Friday, January 15, 2010

Milan, Italy

Milano! Milan was a ton of fun! I went into Milan with three other girls and took off on an adventure to explore the city not really having any goals in mind... just fun! We started out catching the 7:45 am train into Milano leaving from Brig. It was only about two hour train ride and absolutely gorgeous. We drove through the mountains and then next to a lake as well; being that early in the morning and the sun rising the tops of all the mountains were a fiery red!

When we arrived in Milan, I made sure to hug my purse as tight as possible as I know the chances of being pick-pocketed are extremely high here. Luckily, this never happened to me. We headed down to the metro that they have that efficiently runs all the people here and there throughout the city and bought a 24 hour pass for 3 euro, not too bad considering we used this at least 10 times and a one way pass was a single euro. We started off by heading to the Duomo. It was absolutely gorgeous and I can safely say I have fallen in love with european architecture; it's breathtaking. My favorite part about walking to the Duomo was walking up the steps from the Metro and it was a keyboard, the steps we walked on each were keys to a keyboard and played the sound as we moved up them. When large groups came it was sort of chaotic sounding, but made my day right away.

After exploring and walking through the Duomo we head to other places in the city. Walked around saw the sights, shops, and people. Soaked in the culture and their city life. Hard to believe that I was in Italy just the other day. When we stopped for lunch we went to a sandwich shop - "Sammy Sandwich" and had panini's! They were absolutely delicious and we couldn't even eat the entire thing! After exploring a bit more we went to a coffee shop and had some of the local espresso, yumm! Headed back out into the cold and wandering a bit more, we went to the far side of town and ran into a castle, we stopped here to take pictures, walk through, and I pretended I owned the place. Gave the other girls a personal tour :) After that we set off to find a traditional Italian restaurant to have PIZZA! You can't come to Italy without having pizza or pasta, we wanted pizza. We found a rather nice place near the train station that served pizza and all got our own. Probably could've split one between two people, but this allowed for lunch tomorrow!

We hoped back on the train and set out back for Brig, it was a fun but very LONG day. Not to mention cold, but well worth it! Can't wait to see what next weekend may bring.

Swiss Nightlife - CHAOS




Finally getting to the good stuff! What everyone has been asking about and expecting me to partake in. Well lets go back to Monday, Lauren and I went out and got an amazing fondue dinner, it was a Swiss traditional cheese fondue with fresh bread as well as potatoes. Which I found to be rather interesting, but extremely AMAZING! I got a glass of white wine to go with dinner, as it helps break down the food and makes digestion easier. Good to know, I guess I will have to keep upon this one!

Tuesday Jan. 12, 2010

Nothing overly exciting, rather than starting classes and sitting in class from 8:30 am until 4:20 in the afternoon.... let me tell you that is one long day! Yes I know it's shorter than a job, but not being able to get up, walk around, talk, etc. it's making my life tough! haha. :) After I had classes I needed to pick up some notebooks for classes and all for taking notes. Even though the told us it is mandatory to have computers, NO ONE uses them in class. It's very different from what I am used to. When we were out I ended up buying a hair dryer (discounted at that) and it may be saving my life it seems! Never knew how handy these things were until you don't have one to use. Still using my curling iron to straighten my hair, makes life interesting. Especially since my converter won't plug into my bathroom ones (they're too far inset) and I have to straighten my hair with my computer in "sleep" mode and look into the black of the screen as a makeshift mirror. I'm a college student, I am handy with these things.
With all of these stressful first days and transitioning into the cultural and what not I bought my first bottle of alcohol LEGALLY! Jack Daniels! My favorite :) Dad, you would be so proud....

Wednesday Jan 16, 2010

Yet again another day of classes. Only one today though. It went by fairly fast and was actually rather interesting, especially considering I have worked within restaurants for the past year or so now. This entire course is in relation to Food and Beverage (F&B) Management; not sure if it's the path I want to go into, but it has potential. Today we ended up going to the store again... this time I was determined to by Coca-Cola for a jack and coke... Well this store that we went into doesn't accept VISA so I told her I would be abck because I didn't bring any of my cash on me. Went and walked around downtown, say a bunch of little shops here and there, it's really an itneresting and fun little town with a ton of personality. So many little restaurants, pubs, clothing and shoe stores GALORE! and your typical little knickknack stores as well. I find it interesting that postcards here cost 1.75 - 2.50 PER CARD. Defnitely not in the US anymore with our .25 cent postcards haha. Lauren was able to get a bragain steal and found a cute little sweater that was only 2.50!

Thursday Jan 14, 2010

Tonight is the "ICEBREAKER" for the entire school.... all 290 of us. It started at 5:30 at the University and we took pictures for the yearbook and then went into the dining room for the reception. Here we were served wine, beer, apple juice, and Coca-Cola. I opted for the white wine! Only to help my digestion of course.... after this we all headed to one of the other student's rooms to drink a bit more before we headed to CHAOS, the bar inside our dorms. I had a jack and coke and then around 10:00 we headed to CHAOS to drink the free punch and dance the rest of the night away. We met a bunch of the other students and had a good time laughing, dancing, and hanging out with everyone. We weren't the "lame" americans anymore. haha. While we were there this one girl (actually my RA haha), and she bought me a shot, it is called a B-52 and she wanted them to be "flaming". It consisted of Kahlua, Bailey's, and antoher liquor that was on top of the too and then lit. You then say CHEERS! stick your straw into the shot glass and drink it. Theses were absolutely amazing and Lauren decided they tasted like ice-cream.. not sure I got that impression, but they were delicious! Defnitely buying her one next time. Finally, around 3:00 am I headed up the elevator to my room to get some sleep for the night and prepare for class today (Friday). Thank goodness it is at 1:00 today! Such a fun night though getting to know everyone. More to come later...If I dont get on too often its because my computer is starting to "crash" again. I have already had a "blue screen of death" and it enjoys spazzing out.... just what I want and need while Im here. Good thing BestBuy caught this BEFORE I came like I told them to....

Monday, January 11, 2010

Suit, heels, and nylons.

Monday January 11, 2010

Suit, heels, and nylons. This will be the everyday dress for school. Definitely a change from my Pullman attire consisting on sweatshirts and jeans, occasionally the sweatpants. Here any type of clothing other than a suit will result in me being sent back to my dorm room to change.

Lets also start with the fact that my hair straightener does NOT work. It won't heat up, so to straighten my hair this morning..... a curling iron. Have to make do with what will actually heat up using my converter. Hopefully I can make it into town to find a straightener as well as a hair dryer so that maybe I can do my hair haha.

Mondays = the weekend! No classes for my on Monday, though I do have class on Friday it's only one class and I'm done at 3:00 so I will still be able to catch a night train out of town to do something fun for a long weekend.

Today was primarily orientation, getting books, and filling out information. Tomorrow, for me starts real class work with Management Operations (Organisational Behaviour) , Finance (FIN 325) , and Econ (Global Capitalism). Tuesday and Thursdays are going to SUCK! While Wednesday and Friday I have one class HBM (Food and Beverage Management) from 1 - 2:50.

Portland - Chicago - Zurich - Brig

Wednesday January 6, 2010 / Thursday January 7, 2010

Finally after days of packing and preparation I have boarded the long awaited plane and left for Switzerland/Europe for the next 4 months. You can never start a trip off smoothly so why not have this happen immediately when checking in, minor details. When using the self check-in and through scanning my passport my cousin's travel information would come up.... thanks Rachel! After 5 min of searching the representative was able to help us out and get me checked in to my flight to Switzerland and not Atlanta. Said the good-byes and headed for my gate to wait for boarding. The flight to Chicago went smoothly and we arrived earlier than expected so all was well there. Then after arriving in Chicago I realized I had to go to a completely different terminal via train before re-entering in through security to arrive at my gate. Here I waited for Lauren to arrive to board the 8.5 hour flight to Zurich.
After boarding our flight, a guy kindly switched seats with me to allow me to sit next to Lauren for the flight.... maybe this was a mistake. On our overnight flight I may have slept for an hour. We ended up having a family sit behind us, with a toddler and another child a few years older. When the toddler wasn't screaming and crying the other kid would kick the back of our seats. What a fun flight! Not to mention we had a few delays that made the flight that much longer. Finally touching down at 11:00 am Swiss time (2:00 am Portland/West Coast time) I was exhausted after being up since 6:00 am the previous morning.
We passed through customs without any problems and went down to baggage claim, rounded up our luggage and headed to a travel agency to purchase our 1/2 Swiss Rail Pass, train tickets to the Zurich HB, and our ticket to Brig the next morning. After filling out paper work, handing in passport photos. We asked what train to take to get the the main center (Zurich HB) he said to take train 3 or 4. Whatever one. We made it down to the trains and immediately stood there extremely confused. I asked a gentleman if this train went to the Zurich HB he said he thought so, yeahhhh we let that one pass. A young lady say us looking around, at our tickets, and then at eachother and laugh. She asked if we needed help, she then told us what train to take (the same one as her) and then showed us our stop. First train ride a SUCCESS!
After arriving at the Zurich HB, we figured our hotel was there.... not a chance. We wandered around lost, trugged our luggage up stairs, asked for help in a flower shop and were told to take the moving stairs to the top and then get on a train #3 and it would take us there. Back down the non-moving stairs and found what they were talking about (as well as a Tourist Information Station). They told us to hope on Train #3 and get off at a certain stop, we did this and hopped off, say signs to the hotel and wandered in. Navigation around Zurich..... success!
After checking into the hotel we went into our rooms and passed out (3:30 pm) woke up at 4:30 pm and decided that dinner wasn't going to happen and went back to bed. We then woke up again at 2:30 am fully rejuvenated and ready to go. Hoped on facebook for a bit then decided that it would be best to go back to bed. Woke up again at 6:00 am and thought might as well get up, shower, eat, and head to the train to make our way to Brig.

Friday January 8, 2010

We ate a wonderful breakfast buffet at the restaurant, checked out of our rooms, hopped back on the #3 train back to the Zurich HB, here we once again stopped in the Tourist Information and were directed to platform 14 where the train to Brig left every hour on the hour.
We jumped on the 11:00 am train to Brig and arrived around 1:15 pm. We wandered around the streets with our luggage looking for where we needed to head to. Luckily I had my WSU sweatshirt on and an RA found us, turned us around and brought us to where we needed to be. The RAs checked us in and brought us to our rooms. I'm in Xenius 462. I can't complain. A full size temperpedic bed, desk, my own bathroom with a shower, closet, and a TV. Life should be good for the next three months.
We met up with a few other WSU students as well as a few students studying at UCCR for the term as well. Most everyone ended up heading back to their rooms and sleeping as they flew in on Friday morning and had been traveling all day.

Saturday/Sunday

Traveled around Brig for a bit, did some shopping at the stores for a few groceries. Oh threw in a workout as well, that's something new for me! Most of you back home know that I will not enter into the WSU Rec Center at ALL! I'm trying something different haha.

On Sunday the entire city shuts down. I believe that we say only a pizza parlour to be open. Definitely different from NYC, Seattle and even Portland!