Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Switzerland: Words Cannot Describe The Beauty God Creates

Good evening my friends,



One of things that changes in every country that I did not expect are these keyboards. Every country we have gone to the keys have been different. It is very interesting. I really just wanted to add that because on the z key and the y key on the keyboard are switched and it is really messing me up. Lol.



Ok well I am sorry it has taken me so long to write, we were traveling all day today. We left Nice, France around 9pm last night and did not arrive in Switzerland until about 11am, but did not arrive at our hostel until about 7:30pm. So to say the least, it has been a long day. It has been a good dy, full of a lot of unexpected events but it has been tiring. I kinda knew before I went on this trip that there would be a lot of days with little food and sleep. It is a lot of fun and I am glad our group gets along so well or else this would not be as fun. We all get kinda crazy toward the wee hours of the morning. Everytime I am woken up to get off a train or move to another area, I am always so confused. We usually all walk around like zombies for awhile. I am glad there is a good group of us because we are able to sleep in shifts and look out for one another. We have really been blessed because we have not come across any super sketchy situations or any pit-pocketing. Keep praying. :)



Last night we slept in trains and dozed while waiting for other trains to arrive. It was not too horrible because I have taken a red-eye flight before and it was pretty much the same situation... little sleep and a lot of moving around. It was a very interesting experience. We have met so many people on this trip, we met a guy during this experience named Jais ( prounced yice rhymes with rice ). He was also backpacking around, and came to chat for awhile. He was headed to Denmark and he was originally from Minnesota. He was a very artsy person and had a lot of interesting story. I do not know how people do this whole backpacking adventure on their own, I could and never would do that.

For food in France, we ate baguettes and cheese everyday. They were pretty amazing, but I am definently getting tired of Brie. We also picked up fruit and I bought this massive Nestle Ice Tea at the grocery store for cheaper than the little one was at small markets. I am also very tired of cookies because in Italy I bought a very large bag of cookies because they were cheap and I still have them... they are good, but I am tired of eating cookies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Tonight we had our first real meal in quite awhile. Mmmmm it was delicioso (I do not know where the explamation mark is... maybe they do not use those in Switzerland, I will just have to write it in whenever I get really excited).

Ok so the first place in Switzerland we went to was Geneive. We had a 3 hour stop before our next train was to come and so we went to explore the sights. We were all very tired, but wanted to see the United Nations building and the Red Cross building.

!!!!!! I FOUND THE EXPLAMATION MARK!!!!!!!!

It was cool to be in such a historical place where so much has happened, I think I would have appreciated it more if I payed more attention in history class and was not so tired. We did not actually go inside the UN building because it was like 10 dollars for a tour and we all decided against it. We walked into the Red Cross building, but that museum was closed because of course it is closed on Tuesdays and who knew we would go on a Tuesday. Lol. Oh well it was nice just to be able to be in the same area. The rest of Geneive was extremely disappointing. We were so excited when we were able to leave Geneive, that was our favorite part of Geneive. Everything was extremely overpriced and there was not much to do in our short stay there. We ate at McDonalds because that was the cheapest we could find and those small little cheeseburgers that are like 39¢ in the US were 2.50 here. It was insane. To buy a hamburger meal it was about 11.50 Swiss Francs which is about the same as US dollars! Then we went to a chocolate shop because we really really wanted to chocolate, its Switzerland you know, and all of the chocolate was extremely pricey. I found a 50% off section ( you know me, always looking for those sales), but they were still too much for me to spend. Geneive was just really disappointing because the people were not very nice to us and we spent an entire hour of our 3 hours in Geneive just trying to figure out transportation. Then everything was so expensive that we ended up standing by a bridge watching swans and other random birds fly around because we could not afford anything else. It was funny, but I am glad we did not stay there for a long period of time. Three hours was more than enough time.

Our train ride toward Interlaken was gorgeous! It is everything you imagine Switzerland to be and more! On either side of the train there were round grassy hills will little quaint villages placed so strategically that they almost looked fake. Everything was so perfect that it seemed like it came straight from Heidi ( the children's story). Behind the green hills were the sharp pointy Alps that were frosted with snow just on the tips. Covering the hills were trees everywhere! It reminded me of Vermont and Maine, if you have ever been there you will know exactly what I am talking about. There were little brown cows spotting the hills as well and wild flowers adding color to the vast amount of green. There were small little paths appearing almost from nowhere leading to someone's secret place I am sure. The houses were few and far between with a few dense villages here and there. As we got closer to Interlaken and moved toward Grindelwald ( that is where our hostel is), we followed a beautiful rushing river with trickling waterfalls. It simply added to all of the perfect beauty. This place is so breath taking, it is hard to believe that it is all real. I am just afraid that I am going to wake up and everything is going to be gone. However I have fallen asleep and every time I wake up, this dream continues on.

When our train stopped in Grindelwald, we ended up in this little mountain town surrounded by the Alps. The bed and breakfast that we are staying at is right up against the Alps, we can see the beautiful mountains from our window. This place is so precious. The room we are staying in is really nice, it looks like a large dorm room and youth house type place. There is room for eight people, but there is only the five of us in there right now. It is so cute, the beds are little iron beds like in Annie. There are three bunk beds and two singles. There is also a large couch with a coffee table and a table with a bunch of chairs. There are also lockers and a place to hang clothes. It is probably the nicest hostel we have stayed at ( besides the one the girls and I stayed at in Gatwick, England). We ate dinner here and I had Goulash soup... it was really good! I kept saying that all I wanted was meat and potatoes because I have noto had that in so long and so I ordered that soup not really knowing what it was and it turned out to be meat and potatoe soup! Isn't that great? Hehe. It was a very filling meal. Tomorrow we are planning on going to the grocery store to get food because all the resturants charge on average about 20 dollars a meal.
We really want to do some type of extreme sport tomorrow because I guess that is what Switzerland is known for, but we do not know yet what we will be doing. We were going to do Water Rafting, but it is over 100 dollars so we may not do that, but kayaking is only like 25 dollars and I think that would be really cool but we will see... we have all day tomorrow, our train for Germany does not leave until around 10pm I think or maybe 8.

I love you all so much and I wish I could write more. I think I need to back track on the missing events between this blog and the previous one so I will check on that. However for now this is all I can say, I am exhausted and I need to sleep. There is so much to say, but I hope this gives you all a little glimpse of my life. Thanks for reading!

Love alway, Danni

1 comment:

  1. Hello Danny,
    I haven't read your posts yet but have fun in Europe.
    Uncle Willy

    ReplyDelete