Spring Break Day 2—Zurich, Switzerland

These two days have certainly been interesting to say the least. We’ve been running off of Murphy’s law (anything that could go wrong will happen to me). Honestly, this trip has been a disaster since we left Rome. I’m starting to wonder if its going to change anytime soon or if the whole 2 weeks will be like this. We got to our hostel yesterday afternoon in Lucerne after some more train mix ups (not our fault though…I swear. I want to blow up the entire EUrail Corporation) we’ve paid more train fines than I thought were possible. When you pay as much as we did for these rail tickets, you would expect that the fine print would tell you EVERYTHING you needed to know. Not even close. I’m tired of getting yelled at by train conductors. They’re not very nice. Anyway, the hostel was really nice and in a great part of Lucerne. All of Lucerne was great actually. It was the typical Swiss town with tiny houses and little cafes on the corners. All the people we have met so far in Switzerland have been very helpful and kind. I haven’t met one yet that doesn’t speak English so that help us a lot since we don’t know very much German. We spent last night and today exploring Lucerne and we got some really nice pictures since we were situated right under the Swiss Alps. After we got back to the hostel last night, I finally got a chance to check my email and saw the news about the earthquake. I couldn’t believe that it took us all day to hear about it since Switzerland is so close to Italy. I had a ton of messages and emails for our study abroad program and people back home checking on us to make sure we were okay. Luckily, we were out of Rome when the quake happened since we were still in Udine with my family. They said that more than a dozen aftershocks were felt so I’m EXTREMELY thankful that we weren’t in Rome when it happened. We were actually heading to one of the towns that were destroyed on Monday. I can’t believe how lucky we are to have planned that for next Monday and not yesterday. As far as I know, everyone from our program is safe since we are on spring break and should be away from Italy this week.

We hopped a train this afternoon into Zurich, Switzerland to spend a night and the day tomorrow. Zurich is nice but I think I liked Lucerne better. I feel totally safe in both towns but I just liked the feel of Lucerne more than Zurich. The people that run our hostel here bug me but were leaving tomorrow so I’ll get over it. Today we saw the main attractions in Zurich including a Swiss Chocolate factory. I got to watch the Chocolatiers make about Aa million chocolate bunnies in preparation for Easter this weekend. It was really cool to see how they made everything. Mom, you would have LOVED it. haha Switzerland is SO beautiful but is insanely expensive as well. I’ve purchased 1 souveneir, a silver charm for the bracelet that I’m making yet I’ve withdrawn money from the bank 3 times since yesterday just for train passes, metro passes, my hostels and food. It makes me sick. Something that I didn’t know was that Switzerland still uses the Swiss Franc. I thought everyone in the EU used the euro but you can pay in Euro as long as you use the paper money and not the coins. We had to reroute our trains for tomorrow. We’re heading into Brussels, Belgium for 2 days. We had a bullet train going to Brussels with a connection in Paris but we got changed to a slower direct line since the other train didn’t have room for EUrail Pass holders. Once again, I want to beat them all to death. I really hope our traveling gets easier because it’s more of a headache than it’s worth right now. I’m so excited to see all these places but the cons are outweighing the pros at the moment. I’m sure we’ll still have an amazing 2 weeks though. We just need to get through these rough spots. I’ll write again from Belgium. Hope you’re all doing great back in the States! Email me! I love to hear from you! Talk to you soon.

Love,
Michelle

PS: Why do European men think it is okay to wear spandex man capris???? Seriously! I have pictures. It is RIDICULOUS. I don’t want to walk around seeing this! Put on some full length pants that fit! Okay, I’m done ranting.