Beautiful Swiss lands.

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July 7

Tobias (Toby) gave us a map of Luzern. It is a fucking small city. He told us we could see the city in about 3 hours. And that was entirely true. We loved every minute of it, though. The city has a huge lake, named Lake Luzern (weird, I know), and beautiful rolling green mountains all around it. Pair that with old bridges, walls, towers, and buildings, and you have a pretty fucking cool city. At about 50,000 people, it definitely is small, but that just adds to its character. So we walked around the city, saw the famous chapel bridge and walked up some old tower where you could see (basically) the entire city. It was beautiful. After this, there wasn’t much else to do but head back to Toby’s place. We bought some pasta at the grocery store and had a great dinner with Toby and his flat mate, Chris. These guys were classic dudes. Ari pronounced Toby a “full time dude”. Why, you ask? Because Toby is 30 years old and hangs out and drinks beer. He is a freelance software engineer, so he works for short periods of time, makes a shit ton of money, and hangs out the rest of the time. So pretty much, he is a full time dude. These guys are pretty typical brosefs, except for the fact that they are Swiss and speak Swiss German. That’s another thing that was really interesting. Swiss German is a different dialect than German and is only spoken in Switzerland. It’s not a written language. Other people in Switzerland speak German, French, or Italian. How confusing. Anyway, these guys were really funny, laid back, and all around dudes. They said gay and the phrase “and shit” a lot. I felt like I was back at home at the good ol’ ASU campus. But seriously, I liked them a lot, despite these things. They were really fun to talk with. Anyway, we had some wine with dinner and headed out to a bar afterwards for some drinks. This bar was literally a one minute walking distance from the door of their apartment to the door of the bar. It was great. A girl from Poland, Megdelina, joined us and it turned out to be a very good night. I learned a lot about the Swiss, Polish, Germans, you name it. Too bad I can’t remember it. I blame it on the beer.

July 8

Today was one of the best days of the trip. We travelled up to Mt. Rigi, which was very near the city of Luzern. We first took a boat to the edge of the mountain, and then we travelled up a cable car (a big enclosed ski lift thing). We took a train up to the very top and then hiked most of the way across and down the mountain. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever since. We were completely surrounded by beauty. Beneath us, mountains, lakes, and cities. Right on our feet were green rolling hills and trees. And above us was bright blue sky and wispy clouds. It was breathtaking. Throughout our hike, we ran into much wildlife. Cows, cows, and more cows. They were cute. Well, as cute as a cow can be. The day totally wore me out with all the hiking we did, but of course, it was completely worth it.

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