February 14, 2008

Happy Valentine's Day

I just got back from Bern (the captiol) and I'm pretty wiped, but I'm going to attempt to fill in all that we did in the last three days.

We got to Bern after about a two hour train ride on Tuesday afternoon, grabbed a quick lunch and then headed out for a guided tour of the city. The city is built on a hill and is really old and has tons of cool fountains and buildings and a huge old church. Also, there is the Swiss Federal Bank and Parliament building. In addition, there are bears everywhere (not real of course)!!! They are on fountains and buildings and signs and cars....legend has it that when Bern was founded, the founder claimed the city's mascot would be the first animal he killed - and he killed a bear. There are also two live bears in "bearpits" in the city. It was actually really depressing cement habitat, but apparently there have been live bears in the pits since like the 1400's or something. Also, the city has a famous clock tower from hundreds of years ago that puts on this show every hour on the hour that involves dancing bears and bells and stuff, it was pretty cool. On Tuesday night we went to a cool microbrewery that was a bit pricey but still enjoyed the night.

On Weds we woke up early to go to a few lectures on Human Trafficking and Swiss foreign aid that were pretty interesting. Then we had the rest of the day free. We got some real German Brats (Bern is in the Swiss-German part of the country so everybody spoke German and all the signs were in German, it was really funny) on the street and chilled for a bit. Then a bunch of us went to get a tour of the Parliament building which was absolutely beautiful. It was completed in the early 1900s so its fairely new, but really ornately decorated. It certainly puts the US Capitol Building to shame. It was funny to see how small the houses of government were! Also, interesting to learn that women didn't receive the right to vote in Switzerland until 1971.

After the Parliament tour, it was around 4 and everybody was draggin a bit so we went back to the hostel and chilled until about 7 when we started drinkin a bit. Then some of us went out for some pizza, and after some wandering and arguing about where to go, finally met up with the others in the group at this Cuban bar where we danced the night away. Every one of the 26 of us were there and we took over the bar. My friend Steph even ended up hooking up with a guy from the Swiss Army hahah. It was a fun but longgg night.

This morning we woke up early to check out of the hostel and then had til about 3 to do whatever we wanted. A bunch of us headed back to the crazy big old church and paid to climb up to the top of the highest tower. It was a really long walk up a crazy steep old spiral staircase but when we got out to the balcony it was amazing (and really scary!). You could see all of Bern and the surrounding area. Then we climbed even higher and it was even crazier!! I couldn't stay up for very long and soon took a dizzying climb back down to ground level. Then we went to go see the bears in the bearpit (which was quite upsetting) and finally ended up in a cool restaurant in like a graffiti alley part of town. The people were really nice and the food was great and me, Steph, Greta, Alex, Kat, Kellen, Chris all chilled and ate there. Then we caught the train at 3 and headed home.

Now I'm updating and looking back it was a fun three days. It was really interesting to experience Swiss-German culture and compare it to Swiss-French culture (Swiss-German dominates most of the country). It was also good to be with the group all together again and have a good amount of free time (not that the program is all that demanding).

I can't believe i've been here for over three weeks already. I can't decide if it feels like I've been here forever or for no time at all.

Oh and it looks like im definitely going to be getting a new host family soon. I'll keep you posted on the details of that.

That's all for now, time to go relax