Interlaken, Switzerland

Friday, September 7, 2012 - Sunday, September 9, 2012

On Friday after our finance exam we left at 12:45 for Interlaken, Switzerland. We've started to become keener with our train times because we've started to realize that sometimes later trains arrive first with less connections. The rolling hills of Switzerland prompted everyone to continuously jump up and down in their seats to get a picture. When we arrived in Interlaken, we managed to make our way through the beautiful town surrounded by the Bernese Alps. I expected beautiful scenery but the chief town of the Bernese Alps was unimaginable.

Views from the train from Capolago to Interlaken

Views from the train from Capolago to Interlaken

Views from the train back to Capolago from Interlaken

Views from the train back to Capolago from Interlaken

Balmer's Hostel

The hostel we booked was one of Europe's Famous Hostels: Balmer's. The bedrooms were clearly not what the hostel was known for, but the fun atmosphere of the club below the hostel made up for what the rooms lacked. After dropping our stuff in the room, we ran to dinner next door at a pizzeria called X-port. At X-port there is a challenge to eat two 16'' pizzas in 30 minutes, with not getting up and now throwing it up. If you accomplish the feat, you are reimbursed for your pizzas and they give you a free beer. We were happy to see a recent Virginia Tech student on the wall of only a handful of people over the past decade. Alex saw this as a challenge; if he was to complete it, he would be the first winner this year. However, after the waiter told him he could "prepare" himself and Alex considered what he already ate two hours ago, he decided against attempting the two pizza challenge. Traveling has been making everyone dehydrated. After ordering our third round of water, our water told us we were drinking the best water in the world, and it was true.

Kleine Scheidegg

Saturday, we woke up with one goal: get a taste of the local treasures. After taking to a New York native turned I-can't-make-myself-leave-Interlakener, Ali, Kacey,  Gretchen, Melanie and I took a cog train up to Kliene Scheigg. The local store employee at the register suggested otherwise and gave us directions to picture that was on the wall. After two train rides, a cog train up a mountain with stunning views of the Alps we were inclining, we hit our destination, Kleine Scheidegg, or what is considered the "Top of Europe" without paying 170 CHF to get up all the way to Jungfrau, the top. At the top, I was disappointed I had eaten prior to coming up the mountain. There were local residents selling all sorts of traditional food. There were hundreds of people at the top of the mountain who were completing the Jungfrau Marathon, a feat I hope to one day accomplish. The course started below us in Interlaken and finished after 26.2 miles in Kleine Scheidegg.

Saturday, we visited Shuh Chocolate Factory. We watched one of the chocolate chef's instruct us in how he makes his favorite kind of chocolate.Wisely, he offered us chocolate throughout the presentation to please our instant cravings. After this, we went up to a restaurant which boasted incredible views of the city of Interlaken.

Saturday night was restless, everyone was anxious for Sunday's anticipated event: canyoning! Fifteen of us packed in two vans and headed to Chli Schliere, the canyon we would repel, slide, and jump down.

The ride there put me on cloud nine. Not only was I about to push my nerves and indulge in four hours of pure adrenaline, I had my best conversation with someone I had met to date.

The friend I made, Catalina, was from northern Germany, near Belgium.  She has traveled extensively so I was shocked when she told me that her favorite place to live was America! In her perspective, America is even more beautiful and wonderful than the Hollywood movies depict it. When she was in high school, she spent a year living with a family in Florida. Coincidentally, her boyfriend spent time working for the military in Virginia, she however, has never been to Virginia. After offering my house as a place to stay, she regretfully declined telling me, "I can't, if I ever go back, I'll never leave."

Over the course of our conversation, we swapped opinions and country ideologies in economics, finance, and politics. As a student studying finance, she had much to say that directly correlated to what I learned days before in International Finance.

With each question, Catalina considered all sides and options. When talking about Greece and the Euro, she observed that while the EU would benefit from Greece staying on the Euro, in Greece, their country would benefit from reverting back to the drachma. If this was to happen, exports would increase and people in Greece would buy more.

Catalina continued with an example of how political ties complicate the strength and credibility of the Euro. In Italy, the man who is in charge of our form of the Fed, has been pumping money into the country and thus, inflation rates have gone up. In parallel, interest rates remain low so people are saving less and hurting their country in the long run.

The politics of the US concern Europeans tremendously, as they do the rest of the world. Catalina was very interested to hear my thoughts on what I thought would happen in November and my perception of the thought of the general population. While we never directed expressed our own beliefs, Catalina explicitly stated that in order for the world economy to stabilize, the US needs a change. According to her news sources, her impression is that Europeans make for of Romney, though all agree the US needs something to start rolling in the right direction. We both lamented the need for concrete plans in campaigning, rather than attacking the opponent.

Until speaking to Catalina, I thought that Europeans enjoyed a leisurely  work schedule. She said she loved interning in the US because work weeks are only 40 hours. In her current internship, Catalina works 80 days a week. She said that once she gets a real job, days will demand even more time.

Ready to canyon

 After an hour of diverse conversation, we reached our dropping point... Time to canyon! The experience is inexplicable, it was the most liberating feeling with each 20-40 foot drop. What I found to be the biggest challenge was trusting myself. I had never been scared until standing atop my first jump into the cold Swiss glacier water. What scared me most was failing to perform jumps correctly. Each slide and jump required specific hand and body positions and jump targets. We marveled the amount of innovation necessary to perfect a safe way to do each jump, slide and repel. The most daunting obstacle, in my opinion, was one where we literally jumped at a wall while turning at a 180 degree angle while our instructor pushed us outward and would then slide down the wall: a jump slide. I would canyon again without hesitation, to see if you would want to watch me on the advanced course, watch Fan's Vimeo link: here

Traversing tips

Tips for all my future [college] travelers

Save your receipt, look for one on the ground, or motion and attempt to ask a customer when at a restaurant if you have to go to the bathroom.

Nice, France. What I thought was an easy task, using a toilette, required me to communicate with a man sitting reading in McDonalds and ask him to use his receipt to use the W.C. Turns out that the term W.C. is not used in France, but he understood what I meant and offered his receipt so that I could enter a pin code for access to the bathroom.

Always consult with locals when looking for something to do to get the real feeling of the town you are visiting.

Nice, France. The Saint Exupéry Hostel provided a tourism extraordinare. He told us where to go if we wanted to really experience the real feeling of the French Riviera. By going off his minimal transportation advice, we hopped on Bus 100 and headed for Cap d'Ail. The man sitting across from us told us we had three stops to get off on in order to be in Cap d'Ail, the third being the packed touristy beach. We got off on the second stop, walked down a lot of stairs, and finally saw oceanfront and a secluded beach and knew our trip was worth the 45 minutes on the bus. This marked our first authentic European escape to a local beauty.

Interlaken, Switzerland. En route to the train station and running off the suggestion of the hostel front desk to visit a lookout point, Harder Klum, we stopped in a Patagonia store. The local store employee at the register suggested otherwise and gave us directions to picture that was on the wall. After two train rides, a cog train up a mountain with stunning views of the Alps we were inclining, we hit our destination, Kleine Scheidegg, or what is considered the "Top of Europe" without paying 170 CHF to get up all the way to Jungfrau, the top.

 

Kleine Scheidegg



Talk to everyone.

Interlaken, Switzerland. On the way to where we would trek down the canyon when canyoning an hour away from Interlaken, I sat next to a young woman named Catalina. I spent a trip on which I anticipated to spend my time sleeping, having an amazing conversation as we made our way through the Swiss countryside. It was so interesting to hear her personal take and also her relation of Europe as a whole on American politics, economics, and financial status while she equally challenged me with matching conversation.

European Introspections

Random blurbs written when my fingers find the keyboard...
 
Sunday, November 4, 2012

It's been a long while, but I'm finally back on the blog train. Ironically, I'm for once not spending my time on a train and am instead taking a lazy, but hopefully productive, day in Riva San Vitale. After a long twelve day break full of traveling, topped off with the final 38 hours traveling back home and being homeless people on Halloween, most of us decided to stay at our Riva home for this rainy weekend. On Friday, Tim, Kacey, Alice, Holland, David and I took a short train ride north to Monte Tamero. Here we took a ski lift up 1,962 meters up the mountain to ride a roller coaster on a snowy mountain. Yesterday, after Sam, Alice, and I attempted to ride bikes to Lugano to find there were no bikes left, we hopped on a train with Cody and bought reservations for our train to Rome and sat by the lake. A different experience than my other trip to Lugano, the weather was dreary. However, that didn't stop us from returning later that night with some other friends to explore.

 

Monday, September 3, 2012 - Virginia Tech vs. Georgia Tech

It was hard to be in another country when all forms of social media were blowing up about Virginia Tech’s opening game back in Blacksburg. We made a great night out of it by forcing our eyes to stay open so we could watch the Hokies premiere from 2:00 to 5:00 A.M., our time. We all assembled in our classroom and watched the game on a projector and sat in chairs initially, and as the night went on,  mattresses that were pulled out onto the floor. It was confirmed that staying up with everyone was definitely worth it as we witnessed Lane Stadium host, somehow, its very first overtime and then field goal kick to win the game. The game was probably the only one we will be able to watch this season, and I’m happy that it was a winning event. 

Friday, August 24, 2012

I have now caught up to present day. Currently, I'm sitting on our fourth train of the day en route to Nice, France. This past week has been the most grueling school week I think I've had to date, in the classroom. The temperature has been unbearably hot every single day, never dipping below 90, and there is no air conditioning anywhere in Riva San Vitale. In three days we learned six weeks of finance material in addition to two Italian classes. Both of our professors are really good at keeping our attention thought finance has managed to make me worry even while in a foreign country. Running has been a great way to clear my head and so to say, stop and smell the roses. The scenery while running along Lake Lugano is absolutely breath taking.

This morning we took our finance midterm. The way classes here are structured define the saying "working for the weekend." We go hard during the week and have a stress free break for two days. I'll turn 21 on Sunday! The hype is definitely weakened because I became legal the second I sat in my British Airlines seat. With three hours to go I'm bidding adieu and hoping to arrive at the hostel in Nice as soon as possible!  

Sunday, August 18, 2012

Ain't no rest for college students in Europe! We had the choice to either go to Milan or take a 2.5 hour hike up to the top of San Georgio. The view was absolutely amazing. Across the  view was another mountain that is a 4 hour hike. A group of us want to do this by the end of the trip. I plan to hike as much as I can.

Saturday, August 17, 2012

A long day of orientation was followed by a really fun night. But before we could have fun my roommate, Melanie and I, went to the Mendrisio train station 20 minutes away to make train reservations for our first planned weekend trip, Nice, France! It felt like an experience out of The Amazing Race as we navigated our way with minimal directions and asked for help using our basic knowledge of Italian.

Our first night out, we started at the Mini Bar and then went to a festival a few minutes down the road. The party was the end to a week long festival that none of us are sure what we were celebrating. Nonetheless, we danced on tables and cherished the few dance songs that reminded us of home.

Meeting people at bars has been so much fun to try and speak broken Italian and English with them. I've been learning phrases from our kitchen assistant, Guytano.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Thursday and Friday blended all into one day. After arriving at the villa on Friday, we unpacked and jumped into orientation then had our very first, delicious dinner. After dinner we had another meeting then finally were able to hit the town and start making our friendships with the local bars. We only went to Mini Bar, but the mini bar and its three locals, and new classmates to meet were enough entertainment for us. 

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Left Dulles at 6:40 PM arrived Heathrow at 6:50 (time to switch over to 24 hour scale). Cloudy the whole trip but was offered free wine with my dinner for the first time ever (something that won't happen for a few years at least in the U.S.). We left Heathrow at 9:10 and landed in Milan at 12:05, jumping an hour ahead, at a very old airport, Milano Linate.

Bellinzona, Switzerland

Sunday, September 2, 2012

I woke up today to the sound of church bells. Though the two towers that sound church bells here are inescapable every day but on Sunday morning, you’re lucky if you can stay asleep. I went to church with Uncle Jeff, our director of student conduct, and Clare in the church of Chiesa Parrocchiale. Though I understood almost nothing, it was really nice to enjoy the cultural differences in a beautiful church where close to none spoke my language.

In the afternoon a group of us took at 45 minute train ride to Bellinzona, Switzerland. It was perfect weather for the trip. The green grass and clean upkeep of Castelgrande made our walk through the castle nestled in the middle of Bellinzona that much more enjoyable. After walking through the castle the under in its tunnels, finishing with a view from the top of the tower, we walked through town. We were searching for a big street fair called “strada en festa” and instead walked into a mushroom convention. Clearly we found this much more amusing than those who were participating in the competition but it was interesting to see an attraction that was so unlike a big event back home. 

Lugano, Switzerland

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Today we took our final exam in Introduction to Finance. We covered a whole semester's worth of material in two weeks and it definitely felt like it. Every day we spent a minimum of six hours in the classroom. It was pretty miserable at the beginning of the semester (you know, a week ago) because it was above 90 every day in a classroom with no air conditioning and 32 people packed on top of each other. I am thrilled to have one class under my belt and I'm looking forward, hopefully, to the new finance class we start on Monday because it's International Finance and I'll find it interesting.

After our final, my roommates and I went to Lugano. It was only a 30 minute train ride to a beautiful town on Lake Lugano. This is where in the spring Virginia Tech has a marketing program. We were able to shop and walk around while enjoying beautiful weather. At the top of my shopping list was flip flops and a watch. I had no luck finding flip flops but found a watch so I no longer have to feel in a constant time warp since I don't carry my phone around with me and never know the time.

Roommates in Lugano!

My favorite part of the trip was walking along the water. The views were absolutely stunning. While walking the crooked streets, we noticed a used book street vendor and much to our surprise, there was a Virginia Tech book looking right at us!!

Nice, France

Nice, France

August 24-26, 2012 (My 21st!!)

After making stops in Mendrisio, Milan, Genova, Ventimiglia, and finally landing in Nice, France, our travelling group of eight girls and one boy made it to our destination! On the last train ride we decided to break out the wine we had bought at Denner, which is apparently Blacksburg’s Kroger and Northern Virginia’s Giant, and toast to our first weekend trip. We were caught off guard when a twenty-some-year-old approached us with a concerned look on his face and sniffed the air to then tell us, “you know there’s a 5000 EURO fine for drinking alcohol on the trains in France?” Well everyone’s eyes bugged out and then chugged until he yelled, “I’m not being serious!” We talked to him and found out that he attended college in California and apparently was proficient in trickery.

Arriving at the train station, we executed our easy plan: call the hostel and they would send a shuttle to come pick us up. Coincidentally, when exiting the train, we acknowledged the variety of linguistic tools we had in our group: French (the most important in Nice), Spanish, German, Chinese, a British accent, Italian among all of us, and English, naturally. Turns out the hostel no longer offered the shuttle service so we all dispersed our talents to find a means of communication to the hostel. Melanie, my roommate and connoisseur of the French language, was able to find out from a taxi driver, surprisingly, that we needed to walk down the block to the tram and then meander our way past a few streets, take a right turn, and arrive at the hostel.

Once our means of transportation was established, we were able to notice our surroundings a little better. The very first thing we spotted from inside the train station was Hotel Interlaken. This spotting may be misleading for the disoriented traveler but we were more amused upon the next things we spotted: KFC and Subway. Perhaps our eyes naturally directed to these American brands but nonetheless, the homely sighting was welcomed.

Marching further from the train station, we were able to take Nice’s atmosphere. In the two weeks I have been in Europe, there are two things that stand out and I particularly like most about the architecture: the uniqueness of each building and the use of contrasting, bold colors. I’m going to try and document this more on upcoming trips!

The Hostel we stayed at was called the Villa Saint Exupery. I really liked it, though the other group who stayed in another room did not like it as much. I roomed with eleven other girls in my program and two girls who were from Vienna, Austria. I think meeting people we encounter has already proven to be one of my favorite activities while traversing the European sites. Ali and I shared a quick salad for our dinner once we were finally showered and ready for the night. The salad was delicious. Either, Ali and I were really hungry, or the salad was fantastic; regardless, we spoke about the salad on numerous occasions the next day, just to be disappointed by a sub-par meal after traveling the French Riviera! But more on this later…

By around 20:00 a group of twenty-some Riva students had arrived at the hostel. We spent some time at the hostel bar and met a lot of traveling Australians. I admire their ability to travel; I believe the way their school system is set up, they are given time to travel and become a more informed member of the global community. As Sam put it, “traveling makes you more humble.” This statement proved true starting on Day 1. I am slowly learning to expect a barrier between what I want to do, and how to do it. Little things like ordering from a menu written in French has been a lot harder to decode then I thought. Social expectancies and norms are much different than what I am accustomed to and I have started to pick up on little tips as I go.

Friday night was an amazing first night out in a town other than the quiet Riva San Vitale, Switzerland. The highest and lowest part of the night came at the same time when we went to the beach. Everyone was so happy, no, not happy, euphoric, when we were in the water. When we came out of the water, everyone’s jaws dropped in disbelief: we had been robbed. Though Dana was sitting with our stuff, in the time it took for someone to come up to her and ask her for a lighter, and she declined, some people’s bags and purses were stolen. We learned our lesson early and fast but hopefully we will smarter for the duration of our time abroad.

On Saturday, we got on a bus to Cap d’Ail and then walked down the beach to Monaco. I’m so happy that someone at the hostel recommended going to a beach that wouldn’t be filled with tourists like us. After a 50 minute beautiful bus ride along the French coast, we got off after choosing a random stop in Cap d’Ail and could not have been luckier. We walked to the bottom of a long winding staircase from the highway and arrived at the perfect, little secluded beach. After spending some time in the water and getting directions from a woman who worked in the cozy beach restaurant near us, we walked five minutes along the coast to Monte Carlo. Every moment we took in while spending our time walking down the French coastline towards Italy was more beautiful than I can put into words.

Walking down to our private beach

Cap d'Ail

Monaco

Monte Carlo

We easily knew when we reached Monaco. Yachts the size of half a football field field the harbor and the cars were all so expensive. Judging from the housing advertisements, the cost of living in Monaco started at a mere $5 million. Though I was not able to go into the casino, Monte Carlo, because I didn’t have my passport, we were able to take in the lux decorations and high wealth stores surrounding it. Sitting in front of the casino was Bugatti Veyron surrounded by people taking pictures and following the orders written in different languages on a piece of paper on the car: “Do not touch the car.” 

We caught a bus back to Nice around 18:00 and then got ready to celebrate... MY BIRTHDAY! The night was so much fun. The best part about it and the night before was the instantaneous friendships that formed. Everyone made the night so enjoyable for me and it was the best 21st I could’ve asked for... all that I was missing was my friends and family at home!! Miss you!

On my actual birthday, I spent the majority of the day in a train station or waiting for a train and was beat by the time I came back. Gretchen initiated a birthday bar trip so in the spirit of staying young, we made a visit to Mini Bar. My favorite part of the night came when Matt asked me if I felt old and I said for the first time, standing looking at a beautiful lake in Switzerland, yes I feel old and mature. He then grabbed my hand and brought me to the playground overlooking the lake and told me to go down the slide, reminding me that I'll always be young.