Reflecting Back

Monday, July 5th, 2010

As we leave our 5th country and head into our 6th I wanted to take a minute to reflect back on where we have been. I have been making a list for each country of the #1 thing I will miss, the #1 thing I won’t miss, and the one thing I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to do. So here we go!

Turkey:
What I’ll miss: apple tea served in funny Turkish tea cups (definitely going to see if I can buy these online back home!)
What I won’t miss: Turkish a.k.a. “squat” toilets (although I did run across another one or two in Greece)
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: Cappadocia

Greece:
What I’ll miss: moussaka (specifically the moussaka at the restaurant in Samos)
What I won’t miss: how hard it was to catch at taxi in Athens (damn Metro strikes!)
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: Crete

Budapest (Hungary):
What I’ll miss: Goulash (sorry Mom, the stuff you made growing up isn't close to the real thing!)
What I won’t miss: the pushy restaurateurs
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: a river cruise on the Danube

Austria:
What I’ll miss: the choirs/ensembles singing in the streets of Salzburg
What I won’t miss: dodging horse piss/crap in the streets of Salzburg
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: see an opera or classical music concert in Vienna

Switzerland:
What I’ll miss: the Alps
What I won’t miss: how expensive everything was
What I would have liked to do that I didn’t get to: go to the top of Jungfrau

Only two more countries to go, and almost exactly three weeks left.

One last day in Switzerland

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

Happy Fourth of July everyone! This is my first Fourth of July that I have spent out of the country, and it is a bit odd, I did see an American family with two little children holding little American flags, but other than that, the day just came and went like any other. I hope each and every one of you had a Happy Fourth though, full of barbeques, fireworks, and good company!

As for us, we slept in a bit this morning, even though we went to bed fairly early after watching the soccer game since Lausanne was a miss, so we didn’t board the train to Geneva until about quarter past 11:00. Our train from Lausanne took us all the way to the Geneva Airport station which is located adjacent to the airport which was serviced by a complimentary shuttle from the Express by Holiday Inn Geneva Airport hotel I had booked for the evening. We got into the station right around noon, located the hotel shuttle pick up area and were on a shuttle to our hotel shortly. At the hotel we merely checked in and dropped our bags in the room and were right back onto the shuttle to the train station to take the next available train back to the main Geneva station, located in town. We had a quick lunch at the station, a couple of pre-made deli sandwiches and two drinks which cost 23 Swiss Francs (I still can’t get over how expensive everything is!).

Once in town we made our way down to the banks of the Rhone River which feeds into Lake Geneva. It wasn’t long until over the buildings as we made our way to the river we could see Geneva’s best-known landmark, the 140m-tall Jet d’Eau, which shoots at any given time seven tons of water into the air at a force of 200km/h. The Jet d’Eau only became more impressive the closer we got. After walking right out to the fountain on the jetty we made our way further into the “old town” and towards the part-Romanesque, part-Gothic Cathédrale St. Pierre, where Protestant John Calvin preached from 1536 to 1564. From here we meandered back towards the train station to head back to the hotel for a couple hours rest, before venturing back out for dinner, we only hoped that we would have better luck in Geneva than we did in Lausanne.

We left the hotel around 7:00 or so to head back into town for dinner. We found a street with several restaurants with outdoor seating and after perusing the menus we selected Au Petit Chalet, which advertised that they offered Swiss and Italian specialties. I must admit that I never knew that fondue was Swiss, and I was very tempted to order fondue, as I really enjoy sampling local cuisine, but fondue seems to be something that is better shared and Tim was not interested, so we both had pasta, which I must say I was pretty pleased with. It was our last meal in Switzerland (well if you don’t count breakfast tomorrow morning) and our only sit-down meal at all in Switzerland, the majority of the time we either made our own meals, bought pre-packaged meals at the grocery, or purchased “inexpensive” fast-food such as kebabs. This meal wasn’t outrageous but for two pasta dishes, a glass of wine, and a glass of beer it cost us 60 Swiss Francs, which is only slightly less in US Dollars, whereas I feel that in the US we would have gotten the same quality meal with drinks for 40 US Dollars at most.

After dinner we walked down to the river and to the other jetty, home to Bains des Pâquis, a sort of man-made complex of “beaches” and “pools”, where Genevans have swam and sunned since 1872, and had an ice cream and just strolled along the river and out the jetty, like it seemed the whole of Geneva was doing. It was such a contrast to the previous night where we could hardly find a sole in Lausanne. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of Geneva, and could see why people say it is one of the best places to live.

Tomorrow we say goodbye to Switzerland as we head to France, our 6th country on this trip. I can’t believe how quickly the trip is going and how soon this journey will come to an end.

Trains, Castles, and Soccer

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

We left our hotel in Zurich this morning at about half past eight and caught the 9:00 train to Lausanne. We arrived in Lausanne around quarter past 11:00. It's amazing how you get on the train in Zurich where everyone speaks German and off the train in Lausanne and suddenly everything is in French. We had a bit of trouble discerning how to get to our hotel, luckily I had written down walking directions as well as directions for metro/bus that I found somewhere on the internet. We couldn't really figure out the metro, so we started to walk, but Lausanne is actually quite hilly, so we quickly gave up and began looking for a taxi. But then luckily we came across a bus stop that happened to be for the bus that my directions said you could take after taking the metro a couple of stops, so we waited a few minutes for the bus, bought a day pass (which we would later regret because as it turned out our hotel gave us a free travel card), and hopped on. The bus took us probably about 100 meters or so from our hotel. Luckily our room was ready when we arrived a bit after noon and we were able to drop our bags and head back to the train station, to make our excursion down to Montreaux to see the Chateau de Chillon.

We took the 12:45 train to Montreaux which took a mere 25 minutes or so. When we arrived we grabbed a quick lunch and made our way to the bus stop to catch a bus out to the castle. The small rocky island on which the castle is built acted both as natural protection and a strategic location to control movement between the north and south of Europe. The castle's history was marked by three different important periods: The Savoy era (12th century to 1536), The Bernese era (1536-1798), and the Vaudois era (1798 until today). Excavations carried out in the 19th century indicate that the site of Chillon has been occupied since the Bronze Age. The oldest written mention of the castle dates from 1150 and establishes that the Savoy family already controlled the fortress at that time. The Swiss, or the Bernese, conquered the region and occupied Chillon in 1536. The castle was used as a fortress for more than 260 years. It took us a couple of hours to tour the large castle, we made our way back to the train station and caught the 2:30 train back to Lausanne.

Upon our return to Lausanne we headed back to the hotel to watch the afternoon soccer game and take a break before heading out to explore Lausanne. We headed out of the hotel again around six o'clock in the evening and went to see the Gothic Cathedrale de Notre Dame. We then made our way back down into town. Back in town we found the city to be dead. I will try not to judge the city by our one experience, but the only way I can describe it is that it looked and felt as if there had been some massive party the night before (which we saw evidence of up by the cathedral in the form of broken down festival tents/stages and beer cups strewn all over) and that everyone was hungover taking the day off. All the shops were closed, we couldn't even find a restaurant all the way up until we returned to the hotel around 8 o'clock that was open or if it was there wasn't a sole sitting down or eating. We finally just grabbed a quick dinner at a kebab stand and headed back to the hotel to watch the second soccer game. I have heard good things about Lausanne, but we didn't experience that sadly. The stopover in Lausanne however was still worthwhile if for nothing else for the excursion down to Montreaux.

A beautiful day in Luzern follwed by a surprising evening in Zurich

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

We left the hotel this morning around 9:30 and caught the 10:04 train to Luzern. Upon our arrival in Luzern around 11:00 we stopped in the tourist information office to get a proper map. The map showed a “city walk” which I believe you could actually pay for a guided tour that followed this path around the city, but we opted to walk it ourselves.

Luzern is famous for is covered bridges, so appropriately, our first stop was the Chapel Bridge. The bridge was built in the 14th century as part of the city’s fortification, but sadly much of it was destroyed, including 81 of 111 paintings which adorned its archways, in a fire in 1993, the bridge and some of the paintings have since been restored. After crossing the bridge, we made our way down the river to the lake side and walked up to the Hof Church. A monastery was founded here in the 8th century, but again the church was sadly destroyed by fire in 1633 but was rebuilt in 1645. It is the most important Renaissance church in Switzerland. After taking some photos of the church we headed away from the lake front for a while until we reached the Lions Monument. The Lion’s Monument or “The Dying Lion of Luzern” was carved out of the natural rock in memory of the heroic death of Swiss mercenaries at the Tuileries in 1792. It is considered to be one of the saddest most moving monuments in the World. From here we made our way towards the pedestrian “Old Town” of Luzern, and grabbed a quick an relatively cheap (at least according to Swiss standards) lunch.

After lunch we walked again way from the river and up the hill to the Musegg Wall. The wall was built in 1386. Three of its towers are accessibly by the public, although Tim and I went up none of them, as our legs are still incredibly sore from our Alpine hike. One of the towers, the Zyt tower, has the oldest clock in Luzern, which is privileged to chime every hour one minute before all the other clocks in Luzern. After walking along the Musegg Wall we made our way back down the hill to the “Old Town” and to the river front again where we crossed the Spreuer Bridge where one has an excellent view of the Needle Dam, which was build in 1859/1860 and regulates the level of the lake even today through the careful removal and placement of the so-called “needles” or wooden posts. From here we walked back a bit into the town on the opposite side of the river from where we have spent the majority of our time to see the 13th century Franciscan Church, the Ritterschur Palace, which was built for Luzern’s Mayor in 1557 as his private residence, and the riverfront Jesuit Church. We then walked back over the river for a third time this time on a modern pedestrian bridge and viewed some of the lovely fresco painted buildings that were once part of the “Old City Squares” before walking by the Town Hall, which was built between 1602 and 1606 and back across the Chapel Bridge to make our way to the train station.

We left Luzern around 2:30 in the afternoon and upon our arrival back in Zurich we took the tram back to our hotel to catch the afternoon soccer match before heading in to explore Zurich.

After our rest and the soccer match we hopped back on a tram towards the center of Zurich. We had been told by the hotel staff that we could take Tram 2 all the way down to the lake front, so we were a bit confused when the Tram terminated a couple of stops prior to where we had intended to be. But from the map it didn’t look like we had far to go, so we thought nothing more of it. As we walked towards the 13th century Fraumünster Cathedral it became clear why the tram had stopped early. The streets up and down the river front all the way to the lake were packet with stalls selling goods/food/drinks, carnival games, rides, and more. As we continued down towards the lake front we saw a sign that said, well I assume it said, Zurich Fest 2010. What luck! We quickly forgot about seeing any sights, although I don’t believe we missed much more than a few churches and heaven knows we have seen plenty of those on this trip thus far, and grabbed a couple drinks and joined in on the festivities. They had a skiing show on the lake front, followed by an air show (and later another air show) which was heaven for Tim, a wakeboarding show in the river, and bands galore. We grabbed dinner from a stall, and just walked around enjoying the chaos until we finally made our way to where they had a big screen playing the evening soccer match. We stayed and watched through the 1st half before making our way back through the crowds to catch the tram back to our hotel. It was a surprising and amazing evening in Zurich!

A Stopover in Bern

This morning we left the hostel around quarter after 8 and headed to the train station to catch a 9:01 train to Bern. The trip to Bern only takes about an hour, so we arrived at the Bern train station around 10:00. The Bern train station is the biggest one we have come across thus far on our trip, but we managed to find our way to the luggage storage room and after a detour to get some change to pay for the luggage storage we had our bags stored and started walking into town.

We first walked by the Zytglogge or clock tower, for which Bern is famous for, but it was not close to the hour so we merely walked by and planned to stop back by closer to the hour to see its famous revolving figures. Next we continued down Kamgasse to the Einstein Museum. The Einstein Museum is housed in the humble apartment where Einstein lived while working as a clerk in the local patent office, but Einstein said that it was here in this home that he developed his theory of relativity in 1905. After touring the Einstein Museum we went to Bern's 15th century Gothic Cathedral and climbed its 344 steps to the top of Switzerland's tallest spire for panoramic views of Bern. By now it was nearly noon so we headed back to the Zytglogge and watched it strike 12 and its characters come to life, not nearly as thrilling as it sounds, trust me, but there sure was a crowd there to watch it, so at least we weren't the only crazy tourists. After this we walked down Kornhausplatz and saw the decorative fountains that depict various historical and folkloric characters, including one of a giant eating some children, which I found sort of creepy. Then we had the lunch we had packed along the river before walking by the Bundehauser, home of the Federal Swiss Assembly, on our way back to the train station.

We caught the 1:00 train out of Bern to Zurich and were there within an hour. Our hotel was a bit of a way from the train station and took us an expensive 8 Swiss Francs tram to get there. At the hotel we relaxed, when down to the grocery store to get something for dinner, and swam in the pool, another relaxing evening. Tomorrow we will be day-tripping out to Luzern and checking out Zurich upon our return.

By Christine

Working out, Swiss style!

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

I had planned to wake up between 7:30 and 8:00 this morning to try and be out the door by 9:00, but when I woke up at 7:30 and then again at 8:00 it was so thick with fog outside that I didn't see the point in getting up quite yet, after all what is the point of hiking in the Alps if you can't even see them! Luckily by 9:00 or so the fog had really started to burn off and we got up to have our breakfast and pack our day bag with lunch/snacks/water for our hike. We left the hotel sometime after 10:00 and headed to the train station. We purchased tickets to Grindelwald and a cable car from Grindelwald to First, as well as a return ticket from Grindelwald, with a plan to hike from First back down to Grindelwald, this cost us about 70 US Dollars, which seemed like a lot until we realized that most people were paying over 150 US Dollars per person to go to the top of Jungfrau. The train to Grindelwald took 45 minutes or so and then we had to walk about 20 minutes through town to the cable car which took another 30 minutes or so to reach First (essentially a hut with an extremely overpriced restaurant and restroom facilities). From here we hiked uphill for about an hour or so to a beautiful lake where we stopped and had our packed lunch. From here we walked mostly down hill but on a less groomed path where you had to carefully watch your step over rocks and streams. We hiked down approximately 3500 ft in elevation and I don't know how many miles over the next 3 hours, but I can tell you that by the time we reached the bottom, my legs felt like jello. The views were definitely worth the strife though, pictures can't even begin to do it justice. On the train ride back to Interlaken from Grindelwald I could barely stay awake. On our way back to the hotel we stopped again at the grocery store and got a lasagna to bake for dinner. Then after a short rest we made dinner and were off to bed early. Tomorrow we head first for Bern where we hope to spend a few hours before continuing on to our hotel in Zurich.

3 trains and 9 hours later we are in Switzerland!

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Today was our earliest travel day since we left Athens. We left the hotel around 5:30 a.m. to walk to the train station to catch a 6:00 train to Zurich. The trains are actually very comfortable, so we were both able to get a little sleep on the train. That is until the gentleman next to us on the train decided to conduct a business meeting over the phone and spoke so loud he literally woke us up and continued in this manner until finally he got off the train at one of its numerous stops. The rest of the the 5+ hour train ride was spent doing some reading for my required summer pre-work until I felt I was falling asleep then on the computer typing up some of these blogs to try and get caught up. We arrived in Zurich around 11:20 and switched trains to catch the 11:35 train to Luzern. This was just a quick one hour or less ride then we had to switch trains again in Luzern. In Luzern we needed to grab lunch, but we didn't have very long as our next train departed for Interlaken at 12:55 and we didn't have any Swiss money yet, so we had to go to Burger King, the only place we could find that would accept credit card. And let me tell you one thing about Switzerland, it is FREAKING expensive, I don't believe we will be eating out at all in Switzerland, meals will be sandwiches in the hotel room for the next several days. Two chicken sandwiches, a small drink, and a small fry cost us $20 U.S.! So after this shocking lesson we boarded our scenic train to Interlaken. The train car we were in had panoramic windows that allowed for outstanding views of the mountains as we made our 2 hour journey to Interlaken and into the Alps. We arrived in Interlaken around 3:00 in the afternoon and walked from the train station to our hostel, the Lazy Falken. Luckily we had a private room at the hostel, although I am certain we are paying more than we should for it, but its nice to have your own bathroom and not have to share a room with strangers and worry about your belongings. After settling in, we walked to the grocery store to buy some groceries for dinner/lunch for tomorrow. Unfortunately we didn't get to explore Interlaken at all today as shortly after we got back from the grocery store it started raining. So we had a lazy evening at the hostel, made dinner,and watched some soccer. Honestly, I think we both really needed a low-key day. Tomorrow we plan to go hiking up in the mountains, so I think we will need the rest!