‘Tis the Season

It was Christmas time, usually a time for family and friends. As I wasn’t at home, I made did with what was available to me – one friend and some surrogate parents.

In London I met up with Cat (from home and who has been living in the UK) and her friend Jess who was over for a short two month European trip. So anyway, we met up in London at the Pickwick Hall hostel, a private room for three with ensuite which was great.

The first evening we were in London, we went for a walk down Oxford Street and ended up in Hyde Park where a large German Christmas festival was being held. It was full of lights, rides, people and litres upon litres of mulled wine.

Hyde Park Christmas Festival

The days leading up to Christmas were spent sleeping and wandering around London. It was very cool to walk around a city which is so dressed up for Christmas. Everywhere you turned there were decorations and lights, stalls selling Christmas products and store windows arranged for the festive season.

Snowman!

On Christmas Eve I also had the opportunity to catch up with my friend Meri from Finland. She was in Oxford visiting her friend Lou for Christmas and New Years so I headed up to Oxford for the day. We met at the Oxford Castle which was a great idea as there was an amazing outdoor photography exhibition on called Earth From The Air which was showing beautiful airel photography by aclaimed photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It’s an amazing look the earth from above and how it’s changing day by day. For lunch we had a great Greek meal and then went to meet Lou. Soon we were headed back to London in the car and Meri and I parted ways (again) but promised to meet up once more before she headed home.

That evening  Cat, Jess and I went to meet up with the parents of Cat’s boyfriend, Ant (another friend from home) who were to be my surrogate parents for Christmas day. We headed to a bar, had a few drinks, then headed to the only open restaurant which happened to be an Indian place – pretty nice! But soon we had to get back to bed, early night on Christmas Eve!!

The next morning we woke latish and as promised, I cooked the girls pancakes, bacon and eggs for breakfast. Accompanying that was fresh fruit,  juice and champagne, and it was all pretty great. But soon it was time to head out for the main meal of the day, Christmas Dinner. We met Ant’s parents at a hotel which they had booked the meal at. We started with presents, I can’t believe that they had even bought Jess and I presents (albiet edible ones)!

The afternoon was filled with champagne, turkey, deserts, wine, Christmas crackers, balloons flying around the room, and a hugely expensive bill which was fully paid by Ant’s parents, an amazing show of generosity. And then bloated, we headed back to the hostel to watch Love Acutally which is apparantly a popular film for Christmas.

The following days in London were rather relaxed. On Boxing Day I headed out into the shopping hoards and bought a few things. The following day I had a quiet one, but later on met up with Meri once again before both of us had to leave London. We also managed to see the changing of the guard outside Buckingham Palace on the morning before we were set to leave. It was an interesting affair but really not as exciting as everyone makes it out to be!

Changing of the Guard

Part Two

That night we boarded an extremely uncomfortable bus and headed north, destination Edinburgh. After nine and a half hours of half sleep, half candy consumption we arrived faar too early in the morning, and since our rooms weren’t ready at the hostel, we had to hang out in the common room for a few hours.

It was an unexpectedly beautiful day so after  a nap we decided to go for a wander. Edinburgh’s Royal Mile runs for around a mile between the Scottish Parliment and the Edinburgh Castle. So, with this in mind, our first stop was the castle.

Edinburgh Castle

We couldn’t actually go inside as it was incredibly expensive, but we gave it a good walk around. That night, someone decided it would be a good idea to go drinking, so that’s what we did. The hostel was full of long term Australians who only wanted to drink, so we joined them (Cat had also lived there at some stage earlier in the year). Drinking games started and soon everyone moved to what, to me, was a terrible bar – but the others seemed to like it. Backpacker bars just aren’t really my thing.

The following day I spent most of it sleeping. And while Cat and Jess slept even longer, I decided to take a walk up Arther’s Seat, a rather large hill. So after a walk down the Royal Mile towards the Scottish Parliment I began my way up.

Arthurs Seat Silhouette

As I rounded the corner, I found a very cool rock face which would have been excellent for some rock climbing had I had my shoes with me. Just beyond that was another hill which I had decided was worth a climb.

Rocks!

The weather was amazing and this place was amazing, so I kept going. My mission was to make it to the highest hill around and the climb was suprisingly steep. It might have been possible that I took a hard path, but really, that’s all part of the fun. From the top the view was exellent.

View from Arthurs Seat

Soon the sun went down so it was time to head back to the hostel for an easy night, best be resting up for New Years Eve tomorrow!

The day was new years eve and I spent most of it sleeping. I wanted to be ready for the evening. In the afternoon we took a trip to the local supermarket which was more packed with people than any other supermarket I’ve ever seen.  We were mostly there to pick up alcohol so I grabbed some wine, a Hoegaarden and one of the new Kronenburg Blanc beers (absolutely amazing). The evening was started (as it usually does in this hostel) with drinking games which caused me to finish my entire bottle of wine far too fast. But it was fun, and everyone was enjoying themselves and soon it was time to head out.

Each year in Edinburgh the council holds a massive street party with live bands and DJs and around 100,000 people partying it up. So after all this drinking, we headed out into it. Almost at once I lost Cat and Jess but luckily I was hanging out with a Canadian called Zach. And this was about the last I remember. Much to my embarrasment, all the alcohol hit me at once and most of the night is lost in my muddly brain but apparantly I did participate in the count down. This is the first new years that this has ever happened and I blame it on the fact that I wasn’t with my good friends :P

Fortuntely, the next day I awoke and was feeling fine! I had wanted to do the walking tour of Edinburgh that day and Cat and Jess agreed but by the time we got there it was totally full. This was crazy, we didn’t expect there to be so many people willing to go out and tour around the city on New Years Day, so Jess and I enlisted Cat to tour us around the city which she lived in a few months ago.

It appeared that Cat has forgotten most of the city but took us to two of the more interesting places. First was the Edinburgh Graveyard. This place is full of old grave stones covered in skulls and crossbones and skeletons and such.

Gravey!

The second place which I remember was Caton Hill. This is probably the second largest hill in Edinburgh (other than Arthur’s Seat). On the top of it they have a monument which waas supposed to be a replica of the Athenian Acropolis but for some reason they ran out of oney while building it and it never got completed.

Caton Hill

That night, Cat and Jess went on the New Years Day pub crawl. I decided not to beacuse the following day I had to catch a flight back to Luton to get ready for my next adventure, Morocco!

French Finale

My final train ride in France went without error. After leaving Alpe d’Huez at 7:30am, I arrived in Paris at around 1pm.

I was again CouchSurfing, but as it was a Friday my hosts had to work so we had arranged to meet at the Hoche metro station at 6:30. This gave me five and a half hours to kill and after wandering lost around the complex Gare du Lyon for about half an hour, I finally found the luggage check which turned out to be incredibly expensive. Welcome to Paris.

I checked my bags, checked the tourist information centre, then checked my new map. After ripping the map in half by mistake, I grabbed another which showed the routes which the tour busses take. I figured that I’d leave the main sites ’till the next day and so set off to find the French National Library. This, I gathered, is supposed to be a modern architectural centrepiece, and it was very cool. Four seperate buildings in L shapes donned the corners of the structure (in the middle was great public space and a large cluster of treess), the passage between them underground.

French National Library

After the library, I ventured back over the river via a bridge which I guess was specifically added when the library was built. On the otherside, opposite the library, was some kind of sports centre – a crazy geometric building covered in grass, skylights, and bright blue metal framing.

Sports Centre

This also appeared to be a popular youth hangout as it was crawling with teenagers who I thought should have been in school. I passed these kids and began to walk back towards the train station. I was walking along thhe river, under a bridge, when I spotted a very nice homeless set-up complete with tents, tables, chars, appliances (I’m not sure how they got power for them) and even a christmas tree!

Homeless setup

When I got back to the station I still had a lot of time until I had to head west on the metro so I began to walk towards Bastille, a very large and famous round-about.

Bastille

Now I had to make the decision. What to see. I decided on making a brief appearance at Notre Dame but trying not see too much of it. And after walking down a street which I thought was the right one for a while, getting lost, and then getting reorientated, I spotted the small island on which the cathedral was located.

Notre Dame

I then crossed on to the island, but kinda tried not to see too much of Notre Dame itself – I wanted to keep it until I had more time – so just passed by and went on my way. About an hour later I was back at the train station and ready to take the metro to Hoche.

This was crazy, it was rush hour and here I was trying to take the busiest metro in the world with two bags full of junk! I even had to change lines. But it was OK, I made it to Hoche faster than I thought (with enough time to take a little walk around) and soon met my CouchSurfing hosts, Clair and Francis (who was actually from a French owned island off the south-east coast of Madagascar called Reunion). We walked back to their place, had dinner, talked about all sorts of things and had a pretty good evening. Both Clair and Francis were amazingly hospitable and were offering me things left, right, and centre. It turned out that I was the first person that they had hosted!

From this point of my time in Paris, I must be honest, I was a bit lazy! I think I was just tired from all the partying I did in the alps. But I made sure I saw all the big sites. the next morning I got my self out of bed and headed back to Notre Dame to get a proper look. And after all the cathedrals that I had seen in this trip, I have to say I was a little disappointed. This one gets talked up by everyone, but in some ways it dosen’t even compare to many of the others I’ve seen, especially the Italian ones. Here is a picture of it anway:

Notre Dame

From here I headed towards the famous gallery, the Louvre. Again I was lazy, I decided not to go inside. Partly because of time (two days to see the whole thing!) and partly because of money. It’s becoming rather skint and I can’t afford 9 Euros to go to an art gallery, as much as I would have liked to. The buildings and the glass pyramid were especially impressive though! I hadn’t realised that it was so big.

The Louvre

From the Louvre I headed through the massive gardens which extend in front of it. At the other end of them was a small christmas fair with a pretty large ferris wheel. It was here that I caught my first glimpse of the famous Eiffel Tower, and it was then that I though “yeah, I’m really in Paris”.

It was beginning to get dark so I decided to head back. I was supposed to text Clair when I returned to the apartment block so that she could let me in. I was late and my phone had decided to run out of money and not let me top up the credit. So I headed to the apartment and snuck inside with another resident. I got up to level 7 and realised that it was the wrong building! So back down I went and over to the other building. There was no one to let me in so I just skulked around the entrance until a group of people opened it, not thinking twice about who I could be or what I was doing there. I then headed up to the right level 7 and Francis let me in. That night we were going to go out but in the end decided against it as Francis was sick, Clair was getting sick, none of their friends could make it and I was tired.

The following day Clair and Francis had said they would take me out to Versailles so around lunchtime (after a good sleep in) we got in the car and drove out there. The main attraction in Versailles is the palace which has been home to many a French king and queen.

Palace at Versailles

Inside the palace’s grounds and also inside the palace itself were a number of sculptural works from American artist Jeff Koons. The first one which I saw made for a pretty cool photo with the palace refelected in it.

Royal Reflection

The inside of the palace was pretty cool, but to be honest, for the price that you pay it was definitely not as good as the palace in Brussels which was free. There were many dark rooms with large numbers of paintings of past residents, historical beds and furniture, and a terrible audio guide which really didn’t tell you anything you couldn’t read on the signs. The highlight of this palace was the gardens which I hear are very popular and much more beautiful in the summer.

Gardens at Versailles

That evening was another quiet one. Apart from a trip to a street which houses a huge amount of electronics stores to get some things for Clair, we spent most of the night trying to get the French television system to allow us to watch a French film with English subtitles. This  did not end up working, so we began to watch 300 but soon all of us were pretty sleepy and we ended up turning it off and headed off to bed.

The next day was a Monday and Francis and Clair had to go off to work. It was time again for me to see some sights, so mid-morning I set off to make sure I didn’t miss the sights that Paris is known for. My first stop was the Arch de Triomphe, set in the middle of a huge round-about and extremely expensive to visit the inside of. I took a few photos  and then started to make my way towards the Eiffel Tower.

Arch de Triomphe

The Eiffel Tower is big. It was even bigger than I thought it was and it was very cool to finally see it in all it’s glory.

Eiffel Tower

I then headed down towards it. The metal framework is amazing and it made for some pretty cool silhouette photos.

Eiffel silhouette

After a little bit of decision making (time was running short), I decided to ascend the tower. The line took about 25 mintues which was a pretty good amount of time considering people queue for hours in the summer. I chose on of the legs which only offers the stairs and just under 400 stairs later I had made it to the first level. Over 200 stair more I was at the second level. The view was pretty cool from here although the day was rather overcast. This low cloud prevented me from spending further money and taking the lift all the way to the top (which was in fact in the clouds).

View from the Eiffel Tower

By the time I got back down it had started to rain so I got on the metro and began to head back to Hoche. That evening was an interesting dinner. I had told Francis that I had neve eated escargot before, so in no time he had whipped up an appertiser and I was eating some sort of pesto roasted snails – not bad at all really but I found it a bit hard to stomach them, something most probably psychological. After this we had hotdogs with salad and “French” dijon mustard which actaully almost killed me. I put way too much on thinking it was like American mustard and it felt like I was drinking vodka infused with chili peppers – I was crying and sniffing annd Francis thought it was funny!

The next morning I was off again. An early train to the airport and a flight for just over an hour saw me land in London. It was Christmas time!

Missioning to the Snow

What a freakin’ ordeal!! I thought the French train system was  supposed to be one of the best in the world!

The plan was to take the train from Cannes to Grenoble, then get on a bus to Alpe d’Huez to visit Adam once more (he’s now cheffing up there). This is a three hour journey.

After a series of untranslated French messages and a whole lot of waiting I was in Grenoble, five hours later than I had expected. The bus station had closed. Grenoble doesn’t have a youth hostel. The cheap hotels are not exactly cheap but I stayed in one anyway (after walking around a lot trying to find a cheapest one).

The next morning the bus didn’t come, and I had to wait and wait for even longer. And finally I made it to Alpe d’Huez, twenty-four hours later than I had expected!

The view was looking great!

View from Alpe d'Huez

Adam was living in an apartment with eight other people, all from the land of Britannia. They were all on contract from a company called SkiWorld, and along with nine others, they managed and ran a small hotel and a number of chalets in the town which catered to British skiing tourists.

I was here to catch up with Adam and to hopefully snowboard! Little did I realise that 1) the weather wasn’t all it cracked up to be, and 2) everyone who works here is in a constant state of boozing. They get up to be at work at 7am, work ’till 10am, ski or snowboard ’till 4pm, work again until around 10pm, then  go out drinking to 3am almost every night! So the first night I was there I was whisked off to various bars around the village and everyone ended up frightfully drunking pretty fast – even though the beer was very expensive. That night ended with everyone eating these horrible takeaway dishes called the Americana which is basically a foot long b agette stuffed with meat patties and covered in fries, which in turn covered the floor of the apartment. Filth!

The following morning we awoke and after work, Adam and I set out to fix the bindings on his board so I could ride it. This turned out to be a right mission. We wandered up to, perhaps, the only place that does Burton gear to find just a single screw – they didn’t have it. We were able to, though, get a cool view of the ski field which is amazingly huge!

Ski Field

Soon it had become 2 o’clock and it seemed like no one had the screw and it wasn’t going to be economically viable to buy a daily ski-pass for just two hours. So we flagged it and headed back to the apartment to hang out. And that’s about how it was for the rest of the evening. I spent it watching Peep Show on DVD and the others went to work. One guy got 2nd degree burns from picking up a hot pan, another had ruined his ankle on the slopes! Horray! Hopefully the next day I would be getting out there!

The next day came, the weather was marginal to say the least. This was Adam’ss day off, too, but we just spend it hanging around again. I guess that it is nice to have a break every so often though. Later that afternoon I was getting restless, so I decided to make a break for it and walk down to Huez, the town lower down the mountain.

After walking down and around about 5 corners of the Tour de France hillclimb, I made it.

Tour de France!

Huez was a tiny little old fashioned town. Unlike Alpe d’Huez all the buildings were small, close together and old. The roads were snow covered and icicles hung everywhere. I was sliding all over the place, but was happy. It was an amazing place to explore around.

Huez Town

On my way back up (as it had taken about an hour to get down), I decided to take a shorter route. Jumping off the road I began to follow a path I found in the snow. Surely if someone else had walked up here then I could also. It started off okay but got increasingly deeper and less predictable so soon I had to get out of it and back onto the road.

Snow path!

That night it was back to drinking again. And there was hundred of people out. The craziest part was being in one bar and going to get a drink, being swallowed into the crowd of people on the dance floor and suddenly realising they were all mimes! There was about 100 mimes in full costume dancing away – so very strange!

The next day was beautiful. I was adament that I would get out on the slopes, so I flagged trying to get Adam’s gear to work and rented a board and boots, bought a ski pass and set off up the mountain with one of the girls from the hotel, Alice, who had her day off. And WOW what a mountain. New Zealand has nothing like this at all, it’s huge and the runs are perfect. We skied and boarded for a few hours then met up with Adam who was on his midday break and also his other friend.

Skiing the Mount

We had a few marvelous runs, Adam pushing me way too far, and then headed for the top of the mountain. The view was absolutely amazing, although the wind was out of control. It was like being in the snow version of a desert sandstorm!

View from the top

This was the beginning of what I was told is the world’s longest pisted run. 16km of pure down hill (well, a little bit of annoying flat at the end). It just went on and on and on and it was oh so steep, but absolutely amazing! The weather was brilliant and once we got passed the windswept ice, the snow was lush!

Giving The Gogs a real sporting time

After this run we were all totally knackered and headed back to the apartment for another easy night of nothing. I sat around watching The Mighty Boosh, then the others came back and we watched No Country For Old Men. Then, amazingly, everyone went to bed.

The next morning I was up at 6:30am to catch the 7:30 bus back to Grenoble for I was off to Paris.

Goodbye Alpe d’Huez, I’ll miss you!

View of Alpe d'Huez

France and the Beach

I ended up in Cannes because I couldn’t find anywhere to stay in Nice. I arrived on he train from Bern at around 7:30pm and, following the instructions, made my way to my host, Franck’s, place.

Franck was cool. Extra friendly and hospitable and after a long chat about everything and nothing, he suggested that we go and get some kebabs and a drink with his friend Marco, a Dutch guy living in Cannes. So we headed out, only to find that the kebab shop which Franck wanted to go to was having it’s one week of closure for the year. We then headed down towards an Irish pub (they have these all over the place!) and had a few drinks which continued into the night back at Francks, despite the fact that both he and Marco had work the following day. At about 3am, we decided to call it a night.

The next morning Franck poured both him and I a coffee and left for work. It was a beautiful day so I got ready and headed out to explore Cannes. After stopping by the tourism information centre and grabbing a map, I headed down towards the beach only to get distracted on the way by one of those shops which sells hippy clothes, incense, and blankets and other items from various Asian countries; Tibet, India, Malaysia, etc.

I got stuck in this store for about an hour and half. The guy who ran it was half Chinese, half Tibetan and born in Borneo, and a motor-mouth extrodanaire. He talked and talked and talked, and gave me coffee and talked some more. It was ridiculous. But finally I got out, phew!

Me and the shop owner

Then I headed down the main shopping street, passing a cinema which had a small film festival playing French films, and another playing old films in English. They were playing the 1979 version of Planet of the Apes, which incidently I had thought about seeing recently, but unfortunately it wasn’t at the right time. So I kept on walking and ended up at the beach!

Cannes beach

While I was there I saw the real thing, French kids flipping all over the show practising Parkour!

Parkour!

I started to walk along the beach in the direction other than what is seen in the photo above. Soon I had to leave the beach because it turned into a marina full of large, expensive, launches and the theatre where all the films are played during the Cannes Film Festival each year in May.

Film festival theatre

Af ter this I made my way over the Cannes’ old town. I wandered around though this for some time, checking out all the old buildings and old people, then made my way up the hill to where a clocktower and church looked over the city of  Cannes. The weather was beautiful and it was a great view from up there.

View over Cannes

As the sun began to set I made my way back down to the beach and began to walk. I walked for a while along the beach. It was good to smell and feel the sea spray. Soon the beach ended but I continued to walk further along the shoreline with no real objective other than feeling like walking. As I walked the sun began to set behind the hills in the distance.

Cannes Sunset

Once the sun had set, I began to head back. As I approached the Old Town again, I noticed a fun fair which I hadn’t seen on my way out. I spent a little while checking it out, not being able to tell if it was being set up or down, being yelled at by random carnies, and trying to avoid spending any money.

Carnival by night

I soon left the carnival and headed back to Francks where we decided to have a quiet night –  both of use were still feeling the gin from the night before.

The following day I planned to go to Monaco but the train workers were on strike. The shortest amount of time it would take for me to get there (usually a one hour or so train ride) was 5 hours so I decided to flag it. Isn’t the French train system supposed to be one of the best in the world? This is ridiculous. I ended up heading back to Francks and we just hung out for the day, listening to music and watching crazy French TV.

In the evening we set out for Marco’s house for dinner. Franck promptly reversed his car into another parked car then drove off, got lost, went around in circles and arrived at Marco’s about half an hour late. Another friend of theirs was also there and that evening we sat around and ate far, far too much food and drank even more wine, which Marco told me I had to do as I was in France.  He also told me that I had to eat several cheeses after dinner, so I indulged and ate some crazy cheeses which I would never have dared eat before – they were not half bad either. By this time I was bloated, drunk, and it was 3am so Franck and I headed back to his place. No late night gin this time!

(This post is rubbish! I’m starting to get lazy I think. Sorry my fair readers.)

Berning Down the House!

From Zurich I made my way to Bern. I had intially planned to take the Luzern-Interluken route but since I had already done this the day before, it was just a one hour trip. I arrived in Bern at about midday to find my next host, Regula wandering around the station looking for me just as I was doing for her. Lucky for me that we found each other at that time, as my train was late and she was about to leave.

In an old house near the train staion which usually had a bar, cafe, womens area, theatre and holds frequent parties, a once a month flea market was being held. Here you could by almost everything you could think of from scooters and bikes to console games, candlesticks and tea. I had to hold myself back as I saw so much stuff that I would have liked to buy but unfortunately can’t carry around with me. We spent a few hours looking around the markets and then decided to head back to her place.

Crazy bicycle for sale

Regula lived in a very old house which was situated inside an industrial area in a town about half an hour out of Bern called Oberburg. This industrial area has a building right next to the house which begins some sort of extreme hammering each morning at seven o’clock which shakes the entire house, continuing until five in the evening. Asides from Regula living there, there was also Nicole and Dino, a suitably hippy couple, another girl whoes name I never found out, and one more guy and another couple who were away at the time. For me this was great as I was given my own room which included its own fireplace to keep me toasty warm in the freezing nights. That night Regula, Nicole, Dino and I just hung out, ate some amazing food cooked by Nicole (who should be a chef), and listened to music. I spent half the evening dashing up and down the stairs to keep my little fire going.

The old house

The next day I was to meet up with a girl called Flurina who has contacted me the previous night on CouchSurfing, asking if I’d like to be shown around Bern. So at around midday, I met her in the Bern station and we set out on our mission. The first place to visit was the house where I had been at the flea market the previous day. I had wanted to get a betting picture of  it.

Flea market location

Next we wandered down to one of Bern’s many bridges. Following this we made our way to the highest tower in Bern at the XXXXXXX church. It was many more stairs that I had predicted and after we fought our way up with a number of stops, we found the the view was totally worth it. Unfortunately over half of the tower was closed to it was next to impossible to get a decent view from the other side.

View from tower

After we headed back down, Flurina suggested that next on the agenda should be “bears and fountains”, so we went for a walk towards the Bern bears. For some reason or another, there is a pit in the middle of the city which for numerous years has held a number of bears. It’s a horrible concrete pit and many people oppose it. The bears look so sad in there, just sitting around waiting for food and most probably wishing that the winter would become cold enough to hibernate.

Bern's Bear

Next were the fountains. Not as amazing as many of the other fountains which I have seen on this trip, but pretty cool as a number of them (which run up the middle of the main pedestrian streets) are statues of folktales. The one which is the best and I think every one agrees with is this one of a man eating small (bad mannered) children – a tale parents would often tell to their kids to keep them in line!

Child eater!

A walk down the riverside followed lunch, and when we were about ten minutes down stream (which was 6.66 degrees by the way!) I spotted the zoo on the otherside of the river which Flurina seemed to think was free. So back we headed and over a bridge which we had passed. Then we just walked in! Past some ponies and mules, fluffy rabbits and then… RACOOONS! My god I just keep having child-like exciting moments! So mischevious looking and so cute at the same time.

Racooooooon :)

Onward we walked up the hill to find a pond full of pink flamingos. I find these birds hilarious, especially the way the walk around in the water. They would move around to find the sun in flocks, flapping their wings to gain all the sun they could get.

Flamingos

Our trip to the zoo was our last activity for the day, and as the sun was setting we headed back to the train station where I thanked Flurina for showing me around and then set off back to Oberburg for another evening of music and hanging out.

The following day Nicole had no work and so decided to come with me on a trip to Gruyères to visit the H.R. Giger museum. This is the guy who invented the alien from the film Alien. It was lucky that she came along as it involved 3 trains and a bus, plus numerous amounts of German and French speaking. On arrival we had about an hour to spare so we decided to have a look around Gruyères, a very quaint little medival town set on the edge of the Swiss Alps.

Gruyères

At 1pm the museum opened. This place was crazy, the mind of this man insane. There were so many amazing pictures of creatures that I could never dream of. Very dark and for some reason, also very erotic. They had this little “adults only” section which seemed pretty pointless as almost all of his work had some weird alien sexuality to it. Unfortunately you were not alowed to take photos inside, but this was on the outside:

Babies in a gun

And there was even a bar which he designed, indeed also crazy:

Giger bar

And soon it was time to make the long trek back to Oberburg. We were not back for long when Regula came in from work, covered in snow! “It’s snowing!” she called, and looking out the window, it definitely was. So after another beautiful dinner made by Nicole, she, Dino and I headed outside into the already 4-5″ snow to play around. Snow fights were not an option of choice, and I was amazed to find that you actaully can roll snow into huge balls, resulting in by far the best snowman I have ever built.

Snowman!

This went on for a few hours and by then we were all tired and soaked and ready to sleep, but not after more music and hanging out, though!

I had initially planned to leave the following day, but it took me a while to find a place to stay so I spent one more day in Bern. This day I used for doing nothing. I headed into Bern to get a train ticket and then just spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and watching the snow out the window. A quiet evening and my time in Bern was over, again going so fast!

The next morning I was off to Cannes!