Well if you haven't noticed, I have returned from Europe and I've finally got the whole trip blogged. If you are visiting this site for the first time and need to start at the beginning just scroll to the bottom to Belgium (our first stop) and work your way up. Hope everyone has enjoyed following us along our trip!
P.S. I updated the pictures too. You can now click on the picture to see an enlarged version.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Zurich
We finally arrived in Zurich after going through Liechtenstein by bus and taking a few other trains. When we got to Zurich we exchanged our euros for Swiss francs (the Swiss haven't jumped on the euro bandwagon yet) and we found lockers for our backpacks. Once we left the train station we decided to walk around the city (neglecting to get a map). We didn't take more than ten steps outside the station when we saw these giant plaster teddy bears painted with various costumes apparently sponsored by various companies.
We then took another ten steps, and there was yet another colorful teddy bear smiling back at us. Proceeding our second encounter with our gimmicky, extremely tacky friends we took another ten steps when lo and behold there was yet another bear. Looking up the street there were bears as far as the eye could see.
I thought we might be able to escape them if we just moved away from the train station, but alas it was of no avail. Greg said he liked them, but I saw them for the tacky eyesores that they really were. I'm not kidding when I say there must have been hundreds even thousands of bears, there was spiderbear, superbear, tobelrone bear, olympic bear, ford bear, bmw bear, airplane bear, and on, and on. Lets just say I got real sick of the bears, and that's all I'm going to say at this point about the bears. From this point forward let us never speak of them again. We walked to the lake and then up a road to some churches. The churches seemed, for lack of a better word, dead. There wasn't even an alter or tabernacle that I could see. I assume they still use them, but it sure didn't look like it, maybe it was just a different style of church with things in odd places, I don't know. From the churches we went up to a park and came across some Swiss kibitzer playing chess on these giant stone chess "arena" (well they aren't boards).
There were also some people playing Bocce. We found an open chess "arena" and played a game. After the game we decided that it would be really helpful if we had a map of the city, so we headed back to the train station. We found the tourist information office and got a map, then we headed back to the lake. We found a good spot to swim in a small park by the lake, and we jumped in. Greg forgot to bring extra shorts, while I forgot to bring a towel. Greg decided it was worth it to swim in his boxers, but I think he was starting to change his mind when he realized he wanted to get out and his white boxers were not adequately concealing his dignity. I had no trouble though and after taunting him from the shore for a bit, I threw his towel out to him.
We walked around the park for a bit, and Greg decided he wanted to swim again and soap himself off in the lake. After that we went back into town, saw another outdoor concert band, and then went to a pub that was recommended to us at the tourist info center, where I enjoyed an import (Sam Adams).
After the pub we went back to the park by the lake and played some rummy. It was getting pretty late, about 1:00 in the morning and we thought about whether or not we were going to sleep at all. The night before we arrived in Zurich, Greg and I had decided that we weren't going to sleep our last night in Europe. We had just enough cash to last us the last day if we didn't have to pay for a hostel, and we didn't really want to get out more money and have to exchange it back to US dollars (exchange fees rip you off). We had heard stories from other backpackers who had stayed up all night and we figured it was worth it our last night. We were both getting a little tired and we started discussing where we could rest for a little bit that wouldn't cost anything and yet would be somewhat safe and not too illegal. We thought about the park we were at but around that time a policeman came by in his car and started shining his searchlight around the park and we figured the park might not qualify as a legal sleeping place for the night. Then there were all the random people who seemed to be doing laps around the park at the middle of the night and we thought it might not qualify as safe either. At that point it started to get a little chilly. In my infinite wisdom and foresight I locked away my long pants and my jacket in the train station. Greg also did not think he would need his jacket and so he locked it up as well. We got up from our park bench and started to walk back towards the city center. We sat down on a bench by the river (there's a river that goes by the train station through the city down to the lake) and Greg got out his Mickey mouse poncho to stay warm. We sat there for a while drifting in and out of sleep when we decided that there was bound to be a warmer bench in the train station. We went into the train station passing a few fellow bench sleepers and went down to the lower level where we thought we would be most out of the way. We were walking around when Greg said to me, "those benches look comfortable." At that point comfortable was very relative, and we each took a bench and slept for a bit using our daypacks as pillows. We slept from about 3:30 - 5:30 when people started walking by us on the way to the early morning trains. I got up and looked around and after I woke up a little bit I suddenly realized how goofy Greg looked in his Mickey mouse poncho and newsie hat pulled over his face.
I woke him up and we moved to a more secluded bench closer to the lockers with our big backpacks inside. We slept for another hour or so and then woke up, got our backpacks out, and then headed to a few stores before we had to leave for the airport. We went to a supermarket where Greg got his multivitamin juice he always got, and I found a shop that sold stickers to add to my nalgene bottle (I got a sticker from each country to put on my nalgene bottle, actually I started after Belgium so I missed that one). We went to the park and played one last chess game and then took a train to the airport (after just missing the first one (they have trains every ten minutes though)). We made our flight without any problem and after a little sleep and a couple in flight movies we were back in the states, and our awesome adventure through Europe had come to an end.
We then took another ten steps, and there was yet another colorful teddy bear smiling back at us. Proceeding our second encounter with our gimmicky, extremely tacky friends we took another ten steps when lo and behold there was yet another bear. Looking up the street there were bears as far as the eye could see.
I thought we might be able to escape them if we just moved away from the train station, but alas it was of no avail. Greg said he liked them, but I saw them for the tacky eyesores that they really were. I'm not kidding when I say there must have been hundreds even thousands of bears, there was spiderbear, superbear, tobelrone bear, olympic bear, ford bear, bmw bear, airplane bear, and on, and on. Lets just say I got real sick of the bears, and that's all I'm going to say at this point about the bears. From this point forward let us never speak of them again. We walked to the lake and then up a road to some churches. The churches seemed, for lack of a better word, dead. There wasn't even an alter or tabernacle that I could see. I assume they still use them, but it sure didn't look like it, maybe it was just a different style of church with things in odd places, I don't know. From the churches we went up to a park and came across some Swiss kibitzer playing chess on these giant stone chess "arena" (well they aren't boards).
There were also some people playing Bocce. We found an open chess "arena" and played a game. After the game we decided that it would be really helpful if we had a map of the city, so we headed back to the train station. We found the tourist information office and got a map, then we headed back to the lake. We found a good spot to swim in a small park by the lake, and we jumped in. Greg forgot to bring extra shorts, while I forgot to bring a towel. Greg decided it was worth it to swim in his boxers, but I think he was starting to change his mind when he realized he wanted to get out and his white boxers were not adequately concealing his dignity. I had no trouble though and after taunting him from the shore for a bit, I threw his towel out to him.
We walked around the park for a bit, and Greg decided he wanted to swim again and soap himself off in the lake. After that we went back into town, saw another outdoor concert band, and then went to a pub that was recommended to us at the tourist info center, where I enjoyed an import (Sam Adams).
After the pub we went back to the park by the lake and played some rummy. It was getting pretty late, about 1:00 in the morning and we thought about whether or not we were going to sleep at all. The night before we arrived in Zurich, Greg and I had decided that we weren't going to sleep our last night in Europe. We had just enough cash to last us the last day if we didn't have to pay for a hostel, and we didn't really want to get out more money and have to exchange it back to US dollars (exchange fees rip you off). We had heard stories from other backpackers who had stayed up all night and we figured it was worth it our last night. We were both getting a little tired and we started discussing where we could rest for a little bit that wouldn't cost anything and yet would be somewhat safe and not too illegal. We thought about the park we were at but around that time a policeman came by in his car and started shining his searchlight around the park and we figured the park might not qualify as a legal sleeping place for the night. Then there were all the random people who seemed to be doing laps around the park at the middle of the night and we thought it might not qualify as safe either. At that point it started to get a little chilly. In my infinite wisdom and foresight I locked away my long pants and my jacket in the train station. Greg also did not think he would need his jacket and so he locked it up as well. We got up from our park bench and started to walk back towards the city center. We sat down on a bench by the river (there's a river that goes by the train station through the city down to the lake) and Greg got out his Mickey mouse poncho to stay warm. We sat there for a while drifting in and out of sleep when we decided that there was bound to be a warmer bench in the train station. We went into the train station passing a few fellow bench sleepers and went down to the lower level where we thought we would be most out of the way. We were walking around when Greg said to me, "those benches look comfortable." At that point comfortable was very relative, and we each took a bench and slept for a bit using our daypacks as pillows. We slept from about 3:30 - 5:30 when people started walking by us on the way to the early morning trains. I got up and looked around and after I woke up a little bit I suddenly realized how goofy Greg looked in his Mickey mouse poncho and newsie hat pulled over his face.
I woke him up and we moved to a more secluded bench closer to the lockers with our big backpacks inside. We slept for another hour or so and then woke up, got our backpacks out, and then headed to a few stores before we had to leave for the airport. We went to a supermarket where Greg got his multivitamin juice he always got, and I found a shop that sold stickers to add to my nalgene bottle (I got a sticker from each country to put on my nalgene bottle, actually I started after Belgium so I missed that one). We went to the park and played one last chess game and then took a train to the airport (after just missing the first one (they have trains every ten minutes though)). We made our flight without any problem and after a little sleep and a couple in flight movies we were back in the states, and our awesome adventure through Europe had come to an end.
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