The Swiss Saga: So Long, Farewell

Why I no post?

I'll tell you why, buster: I'm packing my bags. I'm checkin' 'em twice. Gonna find out halfway through my trip that I forgot to bring something seemingly impossible to forget such as my shoes, and that's definitely not nice.

Academic Travel is coming to town.

Or rather, I'm coming to a different town as part of Academic Travel. Or...you know what, that extended allusion made little to no sense to begin with, so let's just move on.

The Academic Travel program at Franklin requires that students go on a two-week trip to various destinations with a group of other students and a teacher as a guide. To prepare for the trip, you take class that meets biweekly (in the once every two weeks sense) to instruct you on what you're going to see and how you need to prepare. Or, in my case, try desperately to convince me that where I'm going is worth seeing.

Yes, I managed to submit my application to Franklin at a date that could be considered before the deadline for application if you allow for adding negative numbers. The result is that, while I'm grateful to even be here, I got stuck with the last Academic Travel group that wasn't already full.
Imagine arriving fresh-faced in Switzerland, in many ways the hub of the Old World, practically equidistant from Moscow, London, and Giza. You can go to Greece and study the Parthenon, to Namibia and sleep on the Serengeti, to Paris and see the Louvre. And yours truly?

I will be traveling from Switzerland to...a different part of Switzerland.

Yup. And it's not even the part that speaks one of the two languages I've been studying all this time. Nope, I'm heading to the part that speaks German.

But I keed, I keed, of course. I'm totally psyched to get to go on a trip at all, although the fact that it replaces Spring Break is rather annoying. Then again, I have no fecking clue what Swiss people do for Spring Break, nor do I likely have the financial means to do it.

That said, it was rather pathetic to watch our chaperone teacher, Professor Parsons, go through our itinerary and say something along the lines of "Most people who come to study here, they stay here four years, and they never really get to know the country!" what seemed like six times per class.

So what will I be seeing, that makes this trip rival Casablanca and Washington D.C.? (Yes, they are putting people on a plane and flying them back to America for two weeks. Yes, I know that a lot of students here aren't from the United States or even from a state near D.C., but I just can't wrap my head around how the trip is economically feasible. We're just hopping on the 8:30 train; they have to fly a grand total of like 4000 miles.)

Well, we're coming and going from Zurich, seat of the Swiss parliament, and there we'll be sightseeing and learning about Swiss government. Then we're going into the countryside, staying in various smallish towns, and visiting a couple of 8th-century monasteries, a big ol' clock tower, Einstein's house, the James Joyce Foundation, and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember offhand.

But I think the site I'm most eager to see is the 50 CHF stipend we're given daily.

Yes. They bribe us to come on the trip.

Okay, it's supposed to be so we can feed ourselves, but since we're getting something like two meals per day already paid for already, I somehow think that I'm going to have a surplus at the end of the day. What will I buy with my embezzled riches? That remains to be seen! (hint: probably booze and souvenirs).

The most entertaining slash terrifying aspect of the trip so far is the professor himself. Floyd Parsons is a balding, white-haired, bearded, spectacled, slightly rotund man who speaks very fast and intensely, to the point where his breathing patterns are different when he's addressing the class. In short, he is the very soul of bizarre college professors everywhere, and I am sure he will be a delight.

So, bottom line, for the next two weeks, I may or may not be posting regularly. It depends on whether the hotels we stay in have Internet access, at least not the hotel kind that costs an immortal soul per hour and is slow as hell. In any case, I'll be keeping a daily log, and sooner or later, you'll be seeing it whether you like it or not. And pictures!

Wish me luck. Until next time, au revoir, arreviderci, auf wehedersein, so long, suckeresas!