Bern/Geneva

Friday morning was such a treat to leave for a weekend trip when it was still light outside! Usually, we schedule trips with the first train out of Riva (somewhere in the 6AM range), but today we got a little extra sleep before the trip. The train ride was around 4 hours and we got to Bern around 2PM. It was really terrible out, raining and cold, and to top it off, apparently Bern is a week behind in their Carnival so it was the weekend we were there! It is like we cannot escape it, Carnival is following me. Despite the weather, I really liked Bern! It’s the capital of Switzerland so there are a lot of political buildings around but also some really neat sites. But it still maintains the feel of a quaint German town, it is awfully cute.

We found our hostel to put our stuff away and headed to the Einstein Museum, a huge site in Bern since it was here that Einstein lived and worked while developing his Theory of Relativity. The museum was interesting, but very hard to follow. There was almost too much information in it and I now know more about Albert Einstein that I ever wanted to, but it is a must see site in Bern. Afterwards we trecked through the rain to the cathedral (which was closed) and then to the one thing I was really excited about seeing, the bears!! The bear is the city symbol of Bern and there is a bear pit near the river running beside the city that 4 live. They have a pretty sweet set up, tons of space and things to play with. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that bears don’t like the rain…they were all inside :-( The picture above is the only bear I saw that day.

After the disappointing bear pit we headed back to the hostel to get ready before dinner. Before going on this trip, we had heard rumors about how expensive it would be. Apparently, not only is Switzerland one of the richest countries in the world, Bern and Geneva are the two most expensive places in Switzerland. This wasn’t that noticeable until we needed to eat. We found a pizza place that had pizzas starting at 15 (the cheapest we found) and decided to suck it up and pay. This wouldn’t have been that bad except the pizzas were personal pan sizes! It took us all only few minutes to eat them and then begrudgingly pay the check. As soon as we left, we found a grocery store on the way back and stopped in for our actual dinner haha That night we walked around the streets of Carnival but did not partake, I was tiered and frankly uninterested in it, although I did get some great Halloween costume ideas :-)

Saturday we took an early train from Bern to Geneva and got in around 1PM. We found our hostel easily, dropped our bags off and started exploring. Lake Geneva was absolutely gorgeous! It has the Jet d’Eau which is a huge geyser type thing that shoots up in the middle and there are boat tours that you can take around the area. We walked around, found some lunch, then headed up to see the United Nations building. You couldn’t go inside (we are guessing it was closed), but I got the general idea of it. We then went to the American Red Cross Museum, which was started in Geneva, Switzerland. It was a really great museum (much better than the Einstein one) and I learned a lot about the start and the current work of the Red Cross. Our original plan was to go to Cern, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory that was written about in Dan Brown’s Angles and Demons, which is supposed to be nerdy but a really cool experience. Unfortunately, the tours are booked up until mid-march so I didn’t get a chance to check it out. So after the Red Cross Museum, we headed back to the hostel for a quick nap before going to dinner and then out.
Since I have the rail pass that allows me to use any trains on a day I specify, I wasn’t limited to a specific train to take back on Sunday. Our group of 8 split up on Sunday as some went home fairly early and mine walked around Geneva a bit more. We visited the St. Pierre Cathedral, which was in service, making it even better since we could hear the music from outside. My original plan was to go to the contemporary arts museum nearby but we found a really awesome market by the water where we spent a lot of time walking through. After that, I decided against another museum and headed home around 2, getting us back into Riva around 7.

This week is a short one for us since half the students (the theater kids) are going on a field trip Wednesday night. Since I have a 4 day weekend, my roommate Kate and I have planned a trip to PARIS!

And the Carnival Continues...

After getting a lot of sleep Sunday night, I was ready for another night of Carnival in Bellinzona. The tickets we bought (and used on Thursday night) were valid until the last night, Tuesday. The trip was actually quite impromptu since most everyone was worn out from the weekend, but a second wind blew through the classroom and somehow we scrounged together a group of about 15 kids wanting to go. Since costumes were an afterthought, we threw on anything sport team or American related and made that our theme haha Somehow I wound up wearing a US soccer shirt and a USA bandana (and received some dirty looks throughout the night). Monday night wasn’t nearly as crowded as Thursday but it was still a ton of fun.

On Tuesday, there were bigger things going on in Europe than Carnival…the AC Milan v. Manchester United soccer game. All along I had planned on just going to Milan and watching the game in a bar, since the cheapest tickets in a terrible section ran at about $175. But, the group I was going with were dragging their feet on getting there early and with the train schedule, it didn’t make sense for me to go there and have to leave on the last train midway through the first half. So, I decided to stay home, watch the game around here and save some money – UNFORTUNATE because the 5 that went ended up scalping tickets for only 50 Euro and getting into the game…yea, really kicking myself on that decision. But, I ended up going to Lugano and met the VT kids there to watch it. The rest of the week was fairly uneventful as I tried to rest up for a weekend in Bern/Geneva.

Carnival: Part 2

Friday we had an early train trip out of Riva…6:45. So when I went to bed around 4, my 6:00 alarm was not pleasant. Surprisingly, our whole group made it to the train station on time! There were 8 of us that went on the trip, 5 girls and 3 boys. We had a connection train in Lugano (about 15 min away) and then got on our train to Basel, Switzerland. That leg of the trip took about 4 hours and I may have slept 2 hours…and that is probably an overestimation. We switched in Basel and headed towards Cologne, another 4 hour trip…quite a LONG TRIP if you can tell. But, the early morning paid off when we got into Cologne around 3:30 and had time to look around before heading to our hostel.

The first thing you see when you get out of the train is The Dom, a HUGE cathedral in the center of Cologne. It is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites and is one of the best known architectural sites in all of Germany. I don’t think the pictures do it justice, the inside is awesome, the windows are floor to ceiling stained glass and I love the gothic/medieval feel it has. After checking that out, we grabbed an early dinner at a little Kebob store, which are all over the place there then went to the hostel to shower and get ready. Our reservations were such that there were 4 in one room, 2 in another and 1 all alone (yea, that’s only 7 rooms…one guy slept on the floor since we booked the last 7 rooms that hostel had for Friday). My friend Lindsay and I were in a 4 person room but with two other girls they put with us. It could have been weird but they were not even there when we arrived and I only saw them for a few minutes Sat morning. We showered and put on our matching leggings and colorful tops (what our costumes consisted of) and met everyone at our hostel’s happy hour. We hung out there and left to go check out Cologne around 9pm.

Just walking through the city was so neat. The costumes were great and the coolest thing was that everyone was dressed up, no matter the age. We were headed to a bar that we were told would have a huge party that night and stopped along the way to warm up – it was snowing all weekend – and grab drinks. The band playing at the bar was a Reggae band which was really fun. We didn’t stay there too long though because it seemed like something we could go to in the States. Our solution was to grab a cab and tell them to take us to a place that is a lot of fun…he did not disappoint.

We pulled up to a street that was blocked off and each side had clubs blaring techno and people everywhere. It was called The University since it was near the college, making it full of kids our age. It is what I would expect Bourbon Street to look like. Since there are no cover charges anywhere, we popped in and out of places whenever we felt like it. Our group got split up 4 and 4 as my group stayed at one bar longer than the others but we all made it back to the hostel (pretty late).

NOW, let me preface this story with what our original plans were. Only 4 of us wanted to stay in Cologne for both nights (Me, Lindsay, Corey and Mike) and the other 4 made plans to leave Sat and go to Heidelberg, Germany for Saturday some of Sunday. My group booked the hostel for only Friday night thinking that we would just sleep in on Saturday morning and put our stuff in lockers at the train station. Since clubs in Europe (especially during Carnival) stay open until at least 7 am, we planned to stay out all night and catch our 6:50 train on Sunday. This all went downhill when we found out the hard way that this hostel had a strict 9:30 check out policy. I woke up at 9:15 to a harsh looking maid yelling at me in German to get out of the room. We were literally kicked out. You should have seen us in the lobby, we were quite haggard. We decided to try our luck and see if there was ANY way we could book another night and luckily, they had a room of 4 we could have. The purchase of another night there was the best $25 spent all weekend. We went back to sleep until around 1 when we left to check out some more sites around Cologne and get ready for the night.

We showered and me and Lindsay put on our same costumes…yea, I felt/smelled terrible. We walked around the city for a bit getting the feel of things but a lot of things were closed for the festivities. I really wanted to go to a contemporary art museum there that supposedly has one of the best Picasso collections, but that too was closed. For dinner we found a HardRock Café, about as American as it gets and I had a hard time justifying going, but those chicken fingers were worth every penny! We met a group of American guys who were stationed in Germany and they had been there for a few days and knew where we should go. After dinner, our now expanded group went to a brewery, Fruh.

It was soooo cool! It was about 3 floors with tons of rooms and German music. There were also guys that would walk around with small glasses of the bar’s brewed beer (the only thing they served there). They were cheap and apparently is was ok to just smash the glasses when you were done. A bit dangerous but I took part :-) That stayed open only until midnight since it had been hopping all day long, so we headed back to the street we were at the night before. It was about 3 when we started thanking our lucky stars that we got a room for the night. Exhausted, we headed home for a short nap until our early morning train. Since we were so tiered, we slept most of the trip, making it go by really fast. We got back to Riva around 3pm and I immediately threw my clothes in the wash (since we decided Germany has a collective smell of cigarettes and meat) and took a shower. Not the most educational of trips, but I definitely got the feel of Carnival and had a great time! (This is not the end of the Carnival posts either; there are still 2 more nights of Belinzona we paid for!!)

Carnival: Part 1

This Thursday started the celebration of Carnival in all of Europe. It is the Thursday-Tuesday before Lent begins and entails tons of parties and festivals each day/night. It is what Mardi Gras is modeled after but from what I saw, much more classy! On Thursday we kicked it off in Riva by checking out a parade in the street of all the kids from the local elementary school. Each class was dressed as a different insect (like ladybugs, caterpillars, bumblebees), all super cute! They had tents for food and drinks lining the streets and I think the whole little town of Riva was there. We listened to the band for a little bit until a huge group of us headed to catch the train to Belinzona at 8:45.

It was a 45 min train ride there but the train was a party in itself! I had bought a mask in Venice for the weekend but didn't realize that Carnival is more like our Halloween (except they wear way cooler/less revealing costumes haha). It was sprinkling that night so I opted out of wearing my mask, as to not mess it up, and just wore bright colors. To state the obvious, our whole group looked a bit out of place because we were no where near as dressed up as everyone else on the train. Regardless, it was really cool to see the costumes and the ride was a blast with people drinking and dancing through the isles, gearing up for the night.

The first picture shows Belinzona during the day since it gives a better idea of how it was set up. Down that road there was a gate where people checked your ticket - the tickets were $25 and count for train tickets and admission all 6 nights. Once through the gate, there were tons of vendors, bands playing and huge white party tents. We spent the night going from one tent to another dancing and having an awesome time. It was so cool! There were SO many people there. I caught the 2:30 train and a group of us headed back since we had an early trip Friday morning for Cologne, Germany...continuing my Carnival celebration! (See next post)

Meat Mountain/Snowboarding

Well, for a planned “relaxing weekend,” I feel far from relaxed this Monday! I woke up Friday to my first Switzerland snow and it was absolutely beautiful around here. It snowed all day long and we went sledding mid-afternoon but all in all I hung around the villa/apartment most of the day. After dinner a lot of us met at my apartment and then headed to a little place named ‘Bar Ticino’ for the night…nothing too exciting.

Saturday we slept in (for the first time since I have been here) and it was so nice! I woke up around 11 and we all started to prepare for our hike. Just to be clear, this was not approached as a typical hike. It entailed a 20 min steep incline with heavy, drink-filled backpack until we got to a park that has been designated by past Riva semesters as “Meat Mountain.” About 12 of us headed up after lunch and set up camp in the snow-covered park. There were all sorts of tables to play beer pong and other various games and the best part was the zip-line from one section of the area to the other (both pictured above). We stayed on Meat Mountain until around 4 and then headed back towards the villa for dinner. After drinking all day and eating a big dinner I was pooped and ready to hit the sack around 10, which worked out well because I had an early day planned on Sunday.

Sunday morning 6 of us woke up at 6:50 to get dressed and ready for our day of snowboarding. We took the 7:15 train from Riva to Belinzona and then a bus from Belinzona to San Bernardino, the ski resort. It took a little over an hour and a half to get there and the train ticket (inclusive of our lift ticket for the day) was only $46.00! We were dropped off close to a sports store where we got our rentals (only $40), 3 of us snowboarded and the other 3 skied. After we were fitted, we wandered around the little town trying to find ski lodge which was pretty difficult due to the serious serious language barrier going on. Everyone spoke German and only a little bit of Italian so with our broken Italian, it was tough to figure out directions. We finally found it, got our lift tickets and stared petrified at the 10 min gondola ride we had to take to the ACTUAL ski resort on the side of the mountain. It was definitely a great view on the way up but a bit unnerving. We got out of the gondola and found our way to the ‘bambino’ slopes, which was only about a 25 yard slope with a small incline and a carrot lift at the bottom. I don’t know how it works at big ski places in the US, but I have never once seen these terrifying carrot lifts. We waited in line to head back up the slope and proceeded to make absolute fools of ourselves on this thing. It was just a rotating line with prongs every couple of feet that you grabbed on to and stood on your board as it pulled you up the hill. Of course, we were very bad at figuring this out. At one point I was face down with only one glove since my other got caught in one of the prongs and taken away up the mountain. They had to stop the machine while I wobbled up to my glove and tried to hold on the rest of the way…pretty embarrassing.

We stayed on the little kid slope for only two runs to try and get our bearings and then figured we were ready for the blue level slopes…the next in difficulty the resort had. We jumped on the one actual chair lift in the park and headed over a hill, where we thought we would find the end of the lift. WRONG. We seriously went to the top of a mountain. I am not kidding people, we were at the peaks! It took 15 minutes to get to the top on the lift. At the top, the 4 of us that went got off and had a collective panic attack. The wind was whipping so hard at that altitude we could barely even hear each other talk. After convincing ourselves we were either dying at the top of the mountain or dying on the way down, we decided to charge. It was terrifying and probably the equivalent of a black diamond or higher in the states. We were super excited when we got down and much more confident in our ability to conquer the rest of the hills so we headed up a few more times and even tried a few others. I am not the best snowboarder and have not gone for about 3 years now, so it goes without saying that I fell A LOT, making me super sore today (no broken bones though!!). It was absolutely worth it though, not too many people get to say they have boarded the Swiss Alps!

Thursday Update

So this weekend, supposedly my relaxing weekend, started off with a late night. On Thursdays we only have class until noon so after lunch a group of us went into Lugano to shop a bit :-) A pair of boots and a jacket later, I met up with a big group to eat at a Mexican restaurant since we have all been craving it since we got here. It was soooo expensive! like 20 bucks for a burrito, I opted for the cheapest thing on the menu, chips and guacamole ($7). But the margaritas were good and as you can see, they give you sombreros! After that we went to a Karaoke bar called Peter Pan (they have frescoes of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell all over the walls hahaha really funny) All the people from the Lugano section of the VT program met up with us there and it was really fun. Unfortunately, I didn't get any singing in last night, the line was too long! We took the last train back at 11:30 and headed to our local hang out Mini Bar which was a lot of fun with a live band and a lot of people.When I woke up this morning it was snowing! Its snowing a ton but apparently not as much as the East Coast!! This may put a damper on our plans to go hiking tomorrow afternoon but it will be great for my snowboarding trip on Sunday!!

Venice Trip! Friday & Saturday

So, I made it back from Venice tiered and frozen but it was SO worth it! Friday was an early start for all of us. We left the villa in a bus at 6am so in order to get breakfast in, I was up around 5:30. We rode until we got to Sirimione, a little town on the way, in order to see the Grotte di Catullo. It is a huge area of Roman ruins and since one of our classes is about the Romans, it was made one of our stops. Needless to say a Roman ruin for an hour at 8:30 in the morning was not something we would willing choose. But soon enough we were back on the bus and on our way to Verona. I LOVED Verona! It was such a cool city. We saw a couple more Roman things (Can you tell this was a class trip??? Haha) but also went to see Juliet’s house from Romeo & Juliet! You can see the balcony and there is a statue of her underneath and you rub the right breast to have a life filled with love, so of course all of us did it :-) The coolest thing was in order to get to the house you had to walk through an alleyway that was covered in love letters from all over the world. People from everywhere write notes of current or lost loves and place them in the alley. It was really cool being able to read them – well the ones in English at least. After that we grabbed lunch and got back on the bus to make it to our final destination Venice.

By the time we got there it was getting dark so we couldn’t see too much of the city. We walked to our hotel that was conventently located right off of Saint Mark’s Square! It was a perfect location! We had dinner provided from the hotel that night and after dinner we all got together to check out the Venice nightlife. It didn’t take long for us to realize that there isn’t much of it haha apparently most people do not live on the actual island of Venice due to high costs so that means there isn’t much need for a “nightlife” especially during the off season. We found one bar and were told about a dance club which we misunderstood directions to. So, in the treck to find it, our group got split up and about 7 of us gave up and ended up at an empty bar for the night. It was actually a lot of fun though since it was only us…we started our own dance party :-) Once we left it had started to snow. It was really cold but absolutely beautiful to see everything covered in snow!

On Saturday we got up early and had breakfast before our entire group went to a few designated sites that pertain to our classes (both Roman and Venitian). After about an hour or so we were allowed to explore on our own which was really nice. A group of us went to the Gallerie dell’Accademia which is full of 18th century Renaissance art. It was neat to see but definitely not one of my favorite things we did during the day. Afterwards everyone wanted to grab some lunch but I instead opted to go to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum of Contemporary Art by myself. I splurged and got the recorder that tells you about each piece of art if you plug in the designated number, which was so worth it since I got to learn a little about each painting. That hour and a half was by far my favorite part of the trip! I got to see paintings by Picasso and my favorite (as all of you who have graduated for VT know), Jackson Pollock!

After I left the museum, I met Kate at the clock tower and we went to the top to see an amazing aerial view of all of Venice. It wasn’t as great as it could have been because it was pretty foggy but it gave us a good idea of what the city looked like. After that we went to the Doge’s Palace which was so cool! It is HUGE and is somewhat like how it would be to visit the White House except it included their version of the senate, the apartment of the Doge and the prisons! It was pretty unnerving being down there and walking the “Bridge of Sighs,” the bridge from the prison to the square where prisoners were executed. After that we got outside and it was sunny! We rushed over the clock tower and asked the guy collecting money if we could please go back up and he let us, so we got some good pictures (although it was still kind of foggy). From there, we checked out the Basilica which is just ridiculous. Not only is it gaudy from the outside, but the entire interior ceiling is covered with gold mosaic. It is pretty amazing to see, but it does seem like they just kept adding more and more stuff making it a bit over the top.

We took a break from sightseeing after visiting the main destinations throughout Venice and got to the good stuff…shopping! Venice is known for its blown glass so the stuff you could get was really neat. I got a few blown glass wine toppers and a bracelet AND everyone got masks for Carnivale! They are sold everywhere in Venice (since Venice has a HUGE Carnival). Everyone got one since most of us will be going to the one in Belinzona, mine is black and gold with a massive feather on the side. I am super excited to wear it! After shopping, a group of about 10 of us met at the hotel to get dinner. We ate along the Grand Canal and I had the best meal I have had here! (Spaghetti with Pesto-my fav) We went back to the hotel after to meet up with some other people and went to a Reggae bar that was close to our hotel – yeah, weird there would be a Reggae bar in Venice but the music was good! Unfortunately, while there people started getting sleepy and by 11:30 most people decided they wanted to go to bed. And then there were 5….

The 5 of us we determined to find something fun to do and by using Blackberrys to look up 'Venice Nightlife' we decided to find a place called Club Piccolo. It was about a 15 min walk to get to the section of the city it was in and somehow we stumbled upon a small sign that said Club Piccolo with a doorbell beneath it. We rang it and waited for about 30 seconds (while -we found out later- the owners inside were looking at us through a camera to see if they wanted to let us in haha). That exclusivity paired with the loud, American music pounding from the inside made us think that the 10 Euro + 1 Drink cover charge was worth it. We were wrong. Once we got inside there were about 5 people on the dance floor…and that’s it. Pretty funny to say the least! Luckily, it started to pick up around 1am and it ended up being so much fun! We were out until around 3:30 and then headed home in the snow/sleet. It was a late night.

We left early the next morning and stopped in Vincenza to see a few more site pertinent to our classes and got home around 5:00 Sunday night. Minus the boring school part, I had a really great time! No matter how terrible the weather is, Venice is absolutely amazing. This week should be pretty normal and I am planning on staying around Riva this weekend to take a little breather from crazy traveling but I may do a day trip to go snowboarding. I’ll make sure to update and let everyone know!! Love Love