a pice of my heart will remain here forever

** still blogging in Portugal aka using a weird keyboard and with no spell check ... will make it all the more fun.

Weeekend of February 11 to 2011 

It was actually nice to settle back into the routine of classes after the intense week of travel in Italy. I survived my marathon 4 1/2 hours of class quiet well this morning... I give full credit to the crazy baker’s nutella croissant and insanely strong coffee. This weekend I am headed to SWITZERLAND!!!!!!!!!! I actually had a difficult time packing as it was suppose to be 50 degrees at lover elevations but I was concerned with extremes at higher elevations or if we went sledding etc. I finally admitted defeated and packed my large hiking backpack with everything.

I caught the 2:20 train to Luxembourg City where I met Annie and Amanda (Caroline, Kat and Megan, who don’t have morning classes left earlier in the morning). We went to proxy (the grocery store) and bought food for dinner to cook Saturday night at the hostel and to snack on. Our 16:10 train (aren’t I becoming European) to Basel Switzerland was actually delayed... didn’t know that could happen with trains... however our ride to Basel was very enjoyable until we got to Strasburg France when the train became extremely crowded... which made it kind of feel like NJ transit. I however managed to fall asleep as I am in a constant state of exhaustion. I was however jolted from my amazing nap by loud shouting in a foreign language which I swear sounded like someone was going / was in the process of hijacking the train (my friends said this was funny because how could you hijack a train its on a track I told them to see the movie unstoppable) . After a small scuffle, a couple punches and a lot of shouting in French everyone just went back to normal like nothing had happened.... seriously sometimes the French are really weird.

We arrived in Switzerland around 11 pm, we met up with the others, settled into our room which is really nice and while we were planning on going out everyone ended up falling asleep and we ended up having a very relaxed and quiet evening. Nothing beats waking up in Switzerland I had forgotten how amazing it is. We woke up and after a simple breakfast headed to the tourism office with some help to plan the day. Blame it on global warming or weird winter weather but there is hardly any snow in the lower elevations so we couldn’t go night sledding. I also decided that I didn’t want to or couldn’t justify spending 130 Swiss franks to jump off a cliff so we went to Grindelwald instead. I remember Grindelwald from 2005 as a quiet quaint town and was excited to return. We however had some difficulties with the trains and didn’t manage to transfer onto the correct one however because the Swiss are so amazing an nice the conductor didn’t give us any difficult with having the wrong ticket and even helped us get onto the right train.

As we traveled farther into the alps it became snow covered with the adorable brown chalets dotting the landscape. Grindelwald a bustling winter town and was significantly busier and crowded than I remember it. Its funny I have very distinct memories of the daytrip to Grindelwald however I wasn’t able to distinctly place any of them funny how time can distort our memories. We walked around the little town and then decided that we were ready to get lunch. As I had always regretted not getting cheese fondue last time I was determined this time. Even though the fondue was really expensive Kat, Amanda, Caroline and myself wrote it off as a necessary although delicious cultural expense and after all we weren’t jumping off any cliffs so we figured that we could justify the expense. Basically it was amazing and delicious and we all ate way too much cheese.

Beautiful snow covered chalets. 

Enjoying a delicious Cheese Fondue lunch in Switzerland: Me, Amanda, Kat & Caroline

After lunch we took a cable car up the Tschuggen Mannlichen from an elevation of 3094 feet to over 7317 feet at the peak. The ride up was extremely peaceful as we guided along the mountain side the bustling city bellow was reduced to mere dots. Equally as surprising was when we arrived tat the top to find basically a little city complete with a restaurant, bar, DJ, hundreds of picnic tables and hundreds of chase lounge chairs where you could sit and enjoy the warm sun. Kat and I both agreed that this is the best way to go "skiing".

Party on top of the mountain, hundreds of people enjoying the view and sun on comfy chase-lounge chairs

  Part of me wishes that I could ski although its probably a blessing as my fearlessness mixed with my sense of adventure would inevitably result in bodily injury. The skill and talent that it takes to ski down this mountain is unimaginable the start is literally like the side of a cliff. I took about a million photos of the view as it was breath taking. I remember when I summated the mountain in Switzerland in 2005 writing in the summit journal... " a piece of my heart will remain here forever" five years latter this sentiment still is true and its hard not to fall in love or feel connected to the mountains in Switzerland.

Continuing with our theme of always sticking out where we go our jeans and tennis shoes didn’t really fit in on top of a ski slope. Two nice (and by nice I mean hot) Swiss guys came up to us and offered to take our picture. They proceeded to tell us that they were on a company outing (sadly they don’t work for Nielsen) but I mean how amazing would it be to be Swis?

On top of the Swiss Alps. Left to Right: Annie, Me, Kat, Caroline and Megan.

 At 5:30 and about a 1,000 pictures later (how people traveled through Europe with film is beyond me) we headed back down the mountain. When we arrived at the base of the mountain and peered up to the top it was hard to believe all the excitement and energy up there, 4,000 feet below it looked equally as peaceful and undisturbed as all the other peaks.

beautiful.

 When we arrived back to Interlaken we went to the grocery store and bought some wine to have with our pasta dinner. The Swiss are much more stringent about alcohol than the rest of Europe and actually card people who look young.... so I had my first experience being "carded" it was fun and was actually the first time it hit me that I am 21!!!! We then went back to the hostel and cooked dinner, which ended up being a lot of fun and we ended up having dinner with 4 guys from Penn State! We then went out to a club for a little while, however as Interlaken is really touristy it wasn’t really any different than a club at home.

We woke up extremely early (like 7 am and if you knew my sleeping pattern at school on the weekends you would appreciate how bizarre that it is) so that we would have time to hike around the lake before we had to leave... most of the people in the group wanted to take a 10:30 am train back to Luxembourg. We walked for nearly and hour and a half along the river only people walking their dogs were out and they greeted us pleasantly. We reached the lake just as the sun was rising over the eastern mountains. As we walked back towards Interlaken all the church bells started ringing and echoing off the mountains... and continued for nearly a half hour.... which was absolutely magical.

As we were walking to the train Kat and I decided that we wanted to spend a couple more hours in Switzerland and would take the 4 pm train from Basel to Luxembourg. Also as we were traveling on our Euro rail passes today we could go on as many trains as we wanted to... which made our travel plans very flexible. So we decided to stop in Thun for a couple hours. Thun was another city that I had gone to in 2005 and it was as cute as I remember it. The only problem however was that we had done a good job spending the majority of our Swiss franks and therefore didn’t have enough money left to rent a locker at the train station so had to carry all of our stuff all day - we felt like legit backpackers The town was beautiful we climbed up the castle, wandered through the town and took a long walk around the lake and it was a great afternoon as it was just Kat and me. Around noon it started to become busier as it was a gorgeous day and families were all out walking young couple linked romantically together, little kids riding bikes and rollerblading, older couples peacefully strolling together and Kat and I of course stood out with all of our bags as we meandered through this beautiful and traditional Swiss town in utter amazement.

Me and all my stuff in Thun Switzerland.

told you that I had a lot of stuff... made a nice bit of exercise.

me in a castle in Switzerland (unfortunately it was a little hazy and we can't clearly see the mountains in the distance but they are there.)

Kat & my romantic walk around Lake Thun, the castle and town in the distance.

Kat and I then proceeded to make our largest public transportation mistake of our trip thus far rather than getting on a train to Basel we got on one to Bern. We were only concerned because if we missed our train from Basel we wouldn’t be able to get home tonight. Everything worked out fine, and several trains later we made it back to Luxembourg around 9:30 pm so that I had time to skype with mom and dad and prepare for the week. I can’t believe that I will be in Spain in five days!!!!!!

*** will upload pictures when I return home... and by home I mean Luxembourg.