Fondue=Nirvana

"Any country that has melted cheese as it's main dish must have good people" -Lena

So when I left off, I was in Scotland with Courtney and we had managed to do all of the things that she wanted to do but never got to do while she was in Edinburgh. Then we went to London.

London is way over-rated; it is very big and very crowded. I feel the same way about it as I do about LA, its size allows it to have certain opportunities others do not, but it is SUCH a hassle to take advantage of them! Granted, some of the hassle (forgetting my wallet at the hostel and having to walk all the way back) was of my own making, but most of it was because of the extreme amount of people in the city, and London and the UK in general are expensive.

We did go to the TATE modern art museum that had some interesting stuff in its collection, a special Cy Twombly exhibition, and a collection of photographic portraits. The photos were my favorite because it was done chronologically and Courtney loves Cy Twombly so it all worked out. The next day we went to look at graffiti/street art that was commissioned by the TATE from a few artists from Spain and South America. It was fun because they give you a map with lots of pink dots on it and each corresponds (somewhat inexactly) with a piece of street art so it is like a scavenger hunt. My favorites were old circular light street signs which were repainted and then hung up in random alleys because people almost never think of adding objects to the street instead of just painting on the wall.

After an extensive period of art scavenger hunt/ picnic lunching, we decided to see Westminster abbey and Buckingham palace, which we did briefly, the church was impressive but the palace was sort of boring. Then we went to buy high tea and, to use Courtney’s words, we were thwarted. The first place we went was closed for a private function and the next was out of high tea. Sigh, one day it will work out but fate instead wanted us to drink tea and eat dry chocolate cake while WATCHING three young American girl tourists nibble at their finger sandwiches and waste at least 30% of it.

We needed a pick me up after that so we went and found a movie theater to watch the movie Wanted. Movies are very expensive there and because I didn’t get a student discount, I ended up paying 10 pounds to see a very ridiculous movie with the most hilarious cheesy training sequence ever. When we got out of the movie the finals for the Euro 2008 soccer game were already on and we wandered around trying to find a place we could eat dinner and watch the game. Every bar had a crowd of men outside watching the game through the windows but we finally found a small Italian restaurant playing the game on a projector screen. We had pasta a la Sofia Loren, an anchovy caper pizza (tasty and very, very salty) and wine as we watched our team, Germany, lose to Spain. In a restaurant full of Spain fans. But the food was amazing.

The next day we took the tube to the airport where they changed the destination of the train we were sitting in 3 times because of delays. In the end I had to say goodbye to Courtney in the train because my flight was very soon. (Except it got delayed, but oh well) and then I flew to Switzerland to meet Gaby and Phillip my Swiss friends, and Lena my travel companion/roomie for the next two weeks.

Gaby was my nanny back when I was wee, in around 1995 and she graciously said she would host us in Switzerland. This involved she and her husband, Phillip, who is almost a doppelganger of my dad, driving us everywhere. They showed us a rotating restaurant on top of a mountain, where they filmed the James Bond movie ‘In Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ and the air was so thin we got tired walking around the top of it. Then a cute little town halfway down the mountain with a mouthwatering cheese shop. That night Phillip cooked up fondue which was AMAZING. As Lena put it, any culture that could make an entire meal out of melted cheese has to be good people. I want a fondue set as soon as possible because I could eat fondue at least every two weeks. Phillip was a proponent of a small glass of schnapps to aid the digestion because ‘it is very dangerous to eat only cheese’ it was nice in very small sips but I don’t think I could detect the hint of pear flavor above the heat of the alcohol.

View from the top of the world

People would actually parachute from the top of the mountain. This one small Asian guy asked us (in english oddly enough) if we would hold up the top of his chute for him like a kite. That's him standing on the steep slope. when the time came, he said "Thank you!" yanked the chute into the air, and jumped off the mountain.

Lena and I during out little high altitude hike. Yes that is a snowball, in July. Also we saw a woman hiking this in tight white pants and heels, according to Lena she was Russian. I LOVE people watching.

The next day, Phillip drove us all to Switzerland’s wine country. (And sorry, Phillip, I don’t have all the names of places in front of me because I can’t get out the route map you gave us at the moment, but I will put up place names when I post my picture post once I return home) we rode the train for part of the way; we were in the car, on a train car, going through mountains, it was incredible! And much faster because only the train has a tunnel through the mountain, otherwise you have to go over the top. We ate at a steak restaurant, a delicious lunch with herbed butter for our steaks and it was amazing because other than burgers it had been a long time (ok Paris) since I had eaten beef. We also went to see a glacier which was incredible and huge but i have no really good pictures of it sadly.

View from the train before we go through a mountain. Houses in Switzerland are really pretty!

Lena and I after amazing steaks


The noble 'Mountain Pig' roughly translated from Swiss slang. I don't remember what they are actually called but there was some tourist trap zoo of them for us to see, isn't it cute?

That night we ate at Gaby and Phillip’s neighbor’s house. They had an outdoor barbecue house type thing and we had grilled chicken and sausages and everything was delicious. We couldn’t understand our hosts a lot of the time but Gaby told us that was probably better as our host kept making odd jokes.

The next day Gaby, Lena and I went to Bern for the day while Philip packed up his and Gaby’s stuff to go on their trip to Spain the next day. We had a great time in the city walking around and souvenir shopping as well as going to lunch and eating spatzl and rosti which were both incredible. Gaby and Lena both humored me and we also went to an art museum where there was a retrospective exhibition of a Swiss artist called Ferdinand holder that was pretty interesting. Also in their permanent collection they organized everything by subject matter rather than time period or style, which was interesting because in one room you could see how animals were painted in the 14th century versus the 20th century. I liked it because each painting was not lost in a sea of paintings in the same genre, but in some cases they covered the walls to such an extent that I was overloaded.

Bern was gorgeous, tons of old clocks and fountains everywhere and an extremely blue river.

Bern's crest is of a bear so they have a 'pet' bear in the city but he is very sad looking because his 'habitat' is not very natural. Gaby said that they are building a new home for him, hopefully it is finished soon!

OK, this was one of the weirder/cooler things I saw in Bern in a sports store. It is an elevator that you hop on and off of like an escalator. What happens if you get stuck? Does it reach the top and switch directions? No idea, but it was awesome.

The next day Phillip drove Lena and I to the train station and we left for a day in Luzerne while they went off to drive through Spain. They were incredible to show us such a great time and I hope that someday they will visit me so I can do the same for them!

Anyway, Luzerne. We walked around a lot and did a bit of shopping but since I left the map of the city and guidebook on the area in the locker we put our bags in we didn’t really know a lot about the tourist attractions of the area, which was fine with us.

I had also forgotten to print the actual tickets for our bus ride to Croatia because I had printed the confirmation sheet and thought that was enough. Cue annoying conversation with the head of the bus company. This was unpleasant both because of his attitude/clear dislike of us and also the language barrier. We finally agreed that we didn’t actually need to print tickets and the confirmation sheet would be enough. Fast forward 5-7 hours when we are waiting at the bus parking lot having spent the very last Swiss francs on dinner and we go to the office again to make sure everything is ok. The SAME guy is on shift and this time he says we do, in fact, need tickets, even though he has looked us up on the passenger list and knows we have paid in full. Finally he prints us tickets and we wait with crowds of people in a disorganized parking lot for our bus. (None of them are really labeled very well) We decided that Croatians must run the bus service because the Swiss are MUCH more organized.

Anyway, finally our bus comes and we find out there is a fee to check our bags underneath the bus. We had no money because we had carefully used it all up on a nice dinner so Lena ran off to change a few American dollars while I tried to stall the bus driver. Guess who comes over to speed up the bus leaving and gets angry with me for holding everything up? Yep the same guy from twice before. Thankfully Lena came back and saved me from his wrath, but seriously nowhere on the ticket or website did it say ANYTHING about a bag fee! We got on the bus and there were no open seats together and after asking a few people if they would mind moving (which two of them very grumpily refused) a nice man finally moved and we sat down in the very crowded bus (which was completely full by the way so why the attitude about moving from once aisle seat to another?) and began the 8 hour journey to sunny Croatia.

Tune in next time for my ramblings on travels through Croatia and Hungary and my final journey back to the US. Till then!