My journey to Switzerland began Friday, soon after lunch. At the station in Alsheim, I was planning on purchasing a ticket to Mannheim and then a Baden-Wurtenburg ticket for the journey to Bammental and Switzerland after that. Tim's good friend and his fiance, Matt and Becca, were planning on arriving Friday morning into Frankfurt. I was going to meet Tim and the two of them in Mannheim and we were going to use my Baden-Wurtenburg ticket to get to Bammental. I had a box of six bottles of wine in tow that would eventually make it back to Kansas. However, Matt and Becca's plane had the same fate that my parent's plane had and they wouldn't be coming until Saturday, when I'd already be in Switzerland.
The land ticket in Germany is a wonderful idea and if you have a lot of time and some fun travelling companions, it's a great deal. The premise of the land ticket is that you pay 28 euros and up to five people can travel on that ticket for that day, anywhere in that Bundesland (state), on any regional trains. Mannheim is at the far northern reaches of Baden Wurtenburg (BW from here on out). With the BW ticket in tow, I met Von, another trainee, in Mannheim. Our journey to Basel consisted of changing trains twice, in Karlsruhe and Offenburg.
The plan almost failed at the first stop. There we were supposed to meet Crystal (trainee in Karlsruhe) and Alyssa, who was coming in on a train from Bavaria. The poor, decrepid souls of the Deutsche Bahn decided to change platforms on us. The three of us who had already found each other had discovered this, yet Alyssa hadn't seen the change. In her defense, the change was not noticeable at all. It took a last minute, no, last second effort to find her. I stayed on the platform while Von and Crystal went to other platform for one last check. I'm standing on the platfrom with everyone's stuff as I see Von running up the steps with Alyssa's suitcase above his head (he's well suited for work on a farm or warehouse). Behind him are Alyssa and Crystal. Making the train late, we are literally the last people on. The train, however, was jam-packed with people heading out of Karlsruhe for the weekend, yet we still shoved our pushy American selves onto it.
Catching our collective breath, we thought that things could only get better from here. We were far from right. For some reason, the train decided to sit for reasons unknown to its passengers on the tracks for a good half-hour. Just sitting there. Had our time between trains in Offenburg been more than 30 minutes, we would've been fine. But it wasn't. Finally arriving in Offenburg well after the train we had planned to be on left, we were left to hang out on the platform waiting for our next train, almost an hour later. We passed the time by communicating with Debbie that we would be coming in later than we had planned and by playing with a deck of cards someone thought to bring.
Once on the next train, the trip to Basel went well with time passing by quickly. Debbie, who is a Swiss Committee Member, met us on the platform and we went to her house. A happy reunion with Dutch Trainees was had and stories of the evening were shared.
We awoke on Saturday at the ungodly hour of 5 am, but all in good spirits and quickly filling up with coffee. After all, we were heading deep into the heart of the Alps, specifically to the town of Fiesch. (Good luck google mapping it, my mom had trouble.) For those of you keen on the Swiss landscape, we were south of the Jungfraujoch and east of the Matterhorn. The Swiss trains were all on time and about 9:30 am, we arrived to Fiesch. A short walk across town and we were on a gondola heading up to the ski resort area.
There were 12 of us, divided evenly by gender. There were two rooms, each with bunks that were ours. The skiers and boarders quickly dropped their stuff and headed to the renting facility to get their wares and the nonskiers walked around, dodging people on skis and boards coming down the hill. With our gondola passes good for as many times as we could stand it, we headed up to the top of the hill. There we were greeted with amazing views. Just imagine standing at the top of a mountain and in every direction are jagged, snow-covered peaks. Yeah.
We had a lunch of plates full of french fries. Soon after lunch I had an idea. I thought to myself, "I came all the way to a ski weekend...in the Alps...and I'm not skiing or snowboarding? Something's wrong." Since I have never been boarding or skiing before, and hadn't intended on it, I wasn't about to rent gear for an hour of falling down. Luckily one of the Dutch Trainees, Matt, was ready for a break and our European shoe size was extremely close. Along with my first insect sting, I have added "snowboarding in the Alps" to new experiences here in Europe. If you don't count all the falling and the inability to turn, I think I did pretty good. There are even some sweet pictures of me looking like I know what I'm doing...and not doing, but I haven't swiped them off the net yet.
That jagged peak is the Matterhorn:
Me, Debbie, Alex, Matt, Von:
Supper was in a cavernous meeting hall, which reminded me of some place like Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp, where everyone who was staying at the hostel ate as a group. Saturday happened to be Debbie's birthday and nobody had sung 'that song' to her yet. That is, until I stood on a chair and had my first (add it to the list) public-speaking-in-German experience. And the whole room sang.
After that, we stayed up the whole night, until about 11 (everyone was tired from being on the slopes all day). I think my stomach muscles were sore from all of the laughing from the stories and jokes that were being told the entire weekend.
We awoke on Sunday for a quick breakfast and the gondola ride down the hill. Another walk across town and we were on our way back out of the Alps to Basel. I was sore from the 2.5 times I went down the bunny slopes and I can't imagine what the people who had been out there all day felt like.
My goal once in Basel was to order my train card so I could use it when I move down to Switzerland in a couple of weeks. For 249 CH franc, I now have my Halb-Tax and Gleis7 card. Basically, this card allows me to cut any fare within Switzerland in half as well as travel for free anywhere in the country after 7 pm. I believe it will pay for itself throughout my six months in the country. It's also good for a whole year, so until January '10 if I find myself back there, I can still reap (I typed this word 'reap' just as it was used in a song I was listening to. Weird.) the benefits.
The four of us who were on the Friday night BW ticket got another one for an identical journey back to our respective placements. This time our trains were all on time. If I were able to upload things to the internet, I'd upload a video of a band called the Bloos Brothers (modeled down to the dress after the Blues Brothers) march onto our train and play Amazing Grace.
Great people and great scenery made for an awesome weekend. I can't wait to actually live in the country, too. The current Swiss trainee told me that I'll awake every morning, open the curtains, and outside my window will be the Alps. Speaking of which, I leave Wintersheim on February 5 and make my way to Switzerland on February 9. So if you have that postcard you've been itching to send get it out before early next week and I should still get it. My address for the next couple of days:
Jon Huber
c/o Familie Dettweiler
Haupt. 11
D-67587 Wintersheim
GERMANY
In Switzerland, you can send me those pieces of paper which make my days brighter to:
Jon Huber
c/o Familie Fellmann
Ruteli <-------------- put an umlaut over the u...you know, those two dots
9633 Hemberg
SWITZERLAND
On Monday I had my final German class. It was just a class like any other, except at the end I recieved words of luck and either handshakes or hugs from my classmates. All of them are continuing on for the next section of the class.
Tuesday was a day that I had been waiting for and after 8 long, long, long years, it finally happened. This is one of the those things where many years from now, people will ask you where you were for "The Moment". Not wanting to be alone in my room, I wanted to watch it with someone so I turned the TV on downstairs. Mind you, Obama was supposed to be sworn in at noon eastern time, which made it prime time here at 6 pm. I had on the CNN version of coverage, which I ended up despising because everything appeared at the bottom of the screen as a FACT. What? He raises his right hand while he's being sworn in? I didn't know that. Even though it was 12:02 and he hadn't been sworn in yet, he'd still been president for TWO WHOLE MINUTES! Wow! Thanks TV for telling me! Anyway, Heiko comes in and it's five minutes until America gets a reputable leader and he says he wants to change the channel. Thinking he's joking, I look at him and laugh but then he tells me to watch it in my room. Only missing half of Joe Biden's oath, I realize that he wanted to watch it in German. That's fine with me, whoever wants to understand the speech should be able to do so. The next morning at breakfast, he said he loved how Obama didn't once look at his speech notes. I thought about letting him believe how even more awesome Obama would be if he memorized a speech like that, but I brought him back down a notch, telling Heiko that it was displayed on glass so he could make eye contact with each every 1.5 million people there.
Until next time,
Jon
1 comment:
I made that first picture of the Alps my background at work.
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