Road to Switzerland

---

Road to Switzerland

Four days left of tour. We've got some long drives ahead of us starting with today which will be about 12 hours. The drive is from Florence to Lauterbrunnen.

Switzerland is fucking beautiful. Lakes, rivers, old mountains, lots of green grass, trees and snow in some areas. I think it's actually more beautiful then Austria, which is hard to beat.
To put it into perspective, think of being present at a badass castle. You've got a deck chair and beer in your hand. You're about to witness Pairs Hilton get be-headed. All you can do is sit there, sigh and think "Man, this rules."

Lucerne

On the way to Lauterbrunnen, we stopped off at Lucerne. The city, like the scenery in Switzerland is beautiful. Clean, wicked scenery, full of attractive people and some what classy.

We went up and saw the Lion monument which was put up to remember the Swiss guards that were killed proctecting French royalty who had actually left their sanctuary (where the Swiss were protecting them) without telling the guards. The guards continued to protect the sanctuary and ended up getting slaughtered because of it. Basically, heaps of people died thinking they were protecting French Royalty who weren't actually there.
The sad look on the lions face illustrates the depressing nature of the situation. He's lying on French and Swiss Shields and has a broken spear in his back to symbolize the resentment of the French (Back stabbed if you must).

Switzerland

Moving along. The Swiss are very paranoid people. Every male at the age of 18 has to do army service. Once your service is finished in the army, they give you a gun (with bullets) and your own Swiss army knife.

My thoughts: Don't fuck with the Swiss.

Anyway, as I mentioned, the Swiss are paranoid. They can get their entire army ready in a few hours. They have a detonator on a large rock above the road to enter Switzerland to block the road if needed.

On the way to the campsite, we saw a hidden air strip which has airplane hangers with jets in them. They hangers are covered with grass to make them appear to be small hills. Crazy crackas.

The trick to play on the rep appeared to start off lousy, but really progressed into a funny set up. We had a guy at the back of the bus repeat what the rep was saying completely incorrectly then while this was happening they hand cuffed him to the bus and started to take his clothes off (see pictures).

I like Switzerland. Up to Jungfrau mountain tomorrow.

Our campsite is just a hostel building. It's nice, totally bareable. Dinner tonight was probably the best vege meal I've eaten that has been made by Contiki thus far.

---