Notes from Abroad

After paragliding I was handed a train ticket back to Lauterbrunnen and pointed in the direction of the train station. It was a nice little walk and at the end was something very exciting:

A supermarket.

I don’t know if you understand just how great supermarkets are, especially while you’re backpacking. You see – most places I’ve come across have grocery stores. They’re tiny little stores, generally no larger than a 7-11, and sell a decent selection of the basics. Sometimes you’ll find one a little bigger, but for the most part we’re talking just essentials.

But the thing is – in each an every city I’ve visited so far, it seems that the locals don’t consider VEGETABLES to be essentials. Try finding some lettuce in the grocery store. Good luck. And if you do manage to find yourself a bag salad, odds are it’s going to be really limp and brown. At least that’s been my luck.

So when I came across this giant co-op just across the street from Interlaken Ost, I swear the clouds opened up and the angels started to sing. Even though my train was scheduled to leave in about 10 minutes I made a quick turn right and headed straight for the entrance.

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Dear Diary,

Today I ran off the side of a mountain. The technical term is paragliding, but I think that term is far too tame. You’re basically running off the side of a mountain util the ground falls out from under you and the float your way over mountains and trees and the city of Interlaken held up by nothing more than a bunch of strings and a few yards of fabric.

I’m not much of a dare devil. I even gave up skateboarding after about 3 hours because I was scared of falling and breaking my arm or something, but for some reason when they showed a video of paragliding on the Bus as one of the many options for activities in Lauterbrunnen, paragliding piqued my interest and without really putting much thought into it I signed up and paid. The panic didn’t really set in until this morning.

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I’ve only been here for around 18 hours so far, but I already know that I love Switzerland. I think I knew the moment we crossed the border from Italy. It’s absolutely beautiful.

I’m not much of an outdoorsy person – I don’t like bugs or animals, I’m not really all that into white water rafting or rock climbing and I don’t particularly enjoy completely “roughing it,” but I learned in my last few years at Cornell that I really enjoy just throwing on my camera and taking a walk through nature. Not trailblazing or anything like that, but just a slow wander around some trails, through some trees, maybe along the water, just relaxing and getting away from all of the busy-ness of life. I took these walks once a week or so, even in the dead of winter. I ran into deer, I walked through knee-deep snow, and puddle-jumped when it all melted away, but I loved my walks.

It turns out that I’m not a huge fan of cities, something that really surprised me considering that I’m not a nature girl by any stretch of the imagination. I prefer “structured nature” – you know, where all of the trails have been marked, the paths have been carved out, and the scenery still every bit as wonderful.

That’s exactly where I am right now.

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I spent all of 16 hours in Nice, 8 of which were spent sleeping. AND, to top it all off, for the time I DID spend outside, I didn’t have a camera with me!

Shocking, I know.

I was planning to run across the street to the market to get something for dinner but I ran into a group of girls from Australia who were headed off to Mackers (that’s Mickey D’s to us American folk) so I decided to join them instead. Yes, that’s right. I ate McDonald’s. My 3 year boycott has come to an end. I still haven’t had a burger from there though, so that part is still going strong.

Anyway – after dinner we decided to walk around a bit because we had a few hours of daylight to kill and the hostel was umm… interesting.

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Spending the majority of your day on a train can really wipe you out. I think Alice and I made it back to our hostel around 11PM and basically plugged in our laptops, plopped on our beds and just passed out.

We had another early morning planned – this time to actually see Florence. And this time we actually woke up at a reasonable hour.

Our hostel had an all-you-can-eat breakfast for 5 euro which was a pretty good deal. I stuck to toast and yogurt, but it was nice to have a decent breakfast that could tide you over for a few hours instead of eating your first meal at 1PM.

Since it was Sunday we thought our options for sight-seeing would be pretty slim. We’d agreed earlier in the day not to do any of the museums because frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to stare at sculptures for hours on end. Since I really only had one full day in Florence, I wanted to experience the city, not the museums.

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The “early to rise” part of our plan didn’t really happen and we ended up waking up around…11AM? After lazing around for a bit (our hostel was really nice – it was hard not to just sit around and enjoy the luxury of a big room, air conditioning, and free wifi) we headed to the train station. We were told we could take the bus, but we’d missed the one for that hour and decided to go for the train instead.

The train took a lot longer than we’d expected so we didn’t actually get into Siena until around 5:30PM. We knew that the last bus out was at 7:10PM, so we would have to do the speed tour. We bought our bus tickets to save the last minute hassle and set into the city center.

On the bus from the train station we ran into a group of students from the UC system who were studying Italian in Siena. They were nice enough to let us follow them into the main Piazza because we would have gotten so lost.

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We arrived in Florence pretty early, which was good because that meant that we could go on a bit of an “orientation tour” with the BusAbout guide to get our bearings. We went by the major sites – the Duomo, the various museums, etc. on our way to dinner for the evening.

BusAbout arranges some group dinners in each city where you can go and get a proper meal for a pretty decent price. This wasn’t offered in Rome, so when I heard about the Florence dinner I was intrigued, but after hearing the menu I decided to opt out. Alice mentioned that since it was a regular restaurant it might be possible to just order what we want off of the menu. She was right. Good call.

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On our way to Florence the bus made a 2-hour stop at Orvieto, a small hill-top town between Rome and Florence. The stop was a surprise to me, but it looked quaint and I was excited to be off of the bus for a little while.

We took a funicular up to the town where Ben, our BusAbout guide, walked us to the Duomo. We didn’t go inside, but it was a really incredible building from the outside. So ornate! It looked like a giant vanilla and chocolate layered wedding cake.

From there we had the option to go to some sort of cave, but Alice, a girl from Australia that I’d met in Rome, and I decided to wander through the town instead. We found all sorts of cute little streets where people were just stopped in the middle catching up and chatting about this and that. It was the Italian town you always imagine – high on a hill, winding cobblestone streets with few cars (if any at all), green shutters and big wooden doors, window boxes with bright pink flowers and a slow and steady pace. There weren’t many tourists around which was perfect.

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I’m in the 3rd week of my European adventure and it’s been quite a trip so far to say the least!

The first few stops in Spain were a good introduction to hostel life, living out of a backpack, and being in a new city. It was especially helpful that I chose a place where I could at least manage to communicate when necessary to start out. I couldn’t imagine starting this trip in a place like Denmark or Prague.

Copenhagen and Palermo were tough for me. They were the first cities I did on my own and I didn’t particularly like them. At that point I was about a week into my trip and the combination of being on my own in strange places where I didn’t speak the language and being in two cities that I just really didn’t enjoy in hotels rather than hostels (they were the cheapest option) made me consider booking a flight home right then and there.

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