Bring on the Cheese!

I hadn’t really planned what I was going to do after travelling through Italy, and at the last minute I decided to go to Switzerland in search of snow, and to begin my treck towards Paris, where I will be just before Christmas. So the morning after the Cinque Terre adventure, Carmen and I parted ways at the train station, her to Rome and I was heading to Zurich.

Eight train-filled hours later I was there. My first mission was to get to a town about twenty-five minutes out of Zurich called Winterthur where I would meet my host, Lia. Finding the train was the easy part, finding an ATM to withdraw Swiss franks was not so easy. Finally I figured this out and soon I was travelling north to Winterthur where I found Lia waiting for me.

That first night we did not do a lot, we were both tired and had decided to have an earlyish night so she could show me around Zurich thee following day. In the morning we ate and then headed into Zurich, there was much to do! Unfortunately it was raining, but this was not to stop us. First of all we headed out of the train station and down the main street, appropriately named Bahnofstrasse. This was a street filled with expensive clothing and watch stores, intermingled with douzens of different banks promoting private bank accounts. On the way down this street we stopped to check out various churches.

Church clock tower

We ate roasted chestnuts, talked and took numerous photos of Zurich dressed in it’s best Christmas attire.

Christmas pinecones

We then passed the Zurich lake and headed towards a secondhand bookshop which we both wanted to check out. The English section was not so large, but I managed to find Catcher In The Rye and Dracula for 3 franks which is a damned good deal. Lia bought a collection of 13 huge photography books that she would have to collect later as they were much too heavy to carry around.

But before we hit the bookstore, we stopped by:

Google office Zurich

This was pretty cool to see. Apparantly the inside of the building is amazingly well equipped with meditation rooms, aquariums, a gym, and much more. Outside the office was parked this Google bike! I hear that the staff are given them to use.

Google bike

After we left the bookshop, we headed back towards the centre of town, where we crossed the river and checked out another church.

Zurich's riverside

Twin church towers

And now was the exciting part! We decided to head up the local tall mountain of which I forget the name and climb the view tower. We took the train and when we arrived I was thouroughly excited to see a snowy path leading to the top. I could barely contain myself and was running around like an over excited child.

Snowy path

When we got to the top we headed up the tower and found the view of the alps in all directions. It was amazing!

View over Zurich

The sun started to set so we headed back down the the tower and began to construct a small snowman on a park bench which I was actaully able to pick up and carry around with me until I picked him up off of a chair and he lost his balance, his head falling off.

Snowman!

By this time it was getting pretty late and we had a dinner date with 100 other CouchSurfers out in the countryside. This event was run by the Zurich CouchSurfing group and was basically 100+ people in a big cottage in the countryside eating over 20kgs of cheese fondue and drinking too much wine. It was a whole heap of fun! There were heaps of Swiss people and many others from all over the world there too. One guy I talked to had even cycled from Belgium to Serbia in 4 months, crazy!

the CHEESE

This went on ’till the early hours of the morning and when Lia decided that she has drunk far too much, we headed home.

The next day the weather was terrible, it was raining something atrocious, so instead of checking out any more outdoor sights we planned a scenic train trip. This would be from Luzern to Interluken. So we got on the train and headed for Luzern. When we got there we had some time to kill, so went for a short walk in the city, over the famous bridge:

Some old bridge

and past some very cool decorated buildings:

Decorated house

Soon it was time to get on the train, so we headed back to the station, boarded the train and we were off. In no time you could feel the pull of the train heading upwards and soon enough we were engulfed in snowy forest and paddocks. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before! We opened the window of the train at one point when it stopped to get some photos and the woman sitting infront of us ended up covered in snow! It was snowing like I’ve never experienced.

Lotsa snow!

In what seemed like no time at all, the night fell and we were headed back to Zurich to meet the CouchSurfers again for their monthly meeting which just ended up being a number of people drinking in a bar. It was good to see some of the people again from last night and meet more new people. I can’t keep track of all the people I’m meeting everywhere, there are too many!

That was my final night in Zurich, it really felt like it had gone much too fast but it was definitely a great time. In the morning I was off to Bern.

Things I Did In Amsterdam

As I’m writing this on a night train to Copenhagen, I’ve decided to change the format for this post. Usually I write things in a pretty linear format: this day, then that happened and it keep adding up. This post will just be a series of points with no time structure, hence the title ‘Things I Did In Amsterdam.’

I spent hours each day walking around the ’straats’ (streets) and ‘grachts’ (canals) until I was too tired to walk any longer. I got lost many a time. They told me the city is shaped like an onion, I prefer to think of it as a rainbow with veins.

Amsterdam Canal

I slept in a dorm with two Swedish girls who were horribly ill, fearing that I might catch what ever they had.

I almost got hit by a bike while using a pedestrian crossing.

Bicycles!

I visited one or two of the famous Amsterdam coffeeshops and then proceeded to wander around the city in marvel at almost everything. I also went onto a balcony and who ever was on the balcony above me was having a laughing fit, which in turn I contracted, me laughing at some guy I couldn’t see and vice versa.

I went on a pub crawl, drank too much then went for felafal with two Canadians. Before our kebabs were ready, the store workers brought us each a bowl of an onion-tomato mix and a bowl of tatziki for putting on said kebab. Being in the state we were, the three of us just started scooping out the onions with the spoon, dipping them in the tatziki and eating them. The sauces were gone before the kebabs arrived, half of it in our stomachs, the other half all over our faces. Following that, we managed to cover the entire table in lettuce. I highly doubt the store owners were impressed.

I went on a walking tour of the city and learnt the history of how Amsterdam was built from just a marsh. How drugs and prostitution become the norm, why all the buildings look like the are leaning over (and they actually are) and a whole lot of other interesting facts about the city.

Leaning Houses

I walked around the Red Light District and checked out the nice ladies in the windows.

I went to the Anne Frank House. The place where Anne Frank and her family hid in an annex behind her fathers office for 2 years during WWII. This was amazing and utterly moving.

I went to the Sex Museum and saw all sorts of artifacts from ancient Greece and Asia, to modern day porn that you wouldn’t tell your friends about.

I taught a small-town Swedish girl to play snap and then I proceeded to lose for an hour. She then taught me how to shuffle cards (by God am I clumsy with cards).

I caught up with Isa, a girl that Matt and I met in Byron Bay when we backpacked around Australia in 2006.

I saw a hidden Catholic church from the days with Catholosism was banned.

Hidden Catholic Church

I shopped in the ‘Nine Streets’ district and bought myself a pretty cool t-shirt after trying on some pixie pants. I also found an excellent market with the craziest used clothes stand ever – it was just a tarpolin with mountains of awesome clothes on it. Crazy! Mama, you’d be in heaven.

I wished all you guys reading this had been there to share this with me. We are definitely all coming to Amsterdam one day, it is so awesome!

Thrilling Fixies!

Thriller, this one is for you!

London is flat flat flat. The roads are wide and there really isn’t that much traffic as it costs around 6 pounds to enter the “congestion zone” by car. Because of all that, there are quite a few bikes, and I’ve seen a good number of fixies. And even one very hot girl rolling one down the path along the Thames. You’d love it here Thriller, fixies for the road and close to French ski resorts.

 

Bianchi, bitch! Complete with porn ads in the spokes.