Advertisement
Published: February 24th 2006
We decided it was time to leave the UK and move on to Switzerland, because that's where chocolate comes from, right? Maybe not, but it was time to see our Swiss friend Gerda, a former exchange student hosted by Chris's family, and drop off some heavy bags--thank you, thank you, thank you. We caught the Eurostar, a semi-fast train, to Paris, where we decided it would be a wonderful idea to stay in the Paris train station forever--well, it wasn't forever, but six hours with nothing to do and near-zero Celcius temperatures seems like forever.
Bischofszell Stadt, a small village of 7,000 people located near St. Gallen, was to be our new home for a few days. Here, we ate so much food our heads were ready to pop off and we spent many hours lounging and enjoying a life of luxury with an extremely warm family. Bischofszell Stadt, it must be said, can be traversed in about 30 minutes, but surrounding it are beautiful hills, typically used for crops, and vast, quite breathtaking mountains.
We took a daytrip to
Lucerne, a picturesque place with old buildings, a neat wooden pedestrian bridge, a small dam with a grand mountain
backdrop, and a neat carving in the side of a rocky hill. Following Lucerne, we traveled to
Bern, the capital city of Switzerland, where the principal attractions are the tall, aged buildings and several beautiful views from the bridges branching outward from the edge of the city. There is also, it seems, a bear pit with live bears who roam around doing bear things, alas it is winter, or at least it feels like it, so they were likely slumbering away in their bear caves with their behinds stuffed with large wads of mud and grass, like ya do.
The following day we were treated to Fondu, a fashionable communal meal that originated in Switzerland. Two large bowls of warm, wine-enriched cheese pools were sat upon small burners to maintain their warmth while we stabbed small pieces of bread with mini-pitchforks and cast them into the warm vats of cheese. While basking in the glory that is cheese during this delightful meal, it occurred to me that I (Chris) wasn't only sharing the cheese with everyone else around me, but with every turn where each person plunged the cheese encoated bread into their mouths with the pithcfork still attached,
stabbed another innocent piece of bread, and gleefully dipped it back into the cheese, I was also sharing everyone else's tongues and teeth. Yummy!
Before the Fondu, however, we worked up an appetite by putting a day's work in at Gerda's Uncle's farm. We pet some cows and pigs, chopped some wood, pitched some hay, and ate some delicious assorted cookies--check out the pictures.
And so, we moved on to Austria.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.126s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0338s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Khalid
non-member comment
Hey
Hey Anu, I keep adding comments to your journal and none of them seem to show up. I don't know what's wrong. But anyways, I know I have been a super ass lately. We will talk when you get back (in case you haven't got my earlier comments in which I tried to tell you what's going on with me for the last few months.) It's fun reading your blog. I am glad that you are having a good time in Europe. It's almost making me jelous.. almost but not quite. I have been doing a lot of traveling lately - I am kinda tired of it now. Anyways, please don't stay mad (I know you won't - you're such a sweetheart!) and give me a call when you get back - oh..btw. my no. has changed it's 319-210-5401. Enjoy the rest of your stay in Europe!