Hey Team,
Sorry I havnt posted anything in a while. I got busy after my last post and I appoligize for not posting anything significant in over a month. In my last blog I told you all about my trip to Germany, and since then I have done a lot. I went to Chinque Terre in Italy, traveled to Switzerland, Amsterdam, to Germany again, and finally back to the United States. In this blog I will tell you about my life up until the end of classes in Italy, and then I will post another outlining my continuing adventures in Germany. Here goes:
My friend Nate and I took a day trip to the Chinque Terre in northern Italy in mid April. Chinque Terre, or the "Five Towns," is a series of five towns on the Medeteranian coast with lots of hiking trails in between the towns. We had good day just hiking from town to town, eating some good pesto and drinking the famous wine of the area. It was a really beautiful place, and if you are ever in Italy, it is definately worth your time to hike it. Even though we were pretty tired by the end, it is hikable in one day. All in all, I think we hiked around 10 km from town 1 to town 5.
Switzerland was the next big trip I had in Europe. My friend from Iowa State, Laurel, has been studying in Fribourg, Switzerland since August and I went to visit her and see some of the sites of the area. The first day we got there we traveled to Luzern which is a little town on a lake in the heart of the Swiss Alps. This town was beautiful with hundreds of swans swimming on the lake, a 700 year old bridge crossing a part of the river leading into the lake, and an old city wall once used to protect Luzerns inhabitants. We also saw the memorial for the Swiss guards who were massacred during the french revolution. This memorial is a carving of a dying lion into the side of a bluff in the city.
The next day in Switzerland we saw the sigts of Fribourg, Laurel's college town. It is a quaint little village with a lot of history. We toured the big cathedral in the town and basically just walked around for a while. Later in the day we took the 20 minute train ride to Bern, the federal capital of Switzerland. It was a nice city, but there was not a bunch to do in it beyond visiting museums which costs money. We were going to see the Bern Bears, the symbol of the city, but apparently the last one had died the day before we arrived. Sad day. We did see lots of the historic fountains in the city, including the most famous one of a man eating babys. Apparently it was depicting some legend of a man who would eat bad children or infants or something like that. It appears that the Swiss have some mental issues...
The final day in Switzerland was spent seeing Gruyeres to tour a chocolate facotry and to see its castle. The day started off on the wrong foot, however, when we decided to take the wrong bus to get there. When we realized we werent where we needed to be, we tried to ask the bus driver how to get there...this is where things got interesting. The bus driver was very nice, but the interesting thing about Switzerland is that they speak French and and weird version of German, neither of which we spoke (Laurel is fluent in German, but as she puts it "The Swiss speak a bastard form of German and I don't know what the hell they are saying.") He spoke a little English, but not enough for us to to figure out what was going on, so eventually we found out he spoke Italian. Horray! Studying in Florence has come in handy. With the use of my very poor and broken Italian we figured out how to get where we needed to go and were on our way to the chocolate factory.
We finally made it to the Callier chocolate factory, Nestle Chocolate's Swiss cousin. It was a nice tour that covered how the chocolate is made, the processes involved, and a little history of the company. At the end was the best part: free samples. They lots of different kinds to try and we could eat as much as we wanted. Who would have known that free chocolate is my Achilles heal? I probably consumed about a pound of chocolate in a span of ten minutes, and then had a crazy sugar headache for a couple of hours. It was worth it for the deliciousness I experienced. After the chocolate factory we went to see the castle in the town and that was a lot of fun. We saw some really good views of the Swiss countryside from the castles high vantage point on top of a big hill. At the end of this day Nate and I went back to Florence.
The last trip for me before ending school was a impromtu trip to Amsterdam with my friend Nate to visit his cousin. We took an 18 hour train ride to get there, spent one night in the city, and left he next day. Nate's cousin kept us entertained while we were there, so it was a nice trip. We rented bikes and went all around the city. Bikes are the main form of travel in this city as it has more bikes in it than people. During the weekend we also visited a brewery that is powered by windmill, and took a canal boat ride. All in all I thought that Amsterdam was a really nice city. The only type of crime they have is bike theft (mostly because everything else is already legal), and unlike the typically American view on the city, the drugs and prostitution is a very very small aspect of it.
My last week in Italy was spent studying for my finals and finishing up with my schooling. I had a really good semester and am glad that I went. After I was done with classes I traveled to Germany again to see some more of the awesome country that it is, and I will outline those adventures in my next blog.
