DUBLIN? More like PUBLIN!

Dublin

**this text is in green because...welll... it's IRELAND!***

Off to Dubcity!! I was so excited to go to Ireland, mainly because I know my mother is obsessed with Ireland and it’s cool to make her jealous sometimes.. hehe jk. Anyway, this was the first time I was traveling via PLANE in Europe.

The cheapest flights you can take around Europe are through this airline company “Ryanair”. Tickets to Dublin were about 20 euros (not too shabby!).  Now… I am not a fan of flying in the first place, and when I found out that Ryanair is a cheap airline it did not sit too well with me because I wanted to make sure we were going to be flying safe and sound. Basically… Ryanair is the Greyhound’s of airlines in Europe. They may not have the best service but they will get you where you need to go. Ryanair is very strict about weight limits for checking bags. Bags HAVE to be no more than 15 lb or else you have to pay 40 extra euros. Me and the group of girls I went with went to go weigh our bags on the weigher-thing and low and behold… every single girls’ bag was overweight. NOT MINE! Because I am efficient. And I am too poor to try and spend an extra 40 dollars, excuse me EUROS, on a 15 lb bag.  Not to boast… but I did check my bag at 11.6 lb. BOOM! All the girls’ bags were about 17-19 pounds. So, right in the middle of the airport in front of the checked baggage area…. There are 5 girls on the ground pulling out shoes, clothes, ANYTHING, that would make their bags less heavy. I stood and watched them while eating some oreos (that Ryan shipped to me previously. Oreos here are either too hard to find or else way too expensive…). I am smart and definitely and an experienced world traveler by now!

We finally land in Dublin!! At this time it is about noon and we checked into our hostel --- The Four Courts --Bunk bed style, very cramped. Oooooh 6 girls trying to get ready in a 15 by 9 room….. yep. I already have a sweating disorder, but when there are 2 hair-blow dryers, 3 straighteners on, AND girls going in and out of the shower which then turns into a sauna…. Melting does not describe how much I was sweating. Let’s just say the Niagra Falls is located in two places… Canada and MY BODY. It was a worthless cause trying to apply makeup. Anywaaaaay after we got situated, we had to grab a quick lunch because I had to make my tattoo appointment at 4pm!!!!!!!!!!!!

This was by far the best experience ever!! (Getting my tattoo) !!! So we got to the tattoo place, Zulu’s, on time. It was a standard tattoo/pericing place… all the artists were tatted and pierced up. I checked in at the desk and the guy was just asking all of us where we were from. After we told him that we were from Virginia, he was silent and responded “Really?! Ha Ha Ha, I am from Alexandria, Virginia!” TALK ABOUT A SMALL WORLD! We flew all the way to Dublin and we meet someone from Virginia! I knew everything was going to be good from then on. I went to the tattoo place knowing that I wanted to get a 4 leaf clover. My mom is born on St. Patrick’s day, and it seemed only fitting to get a FOUR leaf clover (family of 4 – Lorraine, van, phil, and me and also for good luck) because I was in IRELAND DUH! I did not have a specific design in mind, but I had a good feeling the people of Dublin had some clovers they have tattooed before. I was right. My original artist, Duane, was backed up, so they placed me with Sean instead. BEST DECISION EVER! I was very lucky to have Sean because Sean is the tattoo artist for Green Day AND Xenophilius Lovegood (from HARRY POTTER!!). I was literally in good hands. Before I got my tattoo, I was feeling very jittery and nervous. Alexandria guy told me that if I wanted, I could have a beer while I got it done. Well… I sure enough took him up on his offer. Me and my girl friends all drank a beer. I got on the chair, was drinking my beer with one hand, my friend Katie was holding my other hand, and all of a sudden I felt a razor blade carve my skin (it wasn’t aaccttually a razor blade. But it felt like it!) Luckily, the tattoo only took 15 minutes!! Sean was done tattooing me before I could even FINISH my beer… such a shame ( I was drinking Budweiser…). SO that that was my tattoo! 15 minutes of pure pain for the best everlasting European souvenir!! You’re welcome, Lorraine.

After the tattoo, we all went back to the hostel and got ready for the evening. In Dublin, the best street/area to go to at night is this place called “Temple Bar”. Temple Bar is this long street filled with pubs and great live music! This was by far my favorite place I have been so far in Europe. Every single pub had live music with someone playing the guitar and someone singing. Btw, I thought the Germans could drink. HA! The Irishmen will drink the Germans under the table! I realized it is only acceptable to be drunk at 10am on 2 occasions. 1. If you are in Ireland/ are Irish. 2. If you are at a football tailgate. It didn’t hurt the fact that we were visiting Ireland during the biggest rugby matches Ireland was playing all weekend! Such a good time with good music and good friends!

The food was all pretty “normal”. I think Ireland and London definitely take on a lot of American style restaurants. Nothing particularly stood out. But the one thing I did have for the first time was FISH AND CHIPS! (btw… fries in Europe are called chips… EVERYWHERE. Sooo if I want fries I ask for chips and if I want chips… I still ask for chips. I don’t know.. its confusing. Luckily they know what I am asking for when I ask for fries) So the place we went to was the famous fish and chips! Literally, famous. They had a plaque on the wall of alllll the famous people that had eaten in their tiny tiny shop. From Sandra Bullock to U2 to Brad Pitt’s parents. It was cool. And deliciously fried.

All day Sunday we did a walking tour of Dublin. We were able to see this old castle place, Trinity College, Christ Church, this other old building, some green grass, annndd some cathedrals in the mix. Me and the girls broke off half way because we wanted to go see this really old jail. (Gah I wish I paid more attention to the history and what the names of everything is).. anyway, the jail was so cool!!!! The tour of the jail was about an hour and the tour guide was such a character. He as this old guy that looked like santa claus, but was legit and he knew his jail history. Sooo after the jail we went by St. Patrick’s cathedral and then walked back to our hostel to get ready for Super BOWLLLLL That night, there was one pub open specifically to cater to the American Football lovers (americans.) We watched 15 minutes of the super bowl. Go Giants!

On our last day in Dublin, we went on the Guinness Factory Tour! (beer). It was wicked cool! It was a self-tour and they walked you around 5 levels of how they make and produce beer. Only 4 ingredients! Water, barley, hops, and yeast. Something about a fermentation process and something else about letting it sit for a couple day…. Idk. All I know is that we got free beer on the way (not really free because I spent fricken 12 euros on this tour…). I have never had Guinness before… and lets just say the tour made it sound like it was going to taste amazing. False. Lies. Erroneous. Guinness tastes like Sh*t. I am sorry. But that is some nasty stuff. But I drank my beers anyway because I wasn’t letting that 12 euros go to waste. Oooohhh it was yucky beer. Then again… I’m not a big beer girl anyway. I like Natty Light….. you can see how mature my taste buds are. But once we got to the top gof the building, we were in a 360 cylinder room of glass overlooking all of Dublin! THAT was worth ATLEAST 9 of my 12 euros…. The last 3 euros went to the cute boys that were everywhere and the wonderful accents. (love ya ryan)

Before we left for our second flight on Ryainair (yes… another 30 minutes spent on the floors while girls tried to make weight… again) we stopped at this local shop that would print out the meaning and history of your last name on a scroll of parchment. So…. I decided I would step in and ask the man to look up the meaning of Weisner (my mom’s maiden name). Low and behold…. He had some info on weisner and it all came up in about 6 paragraphs. What makes this place extra special is that you can put designs and fun pictures on the background of the text. You see, my mom is obsessed with Ireland.  Some people may even say that she wishes she were Irish. (She really does wish she were Irish.  She wants to be Irish like I want to stop sweating the Niagra Falls every day) I thought it would be quite comical to have the man print off the history of the “weisner family” WITH a picture of Ireland as the background. Clever, eh? More like hilariously brilliant! What makes this story almost perfect is that I was then going to see if he could change the name from Weisner to… “O’Weisner”. I mean, nothing screams Irish like putting “o” in front of it! Sadly enough, the computer system wouldn’t let the change. So I settled with the history of the german name “weisner” with an Irish flag in the background…. LOVE IT!

Dublin was a great time! Even though it was rainy, the Irish accents definitely put everyone in a better mood. So far Dublin has been my favorite place and I would love to go explore other parts of Ireland in the Future!! Next stop, LONDON!!!!!

FUN FACTS!

1.       Irish accents are great when you can actually understand them. Some of these irish accents were so think, I may as well been in Germany because I could not understand them!

2.       Irish people are the nicest people I have met so far in Europe. It’s probably because they love their irish accents as much as I do which puts them in a good mood.

3.       Guinness is disgusting

4.       Even though predominately catholic (98%), there is no official catholic church in dub city

5.       Cheers!

Dachau: Concentration Camp

Disturbing does not quite capture the concentration camp at Dachau.

We arrived at Dachau in the morning around 10pm. Before you actually go into the concentration camp, there is an information building out front.  We went in to see how much the tour would cost (if it would cost anything) but found out that the next available tour wasn’t for another 2 hours.  We decided we did not need a tour leader, because the entire concentration camp is filled with information boards in all locations that you can read and learn about what happened (you can see this from my pictures on facebook). So we began walking into the concentration camp.

When stepping through the gates into the concentration camp, I did not realize how much of an effect it was going to have on me. The very first thing you saw was a huge open area. In the open area, the Nazis would gather all of the prisoners for morning roll call or just for punishment activities.  Almost everyday, the prisoners would be forced to stand in lines for hours. Just standing.  If a prisoner could not stand for that long and collapsed, the prisoner would be hanged (hanged up my his wrists for hours).

After walking through the open courtyard area, we walked through the barracks area.  There were dozens and dozens of barracks back in the 40s, but the concentration camp only kept 2 standing.  Inside the barracks was where the prisoners slept. Seeing the wooden bunk beds was… I can’t come up with words. After reading some of the postings, we also learned that certain barracks were used for certain medical experiments.  Barracks 3 5 and 7 were all used for experimentations on prisoners (malaria, hypothermia, twins). It was quite disturbing.

The most disturbing of the entire experience, though, was going to the extermination house, the gas chambers. It was quite cruel the way they made these gas chambers seemed like shower rooms. Basically, they made the prisoners believe that they had been lucky enough to win the lottery of being able to shower. In the first room, the prisoners were informed they were taking the shower. The next room was where they took off their clothes. The third room was that “shower” area… which was really the gas chamber. The fourth room was for incinerating the dead bodies. I literally walked through every single room, and my chills and goose-bumps never went away the whole time I was there.

The whole concentration camp felt so unreal. Just walking on the ground made me think of hundreds of prisoners that walked on the same ground.

FACTS

Currently, a convent and a church holds regular service ON THE CONCENTRATION CAMP. Even though it was a very strange concept for me… I guess in a way it is nice to see good being used in a place that such tragedy took place.

Dachau was primarily used as a labor camp, not an execution camp like Auschwitz

Munich, Prost!

Munich was a blast! Again, you have to forgive me for this blog post because 1. I am writing this 1 week after I went and 2. I get so excited and my words and sentences sometimes don’t make sense and 3. I am too lazy to reread what I wrote and look for mistakes. With that being said, me and 36 of us begin our trip to Munich, Germany!

We left Lugano on Friday (Jan 20) at 2ish. This was my first train ride ever, so I did not know what to expect.  Naturally, I ended up getting motion sickness on the first train ride because it was a “tilt” train… literally felt like I was on a roller coaster. We had a transfer in zurich for another train to get us to Munich, and luckily, this was a normal train and I was able to nap a little bit on second train ride to Munich.

After 8 hours of traveling, we finally go to Munich! And of course… the weather was not in our favor.  It was snowing/raining/FREEZING. I was very smart and I packed some cute snow/rain boots.  Everyone else ended up ruining their designer boots while on this trip. Sucks for theemmm. Anyway, we arrived in Munich and thankfully our hostel (Wombats) was located 5 minute walk from the rail station. Wombats was very very nice. Nicer than the Interlaken hostel.  I stayed in a private room with 5 other girls. There was a shower in our room, so we did not have to share with other people on the hall.  This type of hostel was kind of like a hotel-ish feeling.  Very clean very organized. By this time, it is 11pm and most of us want to go out and explore the night life. We met up with the other groups of people and we all went out to a club about 10 min walk from our hostel. What was the name of the club? I have no idea.. but it was a lot of fun! They even had a coat check which I was so happy about because sometimes when we go out at night time, you have to hold your coats. SO I give this club an A+.

The next day, Saturday, was when we had all of our day planned with a walking tour of Munich and a late night beer tour of the town. We woke up around 8am so we could get to our walking tour at 10am. Again, the weather was shitty and it was very cold and snowing and raining. I did not mind the weather too much only because I was dressed appropriately with now boots and a heavy coat.  The only thing I was annoyed about was that I had to get over the fact that my hair was not going to be pretty.. no matter what.  So we met our tour guide and she was AWESOME! What a little fun person!! Her name was Diana and she had so much energy and was funny so she made the tour of the city much more enjoyable dispite the fact that everyone was freezing. Most of the tour she just took us around to major architectural buildings and also talking about the history or Munich. The walking tour was supposed to last us 2 ½ hours, but some of us were way too cold that we stopped it short and decided to get lunch instead.

Even though we left the tour early, it was so nice to finally sit down inside and have a great lunch. Right away, me and the other girls ordered hot chocolate and some food. One of the best things about Germany is the fact that everything is not nearly as expensive as it is in Switzerland.  My meal (hot chocolate and this mac and cheese stuff) only cost 8 euros which is really good. After we ate lunch we went shopping and walking around Munich some more

The shopping was a great time. Munich is basically a tiny square filled with tall buildings and lots of shops. There was so much shopping that had to be done. Unfortunately, I am on a budget and I like to spend my money on important things (like food) so I did not end up spending any money on clothes. I did, however, get some souvenirs for some people (beer glasses and shot glasses).

There was this very weird incident that occurred during the day and during our shopping.  All of a sudden we hear this big commotion and hundreds and hundreds of police EVERYWHERE in the middle of Munich.  We found out that there was actually a Neo-Nazi rally happening.  We had been told earlier that day from our tour guide that neo-nazis sometimes have rallys in the middle of town, so it was ironic that there happened to be a rally that same day.  **Google who the neo-nazis are because I will have a hard time trying to describe it in this blog.** The rally was crazy because there were hundreds of cops surrounding the neo-nazis (for their protection) because they are such a radical group, normal sane people hate them so much for what they stand for. So picture this – about 50 neo-nazis in the middle of town dressed in all black and waving these flags.  Police were surrounding the neo-nazis from the on-lookers.  The neo-nazis had microphones and loud-speakers, so they would try to preach to the crowd.  Every time the neo Nazis started chanting, the surrounding crowds started blowing whistels (like lifeguard whistles) in order to drown out the neo-nazi chanting. It was a crazy scene.

The most thrilling part of Munich was obviously the beer tour!!! The beer tour basically consisted of going to different restaurants/pubs and drinking beer. We had already bought our tickets for this tour (12 euros).  We all met at the train station to meet our tour guide. Once we got checked in and situations, we had our first beer of the night right outside the train station.  They gave us this beer first because it was in a bottle and we had to walk 15 minutes to the first restaurant and we were supposed to drink the beer on the way to stay warm. We got to our first location and everyone got the popular beer (cant remember the names). It was delicious. But then again… I think Natty Light is delicious soooooo…. Haha! Our next place to drink beer was at HOFBRAUHAUS!!! This place was so awesome because it’s a huuuuuuge beer hall. If anyone has been to the beer hall in busch gardens.. its like that but BETTER! Tables and tables and tables of people all drinking Liter sized beer oooooh myyyy it was soo cool!!!!! Every 30 minutes there was a mini “show” of people playing the tuba and some other instruments. All of the waitresses were dressed in beer girl outfits. Everything was on POINT! I of course drank my entire Liter beer in 15 minutes. True signs of a Hokie. After the beer hall, we went to another restaurant and had another beer. We ended the tour at our hostel (convenient) and had jager shots.  We did not get back from the beer tour until later (1130pm) so many of us were too tired to go out clubbing.

The next morning (Sunday) we had to catch a 45 min train ride to Dachau. The next blog post will be about Dachau. For now… CIAO!

FUN FACTS

Munich is so much more affordable than Switzerland

Germany loves beer

Everyone still thinks I am Brazilian

You cannot “fist pump” in Germany because it looks too much like the Nazi sign and you will get fined if you do that.

To cheers a beer, you say “Prost!”

FAMILY DINNERS

Every Monday-Thursday, we have "family dinner" in one of the adjacent bulidings to the Montarina at 7:30pm. Each night we get a salad (sometimes), main course, and dessert.  Here is a list of some of the dinner combinations we have had so far!

• Lasagna and icecream (my favorite so far!!)
• Pizza and chocolate mousse
• Pork chops and chocolate brownie
• Chicken and Rice and sorbet
• Chicken Cordon Bleu and pie/flan-ish ...ew
• Gnocchi and "sweet cheese" (like this weirdish whipped cheesecake without the crust.. ew again)
• Pork (again) Mashed potatoes and Creme Puffs!

To save money, we can bring our Tupperware to dinner and save the extras for leftovers for lunch the next day! All the skinny girls who's meals consist of air, they normally don't finish their plate so I mooch off of theirs and take the rest so i can have them for leftovers!! 

I have also decided to keep track of my weight while I am here. If you haven't already noticed, I have lost a good amount of weight in the past year, and I would like to track my weight while being here. I have heard horror stories of girls in the previous years of gaining weight while being here, but i have also heard of girls loosing weight.  I hope to either stay the same, or look even more like Kim Kardashian at the end of this trip. With that said, my roommate and I had our "house dad" (Julien) go find us a scale that we can keep in the main room. Also, many girls here actually do work out on the regular, which is a good thing because I like to be surrounded by positive influencers! 

So far, I have lost 1 lb! wassuppp

Ciao for NowWwW

Interlaken: Because sledding on the Alps is such a great idea.

This was our first weekend trip and we are off to INTERLAKEN! SO much to say so littlee time, so if this post seems all over the place, it’s because I sometimes have a hard time with putting my excitement into words.

We had class (Italian) on Friday, Jan 13 until noon. Luckily our teacher let us out early because she knew we were going on a weekend trip to Interlaken. Originally, we were planning to buy a train ticket to get to Interlaken, but because the entire group (44 of us) were going on this trip, we rented a charter bus for the weekend instead (60 francs per person). So our journey begins with our bus ride to Interlaken at 2pm.  What was supposed to be a 2 and a half hour bus ride, turned into a 4 hour bus ride.

This bus ride was going smoothly and everything was going fine until we hit driving up this mountain.  Btw, driving up these Alps is possibly one of the more scarier things I have done… they barely leave any shoulder room, and you are looking off the side of this mountain and you could literally take 1 wrong turn and DIE because youre on a frickin mountain… crazy. We were so close for getting to our destination (about 5 kilometers out… yeah, kilometers because apparently these Europeans don’t use miles.) and all of a sudden we hit some bad traffic on the mountain.  We had no idea what was the hold up, so naturally we assumed it was car crash. We sat in traffic for a good 1 ½ hours … and it seemed only necessary to open some wine to make the time go by quickly – drinking wine and playing family feud in a charter bus with a driver that speaks german and doesn’t know how to speak English. It was an interesting combination of events. We finally got to the hostel (Balmers) at 6:10pm, but we had to be on another bus at 7pm because we scheduled a night-time sledding. We were in a hurry.

This was the first hostel I have ever stayed in and it was quite nice. I didn’t know what to expect of hostels but apparently we had one of the nicer hostels (about 30 francs per night). There were 3 buildings/sections of the hostel with 3 floors each. The floors are basically long hallways with public showers and restrooms and about 5 bedrooms per floor. Each bedroom could have been anywhere between 6-18 people per room. Me and 5 other girls shared a room, bunk bed style, on the first floor. The main building of Balmers had a nice restaurant area and lounge (we got free breakfast woo hoo!). And at night time, they have an underground club/bar (so much fun! i will talk more about this soon).

So after we checked in, we had to get goin’ because we were going night sledding!! We left the hostel and walked to the bus station. The bus took us up even farther on this huge mountain (mountains be errywhere!) about a 20 min bus ride. After the bus ride, we had to get off and take a gondola ride (a ski lift thing) even FARTHER up the mountain.  At the top of the mountain, we got off the gondola and went to this restaurant place where we got our fondue! The fondue was awesome! Cheese on cheese on cheese on bread and potatoes – the cheese was different tasting because they actually made it with wine so it had this bitter taste to it.  Needless to say.. some of us may have had a drink or 2 because it’s such a good idea to be intoxicated when we are about to sled to our demise….

After the fondue, everyone was just so excited in general to start sledding so we sprinted to get our sleds (small plastic things) and started sledding. This was a terrible idea. We should have probably listened to our sledding instructor instead of running straight past him.  When I say “sledding”, y’all probably think a short 30 sec ride down a little hill. HA. HAHA. This “sledding” was unlike anything I have ever done.  It is an estimated 30 minute sledding down to the bottom of the mountain… We all started off sledding and nobody knew how to sled swiss style… but it was very dangerous.  People were sledding into other people! So many bruises!! It was quite scary at some points because the route down the mountain was so narrow… you could literally sled off the mountain… literally. It was pitch black, foggy, and you couldn’t see 10 feet in front! I am having such a hard time at describing this sledding experience because… it’s just so hard to put into words how scary, exhilarating, dangerous, fun?, and extreme it was. Let’s just say, that apparently night time sledding is one of the more dangerous activities to do in Switzerland... but obviously the Swiss just want to have a laugh at us silly Americans while we struggle to speed down a mountain.

                1 girl sled off the side of the track and had to hike back up the mountain to get back on the right track -- Another girl hit a pole and had a terrible groin bruise -- Another girl was hit by an incoming sled and did a flip in the air… just sayin.  But I survived!! BUT I WILL NEVER DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT EVER AGAIN!!!

The sledding trip ended around 11:30pm and all of us were obviously exhausted. We got back to the hostel and PTFO (passed out).

The next day, Saturday, a lot of people did different things. About 10 girls went paragliding, 20 people went to the World Cup Skiing competition (about 1 hr away from the hostel) and the rest of us stayed around town and explored. I was part of the latter. I really wish I could have paraglided but it was just a little too out of my budget – but what I hear from the girls that went, it was amazing!! Me and some girls walked around the park and watched the other girls who went paragliding soar through the air – pretty neat! (Oh btw, it was really cold in Interlaken – about 25 degrees as the high.)

While walking around Interlaken, the girls and I noticed some interesting things:

• 1.       There are a lot of Asians in Interlaken. Why? I have no idea.
• 2.       I think the country’s mascot is a cow or something because I swear… we saw so many cow souvenirs … it was strange.
• 3.       Many people in Interlaken speak English!!
• 4.       Interlaken is part of the German speaking area of Switzerland  (there are 3 speaking sections – German, Italian, and French)

• 
  

We decided to do the European thing and have a 3 hour lunch at a local pizzeria – I had the most delicious tortellini in the entire world of tortellini food evaaaa!! (17 francs)

After our day trip, we all got back to the hostel (around 5:30pm)and started to get ready for the night of clubbing!! Luckily, the hostel we stayed at is also a club at night time – talk about convenience!! I will not go into too much detail about clubbing, but basically we all had a great, fun, intoxicated time! 

That was my trip to Interlaken… nothing too exciting, but definitely a good start of figuring out how our weekend trips will be.

Fun Facts!!

• 1.       Everyone in Switzerland thinks I am Brazilian – I don’t’ mind… they can think what they want 
• 2.       The bouncer at the club said I looked like Pocahontas
• 3.       For a 2 night trip, I packed my entire hiking backpack… I have no idea how I will pack for a 10 day trip with that thing…
• 4. street sweepers make 40,000 a year
• 5. Swiss people are required to retire at the age of 65

Next weekend (Jan20-22), I am off to Munich and Dachau! Munich should be fun – we have a planned walking tour of the city and a night-time beer tour of all the cool places to drink beer. Dachau will be much more depressing and profound (concentration camps) so we will only be there Sunday morning for the 2 hour tour.

CIAO FOR NOW!

Gandria

Piacere!

The weather here has been absolutely wonderful since I have been here! And by wonderful I mean it has been upper 40s and sunny, and with my sweating disorder, that is wonderful weather!! Not to mention the workout I get every day walking to and from class…

Yesterday, many of us decided to walk to a nearby town, Gandria (right near italy!).  Brinberg (my professor/director) gave us very vague directions on how to get there -- and me being as directionally savvy as I am (can you hear the sarcasm?), it took us a little longer than expected.  He told us the walk there would be about 45-1 hr long walk, which was completely okay because I needed to get my workout in for the day anyway. So, after class at 12:45pm, me and a group of 7 started off on our journey to Gandria.

The walk was absolutely gorgeous – I know I have pictures posted, but the pictures do not actual capture the beauty of this country.  We stared off walking in the right direction, but surprisingly we got a little lost on the way. Luckily our detour was not too bad, we just walked a little too far on one road that we should have. Thank God everyone here speaks English or else it would have been so hard to get back on the right track (sarcasm.. again). There are some pictures on my facebook, but basically the way we took was walking around the side the mountain that is shown in the picture of “the view from my room”. The weather was perfect 50 degrees.. the river was gorgeous.. perfect.

Because I knew we were most likely going to be taking pictures of Gandria, I decided I should look a little Kim Kardashian (aka look good) just in case someone snapped a photo of me.  This was the worst decision ever because they the TRAIL we took alongside the mountain was, of course, a dirt and rocky trail. My boots were definitely not made for walkin’.

After a good hour of walking, we finally reached this beautiful SMALL town, Gandria. We went to the nearest restaurant and it was by far the most beautiful restaurant I have ever eaten in.  The restaurant is literally built on the Cliffside of the mountain that overlooks the entire river and mountains. We were seated at the back of the restaurant on the full glass-windowed balcony that hangs off the side of the mountain.  Some of the girls got gilato, I got pasta, and we all had the most delicious sangria. The pasta was the first time I have had pasta here and it was outstanding! Definitely exceeded my expectations of pasta.  I could literally taste all the freshness of it and I could tell they hand made the pasta and pesto sauce. Perfecto!! Not to mention the old Italian man who owned the restaurant absolutely loved us!! But who wouldn’t, no?

On the way back from Gandria, one of the girl’s back and neck went out. She has always had problems with her muscles and she has a weak neck and basically she was stiff from head to toe and in so much pain. She didn’t have any muscle relaxers on her, so we stayed with her and walked allll the way back to lugano with her. So sad L

So that was my mini trip to Gandria!! Very cool to be able to walk on the side of the Alps and overlooking a beautiful river! Tomorrow (Jan 13) we are off to Interlaken for the weekend!!!  And I think I may be going PARAGLIDING (about 130 francs)!! When in Rome?! Or… INTERLAKEN hehehe.

Ciao for now!!!

FUN FACTS:

1.       No tipping at restaurants

2.       No tax!!

3.       Everyone here drives a hatchback 

wEiRdOes!

These Swiss people are WEIRD! haha not really, but here are some things I have noticed that are different from the US norms:

1. They eat their meals for a looong time: lunch can be for 3 hours while dinner can go on for 4. Meals are not a "refueling station" like they are in the US -- they are more like a time for socializing and enjoying the company.

2. They don’t drink many fluids with their meals

3. No ice in drinks

4. Small glasses that they have if they even do drink water or a beverage at dinner (refer to #2)

5. Water is 4 francs

6. No free refils

7. If you order water, it comes in a wine shaped glass bottle

8. They always ask if you want sparkling or still water

(clearly you can tell that i drink a lot of water and it irks me that these people dont)

9. There is no take out/carry out. They looked at us weird when we asked for a box for our leftovers after we ate dinner... but if I am paying 15 francs for dinner... imma take home everything! Once, i even took home the glass 1 liter bottled water... it was 4 francs!

10. Condiments (mayonnaise, ketchup) come in a tube …. Like a toothpaste tube

That's all the weird stuff I cant think of now! I am sure I will be randomly posting about more norms and customs I am not familiar with!