The Finale

Oops.

Sorry I've taken so long to write my last post, but I'm sure most of you gave up on me a long time ago. That's ok. 

Anyway, I've fought long and hard against procrastination and finally feel motivated enough to write this.

May 31: After Meret and Senta came home from school we visited the town of Hergiswill to visit a glass museum. We took a tour to learn about the history of glass and of the factory and finished in the furnace room where the workers were blowing glass. I bought myself a glass hippo!

June 1: Meret's boyfriend Moritz invited us over for breakfast for dinner. They served rolls with some sort of sweet, creamy sauce. It was really good! Afterwards Eliane, Senta, and I went to Lucerne to meet up with their friends.

June 2: We returned to Kerns in the afternoon and had a relaxing night at home.

June 3: Eliane drove me to Flueli, a town a few minutes away. It is the home of the Paxmontana, the sister hotel of the Keller's hotel home, Hotel Burgfluh. More importantly, it is also the home of Brother Klaus, the patron saint of Switzerland. We toured the house he lived in before he became a hermit and walked down into the valley to see where he lived and slept (a narrow wooden board with a rock for a pillow). If you're interested, here's a link to a page about Brother Klaus: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_von_Fl%C3%BCe

June 4: Mr. Keller had to work in Zurich and took me along so I could explore. I walked and walked and walked around the city and had a good time even though the museums were closed. I made it back to Mr. Keller's office and we headed to the train station to pick up Senta, who had a foreign exchange program (she's going to Chile for a year!) meeting later that night. We ate dinner, sat through the meeting, and made it home late at night.

June 5: While all Kellers were out I went for a walk in the fields around the house. At night we walked to Meret's friend's house for her birthday party.

June 6: I went to Lucerne by myself to do a day of souvenir shopping. After hours and hours I made it back to Kerns with several bags o' goodies. For dinner, Senta, Eliane, Meret, Moritz, and I went to a really good pizza place in Sarnen called Da Mario's.

June 7: Meret and I went to Lake Sarnen to have lunch with one of her friends and later went out for coffee with more friends.

June 8: I flew home!

A few words...

Thank you very very very much to the Osmanajs and Kellers for being so hospitable and especially to Westminster's Take a Friend Home Program for funding the flights!

Below: My favorite part of Lucerne that I had to revisit: The Lion Monument.

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff — for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.


Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion — and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.

— Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, 1880

Kerns and Lucerne and Sarnen

First off, sorry for being too busy and/or lazy to post for several days. I'll do a super quick recap of each day.
May 22 - Eliane drove me down to Lake Sarnen so I could walk around the lake while she was at school in Lucerne. I intended to walk around the entire lake, but then I realized it would take me a lot longer than the 3 hours I had, so I decided to buy some ice cream and read a book instead.


May 23 - I went on a walk through the hills around the house. My turnaround point was the bridge I had seen a couple days before, but I made a wrong turn at the very beginning of my trek (so much for knowing the way) and ended up a lot higher up than I meant to. I finally saw the bridge in the valley below, and thankfully there was a road a little ways ahead of me that led almost straight to it. I stopped in town to buy some favorite foods for lunch (pasta, butter, orange juce, and chocolate milk) and didn't think about asking for a bag, so I had to carry it all to the house - a completely uphill journey. Oh well, I needed a good workout.


May 24 - I don't completely understand how the school system works, but I do know that Meret had only biology lessons all day, every day last week. Since I'm a biology major, Meret asked if I would like to sit in on her class, to which I said yes. So, while she was doing the "boring" part of the class, I spend quality time with my book in various cafés. I wasn't sure how long was too long to sit in a café after drinking my coffee, so I switched to avoid an awkward situation. Do I have social anxiety? Probably. Anyway, I went to Meret's class when they were scheduled to go outside and examine different plants in the forest. I knew which trees were maples, but beyond that I knew nothing.


May 25 - I went to school this day too, only this time it was to watch the faculty vs. seniors soccer game. The faculty were actually pretty good, only losing the game 3-4. Later that night we went to her mom's house and went to another soccer game, but this game was between two college-aged teams.


May 26 - We started the day off with a walk through the classic car show in downtown Sarnen. After that, Meret and I drove to Alpnachstad and took the boat to Lucerne. While I was there I bought a Swiss watch from Swatch, and I'm really pleased with it. For dinner Meret's boyfriend made us pizza in his pizza oven and it was awesome. Later I hung out with Eliane and some of her friends.


May 27 - Meret took me to Arenschlucht (the Aar Gorge), a section of the river Aar that carves through a limestone ridge near the town of Meiringen, and later we went out for coffee with some of her friends. One of them even invited me to her birthday party. Oh boy!


May 28 - Meret, her boyfriend, and I went to a zoo a little beyond Lucerne. It was nice, and there were small deer walking around freely that you could feed. I was a little nervous about the free-roaming miniature bighorn sheep, but I guess they don't harm anyone. Later we went back to her dad's house, and I stayed up late to finish "All Creatures Great and Small" by James Herriot.


May 29 - Sleep, eat and read Cracked.com articles, sleep, eat and read more articles, sleep, eat, sleep.


May 30 - Today Eliane drove me to town to meet Meret after she got out of school. I bought ice cream and we spent half an hour on Lake Sarnen in a paddle boat, chasing ducks every now and then.


Below: My favorite picture from the walk I took on the 23rd.

Adventure Part 2

May 19 - My last full day with Linda. We drove to Lucerne in the morning and met her friend Valon, who had tickets for us to visit Mount Pilatus. Visting it was quite an ordeal, though. First, we took a 90 minute boat ride on Lake Lucerne to Alpnachstad, a village at the base of the mountain. Next we spent 40 minutes on the steepest cog railway in the world (seriously) to make it to the top of the mountain. On the way up my train stopped beside another train that was on its way down, and in the other train I spotted a guy from my home town with his mom. I wasn't completely surprised to see him because I knew he had been participating in a foreign exchange program in Lucerne for almost a year. They didn't see my obnoxious waving, and after a few minutes we continued up the mountain. At the top, a man approached us upon seeing our Westminster gear and asked if we were students at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. I said no, and it turned out that he was from Kansas City and hadn't heard of our Westminster. Poor guy. Anyway, once we reached the almost top of Mount Pilatus we walked up a couple short trails to different peaks for better views. The views were absolutely amazing, and I hope my pictures made it look at  least half as beautiful as it really was. We opted to take a 30 minute gondola car ride down the other side of the mountain. Good thing I'm not afraid of heights, huh?

At night we drove to Zurich so I could experience a popular Albanian hangout. It was a lot of fun and a great way to end the first part of my trip!

May 20 - Linda and I went our separate ways (A big thank you to the Osmanajs and all their relatives for being such wonderful hosts!). Our adventure came to an end because she has a job that starts soon, but I'm only halfway done with Switzerland! How's that, you ask? Well, two years ago my parents hosted a Swiss foreign exchange student named Meret Keller, and now I'm staying with her for a couple more weeks in her hometown of Kerns.

My little Swisster's house is a hotel (Hotel Burgfluh) turned apartment complex, and it's, for lack of smarter-sounding words, freaking awesome. After arriving at her apartment we visited Lake Sarnen and played a round of mini golf with her boyfriend and younger sister Senta. Later in the evening Meret (18), Senta (16), and their oldest sister Eliane (20) drove me around the lake and through neighboring villages. All of us were exhausted at the end of the day, and I think everyone was in bed by 10:00.

May 21 - Slept in. Surfed the web. Ate chocolate. Awesome.

May 22 - I think I'll go on a walk.

Below: The view from Mount Pilatus

Goodbye, Graubünden!

May 18 - Our last day in Chur and the canton of Graubünden in a nutshell:

Linda took me around the old city and new city while she ran errands for her dad whom arrived this morning. For lunch we stopped at a Turkish eatery for döner taschenbrot, which is like a big sandwich of...döner. After showing me around some more, we drove to a trail that would lead us to the ruin of Haldenstein Castle. We took pictures of the castle from the trail, walked a little further, and saw another castle from afar. We found a small dirt trail and followed it over a hill, under a cut fence, and straight to Haldenstein. Steep bluffs were braved, nerves were shot, and pictures were taken from dangerous rocky ledges. No word yet if such shenanigans are legal. We walked back down the mountain and drove back to her house to rest before visiting the Rhine River. I got my chocolate ice cream fix and we made the whole 5 minute walk to the water. I'm officially jealous that the Rhine River and Swiss Alps are in her backyard! After the river, we saw the sports center where Linda used to play and walked through a carnival. We haven't done much since then, but that's all right because the hike up the mountain got the best of us.

Below: Winston on the mountain near Haldenstein Castle, probably singing "The Sound of Music".

Country Hopping

May 14- To wrap up our stay in Kosovo, Linda spent the whole day showing me around Pristina. First we went to the school where she finished high school, The American School of Kosovo, where her brother now goes. The school holds only about 300 students spanning kindergarten through 12th grade.

Next I had my first visit to a mosque. We had to move quickly and quietly because people were praying inside, but I was able to watch for a couple of minutes before I started feeling like a sinner.

After running through the rain (It's rained every place we've been so far) we went to a museum, and even though it was being remodeled, Linda's mom, who from now on will be referred to as "Teze" (Albanian for "auntie"), convinced them to let us in because there was an American in the group (They really like Americans, specifically Bill Clinton, for their help during the Kosovo war) We saw some artifacts, but not surprisingly, most of the exhibits were about the war.

After running through the rain some more we made it to a souvenir shop so I could buy something distinctively Kosovo-Albanian. The name of it escapes me now, but I ended up with a traditional instrument that looks like small guitar with two strings that has the flag of Kosovo on it.

Parliament was next on our hit list. Teze's cousin works at the Parliament building and was nice enough to let us in to the assembly floor. We felt really special sitting in the seats of the leaders of Kosovo and snapped a few pictures of our mini Winston Blue Jay in the "hot seat."

The last stop of the day was Juridica, the school Teze attends. Serbians prevented her from finishing her degree in the years leading up to the war, so now that Kosovo is independent she has returned to take business and English classes.

May 15 - Back to Switzerland!  At night we made it to Linda's home of Chur, the oldest town in Switzerland. There I met another aunt and her kids and Linda's best friend (By the way, today we counted that Linda has 51 first cousins. I have a whopping 0.).

May 16 - Linda drove me around part of Chur, through the small town of Zizers, and then to Igis, where her aunt from the night before prepared fondue. After lunch we took 3 of the aunt's daughters to Bad Ragaz, a town with a really nice tourist area. It had several hotels and lots of interesting sculptures throughout the park. In the afternoon Linda, teze, and I left for Geneva/Genève/Genf with the first aunt I met, Melos, and Elijona, and two of the cousins I had met the night before : Laura and Florina. We arrived in Geneva late at night and crossed the border into Annemasse, France where Linda's uncle lives.

May 17 - After lunch the whole crew (8 of us plus the uncle and his wife and two kids) went for a walk along Lake Geneva and took a break in a park. Sadly, we had only a few hours to enjoy Geneva and started heading back to Chur in the afternoon. On the way back we stopped near Lausanne to visit the last of Teze's brothers and his wife and three kids. We arrived in Chur just a couple hours ago. I've officially met all of Linda's uncles and all but one of her aunts....on her mom's side.

Below: The three amigos in the Kosovo Parliament

Skopje, Pristina, and Istog, Oh My!

First of all: Sorry I haven't been able to post for a couple days.

To recap: For our last night in Thessa we went to a restaurant for coffee. We had a really good time and probably looked super cool when we danced in our seats to the American songs. 

The next day we walked around, bought some souvenirs, and hung out in the courtyard of a church. We think the church was underground, which sounds like an easy thing to figure out, but I'm still not sure. To go to Kosovo we had to take a bus from Thessa to Skopje, Macedonia so Linda's mom could bring us to Pristina, Kosovo. We met an older American couple on an eastern European adventure from Dallas at the bus stop, and even though they were harmless, the border patrol gave them trouble and cost us nearly an hour. Luckily, everyone made it back on the bus and we continued on our way. Linda's mom and her mom's cousin picked us up, and late at night we made it to Pristina and met Linda's brother Durim and his friend Adrian.

The next day (May 11th) we drove around the capital city, walked around a mountain, and took pictures of some bears and a monkey that we ran into. Calm down -- they were in cages. After lunch we left for Istog, a town of about 15,000 people nestled at the bottom of a mountain where Linda's mom grew up. Once we were there we went for coffee and walked around a waterfall with Durim and two of his very friendly friends. From dinner until 11:00 we visited the homes of 3 of Linda's relatives, and I met more people than I can count. But hey, they were all really nice!

Today we went to the mountain in Istog. It was a long, bumpy ride to the top in a van full of people, but it wasn't that different from the rides on my farm at home to check the cows. Our destination was the home of another of Linda's relatives. They live in a two-room portable (yeah, portable!) house that somehow fit all 15 or so of us. After a few hours of eating and exploring the area we had to go back to Pristina, where I've spent the last several hours meeting some of Linda's friends. I don't know what I expected Kosovo to be like, but it's been lots of fun so far!

Below: Winston on top of a mountain in Istog

Thessaloniki Day 2

Last night we returned to the White Tower area to experience Thessaloniki at night. It had a carnival-like atmosphere, complete with popcorn and cotton candy stands and "carnies" selling baubles and hovering around women's purses. It wasn't long before we were ready for bed, but before we "hit the hay" we drank Albanian coffee. I'd had it before at Linda's uncle's house, but this time Edo used my used cup to read my fortune. According to her, everything I'm wishing for will probably turn out how I want it to (sweet!), someone is jealous of me (ha!), and I'll have two children (uhhh...). Nifty, huh? 

This morning we met Edo and her friend Donjeta and headed out into the busy streets of Thessloniki. We wanted to see how Greek people live and behave, and by going through shops and restaurants we gained a better understanding. They seem to be pretty independent and mind their own business unless they're trying to sell you something (They like to break the ice by calling you Beyonce or Shakira). We toured the University of Sheffield and saw its versions of Champ, Hazel, and JCI, and even though the school has more students than Westminster, all of the rooms were very small. In fact, everything was in three levels of one building, which was sandwiched between other buildings along a street. Apparently the school is split into two buildings though, one for freshmen and sophomores and one for juniors and seniors. Linda and I walked around the city some more while Edo and Donjeta took an exam, and on the way back to the apartment we were caught suddenly by heavy rain. (see below). My fortune tells me that we'll be going out for coffee later.