Here is a water, look ye

Alright, so for all of you who are a bit behind the times and out of the loop, I'm no longer in London.  My study abroad program has ended.  Of course my blogging hasn't, because there's no way that I'm going to stop blogging now that I've found such an exciting and interesting writing activity that also conveniently doubles as a journal.

So without any further ado, onto Switzerland!  Lorraine and I left the beautiful city of London and, with the assistance of the Tube and the DLR, flew over to Zurich.  We hung out at the airport for about an hour before my parents came and picked us up in their snazy huge rental car that still manages to look European, and we drove towards Zug.  Oh, but in the airport, while we were hanging out we checked out the local shops and found ENORMOUS jars of nutella, like they have at Creperies, and huge stacks of chocolate.  There were no smaller candy bars anywhere in sight.  It was bulk or nothing.  Although actually, they did have a week pack of nutella jars.  Small little jars, one for every day of the week, all in a big pack.  Just the sort of thing that every family should have in their pantry.  

Anyway, we drove through the beautiful country of Switzerland and back to Zug (Pronounced zOOg, not zUG).  We got in fairly late, and had lots of fun looking at the strangest parking garage that I've ever been in.  You park your car on top of this metal ramp, and then when somebody else needs to park somewhere, the metal ramps will slide around, with your car on top of it, to make space for the other people's car.  It's pretty nuts.  But then we went down for dinner at this pizza place that is right on the edge of the lake, and I mean RIGHT on the edge of the lake.  It was really beautiful sitting right there as the sun faded from the sky and night set in.  Our waiter had something like four languages that he offered to speak to us in, including English, before settling on Spanish when he realized that we could understand that as well.  He's from the Dominican Republic, so it was exciting for him to speak his native tongue I suppose in a country full of German, French, Italian, and English speakers.  

Oh yeah, everyone speaks English here.  Some people pretend that they don't speak English (when you ask they say that they don't) but then you'll start trying to ask questions and they'll respond and give you directions in English.  Although there are some exceptions.  Most of the store clerks seem to just speak German.  Probably French too.  

This is a track that you put your shopping cart/bag on while you use the escalator to get up to the next level in the grocery store (called coop, or CoOp).  Kind of nuts, but really very smart. 

On Thursday we woke up and went to the grocery store.  We'll take a moment and talk about Swiss food now, which I know everyone will be totally intrigued by.  Too bad, this is my blog and I write about what I need to record for myself.  

The Swiss are really big on dairy.  When we got on the shuttle at the airport that took us over to border control after leaving the plane they have this music playing in the background, and then random cows mooing. Yeah, Lorraine and I looked at each other to see if we'd both heard the same thing.  So we obviously have been eating Swiss cheese, and then we got some yogurt.  But they have an enormous cheese section in the store and more yogurt than I've ever seen.  They also have this really interesting looking bread that's got dark and light sections in it.  We bought some of that and it's absolutely delicious.  They have a lot of really good French bread too that we got.  Lots of sausage in Zug, because it's definitely in the German part of Switzerland.  And strudel!  I ate a spinach strudel for lunch yesterday.  

Strudel is delicious!

And then, of course, there is chocolate everywhere!  Mostly Lindt (I got some of that yesterday to take home) but also a lot of Tolberlone.  They have great bricks and displays of it everywhere.  It's absolutely insane.  But the other thing that we have learned is Swiss is cherries.  Those'll come up later though.  

So the morning we spent in Zug.  We wandered around the old city section, or at least what remains of it.  The old city was built in the 1200's, but part of it actually fell into the lake in the 14 or 1500's.  Yup.  Big storm came up and there goes the city.  Anyway, cute village.  My mom called it Pinocchio's village, which is actually true in terms of what it looks like.  We went up the clock tower that used to be part of the wall for the first bit of the old city (you get the key from the police station) and met this nice Swiss lady on the way that was giving a tour to some students from various parts of the world, so she helped tell us about the town and the tower.  Then we went over to the city hall and looked around there and met another really nice lady, although this one didn't speak English, who gave us this nice book in German that's all about the hall and has some great pictures.  

Anyway, then we headed out of town to Lucern, or Luzern, depending on what language we're talking in.  This is where Switzerland was founded back in 1289.  Switzerland actually would be rather interesting to study politically because it's sort of a confederation of states and right now it's actually ruled by seven main rulers.  In order to pass any law all seven have to agree and vote for the law.  And yet it's the most immaculate and clean country I've been in.  No trash anywhere, and everything just feels so ordered and nice, even when the streets are winding and random.  

The thing about Luzern though is the really beautiful clear water.  Seriously, the river, Reuss, looked like it was almost pool water, it was that clear and beautiful, but it's just the local river.  We walked across all of these bridges (one is the oldest of its type in Europe, wooden covered bridge you know) and just couldn't stop looking at the water.  We did duck into a Jesuit church for a bit though, which was really neat with its white and pink wooden paneling and red marble.  

Yes, that really is the river.  Can you believe it?

After we tore ourselves away from the river we continued driving, this time towards Interlaken.  We drove past the most beautiful lakes that I have ever seen.  The water was like turquoise and clear and looked almost tropical.  It was probably one of the most beautiful sights of my lifetime.  We drove down next to one of the lakes just as a storm was rolling in, so the water was choppy and beautiful, framed by the mountains that were beginning to be shrouded in mist.  There were some fairly cute German speaking boys hanging around too.  But we hopped back in the car just as it started pouring rain.  We drove through town and up to Lauterbrunnen, which is among the top five most beautiful spots in Switzerland.  I've never seen so many waterfalls in one place before.  We couldn't really see the Alps because of the clouds, which was a bummer, but we hopped out of the car and took a walk along this little Swiss trail past waterfalls and beautiful countryside in the rain.

You know, just chilling in the Swiss countryside.

Well, we chilled there for quite a bit before slowly and leisurely making our way back to Zug.  We did almost take a tram up to the top of the waterfalls, but we took one look at the degree of fog/clouds that were covering the mountains we knew were about and decided that the weather combined with the fading daylight were both good reasons to head back to our hotel.  I swear, we have the most beautiful weather whilst in England and then we go to the Alps and can't see them because of the rain.  It's still so totally beautiful though, so I don't even care.