Climbing every mountain in Lucerne, Switzerland

What I thought would be a tiny town tucked into the Swiss Alps was instead a bustling city on the edge of a massive, pristine lake. But oh, what a view to wake up to every morning!

Mt. Pilatus in the distance:


The city itself was fun, with typical Swiss goodies like cheese and chocolate around every corner. The architecture was wonderful too---there was a great medieval section of town with towers that we climbed up to get a better view of the city. Most of the buildings also had beautiful paintings on them. My favorite landmarks, though, were the wooden bridges dating from the fourteenth century, the Kapellbrucke and the Spreuerbrucke (with a creepy death theme).



Our first day there we walked around part of the lake, and even dipped our feet in. The sun was shining, it was hot out, and the breeze from the water made it feel like summer. Being around water makes me happy, for some reason. And did I mention the Alps in the background? ;)

It was so surreal to actually see them. I'd grown up on movies like the Sound of Music (ok, so that's the Austrian Alps, but same range!) The best part was going up them by cable car the second day. It was incredible how different the weather was up there. Down in town it was summer; on the top of Mount Pilatus it was freezing cold winter, with many of the trails covered by snow! The cable car journey took us up three legs, passing over ski trails and forests of evergreens. As we ascended higher and higher, the mist clouded our view and at one point we couldn't see anything!



When we reached the top, though, we got the most spectacular view of the rest of the Alps. My freshman Walden class randomly came to mind: experiencing the sublime in nature lifts up our souls with both terror and wonder. Mt. Pilatus was the very definition of sublime: "Of things in nature and art: Affecting the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; calculated to inspire awe, deep reverence, or lofty emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur." Thanks, OED. I suppose that's as good as a description as any for the view that left me speechless. The air itself made me heady: it was so fresh and pure, the oxygen like a drug. I would have happily lived up there if I could.





We were even treated to a performance on the alphorn, a traditional Swiss instrument (it sounded like a muted trumpet). My favorite trail up there was the Dragon Path, so named because according to legend dragons once lived there. Another legend is how Mt. Pilatus got its name. Apparently Pontius Pilate is buried somewhere up there...maybe the dragons got him.

But of course, as with all high places, we had to come down. Once we got back into town, we looked up at the peak and it seemed unreal that we had ever actually been up there. And that's how I remember it now: the highest to Heaven I've ever been, but even though we didn't want to, we had to leave Lucerne that afternoon. We had a train to catch.

Freiburg and Triberg, Germany: The Black Forest

I had wanted to visit Germany's Black Forest ever since I heard the Grimm Brother's fairy tales as a kid. And I wasn't disappointed! It was Germany at its most stereotypical (lederhosen, etc.) and yet most charming. We were in the fairy tale!

We made the city of Freiburg our home base, as the "gateway" to the forest. This was the first of many misjudgments I made on this trip about the size of the places we were going to visit. In my mind I had conceived of Freiburg as a small town, when really it was a small city! It was a unique one, though, in that it had maintained some of its medieval traditions. Walking around the city I noticed that there were frescoes painted on the sidewalk in front of shops: these pictures actually represented what the shop sold. For example, a shoe store had a picture of a shoe out front. Another cool feature of the city were its crystal-clean open gutters (or "mini canals," as I call them) that ran down the streets of the city. As my guide book cheesily points out, they're literal "tourist traps"! Ha ha. They were holdovers from the Middle Ages when they were used for transport, water for animals, preventing fires, and cooling down the city.



Freiburg has maintained its medieval past in its Munster (German for minster) as well. It's a great Gothic cathedral, unique in that the people of Freiburg themselves owned it and not the Church. Its amazing tower also survived bombing raids during World War II. Freiburg also had awesome wall murals showing seems from Church and German history on many of their historic buildings.



We got there bright and early at 6 AM after taking the overnight train from Amsterdam. After getting virtually no sleep in the "reclining seats", we decided the best thing to do until the hostel let us in was to take a hike up a massive hill! So we did, and we got great views of the city and forest in the distance. We even climbed a scenic viewpoint tower at the top, which was difficult for me, given my fear of heights!

The next day we went deeper into the forest by taking the train to the little town of Triberg. Fun fact: Freiburg is pronounced "Fry-burg" and Triburg is pronounced "Tree-burg". German is hard. ;)

Triberg is famous for its dueling cuckoo clocks; two of them claim to be the biggest in the world. Even though one is clearly bigger by measurement...anyways, we hiked out to the biggest biggest cuckoo clock in the world and arrived just in time to see the bird pop out! Perfect timing!



Another biggest: we saw (and climbed up) Germany's largest waterfall. Now, it was no Niagara Falls by any means, but it was still cool. At one point were we able to get close enough to get sprayed by the mist, which was refreshing on a hot day! We hiked a few trails around the waterfall, and the Black Forest was dense and dark, as advertised. But no trails of bread crumbs leading to a witch's house, unfortunately.





This was also my first taste of authentic German cuisine, which I loved--up to a point. Wurst and schnitzel is so hearty that I had to take a break from it after a few days! We also tried a Radler and Black Forest cake (yum). And I confirmed that I still do not like sauerkraut.

Amsterdam. Enough said?

Our next stop was Amsterdam, where we saw many canals, Dutch artwork at the Rijksmusuem, the Anne Frank Huis, and...lots and lots of "coffee shops". Oddly enough, no real coffee houses though. And no, we didn't do anything. Though I think we might have been affected by secondhand pot smoke, because half way through the day we started to feel lethargic and dazed.



But that might have been because we walked a lot the day before trying to find our "hostel", which actually turned out to be a campground on the outskirts of the city! But it worked out. Our A-frame was nice and snug, and it was fun camping for a change. We hit a warm spell around this time, too, so the weather was perfect. We evens saw some shaggy cows in the woods around the campground!





Like Bruges, Amsterdam had a carnival, with the highest swings ride that I've ever seen! And lots of good fair food.

The museum was interesting, and I liked their Rembrandts and Vermeers. But it was a bit of a rip off because the museum was undergoing reconstruction so most of it was closed off. We only saw a handful of rooms containing the famous stuff. And yet they still charged us a full price ticket, without mentioning the closures until we got inside! Bad form...



The Anne Frank Huis was an interesting place to see, and busy; we stood in line for about an hour to get in. As sad as it was, I felt it was someplace that I had to see. They had preserved Anne's room exactly as she had left it, with cut out pictures on the wall of movie stars and actors. On the wall of her parent's room were marks showing the children's heights as they grew. Finally, after the tour of the house there were exhibits about making sure that horrors like the Holocaust can never happen again.



After that, we did more sightseeing both around what I consider the "nice" and arty part of town, and the seedy part of town. We paid an obligatory visit to the Red Light district, but it was during the day and a bit of let-down after all of the stories I had heard about how shocking it was supposed to be. The coffee houses were more annoying than anything, to be honest. It was a rude awakening going from a place like Bruges to a metropolitan jungle like Amsterdam. On the upside, we found a couple awesome food places: Walk to Wok for cheap and yet freshly made right in front of you Asian takeout and a smoothie place. Amsterdam was also comforting because everyone spoke English--it really is less stressful when you have some way to communicate!

Eurotrip first stop: Bruges, Belgium

Our last trip during the month-long "Spring Break" between spring and summer terms started off in Belgium. Once again I fell asleep on the Eurostar, but when I woke up I immediately knew we weren't in England anymore. The landscape and houses looked so different! Bruges was a great place to see some traditional Flemish architecture. It's such a "medieval" city, with great canals. The churches were also quite different in style to ones I'd seen before. I loved every minute of the short time we spent there, it was such a nice place to be.







And of course, I have to mention the food...delicious! Our first night there I had a warm stew with leeks, carrots, potatoes, and chicken. It made up for all of the junk food I ate the next day! Bruges is known for its chocolate, so we basically went around all day eating pralines (which are like bonbons). Chocolate stores are Bruges' Starbucks; they're on every corner. They're also known for Belgian waffles (surprisingly enough!) and French fries smothered in mayonnaise. Yes, mayo. I decided to be a local and tried some. It was...not as bad as you'd think. The mayo tasted a bit different than American mayo, which was a good thing! But they put way too much on, I started to feel sick by the end of it! I got the fries at a carnival in the town square. We saw the Low Countries at just the right time for carnivals, as you'll see in my next post.



Oh, and I saw an old-fashioned working windmill by the river!

London with Cliff

A completely random note: Last night I had a dream that I was in Wegmans. It looks like Tesco's inferiority has finally gotten to me! It's not like Wegmans is the number1 supermarket in the United States or anything like that!

Anyways, I had a great time with Cliff when he came to visit a few weeks ago! Seeing his reaction to London made me laugh, but it also reminded me of my first time seeing the city. This time around I was like, "Big Ben? Whatever..." but re-reading my first blog entry on London I can see that I was as excited as he was! And there's so much to do that I still saw so many things that I hadn't before. Also, after having navigated the city on my own (sometimes with unintentionally amusing results, as Cliff wrote about in his blog), I now feel much more confident that I actually know the city. Not to mention that the weather was much better! The long, wet, and gray English winter turned into a gorgeous, green English spring. Our hostel was right next to Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, so we in the right place for springtime flowers. Of course, I think Cliff was more interested in the posh cars... ;) Our hostel was really nice as well, the Astor chain does a good job.



Our first day was spent sightseeing. The highlight for me was the Palm Sunday service in Westminster Abbey. Not only was it an impressive church (we saw several tombs of famous kings) but the High Church Anglican service was extraordinary. They even had soloists and a full choir sing the Gospel reading!



The next day we got out of the city and went to see Windsor Castle, the oldest occupied castle in the world. Sadly the Queen was not there (or maybe happily, since had she been there we wouldn't have been allowed in) but we did see magnificent state rooms that rivaled Versailles in opulence. They also had Queen Mary's doll house, which is far from a child's toy. It was huge, and even had working electricity and running water! The town of Windsor itself is lovely and quaint, right next to the Thames. Eton College is also right down the road from the castle.



We also saw lots of London's museums. Even though I'd already been there a couple of times by that point, you can't miss the British museum so I took Cliff there and even saw a couple of new things myself! We also caught the Natural History Museum, which was cool--dinosaur bones and giant whales hanging from the ceiling and all that. A creepy little museum Cliff wanted to see was the Hunterian Museum, which was really cool. Hunter was an eighteenth century surgeon who liked to collect specimens and preserve them in jars. Some of them looked like aliens! Cool!

Finally, the last day we saw Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, which looked much nicer this time with all the flowers blooming then the desolate place it was in the winter. Some of the gems we found were the Peter Pan statue and Princess Diana's Memorial Fountain. Her monument wasn't what I expected; it was modern and simple, but still really nice.





I can't wait to go and return the favor by visiting Cliff in Sweden in a few weeks! Watch out, Scandinavia... ;)

Naples, Sorrento, and Pompeii

Our last stop in Italy was the Amalfi Coast. It was so much warmer here compared to Venice, and much crazier. I'm glad we started the trip in peaceful Venice and ended in "real Italy" Naples.

Oh, Naples. I've been SO looking forward to this post. What can I say about Naples, truly the nuttiest city I've ever been to in my life?? Don't get me wrong, I loved it--and feared for my life. I didn't think a city that did not have any traffic laws could function in the world. I was wrong. We took a taxi ride to the airport---the Superman ride at Six Flags is a little less frightening. Our driver was either terrible at driving or extremely good. He zipped in and out of rows of cars (I won't call them lanes, since Naples doesn't use them). But we made it there alive! It's just as scary to be a pedestrian. There are no such things as "crosswalks" or "lights." To cross the street you book it and hope the cars stop. Seriously, there is no other way of getting past the endless stream of cars. And it wasn't just cars! My first view of Naples from the subway was a moped driving on the sidewalk!! They were everywhere, and people would stop in front of fruit and vegetable stands on their mopeds as if it was a drive-through! A side note: The funniest thing I saw in Naples was a cashier at a store smoking right in front of a "No Smoking" sign. Oh, Naples. On the upside, it had great pizza. ;)

View from our hostel (which was one of the best hostels I've been in, we met tons of cool people):


As exhilarating as Naples was, it was nice to get out and see Pompeii. I didn't know exactly how to approach Pompeii. The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius was a horrific tragedy that killed thousands of people. And yet today it's treated as a macabre tourist attraction. My guidebook even implies that it was a good thing, because it perfectly preserved a city and allowed us insights into life in ancient Rome! I'm not so sure, though. When I visited the Archaeological Museum in Naples, and learned more about the victims (and saw their bodies) it made me see the human element behind it.



Still, the city was fascinating. It struck me how similar people back then were to us today. They scribbled graffiti (some of it hilarious) on the walls, they had a nice and a seedy part of town (with brothels, as well), and had shops and bakeries, a bath house, and stadiums (all right, so we don't force gladiators to fight animals to the death). Apart from the mansions, the bath house was my favorite place. It was so well preserved, it was impossible to tell whether we were looking at in in 79 or 2009 AD. I was also surprised by how big Pompeii was--certainly larger than some modern day small towns. Seeing Mt. Vesuvius in the distance was eerie.






From there, we went on to Sorrento, a nice vacation town on the coast. I tried some of their famous limoncello (which was disgusting), we browsed the shops, and sat and looked out at the Bay of Naples.



A great way to end the trip.

When in Rome...

...be absolutely amazed!? I remember staring at the remains of an ancient Roman wall and saying, without even thinking, "This is an OLD city." I mean, it wasn't my proudest moment. Lana cracked up hysterically at the time, and still teases me about it. But Rome has that kind of effect on people. It just has so much history.

Ok, so most of the city is busy and loud and modern and metropolitan. And we did stay in what was essentially some guy's apartment that he turned into a "hostel." But around every corner in Rome would be a fountain, or a monument, or obelisk, or ruin, that would just remind me how much culture this city has. And how much excitement! It was a real city, bustling all the time (I remember getting accosted by some Australian guy on the street trying to persuade us to go on a bar crawl)!

Day 1: The Vatican

Well, given that I don't personally know the Pope, we didn't really get to go inside Vatican City. But we did see the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's Basilica. The museum was one of the best museums I've been in, rivaling the Louvre. They had so many ancient treasures that they put some of them in the basement, on the way to the bathrooms!! It was definitely worth the 2 hour wait outside.

The main attraction was of course the Sistine Chapel, and the entire museum led up to it. It was quite crowded, so we had to walk through the rooms in a line. They had beautiful statues, frescoes, paintings, tapestries, a whole room filled with maps...and some things I had never seen before, like early Christian art on tombstones. We all had a good laugh about how leaves were retroactively added on some of the naked statues to make them more "decent." We also saw the private chambers of the Renaissance popes, with Raphael's huge masterpiece "School of Athens" covering the walls. But after a few hours I could tell people were beginning to get antsy. By the time we got to the modern art, all we could think was, "Let's see the Sistine Chapel already!" And it was amazing when we did, although I got a serious neck ache from craning to see it all. It was darker than I expected inside, probably to preserve it. And despite the curator's pleas for silence, it was filled with people and so there was lots of talking. But I barely heard them. There was just so much more up on that ceiling than my eye could ever take in!

Afterwards, we hurried over to St. Peter's Square to try to beat the rain. The line for the basilica was much shorter, and we got in quickly, right while Mass was going on. At first I didn't realize that, though, since it was so big I couldn't see the altar or congregation! All I heard was the choir singing, and as I gazed up at the dome, and saw the rays of sunlight shining through the windows, I really, deeply felt the presence of God. And--I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it--I started crying. It's so hard to try to describe in words what came over me. As a Catholic, I think part of the reason I was so deeply affected was knowing that this church has been a place of pilgrimage for hundreds of years. I wasn't only there as a tourist, but as a pilgrim. I was standing in the largest church in the world, so large in fact that I got lost in it and had to work to find my friends! But I was glad for the time alone with God in that holy place.



Day 2: Even more ancient things

More queuing for the Colosseum--and in the freezing cold! Once we got in, I was a bit surprised how overgrown it was. I mean, I knew it was in ruins, but according to Brendan the upkeep hasn't been too good over the years. Still, I could imagine what it looked like in its heyday (thanks to the magic of Hollywood).



From there, we saw the Palatine Hill, which was lovely. The sun came out, and we explored the ruins of the emperor Augustus's palace and frolicked through the gardens and green grass. According to legend, this is also where Romulus founded the city.



Then we climbed down and saw the Roman Forum, which was cool even if I didn't know what everything was! One of the most striking ruins was the Temple of Saturn. Seeing the remains of what was once the greatest civilization on Earth...well, shows the limits of worldly power...



Day 3: More sightseeing, which I won't talk about since this post is already too long, and the Villa Borghese, which was a beautiful park and a nice get-away from the city, with a great view to boot.

Finally, before I left, I threw a coin over my shoulder into the Trevi Fountain...to ensure my return to Rome.