An Amalgamation of Activities Articulated Artistically

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Alright, I have been holding out on this long enough, I figure that right now is as good a time as ever to write this. It's going to take a little bit of patience on your parts to read this, as I have forgotten the exact days that all these things happened, which makes it difficult to organize into coherent and otherwise epic chapters. I apologize in advance for anything that may offend anyone in this blog. I also feel that for to save any organization this last post may have, I should tell you that the night I posted, we enjoyed a delicious dinner, I don't remember what it's called, but it was absolutely amazing. It was a grill on top, then on the bottom you could put cheese underneath so it would melt and then you could huck it over your taters and anything else your little heart desires. The cheese was absolutely delicious and it was one of the best meals I had there. After dinner and a few beers, we had to decide between riding, or fasnacht in another one of the locations which was just beginning to celebrate. We gave Mathias the decision and after a few wines, he decided sleep and fasnacht were far more appealing than no sleep and riding. I did not disagree.... Little did I know of the sheer larsony that awaited me.

Chapter 1

In the Immortal words of Blake: Goosh

Enter Sunday morning. We woke up nice and late, enjoyed a delicious breakfast of bread and cheese and other delicious things, before we head out to carry out our aforementioned plan. Then it was time to hit the road. We went to some beautiful waterfalls somewhere in Switzerland where we walked along the side of the lake and enjoyed our first beers of the day. Fortunately Stokes was there, else I would have had to drink a beer alone, and nobody likes to do that. After a couple of pictures and finishing our beers, we piled back into the car and started towards our next destination, Fasnacht. Now, before I get any further into this, I will have to state that never did I think this was going to happen. See, in the last Fasnacht, it was fairly calm save the beers we were having, we just watched the parade go by and then went to another location to enjoy the party in the hall... this was not the case. This Fasnacht was in a smaller town, but it was HUGE. There were over 40 floats going across this tiny little street, and the one big difference from the one in Luzern? Confetti. Ho. Ly. Shit. I have never seen that many tiny pieces of paper in one place. Ever. And I doubt it will happen ever again (until I go back there for Fasnacht again. Everyone should live through that at least once).

There were a few hilarious things that happened there that I must state, the first of which deals primarily with Jagermeister. See, by this time, I had become fairly well known within the circle of friends for my love of Jager without mix. Apparently that's seen as somewhat of an oddity, which I fully understand, but it had garnered me a sort of status as "that guy". I liked being "that guy". There was one particular instance in Fasnacht where one of Stokes' friends came in a little late to our little area for watching the parade and when I went to shake his hand, he instead said "Jager" and handed me one of those small shot bottles of Jager. Up until then it was one of the first words he's said to me that I understood (his English was not the greatest). I laughed, accepted my gift, and along with him and Stokes, had ourselves a delicious shot of Jager. It was hilarious. The second thing that happened that I must talk about was absolutely hilarious and dealt with confetti and a very aggressive 15 (estimate) year old girl. See, kids in Switzerland (small children) think it's funny when they throw confetti at the people in the parade, which, when you're below the age of 7, I would concur with. This girl hadn't yet gotten the memo that when you're 15 and doing it, people in the parade get to retaliate. And they come back with a vengeance. Much like the Sith. The whole parade consisted of watching her egg them on, then get absolute dominated (eg. one of the floats was towing a small bed behind them, which 2 guys picked up the girl, threw her on the bed, and then completely stuffed her with confetti. And when I say completely, I mean it. Shirt, Pants, Socks, Pockets. EVERYWHERE) and then get mad about it and puff a cigarette. It was one of the funniest moments of my young life and lasted for a good couple of hours.

Now, before I start the third hilarious event, allow me to set the stage. Most of the floats have walking bands, and after the whole parade, everyone congregates in a huge hall and the bands play a sort of concert where they alternate bands and beer is a flowin. Now that you have that thought in your mind, imagine me making the biggest mistake I possibly could have made. I confetti'd Stokes. "Charles, why is that the biggest mistake you could have made?!" you ask... well, allow me to retort. See, Stokes has a lot more friends in Switzerland than I do. One in particular who was in the parade... and I learned, the hard way, that they stick together. After throwing confetti at Stokes, I promptly got attacked from behind by another girl, then by stokes in the front while I was trying to defend myself, then ANOTHER girl whom I didn't even know from the side. Needless to say... Confetti was (and still is) everywhere. It was in every pocket, down my pants, down my shirt front and back, I have found some in my socks and in my wallet. Absolutely Ridiculous. I had been defeated. One could even say, I had been Gooshed. After my now infamous gooshing and a couple of beers, we headed back to the car so we could head home.

Chapter 2

Ding Dangin.

Monday night, it was birthday party time... Again... Apparently I was the birthday crasher on this trip, as this was the 3rd birthday party I crashed. Stokes came home (with a new coffee maker, because she's cool like that) and we had our first beers of the evening. We then, because we are the best, timed the trains properly to give us a couple of minutes to buy beers halfway to our destination at one of destinations (ding) and grabbed a couple for the walk/half train and begun our journey. At our halfway point, not only did I manage to pick up beer, but also managed to pick myself up a donair. It was huge, greasy, and delicious. Just the way donairs should be.

Anyways, moving on, as this trip was not about donairs, we continued (and cracked open a couple more) before we got to the P-A-R-T-Y (Because I gotta) and needless to say, we were ding dangin. When we got there, there were already a ton of people sitting around the table so we did what any self respecting Canadians would do ... sat on the couch. A couple of the braver English speakers moved to the couch with us and it was beauty. Now, this was another situation where I was "that guy", except now it was "That Canadian Guy". Every single person, without fail, that I was introduced to, either already knew me as That Canadian Guy, or I was introduced to them as the Canadian. It was quite hilarious and I was almost forced to live up to my beer drinking heritage because every time I was even close to finishing a beer, a new one was brought over. It got to the point where I was actually consuming my beers at a slower pace than usual to try to keep the situation under control. The strategy failed as I got cheersed over and over again (with a couple of top bottoms courtesy of Stokes to boot). It was an unbelievable night.

Now, just so everyone knows, Mark wanted me to state that he ended up getting a date with the lady from Coyote Ugly. Which I congratulated him on. Don't know anything more than that so ... boom.

Chapter 3

An Omniscient Barista

Alright, so that brings us now to the final day of my stay. And what a sad day it was. I woke up fairly late again as Stokes had to work that morning (again) but this time had the plan to meet her at the station then walk her back to maximize time spent. So, since I had promised Terry that I would get her a pen back from Switzerland, I thought "why not go into Zurich and hang out there for the day, then train back on the same train (or close to) as Stokes?!". It was a foolproof plan. Of course, in a sort of poetic justice, I decided that what better place to end the trip in much the same way that I began it. So I headed over to that nice little cafe by the canal. I noticed immediately that the coffee machine was completely torn apart and was being either serviced, cleaned, or both. My immediate assumption was both, and I was right. It was both. Luckily for me, though, I don't drink coffee, so instead, I ordered a sandwich and ONE beer.... now, this lovely barista must have known I was Canadian because she gave me the biggest sandwich I've ever seen and then TWO beers. Needless to say, I was impressed at her short but quite accurate character evaluation. It was quite impressive. I felt like I was in the presence of an omniscient barista. So as I sat there, drinking my litre of beer and enjoying my sandwich, I noticed no less than 23 people come in and ask for coffee, only for one of the employees to turn around, point at the coffee machine, and then explain that it's broken. It actually became a running joke between that employee and I, and I burst out laughing on no less than the last 10 occasions. I actually managed to turn it into a sort of drinking game with myself. It was probably one of the funnier things in the day, as I had to fill the time that I wasn't with Stokes, and at that point was quite easily amused. After the litre of beer and the good laughs with new friends, I wen to pay and behold, they had only charged me for one beer! I thanked them quite a bit with copious amounts of "danke's" and bid them farewell as I begun the trek back to the train station.

At the train station, I ran into a little bit of a problem. See, though I had been able to figure out the times of departures and all that quite proficiently, and I had learned how to get around the Zurich and other train stations, but I had forgotten if I had to go back to Dietlikon or Dietikon. Why they made two villages with almost the same name going in opposite directions is beyond me, but it happened. So, I did what any reasonable person would do... went to the nearest map, looked at the stops en route to both, and then knew it was Dietlikon. My powers of perception at that moment were unmatched. Crisis averted. So I met Stokes at the Dietlikon train station and we had a hilarious walk home. Then was the fondu dinner and ho. ly. shit. If there was a better meal to end a trip with I do not know it. I don't think I've ever eaten so much bread dipped in cheese in my life. It was delicious and I want some more. Which means Stokes, if you're reading this, I'm thinking about next year 😊. We proceeded to watch a couple of movies from my list of movies that I gave stokes. The movies we watched were "In Bruges" and "Fight Club". She hadn't seen either. In Bruges I wasn't surprised by, but Fight Club is a staple. I think she liked them. She didn't say she hated them so either she was just being polite or actually liked them. After that, we passed out with the knowledge that we both had to depart early the next morning. Her to Paris, me back home. Sad, sad times.

Chapter 4

That's it, That's all

So we woke up Wednesday morning, with me moving slower than usual with the knowledge of what was to come. Now I know how Frodo felt when he saw the Black Gate and knew he had to move into Mordor. Mathias drove us to the airport where we walked around for a bit, then I dropped her off at her gate, we said our goodbyes until the next meeting and then went our ways. At this point, I sat at a little spot and wrote (in wordpad) a little blog, which I will now quote.

So I am currently in the Airport, it's 7:18am, my flight doesn't leave till 10... I've already been here an hour. Mom, you would be proud.

Since I don't want to pay 5 Francs for internet connection, I am writing this in wordpad with hopes to one day transfer it to my blog, which, if you're reading this, I did. Before I recap my last few days here in Switzerland, let me begin by stating what may only be described as a travesty. After saying my goodbyes to Sabrina and Mathias... I decided to walk around the area to find something to eat. Good idea. Or so I thought... the first place I went was a nice little cafe type spot which was ridiculously overpriced. I mean crazy. It was 22.50CHF for a club sandwich. THAT'S A $26 SANDWICH. Crazy. I promptly said no and continued on my walk until I found Burger King. The first thought through my head was "well... food isn't that great... but they should be reasonably priced"... how naive that turned about to be. A whopper meal.... 15CHF. Insane. So now I'm sitting at the third spot which luckily had sandwiches for only 13.50CHF and large beers for 7CHF (large beers are 500ml). Obviously, I did what any good Canadian would do, and ordered a Heineken. This plan, however, backfired. He brought me the wrong beer ... Doesn't understand english. I tried to tell him that I ordered a Heineken instead but nope, no luck, so now I have Ittinger Klosterbrau. It's not bad but it's no Heineken.

Well as you can see my plan of opening with that has failed, but the rest is still relevant. After I finished the sandwich and the beer, I head over to my gate where I managed a nap for a couple of hours, being careful not to oversleep and miss my flight (though I wish I had) before boarding the plane and starting the trek. The plane left late, which was awful, and then that left me with about a half hour layover in Frankfurt. Anyone who has been there knows that a half hour is NOT a long time. Not only that, but we didn't make it to a gate, apparently my flight was one of those where we exited from stairs then took a bus to the terminal building. Awesome. Missing my flight from Zurich - not so bad. Missing it in Frankfurt where I didn't know anyone (and STILL didn't know much German) .. not good. Needless to say I hauled ass through that airport and got to my gate with about 5 minutes until boarding time. Beauty.

Plane ride was... well... interesting to say the least. I sat beside some Greek guy that now lives in Vancouver who was slamming back wine like it was nobody's business, got cut off by the staff, and wouldn't stop interrupting my movie because either a) he had to go get another drink b) he had to go to the washroom or c) had some useless information he needed to share with me. It was awful. For all 10 hours. Then upon landing, the girl to the left of me (luckily she was an aisle distance) threw up in one of those baggies. I had never seen that happen until now. And I was disgusted. It was was a plane ride that rivaled Blakes to Georgia.

Anyways, got home safe and sound, texted Stokes so she knew, and that was the end of my Switzerland trip... or so I thought. As it turned out, I got to my parents house to do laundry, etc. and when I opened my suitcase... confetti... everywhere. Stokes got the last laugh out of that debacle. It was absolutely glorious, and is just another reason she's the coolest.

Anyways, thanks for reading these (for those of you who did), already looking forward to the next trip.

That's it, That's all.
Captain Out.

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Photos

Waterfall
It was really nice.

Fasnacht Hall
Notice confetti and beer everywhere? Yeah. Epic.