Diva on top of the World

LUGANO

After all of us got situated in the Montarina, Brinberg (our director/professor) took us on a walk into the center town of Lugano. This was by far the most amazing, beautifully aesthetic, WEALTHY place I have ever been.  I knew Lugano was a very wealthy city, but actually exploring and seeing everything, I highly underestimated its worth. All of the alley ways and walk ways are made out of cobble stone (I have decided I will never be wearing heels). Because Lugano is literally on a mountain that looks over a river, there are long, steep hills, curves, and stairs (I hate the stairs!). Walking through the center of Lugano was incredible, I definitely felt like a tourist because I was taking pictures of everything but I didn’t care! Here is a group of 40 American students all gawking at everything Lugano has to offer – no wonder all the locals always stare and laugh. The best way I can describe the center town of Lugano is basically a stony point and short pump had a baby.  But it is 503492 times bigger, nicer, more shops, more people, more money, more restarantes, just more!  Its basically a bunch of shops and places to eat. And these stores aren’t just standard Targets or Walmarts… we are talking about all the big time fashion name brands: Swarovski, Cartier, Swatch, Hermes, and a lot of other fancy stuff. I always feel underdressed when I walk around because apparently, wearing fur coats is the thing to do! I swear, every other old woman (by old I mean, 70s), have fur coats and fur hats with too much blush and lipstick on.  Another weird thing is everyone has a dog, and by dog, I mean a fake tiny little dog. Everywhere! But these dogs don’t bark, thank god. They are like a different breed of dog... like Lugano blooded dogs. These dogs probably eat better than I do.

There is an ice skating rink right in the middle of the town next to a BEAUTIFUL park that overlooks the river. Friday night there was an ice skating performance… very random. Then again it wasn’t that random now that I think about it because apparently lugano likes to celebrate random holidays throughout the early months that lead up to their big festival throughout Europe called Carnivale (I will talk about carnival more in late feb, early march).

FOOD AND DRINKS

Do I really have to explain this part? Obviously, the food here is absolutely amazing, but very expensive. A normal lunch will cost about 15-20 Francs and a dinner can cost 15-30 francs.  Luckily, we have found some hole in the wall places that serve cheaper lunches (6-10francs – oh and the franc is 1.05 to the dollar). There is a fantastic deli “kabob” street restaurant in the center of town where they serve different types of deli sandwiches for about 8 francs – they call these sandwiches “kabobs” and I call them sandwiches. All of the restaurants are either pizzerias or pasta places haha.Their pizza is awesome, thin crust, not much sauce, personal size (except its an actual size pizza… not very big. Most of us split a pizza for 2) I have been craving Mexican food but I don’t think I will be having any of that anytime soon. We have so far seen 2 Burger Kings which is kind of cool I guess.

We get served dinner as part of the program every Monday-Thursday night. Dinner usually consists of a 3 part meal: salad, main course, dessert.  The salad is really just carrots and corn with some type of dressing on it. Our main course will alternate pasta meat pasta meat (apparently the “meat” isn’t really… meat. It is a combination of meats. Brinberg did tell us that it WASN’T: bear, dear, rabbit, cat, dog, or anything too weird. It is probably just pieces of cow chicken and pig mixed together…. Yum.)

Wine is a big deal here in lugano. They sell wine and beer from little kiosks in the town center.. but it’s like heated wine or something. I haven’t had it yet, but I want to! A half bottle of wine at most restaurants is about 15 francs and a whole bottle (what I am used to) is 30-35 francs. But if you go to a wine store, wine can cost as little as 4.50 francs (classy stuff right there).

The local grocery store is called Migros – since we only get dinner 4nights a week, it is cheaper to buy groceries for some of the meals. The grocery store is very similar to the ones in America the way they are set up and run, but it is much more expensive.  Frosted flakes cost 6 francs, milk is 4 francs, bananas are 3 frans per pound (they don’t use pounds sooo idk what the other version is), deodorant is 7francs, mabeline mascara is 17 francs! Thank God He blessed me enough where I smell and look good 24/7…. Jk, I definitely already stocked up on utilities in the states before I came here. Also, the cashier rings up the food and items the same way, except there are no bagging people – you bag your own groceries – and by bag I mean TRIPLE bag because their plastic bags are so thin.

I went to my first bar ever last night, a place called Coyote Ugly (it’s a bar for americans haha). It was a lot of fun but drinks were very expensive, about 5 dollars per shot. I made friends with the bartender, her name is Junie (a cute 25ish year old swiss), and she gave me specials of two for $5 shots. We did not stay very long because the next morning we had a 10am 10mile hike up and down the Swiss Alps…

MT. SAN-SALVATOR

Brinberg told us a couple days ago that we would be taking a “stroll” up a mountain. First of all, this mountain is not a mountain… this mountain puts the Appalachian mountains to shame. And naturally, it is a great idea to hike these mountains. It all sounds good in theory – “Yeah! Lets Climb this Mountain!” ….. this is the first and last time I will EVER hike.a.moutain.  I will like everyone to know that when leaving the Montarina to go to the mountain, we did not get a bus ride… a train… no…no we Walked to the mountain. About a mile walk to the bottom-most part of this mountain. Not only was the walk to the mountain tiring… but my feet had been hurting already from the days we had been walking in Lugano!! Anyway.. we carry on. We start hiking up this one trail on the mountain and at first I thought.. “hey, this isn’t so bad. I can do this” I was very mistaken.  3 girls dropped out of the hike 10 minutes in. Oh, did I mention this was a 2 hour hike UP the mountain?! This hike was miserable. Not only was I scared for my life because we were walking up this sharp rocks where there were cliffs on atleast one side at a time, but Brinberg (hes like 60 yr old) was literally sprinting up this thing!! It made me feel really good about myself when I saw a 80 year old swiss man run past our entire group… he was in decent shape… so we are hiking up this mountain and slowly, people start falling behind. NOT ME! I kept thinking “kim kardashians ass, beyonce’s abs, eva mendes, Victoria secret model” – that was enough motivation for me.  It also didn’t hurt the fact that I was beating all of these skinny bitches that are on the trip with me. MONEY CAN'T BUY YOU FITNESS!!! Throughout the 2 hr hike UP, we rested about 4 times. I was using strategy, see not only was I winning in the race/I was in the first group champion, but the quicker you get to a rest area, the longer you have to rest because we have to wait for the rest of the strugglin' stragglers to catch up ( these strugglers were all dressed completely inappropriately mind you – fashion scarves, ray ban sunglasses, cute sweaters…. Shoo those girls are CRAY) I was getting my workout on, sweating a storm… it was probably 40 degrees up on the mountain and I already was in my t-shirt… 40 degrees in a sweaty wet tshirt = cold. I decided that I will create a new weight-loss program and all you have to do is one thing… Climb a Mountain. Enough with my ranting – we finally got to the top of the mountain and the sites were incredible. We saw all of lugano, the alps, parts of Italy. Beautiful. You may ask, “was it worth the hike?” I am still deliberating. As of now, no. but it makes for a hell of a story! The walk down was another 2 ½ hours but it wasn’t that bad since it was all downhill. We got to the bottom and luckily there was a bus waiting to take us back to lugano. Definitely an experience I was very fortunate to have.

School starts tomorrow at 9:30am. Next weekend we are off to Interlaken! Cant wait! So much to do, SO LITTLE TIME!!

Ciao for now!