Finishing Touches

As my imminent departure stares me in the face I am haunted with a strange sense of duty in regards to my blog. I would assume this is a similar feeling to that of someone asked to write a preface of a novel: they know what they are supposed to say, as well as what is expected, however, putting fresh words into new, romantic phrases that do the novel justice seems a more difficult feat than I would have thought. For me, I know need to say what an incredible, eye-opening, life-changing experience this was, but to simply say those words would not even begin to paint my world here.

These last few weeks leading up to today have been entirely uncomfortable for my head. I have settled so well into life here and love it so much that the thought of leaving seemed impossibly distant, however, when coupled with the intensity with which I miss my family and friends and Bozeman, time became this torturous game that I wanted both to speed up and slow down with equal passion. I was, of course, warned that this would happen, and am here to report that everyone is disgustingly right.

Here is what I have to say. In four months I have learned a new language, eaten new foods and talked to countless beautifully interesting new people, my faith in the power of the Sonicare toothbrush battery, and I've made some incredible friends whom I will never forget. I've taken on Europe alone and used trains, planes, buses, trams, and even my own two feet to take me on adventures. I feel incredibly strong and independent, as well as humbled in my realization of how much I need my family and friends at home. I wonder how long it will take me before I need my friends and family here, too.

Tomorrow I have upwards of nineteen hours of travel to do, and then I will finally be home. Home. There is something ultimately very refreshing about that. So I suppose it's until next time, Europe.

A Collision of Worlds and a Lost Turkey

This past week or so has been incredible. My mother came to visit me for a week on Wednesday the 13th, and the amount of things we packed into 7 short days should surely break some record. The first few hours were completely surreal, as if my two completely separate worlds had collided in a colossal mixture of joy and frantic hugs as I prepared to introduce my Mom to the life I've built here. As a self-centered teenager who is way too in touch with her feelings, I can say that seeing my mother for the first time in eighty days was certainly cause for some tearful celebration. To bring someone who is as much a part of my old world as is possible for one person to be into my new life where her (and the rest of my family's) prominent absence is a defining characteristic was one of the most joyful and confusing experiences I can say I've had. An interesting chapter to add to my adventure here, to be sure.

The first day I picked her up from the train station and took her home and gave her tea and held onto every word she spoke about home. On Thursday I showed her my high school. We went while classes were going on and, when no one was around, she was wont to take embarrassingly motherly pictures of me at my school. It's a good thing I am so patient. Friday I don't have school in the afternoons so we took a train and went to explore Bern, which was incredible. We wandered, drank tea, saw Einstein's house, and that night watched the coolest light show on the front of the Parliament Building. Saturday I showed her my haunts around the town and (tried to) demonstrate my newly acquired french skills. Sunday we put on a grand Thanksgiving feast for the whole family and some close friends, as a celebratory thank-you to all of the people here who have been so kind and wonderful to me. Instead of having customary turkey, however, we roasted four chickens for the meal. But the absence of the sleep-inducing poultry was not for lack of trying to acquire one. Two weeks prior, E had ordered a six kilogram turkey (huge in terms of the Swiss) from the local grocery store, had called twice to confirm it's existence, and arrived Friday before the feast with my mother expecting a bird the size of a small child, but instead found a very confused butcher. Our precious turkey was lost somewhere in Switzerland, but had entered the country and been delivered to some mystery location. I'm not sure what I enjoy more, the fact that they then gave us the chicken for free, or the image of a grocery store somewhere in Switzerland receiving an absolutely enormous turkey with no one to take it, and no explanation of it's existence. Those poor Swiss.

The last few days were spent frantically trying to make up for every hug I've missed out on, tie up loose ends on the homework and packing front, and face the imminent departure as gracefully as two people in our situations might. I won't pretend that putting my mom on a train and letting that train take her away from me was at all easy, and my day was a little rough after that, but the end of the week was lovely, and I had an exceptionally lovely weekend that made me love my life here even more. Simply being with friends, doing what we love, brought be back to realizing how charmed my life really is. Maybe its because the sun came out today and I made a new playlist on my ipod, but I can happily report that I am here, I am grateful, and I wouldn't change a thing about this trip. So far...


P.S.: Lyon this weekend. Will write with updates about that next adventure.

Back from Accidental Hiatus

Adventure is found by anyone willing to perceive its existence.  And I'm afraid I haven't been a very good adventurer of late, and therefore haven't blogged in a while. I've really begun to settle in and forge stronger relationships with my friends and classmates, and life is turning much more normal as I fill my weekends with hangouts and homework, and spend the week days on homework and cursing the ever-shortening days. All-in-all, very normal behavior for a sun-worshipping teenaged student such as myself.

But in actuality I should look at daily life as an adventure, especially since I'm a kid living in a foreign country. For Halloween last week I tried to buy the affection of my classmates with pumpkin and ghost-shaped sugar cookies that I had to shape by hand because there weren't any halloween cookie cutters. Just yesterday I cranked out a 230 word essay in french class for the writing test. The assignment was to write a 270-word objective description of an image provided, and, although 40 words short, I feel like I did fairly well. I spent the period frantically flipping through my dictionary and Bescherelle, trying to form coherent similes and personifications, as was directed. Perhaps I'm just becoming more accustomed to the weird things that happen as an exchange student, and am taking them more in stride.

My mommy is coming to visit me next week, something I'm wicked excited for. We're going to have a huge Thanksgiving feast for the whole family and some friends. I can't wait to show her my life here and have a few adventures ourselves.

So, in short, I will try to be a better adventurer and update more often, and I'm sure many upcoming events will prove bloggable..

On Being Travel Savvy

This morning I woke myself up at 5, was taken to the airport by Vince's very kind father, and dropped off at the appropriate check-in area. I then proceeded to navigate the Vienna Airport, get myself on my plane and flew back to Switzerland. I landed in Zurich and then had to find myself a train home, which I did, and arrived safe and sound. I did this entire thing on admittedly extremely low sleep due to a lack of desire to say goodbye to Vince and his friends last night when we all hung out, and as I was walking down the hill home I realized that two months ago, such a feat would have terrified me beyond belief. So now I feel relatively confident that if I learn absolutely nothing else on this journey, I will have at least learned how to get myself around and be independent using foreign public transportation. Don't worry, Mom and Dad, my going away wasn't for naught. I expect a conversation while introducing us kids in the future will go like this:
         Mom and Dad: "These are our three children. The boys are both in college and going to be brilliant engineers and doctors and all that, and our daughter can use public transportation in foreign countries on small amounts of sleep.  We are very proud."

Vienna, Vince, and Venice.

There are so many things buzzing around in my head, I don't know where to  begin. This last week has been glorious. I've found nothing but exquisite beauty everywhere I look; in the people I've met, in Vienna, and especially Venice. But I'm already getting ahead of myself.  

Vince and the entire Scharner family have been the most amazing hosts. They took me into their home for two full weeks with nothing but warmth and kindness. Every one of them has taken time out of their busy schedules to show me parts of Vienna. The city itself has stolen my heart, of course, and I, like teenaged, lovestruck tourist I am, will surely let it break over such a place. To stand in a place that has seen ages pass and dynasties rise and fall; a vast witness to sheer age and beauty, a seemingly divine backdrop to thousands tangled, human lives, is simply breathtaking. And the insane thing is every inch of Europe is like this.

Last week was filled with museums, monuments, palaces, and history. The night of my arrival just happened to be the night that all of the public museums were open until the wee hours of the morning, so Vince, Clara (A friend I met when their class came to Bozeman) and I went into town directly from the airport and toured a bit of the city and a museum first thing. Vince and his mother took me to see the Spanish Riding School on Sunday, which is a world-famous dressage show that features a very specific breed of hot-blooded horses who spend their entire lives learning to do impossible tricks and movements. We watched as these beautiful animals paraded and performed, trying to subtly take illegal pictures and craning our necks rather than tear our eyes away from the impeccable grace and talent of the horses. Later in the week I was taken by Vince's mother to Schonbrunn Palace, the imperial summer residence of the Hapsburgs. That was incredible, and almost humbling, in a way, to see not only the home of an extremely impressive dynasty but the intricate work of architects and variously influenced decor slammed together in one great building. For the remainder of the week I was left mostly to my own devices, with the exception of Sophie, Vince's sister, and her boyfriend Alex taking me into town one day to see some modern art and a lively market. I was actually fairly proud of myself for successfully navigating the public transportation system, as a small town girl whose second language is nothing even similar to german, and whose first is still too far away to be incredibly useful. I took myself to countless museums and sights as well, and took a ridiculous amount of pictures, shamelessly filling out my tourist profile.

And then the weekend brought Venice. Vince, Clara and I took an overnight bus, a nine-hour ride, to the city on Friday night. The bus was just like a Karst Stage and upon entering, I felt I could very well be on the way to a Track or Cross Country meet; everyone was bringing too much luggage on and no one was ever quite comfortable, so the sound of shifting bodies and rustling luggage was almost as non-stop as the growling drone of the bus' engine. We arrived at 5:30 in the morning, when the sun was barely even hinting an appearance by dusting the furthest corners of the horizon grey. Wandering the streets of Venice when there wasn't a soul around was, I later learned, an extremely unique and tantalizingly romantic experience. The ratio of actual inhabitants to the number of tourists that flood the city each day is almost laughable, and causes uncontrolled crowds with no where to go but the street for the duration of the day, so as the streets filled up and we wandered, waiting for things to open, I realized how lucky I had been to have, just for a moment, the city to myself. We then spent the day touring St. Mark's Basilica, the Doge's Palace, and later went by Vaporetto to Murano and watched the famous glass blowing. That evening we planned to meet up with my friends, Sumner and Pat, who are fellow Bozemanites and just happened to both be in the city and exactly the same time as us. It was completely surreal, to find myself with people I grew up with in an iconic European city, five thousand miles away from home. We went to dinner at a seafood place that was completely off the beaten track and took us several tries to find with faulty smartphone coverage. I ordered cuttlefish with ink sauce, and found it was, in fact, pitch black. Our waiter was the sassiest Italian man, who seemed to take it upon himself to educate this little group of obviously American tourists (Again, sorry Vince and Clara for getting grouped in with the Americans). We met up with them again on Sunday and went to one final museum, and then spent the rest of the day wandering and talking and falling more and more deeply in love with yet another city. Then it was back on the bus, a groggy ride home, and my weekend of bliss had concluded. It was simply perfect, there is no other way to describe it.

I don't know if I will be writing next from Switzerland or Austria, but I will update about the rest of my adventures this week at some point. For now, here is one happy kid signing off.

Thoughts in My Head: Airports and Board Games

So I had a lot of down time at the airport yesterday, waiting to be  flown off to my next adventure. I just want to make it clear, you've been warned, this is going to be a weird post.

I took the train to the Zurich airport yesterday, and I arrived pretty early so I had some time to buy a muffin to snack on. I guess after almost six weeks here I still must look blatantly American because when I got up to the register to pay for my food the cashier automatically spoke to me in English. This caused me to lift my chin defiantly, and speak right back in French, asking her to repeat the price. She looked extremely confused, but did so. For a while I was very proud of myself for taking a step towards breaking down stereotypes but then I realized that my french is still thickly accented and screams "American", a fact that could hardly go unnoticed by the cashier. Suddenly my triumph at her supposed embarrassment waned as it donned on me that she was only confused why this obviously American tourist had switched to another language that wasn't even the local tongue, especially when she had already addressed me in my own tongue. So much for trying to be impressive.

I am eternally grateful to the board game Ticket to Ride: Europe. It has been extremely helpful for both entertainment and clarification purposes on this trip. In the game, the object is to build trains that connect major cities all over Europe, but all of the trains in and out of Switzerland are tunnels. As I've been traveling around with my host family and on trains by myself, I've been struck by the sheer number of tunnels that actually exist here. It seems instead of winding around drainages and up mountains like we do in Montana, the swiss just tunnel right through everything. I love it. The game also came in handy when I forgot that Vienna is called Wien in German, and this overlook caused me to stand stupidly at the departure screen for many, many minutes before I realized that I had seen the name "Wien" on the board game, and it was probably where I was supposed to fly.

I've arrived in Klosterneuburg now, and the adventures have already started. But I'll save them for another post. :)

Fête des vendanges: Inebriated Sardines in an Ocean of Color

This past weekend there was a huge festival in Neuchâtel, called Fête des vendanges. It is a huge tradition for the town, celebrating the vineyard harvest. Basically it's a huge three-day party and the whole town goes completely insane. It was great. The first night I went out with Meline and some of her friends, and we just explored and ate cart food and rode the carnival rides. It was incredibly fun. There were various stages set up all over downtown, and DJ's, bands, and performers filled them with music and entertainment. The festival officially ended at 4 each morning, so buses pulled through the streets hauling packed, intoxicated people for the entire night. The inebriated sardines would pile out, pushing themselves into a crowd that reached for blocks and had no visible end. The city's old streets became a sea of color, carpeted with confetti that children and adults alike threw at each other and at common sense, banishing it for an entire weekend. Saturday night I met up with some friends from school who are in a band together, and who were performing that night. We hung out until the performance and then I watched and cheered with the crowd of other high schoolers, and enjoyed watching them suck their cigarettes and rock out. Music, food, fireworks, and most importantly alcohol filled the hours for the first two nights for the town of Neuchâtel. On Sunday there was a parade. Huge floats made of flowers and more confetti cruised by us, offering free bread, cheese, wine, and chocolate and carrots instead of the candy that my American up-bringing led me to expect.

On Saturday I am leaving to spend two weeks in Austria with my friend Vince (it is Autumn Break at school). He claims to have already planned many adventures for us, and I promise to faithfully document them as much as possible. See you in Austria!