are very loyal, which is the reason the French hired them in the first place!
So the memorial is a fallen lion, with a sword in the back, representing the backstabbing French, fallen on a Swiss shield, representing loyalty, and the shape of the carving around the lion is a pig, which is the Swiss' secret way of calling the French pigs... very difficult to see, wouldn't have known if we didn't have it pointed out to us...Very sad and beautiful. Did a bit of shopping.
11th Oct: Jungfrau mountain!!! went to the top of Europe!!! 3454m/11333ft. I just can't even describe the views. I tried to capture it on my camera but ... failed. Scary thing though, what you walked out on was this mesh platform kind of thing, and the further you went away from the inside place thingie, the further you could see the mountain dropping beneath you!! Made my stomach churn that's for sure!
Then we went into the Ice Palace. Palace made of... Ice. In a glacier :) I was sooo scared I was going to fall on my butt cos let's face it I'm not the most co-ordinated person any of us have ever met.... but managed to escape trip-free and very proud :) (other people did fall though, just to make it obvious that it wasn't easy staying upright!). In the palace they had all these cool carvings of penguins, seals, igloos and stuff like that.
Then me and Luce went to do a husky ride, waited in line for like 20 mins while the guy was feeding them, then he started to pack up!!! How lame!! So we got some photos with the huskies (sooo cute!!) and on the sled :D
Such a good day!!!
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