Suisse/Switzerland

It certainly feels like I have been here for a week already, I lost all track of time during the travel six hours into the future. Jet lag got the best of me for a while, and I hope to catch up on a lot of missed sleep tonight however I thought that last night as well to no avail. So  anyway we left on Wednesday(18^th) at about 11am and a large van picked us up to take us to Philadelphia airport. We got down there with plenty of time to spare and the airport was entirely empty. Checked my bags with no problems, had to pay for the second stow away but whatever. Then up to security…and of course I get singled out of the group for the full frisking. The whole individual metal detecting, pat down, and then to guards went through my backpack with my and asked me questions. I mean I hadn’t shaved in a while but I didn’t think I looked that sketchy. Thing is though even with all that I still could have smuggled anything I wanted onto that plane. I was telling the guard of all these extra secret compartments in my bag that he was missing, he seemed to appreciated me helping out. haha

 Anyway, so we get up to the board finally and I was supposed to be seated with all my family like we booked it. But, somehow we were all scattered throughout the plane. We we’re actually able to figure that out and got a row in the center of the plane. It was good and bad at the same time, for one we didn’t have another row of seats infront of us so the leg room was great to be able to stretch out, especially my brother with his 7ft legs. The bad thing though, no window in sight! So the flight went really fast apparently at just about 7 hours, but it was horrible. But the dinner served was surprisingly delicious. I slept for a whole of 45mins probably, the sun went down and then back up again by the time we landed at about 12:30am EST (6am)  in Frankfurt, Germany. The airport was Massive there! Like 100 planes running and boarding as we got off the runway. It was only a layover there, until we had to catch the next flight to Zurich, Switzerland.

 I apparently have terrible luck with airports, because we go to get our boarding passes for the next flight and they girl was like “we only have three Bitlers on this flight”…and I bet you can all guess which Bitler wasn’t on there..yours truly. The girl finally figures it out and I have 2 seats booked for myself? Whatever…next flight was a little late and we board. I got a super nice seat on the window right behind the wing. It was so incredible flying south over the German countryside, winding rivers endless farm fields and then it started to get very mountainous as we neared Switzerland. We were flying pretty low just right above the clouds, and I saw this castle ruins on a mountain which was sweet. So we get to Zurich airport, I was just so syked all my luggage made it.. otherwise uneventful for awhile got to the hotel and got checked in right away. Was up for about two days at this point and we decided to nap for about 4 hours.

That night we got some dinner in the hotel, which is beautiful by the way, and then my and Christian went for a walk out on the town near us. It’s more of a residential area so it was cool just walking around peoples homes and the narrow Swiss back streets. There was a real cool part of town where people must like rent or be given a plot to garden and have a little shed. It was blocks long right in the city and some locals where in there plot grilling, looked like a good time. We get back to the hotel and I crash at about 10pm…but then I wake up, wide awake at 2am because the time change was messin with me so bad. I was up all night until about 5:30am which then we just got up at 8am anyway.  But I got up and felt fine, just getting sleep at odd times of the day. Its 11:30pm now and Ive basically been up since 2am last night..and im not really tired so im praying I fall asleep.

So after some breakfast, croissants and stereotypical things you’d imagine at a Euro breakfast. My dad and Andy went out to get our rental car, Andy is the driver and my dad gets back and is like “you speak german, get down there read andy the user manual that’s in German” because they couldn’t figure out how to put it in reverse and my dad was pushing it down in the parking garage…(wish I could have been there to have a healthy laugh at that) but typical of sending those two out on a task. Anyway we load up our Ford Transit 8seater van thing. It is pretty sweet and driving is awesome over here, glad we got a car instead of taking trains everywhere. Although we defiantly had some sketchy moments driving in cities where a larger vehicle has no room. So we head south today, about an hour or so through long tunnels under mountains and the Swiss countryside. We get to our first stop which was Luzern, Switzerland. I know I haven’t seen much yet..but it was hands down the most beautiful city I have ever seen anyway. Everything over here makes America look like a joke. The city of Luzern had massive alp mountains all the way around it, with a huge lake twisting through the mountains and center city.

We didn’t stay too long there before we headed out of the city, and followed the edge of the lake around back out into smaller towns and villages. The mountains here don’t gently roll like at home, they are huge and so steep. So after passing through this last village where the homes were set right on the mountain hanging right over this lake, I believe the area was called Weggis. Then we got to the steepest cog railroad up the Mount Rigi. It was like 7000m tall. We get on this train thing and start going up…im talking we are on like a 45 degree angle crawling up the mountain, 1000ft drops two feet next to the rail road. But it was another world up there! I could never explain it to do it justice, but there were little houses up in the clouds thousand feet up on this mountain which is so steep you could barely walk out there. It looked like such a peaceful way of life, being a true mountain man. They had the cocco brown Swiss cows with the big bells wandering around these thing dirt paths they have made. I figured out why they wear bells quickly, because clouds just roll in up that high and you literally can see anything, they would lose their cows without the jingle of the bell! We reach the top and get out and there was no oxygen at all, I hit a flight of stairs and thought I was going to pass out. Then we got dinner on the summit..I had my first true brot wurst up there and we headed back home.

Overall the Swiss people are super nice, their country is beautiful and we got helped out a lot by them, and most everyone does indeed speak English. However even being here just the 2 days I can tell my german is going to get incredible. I have already order some things and got some things in stores only using my german, even some of my thoughts are in german..so that’s a good sign. I still can’t believe ill be hear until Christmas!

I just hit the gym, took a shower and will hopefully fall asleep now.

Sorry about the length on this entry, had a lot to catch up on. Tomorrow we headed back out, I heard word of possibly going into Lichtenstein, I have no idea what’s there, but hey how many people can say they’ve been there. Ha

Hope all is well in America!

Goodnight from Zurich,

Josh