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!

Doppelgängers and Smoke: High School Life

Life in the high school is pretty normal. The scheduling is different, and the language is different, but it's still a compilation of busy hallways and lazy classrooms, hidden cell phones, self-absorbed teenagers, and a thermostat that is never right. The almost homely effect of this atmosphere has caused my subconscious to assume I am back in Bozeman High. That's my guess, anyways. In the first few weeks I started to notice how many double takes I was doing at various students in the halls, thinking they were a friend from Bozeman. At first, I marveled at the fact that there could be so many doppelgangers of my high school attending DDR. However, as time passed I began looking more closely at the faces of me look-alikes, and realized that most of them look nothing like the people I mistook them for. I even mistook a boy for a girl once. That was an uncomfortable moment for everyone. I haven't figured out if I am missing home, or just having trouble adapting to the fact that I am in a completely different world from Bozeman High, and my brain is stubbornly refusing to be Swiss. How American of it.

There are some distinct differences between BHS and DDR, however. The biggest one is the smoking. Somehow, a country that is notorious for health consideration and cleanliness didn't get the memo about pumping tar and chemical-infused smoke into your lungs. I would be willing to bet that over half of my class smokes, and they are all 14 and 15 year olds. There is a 20-minute break in the morning, and the entire school, including teachers, leaves the building and lights up. Today we had a fire drill, and as the buzzer went off, the entire class, like the lazy teenagers we are, breathed a sigh of relief and began filing out, our books closing faster than what would have previously been thought possible. The hallways filled up with teachers, irritated by their interrupted lessons and sudden call to responsibility of surly teenagers, and loud, happy kids checking their smuggled phones and plugging their ears to drown out the sirens. In Bozeman, fire drills are a way of  wasting class time while mostly likely freezing and longing for that coat we stuffed into our tiny lockers that morning. In Switzerland, however, it is another smoke break. We had barely left the doors of the alleged flaming building when the entire student body lit up and left a trail of glowing ash in its wake as we were herded to safety by smoking teachers. The irony of such an event was enough to make me, once again, that weird exchange student who laughs at the jokes in her head but doesn't have the language skills to explain herself. I think my classmates think I'm pretty strange.

To Blog: Two Weekends, Too Swiss.

I apologize for the painful word play in the title of this post. I don't even know.

It's been a while since I last updated, and I have two weekend adventures to record. Last weekend was a lovely adventure in the Alps. Hans Peter, Elisabeth, and I drove up to a cabin owned by a family friend of theirs, and we stayed for two nights in an adorable Alpine village, hiking and exploring. The couple we stayed with, Claire and Michel, were very kind and welcoming. Claire is the kind of person who begins mothering you the moment you enter her adorable, wood stove warmed cabin. Both she and Michel were so kind. The first day we went on a trail called The Ibex Trail, which started by a huge dam (the biggest one in Switzerland, actually) and circled around a small mountain, summited the saddle between it and another, and took you back down around the other side, making a loop of twelve kilometers. According to the signs, there were breathtaking vistas of Mont Blanc and surrounding Alps, however, thick fog was our constant companion throughout the hike, and though we did manage to see some of the famous Ibex, the rugged peaks that carry as much history as snow were kept hidden from us. The weather only worsened as the hike went on, and snowed for the final few kilometers. The second day we spent exploring tiny Alpine villages, indulging the tourist franchise, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

Today we had a surprise picnic birthday party for Hans Peter. My host father turned, er, 40 again, and E made plans to have a traditional Swiss picnic in the mountains and roast sausages over a fire. So, joined by a friend of mine from school, our family drove up to a lovely place in the mountains that had a stunning view of the Alps, a place for a fire, and cows ranging around, their bells clanging cheerfully. I made several cow friends on this trip. One licked my hair, mistaking it for delicious food. I assured it this was a common mistake, and to not feel too bad. We ate sausage and bread and salads and chips and cake and torte and even roasted marshmallows. I must admit I felt a bit of American pride when my marshmallows turned out beautifully, while the Swiss continually dropped theirs in the coals or struggled to eat them. They were also the weirdest marshmallows I've ever seen, multicolored and twisted together. Luckily my many years of camping have trained me to take on any challenge, and my marshmallow roasting was nothing short of stellar, if I may say so. All in all a very pleasing day, and full of many laughs and smiles. I later found out that among those who attended the party was my school principle, and that I had engaged in a game of frisbee with him. My life is so weird.

American Yawns

I have choir class on Mondays at lunch, and this week I found that one of my fellow exchange students, a boy from Denver, CO, is also in choir. We sat next to each other, and the music teacher (who is big, loud, and boisterous as music teachers should be) gave a huge yawn in the middle of a speech. Denver and I both proceeded to yawn, because, as everyone knows, those are very contagious things. However, I noticed that not a single Swiss student in the room seemed to be affected by the yawns given off by both our teacher and us. Thus began my experiment. Hypothesis: Only Americans find yawns contagious. I began pointedly exclaiming how tired I am and yawning in front of my host family, and have yet to find any results. They've noticed nothing, and have had no reactions to my yawns. I will continue this experiment and perhaps branch out to more test subjects, such as my fellow students. I will follow up this post with the results.

P.S. How many times did you guys yawn while reading this?