bizzies in swizzie

so, switzerland. amazing. incredible. gorgeous. i mean it's pretty hard to describe it other than just saying it was about as perfect as a trip can be, of course with the occasional mishap, but that's to be expected...anyways, jeff, justin, and i flew out to switzerland on wednesday of 8th week mostly because we could (we had all finished our work early), and went to stay with taylor dufford (duff), for all of you who are priveleged enough to know the great man. he was teaching for the semester at an international school outside of zurich and had a huge apartment to himself, so we stayed there....anyways, we got in wednesday night and he gave us a night walking tour of zurich before heading back to his place which is in a little villiage called ricketersvil (or something like that). we went to bed fairly early and woke up real early the next morning to take a train about 2.5 hours to interlaken, the backpacking capital of the world. interlaken itself isn't that impressive, but what's amazing is that is a gateway to a million little villiages and hiking trails in the alps, and that is exactly why we went there. we ended up spending the day hiking IN the swiss alps from one little village to another. muren and gimmiwald and were the two villiages and they were absolutely incredible. i have really never seen anything like it in my life. they were the opposite of touristy, seeing as we were the only people in sight for miles, other than the locals who we saw maybe 5 of. furthermore, in gimmewald, we met two locals- esther, who owns a b&b, and engleberg, who is a cheese milker. in the summer all the cows come up on the mountains in the alps, eat the grass, and then engleber milks them and makes swiss alpine cheese, which is pretty much the most delicious cheese ever. so anyways, after chilling with engleberg in gimmiwald (a villiage of 300 people), we had to keep going and start hiking back before it got dark. just before dinner time, we took a bunch of trains back and got back to duff's where we spent the night again...on friday, we got up early again and this time took the train to bern, the capital of switzerland. bern was interesting and pretty cool, but was really just an average european capital city. and really when compared to the alps the day before, it didn't really have a chance at comparing. finally, saturday was awesome because we took another day trip, but this time duff was able to come with us because he didn't have to teach...so, we went to luzerne (lucerne for all of you who don't speak german), and luzerne was also amazing. after getting off the train we took a boat across lake luzerne to the base of mt. riggi. then we took an old moutain railway half way up the mountian and hiked the rest of the way along a ridge. we drank hot chocolate at the top overlooking the lake and some of the other alps, and this was pretty much some of the most amazing views i have ever seen (even compared to places in colorado). we were so high above the clouds and you could see the peaks of the mountains poking through the tops of the clouds, that it felt like we were on top of the world. it was what i picture the himilayas to be like. after we hiked back down the ridge, we took a cable car out over the lake, which was absolutely gorgeous, and then we spent the afternoon and evening in the old town part of luzerne. all in all, it was another incredible day in switzerland (something i think tends to be common in that country). that night we just sort of relaxed and then unfortunately we had to fly out around noon on sunday. all in all it was a pretty perfect trip, except for oh well two minor details. first, when on the train to interlakend the first day, i got fined 25 swiss francs for having my feet on the seats and the train guy was a total jerk about it too. swiss rules are crazy! then the other little thing was that on saturday when we were all really enjoying ourselves, hiking along the ridge of mt. riggi admiring the beauty that is lake luzerne, justin decides to push me from behind and thus, we start to wrestle. however, i grabbed him a little to hard and shoved him, consequently ripping a huge gash in the side of his coat, of which i felt uber bad about. at the time it seemed like a minor catastrophe, but we all tried to put it behind us and not let it affect our day, and it all worked out in the end (his mom was able to sew it all back together)....so, in conclusion switzerland was absolutely incredible and i strongly recommend going there anytime all the time. peace.