mountains trips and Swiss times

Some down time ever since the epic Euro-travelling of February, spent discovering more of Switzerland.  I still think I learn the most about this country when I eat dinner with my host-grandparents, and the grandfather, Papa Jean, describes proudly the origin of the use of every last vegetable in the typically Swiss dishes he and Mama Diana prepare.  He is from the Swiss-French mountains, and has a clear love for the place, people, and culture.  They grow their own vegetables in the garden here, and make their own preserves as well.  Today, for example, we had a "Bernese" dish, of mashed potatoes, dried haricots verts, and meat with roasted peppers and onions, although traditionally, Papa Jean said, it's served with sausages. We had a dessert, which we never have, of meringues, vanilla ice cream, and home-made whipped cream, because they couldn't believe I had never eaten this very Swiss dessert before.  What else-- they have also made a rosti, which I love and had eaten previously in the Swiss German part of the country.  It is basically hash browns with sometimes an egg and cheese melted on top, with meat too.  Delicious on a cold day, but not too delicious more than once a month-ish... rosti, fondue, and raclette, all very yummy, all so heavy you feel like you have no business eating for a week after.  Discovering culture through food is one of my favorite things.  The other is traveling :)

A few interesting, memorable non-trip, local Swiss things that have happened in the past few weeks:

I've gotten the chance to meet a few very interesting people for my research project, on North African immigration and integration in Switzerland.  One day, I went to a mosque in Geneva and was there before, during, and after prayer time, talking with men and women there and getting their opinions on migration and religion in Switzerland.  It was a truly eye-opening experience, and was just so demonstrative of the skewed opinions people are engrained with, and would continue to believe, if they did not go out of their way to try to understand the other people who live in this world.  After my visit to the mosque, I had an interview with a man who used to work at the International Organization of Migration; we talked for a long time, and he is going to be advising me on my paper and research.  I also met with my host family's friend, a woman with a slightly backwards history of migration as I have been seeing in the other people I've talked with.  This past week, we finished classes and exams at SIT, and are now in the independent study period of the semester.  I'm really excited to focus on my research and to meet more interesting people.

There has been lots of café exploring, constantly seeking good vin chaud, and since the weather is better more time spent outside by the lake in Nyon, the "big town" 5 minutes from Gland.  I've also given in to the massive book and DVD collections that line the walls of my host families' house, all both in English and French, so it could really become quite a distraction... I've also started spending more time with my 20 year old host sister, Fanny, and today went on a bike tour of Gland with her and Magali, the 21 year old sister (now 22, had a birthday the other day).  This town is tiny, and as it is built on the Jura mountains, there is literally an "up" town and a "down" town.  Up, we biked past green fields, farms, and vineyards, with horses and cows; there's a soccer field too ("Why do they need another soccer field? They already have 3!" "If they didn't, what would the kids do?  They would make trouble!"... the two sisters don't see eye to eye on much).  Then we biked across the bridge above the train tracks, and down, past more farms with sheep, and right to the edge of the lake where there's a tiny beach.  It's really a beautiful town, and I'm loving this country more and more as spring comes.  It's just really cold here in the winter.

View from halfway up the Gornergrat, into the valley of Zermatt.

Last weekend, I went with two friends, the three of us fast becoming travel buddies, to Zermatt.  Zermatt is a town in the Swiss-Italian Alps, home of the Matterhorn, the mountain the Toblerone chocolates are modeled after and the tallest mountain in Switzerland.  We left early in the morning, saw the sunrise and the day begin on another beautiful, winding train through the Alps, and were on a tiny mountain train going up the Gornergrat by 10:30am.  The weather was very foggy and there wasn't very good visibility, but we couldn't have changed our trip so we made the best of it.  We got halfway up the Gornergrat (a mountain near the Matterhorn, but smaller and hikeable/skiable), then got off the train and hiked up further.  It wasn't at all what I would call hiking-- we were walking vertically up on a snow-covered slope, around rocks jabbing out of the snow drifts, and looking down into ravines and across to mountains rising up and enclosing us in their vast snow-dappled hugeness.  Then we would round a corner and find ourselves on a ski slope, literally on a ski slope, with people skiing down next to us.  We reached another stop on the mountain, and caught the train again all the way up to the summit of the Gornergrat where, theoretically, you could see the Matterhorn and all the other mountains in front of you.  We couldn't see anything because of the clouds, so we ate lunch and then took a train about two-thirds down the mountain, where we began to hike.

Church on the side of the Gornergrat.

The softest mountain

We began our hike down the Gornergrat all the way into the town of Zermatt.  This was more like standard hiking, on paths through forests, with only minimal hiking-down-ski-slopes.  We passed an incredible frozen waterfall, two actually.  One of my friends is a forestry/nature connaisseure, and she said that the clay in the rocks in this area is what gives all the frozen water it's incredible turquoise blue color.  When we just about reached the beginning of town, we saw a sign pointing backwards to the "Matterhorn trail"... so we turned around, and tried to see what we could see.  Luckily, shortly up the trail we could make out the outline of the Matterhorn through the fog!  We all took touristy pictures with a Toblerone chocolate in front of the mountain, then walked back to Zermatt, exhausted, to catch our train home.  

Hiking down into Zermatt

Toblerone, in front of the Matterhorn in the foggy distance.

I got back last night from a two-day trip to Grindelwald and the Jungfraujoch, which turned into a 6-city adventure-- my favorite kind!  The Jungfrau is the mountain home to the "Top of Europe", the highest-altitude train in Europe.  We took a train into Grindelwald, the quaint little town that functions as the jump-off point for hikers and skiers in the area, and immediately hopped the train to the top.  The train stopped periodically on the way up once we were inside the mountain-- there were observatory windows where you could stop, get off the train, and then walk around literally in the mountain and see out and down below.  We finally made it to the top, and were spit out in a building of tourism-mania.  We ate our picknicked lunch standing up looking out at the longest glacier in Europe, and listened in on a man giving a tour in English and trying to sell his tourists things from the gift shop.  Then we took the elevator up to the very top of the Jungfrau, and walked around on the little observatory platform.  The view was incredible-- on top of everything, looking over the clouds.   

Jungfraujoch train to the Top of Europe!

View from a "window" inside the Jungfrau, on the way up.

It's blue at the top.

Observatories in the side of the Jungfrau, and the longest glacier in Europe below.

Beautiful

After walking around outside overlooking the world, we went back inside the tourist building and followed signs to the "Ice Palace".  I felt like I was five years old, sliding along an ice floor and through a tiny ice tunnel-- it was really cool, even for a big kid.  We walked out onto another observatory point, and took more breathtaking pictures.  Then we found some postcards at the gift shop and mailed them inside the Jungfrau building, where out-going mail is apparently stamped "from the Top of Europe"... we'll see!  We slept going down the Jungfrau to Kliene Scheidegg, a stop about halfway down the mountain, and then hiked down for about 2 hours.  It was a beautiful clear day, as we walked alongside the Alps and were passed by sledders, skiers, and a yodeling man standing straight up on his skis.  We played in the snow, and finally took the last train all the way into Grindelwald town.  We had heard that we would have to actually hike up another mountain to get to our hostel, so we stopped in a bar called Avocado, of all things, which was full of skiers and snowboarders still in their ski clothes, and then began our ascent.  

Inside the Ice Palace

We woke up to a picturesque snowfall outside the window of our hostel room, screening the Alps that were covered in rolling fog in the not-so-distant distance.  It was beautiful, even as it caused us to rethink our plans for the day.  After breakfast, we walked back down to town and consulted the tourism office, where the woman told us that it was just bad weather everywhere... She pointed out one hiking path, so we walked around the shops (read: chocolate shops) of Grindelwald for an hour waiting for the sky to clear a little.  We then started out on our hike, which for the first part was mostly a residential road, then started to pass through fields and by the riverbanks.  It rained the entire time, but was still beautiful, and was definitely a way to see a not-so-touristy side of a touristy town.  We walked through a field of some sort of animal poop, then back into town for some hot apple strudel, a Swiss-German specialty.  While we were sitting in the café, the rain turned to snow; we got on the train and pulled out of Grindelwald in snow flurries.  

 Directions pointing up to the mountains.

River down in Grindelwald.

Turn around-- the other side of the river in Grindelwald.

Looking down into the residential part of Grindelwald.

Snow downtown, outside the train station.

Because of the weather, instead of taking our train ticket directly from Grindelwald back home we decided to leave early and get off in Interlaken-- I had gone there about a month ago, in between Bern and Vienna, and didn't expect to be back.  However, we didn't really stay, because in our search for more hiking trails, we got "lost"... how I love getting lost.  We were on a bus, and eventually realized that it had been close to an hour and we were still on this bus.  A nice English-speaking woman told us that yes, we were going to Thun (pronounced "toon").  Looking on our map, we saw that this was at the exact opposite end of the lake of Interlaken West!  What else could we do but stay on the bus... we got off on a cobblestone street with bustling shops and people everywhere.  How unexpected-- definitely not hiking.  Note: the whole time we were carrying my friend's obnoxious IKEA bag of snow-shoes and hiking poles, which we never used once because of the weather.  We walked, shocked and very happy, through winding streets, past blazing turquoise blue water, through a street market (it was Saturday after all...), I bought a schizophrenic looking "swiss dress" of a sale rack (what?), and then walked up to the château.  Beautiful, beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful.  

"We found ourselves in..." Thun!  

(This never gets old)

Château in Thun.

Beautiful nature-church at the château.

Turquoise water and another château, Thun.

Springtime

Thun, the edge of one of the "lakens" of Interlaken.

We walked down from the château, along the river for a while, then caught a bus back to Interlaken.  We were asked to show our tickets by the scariest Swiss-German woman in the world, who kindly let us off the hook for paying the fee for bus-jumping.  She seemed surprised that we were Americans, and yet had our Swiss half-fare bus/train cards, and yet didn't know that you were supposed to buy a ticket each time you get on the bus... We got back on the train, actually passed through Thun on the train again, and were heading home when we decided to get off in Lausanne to walk around a bit.  Lausanne is the capital of canton Vaud, the canton Gland is in.  It's a young town, and two-- soon to be three-- of my four host siblings go to school there.  We didn't get to see enough of it, were sweaty and gross from walking for two days, and were carrying that bag of "raquettes", so a return trip is necessary.  Finally made it home close to midnight, and slept very, very well.  

the best week ever?

For the last week of February-- where this blog left off-- the whole SIT group went on our last educational trip, this time to Brussels and to Paris.  We had lectures (almost) every morning, and then had the afternoons and nights free for "cultural observation", aka exploration and being tourists.

Starting with Brussels:

When thinking of this trip, I mostly thought of Brussels as "the city before Paris", someplace I never really had a desire to go to.  It turns out that Brussels is a beautiful city-- granted, I didn't see much too far outside the center.  It's a bi-lingual city, French and Flemmish (although I did research on this fact for the "study" part of this trip, and it turns out it's definitely more of a French-speaking city), and is the seat of the European Union.  One of the first things I did when I got to Brussels was to get a waffle-- a Belgian waffle!  It was delicious, one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten.  There is sugar inside the waffle, and they're made with dough, not batter, so they cook differently... and you put bananas and/or strawberries and/or whipped cream and/or chocolate sauce, or Nutella... wow.

The middle of the city is dominated by the Grande Place, a huge cobblestone plaza enclosed by elegant, ornate stone buildings trimmed in gold.  The buildings include the Town Hall, a strip of chocolate stores and restaurants, the city's culture and history museum, and the beer museum.  There are little streets leading off from the center of the Place, and down each are more restaurants, chocolate shops, waffle stands, and other little boutiques.  If you follow one of these streets-- this one in particular which is lined with extremely touristy restaurants with the waiters standing outside trying to coerce you to come in-- you reach another alleyway, down which is the famous Delirium bar.  They have the largest selections of beer available (please don't forget that Belgian beer is famous worldwide...), and it is always full upstairs and downstairs with tourists and locals.  Everyone we talked to inside, if they were actually from Brussels, said that they loved the place even thought it was touristy, because the beer and the atmosphere are so great.  

Alley off the Grande Place, home to Delirium and the Girl Manneken Pis.

The Grande Place at night.

"TUNISIE, ALGERIE, EGYPTE, 127-BIS... ICI COMME AILLEURS..." 

Living history.

On Monday, our first full day in Brussels, we went to the headquarters of the European Union, where we listened to 3 experts speak about various EU sectors and operations.  We have been to some amazing places-- even in Switzerland, we have badges to go to the UN and have gone frequently for lectures, as well as to the WTO and the ILO.  All of these organizations that used to seem so far away and up in the clouds, I have been to and have listened to their employees and experts talk about what I had formerly only read about in textbooks.  That being said, a lot of the times the lectures are on more basic information, and as international affairs students this is pretty frustrating, because we could be talking about more detailed issues or current events.  They can't escape the revolts and demonstrations in North Africa and the Middle East, however... this situation has come up at almost every lecture, always in the context of, well we'll see how things will change now...  This is an incredible time to be alive, let alone studying and working in the field where all of these changes are taking place.  Seminars and events are popping up everywhere relating to the uprisings: there is an international film festival in Geneva for the past two weeks, and there was a film/discussion on the Arab Spring; I attended a lecture at the nearby Webster University in Geneva, after one of our guest lecturers at SIT mentioned he would be holding a presentation/discussion on the Arab Spring.  Ok, I digress from my nerdy tangent...

Inside the European Union headquarters, Brussels.

Inside the Brussels beer museum... small, to the point, free sample at the end. 

Brussels/Belgium is famous for it's waffles, chocolate, beer, and lace.  There waffle stands everywhere, so it was easy to get our fix of those, and the same with small boutique-y chocolate stores and beer.  There were lace stores too, but clearly things you can eat or drink are more interesting... We went to the beer museum, which consisted of the entryway where old beer-making machines and steins were displayed, and a room with modern equipment and a continuously running how-to film playing.  This was the extent of the museum, and afterwards you could have a sample of house-made blonde or cherry beer.  Those are both very popular and very Belgian, and the cherry is like cough syrup.  In my opinion. We also went to the chocolate museum, where the history of chocolate is explained, as well as the regional differences and the different kinds of chocolate and sugar... you can taste the different components of the chocolate, like cocoa butter and chocolate nub-things, and can also watch a chocolatier-woman making fresh chocolate in molds at the demonstration.  What a cool place.

Another quick Brussels trivia bit:  the Manneken Pis statue, just off the Grand Place.  There are a few versions of the story behind this tiny statue built in the 1600s of a boy peeing into the fountain-- the best known/most viable is that during a war in the 1100s, a baby lord was carried in a basket during a battle, and he peed on the invading troops.  There is a female version of this little man in the alleyway of Delirium... Brussels is a fascinating city.

Manneken Pis, Brussels.

Chocolate statue, "La Tête d'Or", Maison du Chocolate.

Protestors for democracy in North Africa.

Our last night in Brussels, we went to a restaurant across from the Manneken Pis that we called the Marionette Bar, for lack of understanding its Flemmish name... It was a small place with three levels, and marionettes hanging all over the walls and ceilings.  It was all made of and furnished with dark wood, and there were pictures of the Manneken Pis everywhere, as well as books on Belgian beer, and a poster of all of the Manneken Pis's costumes through the ages.  We had a great dinner of spaghetti and beer, and enjoyed the night before waking up to leave for Paris the next morning.

Books on Belgian beer-brewing inside the Marionette Bar.

And now Paris:

We took the TGV to Paris on Wednesday, dropped our stuff off in our hotel (from which we could see the Eiffel Tower... continuation of dream-week), and went exploring.  Three years ago as a senior in high school, I visited Paris for 5 days as part of an exchange program, so I was familiar with the top-of-the-Eiffel Tower, top-of-the Arc de Triomphe, climbing of all things climb-able, and wanted to experience some different, less immediately touristy things.  However, the first afternoon I walked with some friends past the Musée d'Armée, then along the Seine, to the Musée d'Orsay, the Impressionism museum.  I loved the Louvre the last time I was in Paris, but you really need at least one day to devote to seeing it, and it's exhausting.  The Musée d'Orsay is more manageable, and is in an old converted train station which is in itself beautiful.  It was a great entry into Paris.  Later that night, we had a traditional French dinner with the program, and wandered around near the Latin Quarter trying to find places with jazz.  We landed in this small bar with music playing that sounded live but wasn't, and a mean little Frenchman waiter who tried to pass his meanness off as funniness, which didn't work.  Ah the Parisians.  

View from the street off our hotel, on a rainy Parisian night.

On Thursday, we went to UNICEF for a lecture on children and education, which was rather discouraging like the others.  On the way back to the hotel, there was a farmer's market where we bought nuts and hummus and delicious bread, and I found an almond and fig cookie from an Italian baker that was delicious.  The thing I really wanted to do this time around in Paris was to walk through the catacombs, very old underground quarries-turned-cemetary overflow sites which stretch through a considerable part of the city.  We walked by way of the Cimetière Montparnasse, where large, elaborate, artful tombs stretched forever.  It was pretty chilling, although it was interesting because famous writers and philosophers are buried there.  The great Tour de Montparnasse shot up in the background, after a row of apartments right next to the cemetery, and made for a stark contrast of old and dark versus new and shiny and promising.  We continued our walk to the catacombs, only to find the line around the corner down the block and the entry closing at 4pm.  Not deterred, because it is Paris after all, we took the metro to the Notre Dame, and walked in and around there for a while.  A few hours later as we were leaving, we walked past the Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, which had really fantastic old posters of Beat generation books and publications, and lots of signs from the famous City Lights Bookstore, as well-- the  shelves inside were overflowing with books, and although it was still pretty tourist-infested, it reminded me a little of the Capitol Hill Books in Eastern Market, DC.  This is an old town house that is literally made of books-- books fill the old kitchen, the old (still functioning) bathroom (they keep the language books in there...), and all along the staircases.  

Cimetière Montparnasse.

Artist across from the Notre Dame-- Paris.

Poster outside of Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, Paris.

Notre Dame in the distance.

As it was still a little early for dinner, we went to a café called Les Deux Magots, famous for the philosophers who frequented it in the late 1800s-early 1900s.  We sat outside as dusk came, and met our first genuinely nice, not too pushy or disgusted with our American-ness, waiter.  We stayed until the sun set, then made our way back to the Latin Quarter.  Earlier, on our way to the café, we had walked past a restaurant named, "Au Bon Couscous".  Like all other restaurants in the area, there was a man standing outside trying to coerce people to eat in his restaurant.  We stopped to look at the menu, and after he advertised it specifically as "moroccan couscous", I started talking with him in Arabic.  He seemed confused at first and then very happy, and I said we'd be back.  So we returned, and had the best service by everyone in the place-- our Tunisian waiter was very funny and said, when we said we were from America and studying International Affairs in Europe, "oh, so you want to take over Europe, too!"  We had some interesting conversation with him, but he was the sweetest old man.  He brought us free apéritifs and mint tea, and smiled when I asked for bread in order to eat my delicious lamb and caramelized onion/almond/raisin tagine.  It wasn't the same as back in Morocco, but it was close enough to make me unreasonably happy.  

Les Deux Magots-- café of the philosophes of the 1800 and 1900s.

The view once again

Bright and early the next day, I checked out of the hotel, stored by bags in the lobby, and went with a few friends to the catacombs when they opened at 10am.  It was really cool at first, there was a little museum-esque room when you climbed down the bottom of the long staircase, and then you walk through the underground hallways that used to be quarries.  Some of the hallways have street signs on them, and then we reached an area where there were elaborate scenes carved into the rock walls, which was completely unexpected.  But as we walked further, we reached a point where the walls began to be made of bones... yes, bones.  I guess in the 1800s, the cemeteries of Paris became so full, and they needed more building room, so they moved all the bodies that had been in the cemeteries underground.  There are signs marking which bones come from which cemetery, and other signs with quasi-morbid quotations engraved on them built into the walls of bone.  It was really chilling, literally at some points, especially when water dripped from the ceiling while we were standing in front of a tomb.  We toughed it out and finished walking through, then climbed up another long staircase and found ourselves above ground, totally disoriented.  Talk about seeing a different side of Paris...

Hallway in the catacombs.

Sculptures in the catacombs.

"Ossements de l'ancien cimetière St Laurent déposés en 1848"

"Skeletons of the old St. Laurent cemetery disposed in 1848" 

Walls and designs made from the skeletons in the catacombs.

Altar-type structure in the catacombs.

Last but not least...

Rabat, Morocco.

Being in Paris, I was already halfway to Morocco, and just couldn't really pass up the opportunity to go. I had been following the independent news online since the uprisings in Tunisia, and Morocco wasn't in any real danger of following down that path, as we've seen.  Since everything stayed relatively calm, Friday afternoon after walking through the catacombs in Paris, I took the metro to the airport and flew to Rabat.  It was great to see my old host family-- my host sister's still as crazy and fun as ever, and coming back to my host mom's cooking was like I had been hungry this whole semester and was just then eating again.  I went back to the café Nora and I always used to go to, and the waiter still remembered me; I saw a friend who has stayed in Rabat with the program for the year, and met my family's new host students.  The across-the-hall neighbors and their son were still there and as nice as ever-- it was the strangest feeling to feel so at home there.  Things I noticed-- there were police on every corner, looking attentive, at least, and only once on Saturday did I see a crowd of people in front of Bab al Had outside of the medina, but I don't think there was a single sign there.  Everyone said that it was the weekend, why would anyone want to make any trouble?  Kids were playing in front of the parliament building... this is really a very unique country, the social and political scenes just aren't the same as the other countries in the Middle East North Africa region, and it is still as beautiful as ever.  What a shock to fly back into Paris, to the cold northern climate, after reverting back to the warm air, the lazy café culture.  

Home sweet home-- the suburbs of Rabat, Morocco.

Marathon February

February = travel month.  Zurich, Bern, Interlaken, and then Vienna, Austria… oh, and Gruyère to a cheese factory.  First weekend: Zurich

Zurich is the big town in eastern Switzerland, very much in the German part of the country and much younger and more alive than Genève, hamdollah (sidenote:  French-speaking girl living in Geneva traveling in German-speaking Zurich missing Morocco bazaaaaf.  Waaaah).  It was an adventure from the start, as to save a bit of money we decided to shove 7 people into a hotel room for two.  The two boys slept on the floor—how chivalrous— and we planned to only leave and enter the hotel once, on Friday, and then leave for good the next day.  Mission accomplished:  we dropped off our stuff and then left for the night, walking around Old Town Zurich, passing groups of young people laughing together and restaurants and bars with people spilling out onto the cobblestone streets.  We ran into a man wearing a blonde girl’s wig, dressed as a female Viking, and walking with a group of women and babbling in German.  He came up to us, realized we didn’t speak German, and said, “Oh, I’m getting married!!  It’s my last chance to have fun!  Please buy something to help the cause!”  He was selling brownies, shots, pictures with him, and kisses from him…. We took a picture.  It was a great start to the night. 

After wandering for a while—past an extremely talented a cappella group and other street performers—wandered into a very traditional German-Swiss restaurant, and ate the country’s third national specialty:  rosti, hash browns covered in melted cheese, an egg, and ham.  Delicious, again!  Our waiter and some locals sitting at the table with us gave us suggestions for the rest of the night, so we explored the Zurich night life—paid a ridiculous amount to get into the “discothèque”, the “young” place to go, as opposed to the “old” place where we had planned to go.  It was a lot of fun, but probably won’t be paying that much to dance ever again. 

When we woke up, we left the hotel (in groups of two and three—we were never caught once J) and had a picnic breakfast on a park bench near the train station.  Then we started our museum/sight-seeing day:  Swiss History museum, with some very very old history; walking tour of the river banks and the old town with some spectacular views from the top of a elevated park; a stop at a river-side café (great people watching…); and a beautiful church with geodes as stained glass.  We also got caught up in a protest against Moubarak, fed some ducks, and got free maccarons.  We ended the day with another traditional German dinner, delicious sauerkraut and brocht.  Train back to Gland, home to sleep.  But the weekend wasn’t over—Sunday, I went to a performance with my host family and some extended relatives and friends.  Front row seats at a dance/theater performance by Charlie Chaplin’s grandson!  It was fantastic, and so great to spend time with the family in an artsy setting.  Between this and the street performers, I realized how much I had missed performances.  One of the things that I had missed most last semester being in Morocco (see “Senegal” entry, where I’m pretty sure I raved about Piazza Navona for quite a while). 

Back in Geneva for two days, then off to Bern for our first program trip.  Bern is the capital of Switzerland,  and is located in the German-speaking part.  The Old Town is actually a UNESCO protected heritage site, for its “city planning”—the main three cobblestone streets are parallel, with these little alley ways connecting them.  And lining these parallel streets are the “arcades”, little weather-hatch-type doors, like cellar doors outside a house leading down into shops and restaurants below.  We got into Bern and I immediately got a sandwich made out of a pretzel, with herb butter as a filling… yummmmm.  Pretzels are huge in Bern, it appears.  We went on a locally-led tour of the city, to the oldest church in Bern with very ornate and detailed sculptures depicting figures from the Bible, heaven and hell, adorning the main entrance.  We also passed by Parliament, which sits on the edge of a hill, and looking over the ledge you can see the rest of the town stretching out below, including the History Museum with a huge Einstein exhibit (a Bern local—his house is in the Old Town).  That night—and for most of the trip—we had free time to do cultural observation, or sightseeing/doing touristy things.  So we went to a micro-brewery/restaurant located right over the Bear Pits.  Bern is known for these brown bears… the Bern bears.  They were sleeping at night, but I saw them from afar during the day. 

The next day, we had three hours of lectures in the morning, up in a turret of an old chateau, and then the rest of the day free for more “cultural observation”.  The lecturers were actually very interesting; one man from the Swiss government, one from SDC, a Swiss development aid agency, who spoke about their projects in Nepal and Afghanistan, and a Swiss military commander.  After the lectures, we found some bread and cheese, went to sit on the big ground-area in front of Parliament in the sun, and then explored some more.  We climbed to the top of the bell tower of the church in the Old Town as the bells were going off at 3pm, and saw a spectacular view of the Alps in any direction we turned.  After climbing back down, we tracked down a gingerbread store that our tour guide had told us about—gingerbread, actually a “hasselnuss” spice bread—typically Bernise, with the Bern bear outlined on the bread with icing.  That and a strong European coffee in a tiny shop in the Old Town cobble-street-y area was the perfect way to spend the afternoon.  The big clock in between the Old Town and new town was made in the 1500s, with intricate carvings adorning it and arranged in a little circle (mirrored in the fountain sculptures and carvings on the buildings lining the Old Town streets), which turned a number of rotations on the hour, depending on the hour.  This clock also has astrological “clocks” on it, tracking the planetary and lunar movements.  All of this was made in the 1500s… it was so impressive.

That night, I took a tram up a small mountain with some friends, and we walked around up there as the sun set.  Being that high up on a mountain, looking down at Bern stretching and expanding all around us until it couldn’t go anymore because it ran into the Alps, was a humbling feeling.  It was like being in the Sahara again, that feeling of being very very small and insignificant in the face of this natural creation, but in a different climate and with a very different atmosphere.  The sunset was beautiful—we chased it around the mountain, and watched the frosty blue sky turn orange and pink and purple.  Back down the mountain tram, and then we met up with a friend’s friend who is from Bern for dinner.  Another delicious meal of rosti, and off to this friend’s roomate’s brother’s friend’s concert… when in Rome.  It was so much fun, and a great way to see a different side of the city, to see a local show in this converted horse-stable in Bern, and talk with some locals (something I unfortunately don’t do very much here, yet anyways, being with a pack of Americans and a very full school schedule). 

Friday, I went to an art (“kunst”) museum with some friends, and saw a huge variety of art, from impressionist Monet to Rothberg’s to modern multimedia pieces.  I could have spent so much longer in there, but we had to re-convene at the train station for those students going back to Geneva.  I had plans to go to Vienna, Austria with some friends, and our train didn’t leave for a few hours so we decided to take a train to Interlaken to fill the time!  (This is a really unbelievable semester, take 2)  It took about an hour to get there,, and we spent about two hours walking around town; Megan, my resident German-speaking friend here, talked with an elderly lady for a while who was prepared to give us a tour of Interlaken herself, but directed us instead to go to the café at the top of a hotel.  Hang gliders just scraped by the windows of our café, looking like they were having the time of their life, floating through the snow-covered Alps.  We could see the Jungfrau, home of the highest railroad track and station in Europe.  Another beautiful view—I’m losing track of all of them.  You can see a lake to your left, and one to your right, hence inter-laken, and the little toy village in between.  We needed to get back to Bern to catch our next train, but managed to take a cab to a lakeshore as the sun was setting, turning the water and snow caps pastel pinks, purples, and blues. 

Back to Bern, board train #1, switch in Zurich to train #2, and switch somewhere in western Austria to train #3 for the 8-hour over-night train ride.  Rolling through the dark in a soft red compartment with gurgling German and loud laughter outside the compartment door, the past six months really took a hold of me, and all of the incredible places I have been and things I have seen and done piled up in my head, overwhelming me and making me tired but at the same time more excited to keep rolling on and seeing and doing more, leaving me in the end just feeling incredibly, incredibly lucky to have had this year that’s not even over yet. 

We arrived in Vienna at 7am, and started our marathon day.  Half of the group was staying in a hostel, and it wasn’t open yet, so we went to a tiny neighborhood café, traditional cheese pastry and strong black coffee for breakfast, and got some advice from the elderly man who owned the place.  At 9, our room wasn’t vacant yet, so we changed in the reception area bathroom and went out to meet our other group of friends for a tour led by one of them who is studying in Vienna this semester.  We started out in one of the main downtown subway stations (how I’ve missed subway systems…) and walked around the main shopping street, with high scale clothing stores and specialty food and glassware shops.  We saw the famous Vienna Opera House from the outside, and the Stephensdom Cathedral, probably the most impressive old church I have ever seen besides Notre Dame in Paris.  It was beautifully intricately carved on the outside, and painted and embellished and stained-glass-ed inside.  Horse-drawn carraiges lined up outside, ready to take tourists around town; past a quaint old section of town, marveled at the varied architecture and colors of the stone buildings; walked to the old Hapsburg empire government building/palace, with an old copper statue of Goeth outside, then walked further to realize that before we had been looking at the back of the building, and the front was this elaborate curved, pillar-ed construction, with the Spanish riding school through an archway that led out into a cobblestone plaza.  We also wandered around the Parliament building—likewise intricately carved and decorated on the outside, and the Burgh Theater. 

A lunch of traditional Viennese food and delicious locally made beer, and then on to the other Hapsburg palace.  We admired this impressive, yellow, sprawling building from the grounds and then inside, which was set up as a museum.  We took a quick tour through, through the old rooms re-created to look the way they did in the time of the Hapsburgs with all of their princes and princesses and state rooms and music rooms.  Note:  I had forgotten until I arrived that Vienna is the seat of classical music—Mozart, Beetohven, Schubert, and others were represented everywhere. 

After touring the Hapsburg palace, we finally went to our hostel to check in, set up our beds, and shower.  Then we took the metro to see the big Ferris wheel in the main Platz (plaza), one of the symbols of Vienna.  It was all lit up at night, which was beautiful although somewhat creepy to be in a deserted amusement park at night.  I rode on the Ferris wheel with a few other girls, and when our car stopped at the top you could see the lights of the city, with the major buildings and areas illuminated.  From there, we went to the Sacher Hotel’s café, where we each ordered the famous Sacher tort, an un-earthly delicious chocolate cake with real whipped cream.  We spent the rest of the night exploring the nightlife of Vienna, and returned to the hostel late at night, our numbers having dwindled throughout the day.  As you can see, it was a jam-packed, over-exploding day full of seeing Vienna.  Instead of going to the Belvedère art museum the next morning, for two hours before we had to catch our train back to Geneva, I decided to sit at a café and see Vienna a different way; I enjoyed a traditional Viennese mélange, coffee with milk and a bit of cream on top, and watched people going about their Sunday things.  It was the perfect way to end a trip, and on the train ride back it started to snow as we were leaving the city, lasting most of our way through Austria.  We saw another incredible sunset (number 3 of this crazy week), as the sun dropped behind the mountains and over the lakes when we were back in home-sweet-home Switzerland. 

This weekend, a friend from GW visited me in Switzerland, and we spent Saturday traveling to, around, and back home from the town of Gruyère-- as in the cheese.  We took a train through the foggy mountains and arrived in Gruyère, and saw the Maison de Gruyère cheese factory right outside the station.  We walked through the factory, where you can view exhibits on the cheese-making process, and also view people making new cheese through a glass wall.  We walked around with free samples of gruyère cheese aged to varying degrees, then took a local train through the mountains to the town of Broc, to see the Maison Cailler chocolate factory.  Unfortunately we were to late for the tour, but ended up walking around the huge chocolate shop and having a coffee. 

I am about to get off a train in Brussels, going on our second and last school trip to Brussels and Paris this week.  What a trip, what a month, what a country, or continent, I suppose…