Atwixt two lakes, Zurich and an overnight train to rome (April 6th)

Oh man... I AM getting used to this... another approximately eight hours of sleep accompanied by another delicious buffet breakfast. Unfortunate, that this would be the last time, at least here in Switzerland.

God bless our Swiss room

Post face stuffing, we once again beseeched the wisdom of the B&B guru, Ursula, and said our farewells. I snapped a quick picture of her after asking permission, swearing to promote her establishment in the states. If anyone else is feeling adventurous, try it, you'll like it. Rugenpark Hotel!

Ursula ... what a nice lady

Alas, her wise words were wasted on our young ears. We took a train to the other side of town like she said, and then even walked towards the lake she suggested. Or so we thought. Along the way, we managed to see a variety of duck wildlife, along with the works of aspiring young artists dying to be known (graffiti).

aspiring artists... actually most European graffiti is pretty awful (just words that look absolutely wretched) at least these guys put some style into it

Ducks along the way... Duck... duck.... grey duck!


About forty minutes later, we were back again at the Train station we had originally departed to get to the other side of town. Crap. Wrong way. Well, at least the train was back again... so onboard we went... and finally found what we were looking for. The beautiful Brienzersee, a lovely gigantic lake up in the alps. Only having the time to snap a few shots, we fast-walked back to the station, and went twards Luzern. This train was GREAT. There endless good views, going up and down through the alps, and we feasted our eyes on as much as we could.



Birenzersee in all of it's splendor...


After three hours of mountains, sheep, and alpine villages, our train finally came to a stop. Zurich! The capitol of the land of the Swiss Franc, Swiss plug, Swiss army knife, Swiss cheese, Swiss Fondu... you get it. Woo! I sure wish they'd just join the EU, or become a fake member, somehow and make us not have to trifle with power adapters, and their annoying currency. I can only IMAGINE what my parents and the rest of the previous generation had to deal with traveling country to country: francs, deuchmarks, lyra... etc.

I whole heartedly disagree.

Such talk of currencies brings back a painful memory, once AGAIN we needed change so we could store our luggage, only this time, i took the key out before even placing out luggage. Translation: I am an idiot and lost 8 franc, and had to put the key back in, put money back in, then put the luggage in then close it, and THEN take the key... ARSgkklfdsfjh. And this was after being forced to use a third party exchange machine (which robs you; fees).

At any rate, we finally submerged ourselves into city of Zurich. Tramping down the main street, our cameras and English jabber caught the eyes of quite the sketchy old man, walking the opposite direction. Due to his strange appearance, he caught my eye and I noticed as soon as he walked passed us, he flipped a 180 and started approaching us. Instantly I whipped my hands into my pockets, notified Ted and we veered into a less crowded plaza. Lovely, but at least we didn't get robbed.

Zurich has lanes... for bikes... every cyclers dream

At this point we decided to check around the town for various old buildings, churches and took some quick looks. We also decided to walk down the lake area, where the majority of the people of the city were hanging out on this lovely day (20 degrees celsius). Most were swigging beers, and at times, even the smells of reefer could be picked out of the air. I have to admit, it made me want to sit around on the lake and drink a beer in public. where else can we do that normally =(?

Afterwards, we decided to head back, as it was already starting to get fairly late, and we had a night train to catch.. OK it wasn't really that late. We were just a little bored, hungry, and ornery. Finally catching a some eats, we decided we could set up some other connecting trains before finally heading to our Gleis (terminal).

Upon arriving we stumbled upon a giant protest, apparently against Genoside in India, dealing with carpet bombs. Whatever it was, it made me want to look it up. Fortunately it wasn't blocking our train and after a slight mixup (the carts were incorrectly numbered) we were able to get inside just before the police officers started gathering around them (hopefully to just hang out and be neutral? XD ).

out of the protest....

...and onto the train



Now I am sitting on the night train, typing up the excursions of the day. The compartment itself isn't bad at all (it's small, but cozy?), although I don't have any power for my machine, which is running on practically red (they won't let me chage it on here, whee). I am kind of concerned that they took both our passport and our EUrail pass (I feel raped) but hopefully we'll see them again soon in the morning. So pretty quick here i'll just collapse...in a heap....zzz.. OK, not yet but yeah, that's that.