Skiing holiday

This weekend we took a nice mini-break to Switzerland. We arrived in Zurich on Friday morning, and saw St. Peter’s church, which has Europe’s largest clock face, several other pretty churches, a neat playground, and a courtyard/park that used to be a Roman customs post. We walked down the main shopping street and changed money at a prestigious Swiss bank.

Me imitating Europe's largest clock face

Then we caught a train to Bern, which is the capital of Switzerland. The mascot/symbol of Bern is the bear, so we went to the bear pits, took pictures of the bears, watched people feed them, and did an obligatory Sic ‘em. We enjoyed a lovely walk along the river, saw Einstein’s apartment from when he lived in Bern (and supposedly theorized his special theory of relativity), and went to Parliament, where I took pictures of everyone else playing in the fountain that shot up from the ground.

We stayed the night at a hostel in Zermatt, where we went skiing the next day. We had a great day, skiing the easy slopes, falling, and laughing at ourselves. We shopped around Zermatt before catching our train home.Waiting to ski!

The train to Zermatt is privately owned, so we bought tickets while we were in Bern. We had no problems on the train there, but on the train back (which was probably the best train we’ve ever been on) the conductor told us we hadn’t paid enough, because we had the wrong kind of Eurail passes and got a discount that we shouldn’t have. He told us we would have to pay him 15 Franks, and we told him we would pay at the station. Instead, we plotted our getaway. We analyzed everything – the position of the train when it came into the station, the platform locations, and our abilities to run as compared to the conductor… In the end, we walked away briskly, and once we got in the station, we ran to our next train and hid out on the platform. There was no way we were going to pay – it was not our fault the ticket lady gave us the wrong discount.

Switzerland is so beautiful. The mountains are gorgeous – the place we were skiing was awesome – we were above the clouds!

Coming back early allowed me to go to the base and buy some good American peanut butter, eat Anthony’s pizza, and generally enjoy the company of English speakers and American ways (they gave me free bags when I checked out!).

I’ve also been studying… woot. We have our first final on Thursday, and the rest are next week. Then it will be November! I'm working on planning it all out - it is crazy.

I can’t believe how fast time is going by…