Culture Shock

Now, just to give an idea of cultural differences, the difference between being in Germany and Italy is similar to night vs day, sun vs moon, dogs vs cats.....

In Italy, the drivers are everywhere, aggressive, and angry, revving up in a similar fashion to a SCSU student with a big truck. In Germany, the drivers are few, friendly and will gladly wave a pedestrian on in front of them.

When crossing a road in Rome, people will literally throw themselves into traffic to get across. In Munich everyone waits patiently for the green walking man to pop his head out even if there are NO CARS IN SIGHT. Seriously, i've seen packs of about 30-40 Germans do this, they're just that courteous.

As long as we're talking about road traffic, let me go into bi-wheeled transportation. Across florence and rome, there are a hoard of motorcyclists who try to go as fast as possible (they'll even navigate through pedestrians). Berlin and Munich have no motorbikes, but instead of a great many cyclers. If there isn't a specific bicycle lane, they'll bike in the streets and it's quite possible that they're more numerous than the cars.

One last transport difference is trains. Whenever we had to go somewhere in Italy, we had to reserve our seats, paying about 16E or so (despite our possession of eurorail passes =/). Whereas in Germany, you can still reserve your seat, but you don't have to (the reservers obviously get priority on their specific seat, but playing musical chairs sure beats the extra cost).

As far as the mannerism the Italians were much more frequently loath and disliking of tourists, or at least english speaking ones. Like all things, there were of course exceptions to this rule, and there were several friendly encounters. I even acknowledge the fact that my statistical data pool is quite small, but it still seemed to be much more common than anywhere else we had been. Even our futile attempts to interact with them in their own language were generally responded with scorn, and as soon as they recognized our poor accent, they only spoke to us in english. The Germans were all delighted to have us try and speak their language and were all quite friendly as a whole. We even had no problem occasionally hailing a random passerby for directional information, they seem more than happy to be helpful!

Even in our hotel room, the differences were even more apparent, especially to a food crazy individual such as myself. A hotel italian breakfast consists of... well... I'll let you see for yourself:




Toast... in a bag. yum..........

The hearty German breakfast on the other hand.....



Yes, that is salmon on my plate. SMOKED salmon. It's also a buffet. A tall mans dream.

April 11th- Crazy Konigs, is there really a btter kind?

Both eyes open and active, I vaulted out of my bed in anticipation of what the day might bring. What was so fantastic about this particular day? Well, it was in fact, April 11th 2009: national Jesse and Ted explore the fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein day! Hooray!

After a massive German breakfast, we set out onto the train to Füssen, the city which had become a tourist city due to the architectural excursions of the old bavarian ruler, Crazy King Ludwig!

Why was this man crazy? Well, he was just bored, and rich! Rather than spend all his time fopping about at the latest balls and keeping up on the latest regal trends, he would dedicate a great deal of his time to building fancy castles. Three fancy castles in fact. "Well, that's a tiny bit crazy.. but he's a king right? Big deal". It was a big deal, he ended up spending ALL of the royal funds, much to the distaste of his "chums". His court-fellows were so irritated by this, that he was decreed insane. Then one day he was found dead, a great "mystery" of the times.

Upon arriving in Füssen, we had a quick snack in a Nordsee. Nordsee (north.. sea) is a lovely german fast foodish chain. The menu is quite different. Rather than stacks of bovine flank smothered in grease, it offered a variety of seafood sandwiches, which were quite cheap. Om nom nom.

Delicious... AND neutrinos

Rather than take the bus like most of our fellow tourism robots, we instead had the PAINFUL task of moving our legs back and fourth for about 20 minutes. yikes. At last, around the bend we saw the elegant towers and a too cool view of the castle.


there she be lads, booty and treasure for the taking..

Alas, the tours were full, so we had to wait. What's a good time filler? Why, beer in a biergarten of course! Just common sense, simple common sense. We also took some time to check out Ludwigs main home, the much smaller manor just across the ravine. It was quite nice, with a rather elaborate courtyard.


I guess it's OK for a place to live... i mean really though, you can see why he had to build some more castles.. right?

After murdering enough of our spare time, we were at last able to ascend to Ludwig's unfinished (since he died and all) masterpiece. Speaking of which, only a week or so later after his death, the place was already open to the public for tours.


BAM


Since a great many tourists come to this attraction, there were tours of many different languages. We of course, took english as our German isn't astounding enough to comprehend everything being spoken. What do you know? We're with a bunch of other americans! That's cool right? Wrong...

I've never been more ashamed of my nationality. Our touring companions were absolutely wretched. After the tour guide told everyone not to take pictures, a young couple snapped away, thinking they were tricky and secret, as the camera noises were quite obvious in the silence... oh wait.. there wasn't any! Part of the time, rather than hearing interesting tidbits about the castle, I instead had to catch the latest news about TV shows, from our blubbery land mates. "Please don't touch anything".. as the the obese couple trails their hands along the ornately painted walls (each one a priceless masterpiece, i have no doubt), and the oh SO TIRED person (it's a slight hike of about 15 min to the castle) leans on Kind Ludwig's ancient bookcase. At least the tour guide wry warning each time we had to hike a measly amount of stairs, a secret jab at our panting countrymen. What a depressing day to be a member of the USA.

The tour itself was still quite impressive, despite the castle being unfinished. Every room was a literal artistic masterpiece. I could have stood in each one for hours, in awe of the time and construction it took. His bedroom alone took 14 carpenters 4 years to complete. I only wish I had pictures to go alone with it, but unlike our Bush loving friends we actually obliged and respected the rules.

Da courtyard.


On the train ride home, we sat across a thai couple who had also toured the castle. They were a couple of doctors on vacation, who were very very friendly and suggested a tram ride that showed a great many of the cool sites in munich. One Sawatdee later we arrived back at the hotel, internetless once again.




I don't know if I've expressed my frustration on the topic, but I'm in the mood for a mind dump. We've had absolutely horrible fortune in the way of the wifi (weefee in french, hehe). Switzerland was really the only time we've had a reliable connection. Otherwise, it's been nonexistent throughout the hotel and city. Or it costed about 2 euro an hour, for an abysmally slow connection where I could upload one image about every 15 minutes. Now, we finally had wifi in the hotel in Munich, and even that stopped working. I tried desperately to troubleshoot the issue, but unfortunately the problem was clearly on their end. When I tried to bring this up to the clerk, he looked at me really confused ( a common tech support occurrence) and gave me the impression nothing could be done. Sigh. Ted had some important college application work to do as well, so he set out into the night to find a place to connect, which was in vain as nothing was open.

So, after another wireless night, we passed out. Gutnacht.

April 9th-10 Florence und Train to München.... "arrrr me eye!"

Ahhh, at last, an escape from the big city. We finally rode the train out of the capitol city of the ancient Roman empire to the central city of Italy's other division of an artistic age, Florence.

Upon arrival we had a rapid journey into our short-term place of living. Once again we had managed to find a place much earlier that was quite close to the train station, we had no idea how much we would be praising this decision throughout the day to come.

After depositing our luggage (the room was prepped and ready to go this time) we set out to explore all of the masterpieces of stone & metal that are scattered around the city. We had already had a plan not to enter the gigantic, famous museums so well known throughout Florence, but rather to explore the city itself (due to the horrendously long lines that would follow). As we made our way though the city we were greeted by the throng of tourists, street musicians and human statues that we had seen a great deal of throughout Rome. However, the art we saw was much different than what we had seen before. Rather than ancient ruins, there were statues (mostly replicas, to prevent impurities that were so prevalent in the industrial age) lining the roads. Of course, we were able to bear witness to some fantastic sculptures, by whom share names with our favorite mutant turtle fighting force (even if you hate them, are there really any other ones to compare?). Many of these were various greek and roman mythology tales that I was pleased to bask in their majesty.

<3s for greek folklore. We also were able to view another basilica. The architecture of this one was also quite different from what it was in Rome. The buildings took to more of an renaissance style, which was pretty stunning to look at.


quite ornate if do say so myself... I think Ted wants a house just like it



We also perused through the street of gold, which was an overpass filled with a variety of different gold smiths selling their wares. This is where people (tourists) purchase souvenirs if they are either very wealthy, or have some sort of mistress they wish to gain favor with.

Unlike Rome, Florence actually cares about not ripping off stupid tourists. Natural selection imo.


Eventually we had explored most of the city, and we decided to try scaling up to a park to get a nice view of the city, before traveling on a train over to Sienna. Then, something flew into Ted's eye.

When I say something flew into Ted's eye I mean our day was already over, and we didn't even know it. For some reason the item, be it bug or plant particle, could not be dislodged even as Ted zealously tried to get it free. We still scaled to the top, and I took a couple pictures, but then we went back down and traveled back to our room to see if ted could dislodge the item.


"Everything looks the same distance away Jesse".
(Ted) - (depth perception) = sad Ted.

Back in our room, even after trying for hours, he still was unable to get it out. Foolishly, we decided we would try to go to Sienna regardless, and we took the next train there, hoping it would somehow get out on the way while Ted slept. When we arrived, it was still there, irritating as ever, so we ended up walking around confused and unsure of our plans for a while, and then headed back. After that we stayed in our hotel for the rest of the night. We went to bed shortly afterwards as Ted was hoping his eye would be better in the morning.

The next morning, it was not. Rather than magically healing over the night by sleep or the patron saint of hurt eyes as sometimes things do, it had grown more swollen and had even begun to pustulate slightly. Upon realizing this was not a mere eye obstruction that would go away over time, we dashed off to the local pharmacy, to see what could be done. They gave us some eyepatches (yar.) and some liquid to clean out the eye. For some reason, they didn't believe in eye drops, so we were essentially sol on the easy application department. We returned to our temporary dwelling once more. After several awkward attempts, we managed to get some of the cleansing liquid into Ted's eye and patched it up. Then we had to rush out to our train to Munich as we had reserved and bought tickets and had reserved room already, which we were unable to unreserve. We had no place to stay in florence unless we wanted to spend over 150 euro a night.


avast and beware mateys, I be captain Eddhab, scourge of the twin swiss lakes and master of the Florence motes.

After a brief ride to Bologna, we had to wait about 50 minutes or so for the next train to München. To prevent my body from literally devouring itself, jogged over to a local pizzarea, and ordered a "fungi & wurst" pizza roll. Apparently in Bologna, wurst = boloney, blech. Despite my distaste for hot dog like meats, I snarfed it down to temporarily sustain the ever twirling black hole inside of me.



I had officially burned bridges with my stomach after consuming this.

At last, once again on the train. Fortunately, the only other people inside of our compartment were two German girls, who were really nice. Unfortunately, this only lasted about an hour, then a family of Italians came on, with two irritating little ruffians. One of them just slept (praise be, what luck!), while the other just screamed and kicked for almost the entire train ride (unlucked). I would have wanted to strangle him, if it wasn't for the complete lack of discipline of the parents, which turned my strangulation dreams to them. I'm sorry, but "no no no no.." doesn't exactly fit right in a little troll's brain. Despite our hopes of them leaving early, they were there for the entire duration of our journey. For a little while, I talked to the only German girl left (the family had reserved 3 seats, so the other one, her sister, had to get kicked into another compartment). I found out that she was only 17 but was already TRI LINGUAL. Her english was pretty much flawless, and she spoke italian which allowed her to communicate with the family as well. Dang.

After a 7.5 hour train ride, and a complete read through of "Dune Messiah" we finally made our way into Munich. Germany at last! We had a hotel reserved right outside of the train station so it was as easy as can be. Free wifi? Really? "of course!" most excellent.

After dropping depositing our baggage, we made our way to the local artze (doctor) which happened to be open despite how late our arrival was. The local doctor in turn directed us to eye specialist doctors at the local university hospital. Once there, and after some awkward attempts at communication, and some more waiting Ted was finally able to get some attention for his eye. It turns out the object had already fallen out, most likely in the eyepatch during the day, but the eye was still highly irritated. After giving him some antibiotics and cleanser for the eye, we were good to go. At last, time to explore Munich!

Crap. 10:00 PM already? Er.... I suppose explore was too strong of a word at this point. So we "ventured" across a couple streets to a local chinese restaurant (the only one open), and feasted upon chicken and beef curry, giving us much needed sustenance as we had hardly eaten all day. Naturally, a delicious cold brew was also consumed with a meal, as it only seemed fitting and would be blasphemous without one.

Vaticaning- Peter Rabbit (april 8th)

I'm one to pride myself on an internal clock. Usually every single day I can get myself to wake up at about 7-8:30 every single day no problem. Even in europe I haven't been having any issues, it's been great.This morning was an enigma, I slept for over 12 hours, daaang.

Finally departing our room at about 2pm , we headed on over through the labyrinth of rome and finally stumbled on my 5th country, The Vatican. Along the way we ran into a really fantastic pizza joint, crowded with natives. We took this as a sign that the food must be delicious , and it was. On the way we also noticed the COMPLETE LACK OF RAIN despite the 80% chance. grrr. Oh well, at least we finished most stuff yesterday and now we didn't have to buy a chinsy umbrella. Wait, what am I even complaining about? No rain is awesome!

Due to our much needed slothfulness (deadly sin!) we missed the big cheese (da pope) himself having his Wednesday morning speech to tell his herd how to live their everyday lives. It would have been an interesting experience, but at least we weren't tired and crabby.

The central stage

Instead we quickly entered the primary theater of the catholic church, Saint Peter's Basilica. When I think of most big churches, I consider them quite lavish, this one was almost kingly (go figure, since the vatican is the only current absolute monarchy in the world).

There were lots of statues of popes, but this one was quite unique. Death peering out under the sheetlike stone with an hourglass showing the inevitability of demise? Whatever. It looks pretty neat.

Post snapping some photos of the journey, we ventured into the deep dark catacombs of the place.... OK well they were pretty nice and well lit. The tombs contained the bodies of all (or maybe just most? I didn't count them) the previous popes, including the apostle, Peter himself. No photos were allowed, but the other tourists just kept snapping away anyways. I'm surprised none of them were kicked out. Security was quite lax.

Afterwards we had another glorious line wait to get into the cupola. Once inside we climbed up over 500 stairs to the peak. At first the stairs were natural but once we were closer and closer to the top, the walkway became much more twisted and narrow. Especially since quite a few individuals were going at quite the slow pace, snapping photos all along the way and turning a finely beating heart into a series of fatty clogged arteries.

Like all things, it's always difficult to get to the top, but once you're there you are rewarded. Of course, it wasn't wads of cash, but we got a pretty nice view of the city and the country inside it. We even got to peep into the depths of the Vatican, so we could see what kind of mischief they were up to behind those closed walls.

Well.. there's a building... and a couple people walking around..



at least there's good ice cream....ish food

After the long journey down, aided by gravity, we decided to go find some eats once again. Due to our last horrifying experience the night before, we decided to beseech the scholarly words of Ted's travel europe guide. It brought us twisting and turning down a series of windy roads until we finally reached our destination "Da Lucia". We were seated and served pretty quickly, and managed to finally get ourselves our first taste of Italian wine. I'm not much of a wine guy, but it wasn't bad at all all things considered. The restaurant also had it's own violin player, giving us a lovely tune with no thought of personal gain. Just kidding, he was a random street performer who wanted to be paid without even asking anyone if they wanted it , ohh rome. The pasta was good, but once again quite small, especially compared to my usual half a box per sitting. How do these people survive here? Maybe they snack a lot.

wino!

Roma- tourist hades (April 7th)

Ahhh, Roma! I awoke at about 8:00 AM and spent a few hours in the outside of the compartment in looking at the view. There wasn't much of one, but it was more breezy and light than the top bunk in which I was somehow forced into by shotgun rules. I suggested coin flip, but who wants that when they've already won with with a boastful proclamation? To avoid travel buddy hostility, I accepted my uncomfortable fate. I suppose this is my destiny for shot-gunning so many car rides.

After the conductor came by with our passports/rail passes (whew, we found out later they do this every time), we were good to go. We left the train station and managed to find our way rather painlessly to the place of our stay, Hotel Rex. Once there, we were informed that our room wouldn't be ready until much much later: 3:00. This is quite unfortunate as we hadn't even had the time to get a shower in, since there wasn't one on the night train. In the mean time, we decided to check some stuff on the wifi (2E/Hour), like Ted's credit card status.

Since yesterday, Ted has been moneyless due to some shenanigans in the french credit card system. They probably went on strike. As a result, I have become the temporary soul benefactor of this trip.

After a series of errands in the world wide web, we had a stroke of luck where our room was ready much earlier than stated (10am!). The room we received was very very nice. A huge bedroom area with a gigantic bathroom (complete with a "bidet" to clean that lovely area in which food leaves the human digestive system). After an hour or so of waiting, at last we were finally able to set out! Hooray!

two toilets? no.. just a bidet

One of the first things I noticed when we came into the city, was that you had to literally hurl yourself into traffic or else no one would stop for you. Even then, the motorcyclists navigated through the pedestrians to get through as fast as humanly possible. The streets were literally flooded with people (Ted compared it to Paris). There were also food stands everywhere, for delicious panini (grilled sandwiches) that were cheap as can be. I was a big fan. I could probably eat these for five meals a day. Of course, what's a big city without tourist trap stands, with "authentic" folexes, purses, and belts.

Old rome the place to be in one during the reign of one of the coolest/greatest empires of all time. Colosseum... go! Of course, instead of viewing plays of war where men battle with nets & tridents against exotic beasts, it was just a bunch of tourists like us wielding cameras instead of swords... so many in fact, that we were forced to wait in a line for an excruciating amount of time.

At last.. the coliseum.. in 45 min..

Upon exiting this ancient theatre of blood, sweat and tears we happened to run into a couple of Ted's friends who also happened to be touring in Europe. The four of us explored the rest of the ruins in the area but then we soon parted ways since our brisk pace was far too much for them to keep up with.

Rome is now ruined, but it still has cool ruins

As we found it was going to be raining tomorrow, we decided to do a grand blitz of Rome. This involved us dashing throughout the city in a whirlwind being sure to see every important fountain, ruin, monument and statue. This was probably one of the most tiring days for me, but I suppose all trips have one of those.

The "pantheon", now only home to 1 god since he sucks at keeping friends.


A miscreant we encountered at the famous fountain..This guy is a prick, he wanted his picture taken with us, and then wanted 5 euro. I laughed and gave him 1, even though he didn't deserve the gravel we walked on. What is he supposed to be anyways? Note: Rome is full of cheats.

So, we decided to stop at a dine in restaurant. I ordered some Salmon pasta, which wasn't bad, but the portion was dreadfully small. The service was horrible, I think they marked us as "north american scum" (or cheapskates, cause I didn't want any wine.. learn to serve beer please). We asked for the bill several times, which they pretended to acknowledge, and then proceeded to serve everyone else while we waited an endless amount of time. Finally, we got our bill, but it was added with an additional 15% tip that was completely unmentioned in the menu. To top it off, the pretentious french/italian guy behind Ted kept making arrogant faces at me, lovely.

Eventually we managed to make our way back to the apartment, once again by donning my navigator helmet. At last, I am able to lie down for some sweet sweet sleep..

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.

The Roof Of Europe: Finally one I can't hit my head on

mmmm, I could really really get used to lazily waking up after 8 hours of sleep.. it's pretty wunderbar. Free breakfast too? Niiiiicee... and all the while having a splendid view of a nice swiss yard, and many alpine peaks.

Mountains are splendiferous. I quite enjoyed the Rocky Mountains in Alaska, and I wasn't about to let the Swiss Alps cajole me to let them out of my grasp. And so, like any true self proclaimed mountaineer, we decided to reach for the stars, or maybe just settle for some clouds.

For those who may be thinking we burst out into the back yard, picks in one hand, ropes in the other.. you'll be sadly mistaken. Instead, we took a series of trains, to the city of Sulwald. From there, we played leapfrog up the mountains on a series of lifts, until arriving in the Alpine town of Mürren.

ho hum... just a view in Mürren

This city really is a literal translation of a town in the Alps. Resting on the mountainside, we were greeted by torrents snow along with a throng of downhill Skiiers from all over the place. Fortunately, the sun was on our side this day (sort of, we were warned of intense sunburn, but once again our wonderful landlady at the B&B pulled through, and gave us a bottle for free to borrow) and we quickly threw our jackets into the backpack, for it was too hot! We made our way slowly through, enjoying all sorts of views in this car-less village.

Now, if anyone wants to be appreciated as an amateur photographer, just take a bunch of pictures in the Alps and show them to your friends. Practically every shot on this trip was desktop worthy, or perfect on a facebook/blog especially if you somewhat enjoy writing about your exploits and wanting them to be seen.... *cough*.



Eventually we made our way to another tram which lead us to be packed into another slew of skiers, making us feel yet again out of place. I felt a little bit of regret not trying out any skiing during my time here, but my visions of myself hurdling down the mountain and dashing my brains on some rocks slammed those feelings back down. Still wish I tried it though.

altitude...rising... skiers... everywhere..

Finally, we made it. It was more through our credit cards than our blood sweat and tears, but it was still a good feeling. Schilthorn, part of the highest area in europe (not the highest, but there it was cloudy there all day... pass). Even at the peak, the weather was warm, or in Minnesotan: an inferno (8 degrees celsius)! We lucked out! After taking a photo album of pictures, we decided some delicious fare would be a good option, as we hadn't even eaten since breaking fast, and it was already the afternoon.

kickin it back at the top..nothing like harassing randoms to take your pictures for you

Where can one eat on the top of the mountain? Why, the rotating restaurant on top of course! But, why oh why are there 007 pictures everywhere? Apparently, this was a filming spot for one of the latest James Bond movies, so the restaurant, and the gift shop below was packed with secret agent periphonelia. The soup I had was great though, and of course, I consumed beer. I asked for some water as well, but once again I foolishly didn't mention tap water, and was given another bottle. So, I continuously have to pay for my water, thus I can no longer gloat about my free drinks due to my distaste for soda.

goulash und bier

Eventually, we took the lift back down to Mürren, and then decided to go on a bit of a hike through the mountainous paths. They were coated in snow, but since I'm such a badass, I trekked through in my well aired running shoes regardless of the consequences (cold + smelly feet). It was about an hour long ordeal, that ended in another small town, called Grütschalp. From there, since it was already late, we then went all the way back to Interlaken.

woefully unprepared

I thought I came to escape this stuff...


A spiffy alpine waterfall

I was craving something spicy, so we ended up feating on a bunch of korean/japanese food after searching around for a place to eat. We also decided to have desert at another swiss restaurant... which wasn't really a swiss restaurant. The owner was boisterous, and continuously rang a gigantic bell whilst merrily prancing about in his cow polka-dotted pants. It was there we ate the most swiss food of all, chocolate fondu! Ok ok.. it's not really swiss, but it was pretty good with swiss chocolate...

Despite doing things throughout the entire day, I was given a few hours respite at the end to catch up with blogging, and catch a bit more sleep to finally snuff my constant jet lag induced lethargy. Fin.

No pics yet, but tonight hopefully! XD
Edit: hot pix are up xoxoxo