The Swiss Saga, Day 5: Blew a Glass Darkly

It was kind of a slow day today. We went to a glass factory in the town of Hergiswil, a 15-minute train ride away from Luzern. Before we could get to the wicked-cool molten glass and stuff, we walked through a goofy little interactive tour of the history of glass. Apparently, glass is very old and cultural. Also something about World War I. Anyhoo, the main show was the setup in which we could watch honest, hardworking craftsmen, like zoo animals, doing their jobs. We walked around on a balcony overlooking the factory floor, and there were a few other collections of glass art and things. The cool part was getting to blow my own glass...sphere...thing. I really don't know what the purpose of it is, but it looks dandy sitting on my shelf.

But why strain yourself with these letter-congeries when I can give you a thousand of them at a time?

This is what the glassworks looks like. Apparently this isn't the most cutting-edge setup available, mostly because it has actual humans doing the work, but it has historical cachet.

Apparently, I can use the word "cachet" without the slightest guilt.


This, of all the pictures I've taken on the trip, is the one that most resembles a heavy-metal album cover. Which, really, isn't saying all that much.


Here I am preparing to blow my own glass sphere object, a picture in which I could not look less interested in the prospect and may actually be asleep. My explanation is that as a tall person I have to be looking down at people all the time, hence my eyes are forever downcast. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!


If they could, I'm sure the 19th-century Germans would have drunk all their liqueurs out of a dog's backside.

The Swiss Saga, Day 4: Rock, Paper, Rivers

Went to Basel (Motto: “Not the Freaking Spice, You Stupid Bastards”), and went on an extremely long and boring walking tour. However, I did learn that the town of Basel is the origin of the legend of the basilisk, even though, uh, the Wikipedia entry says its from Greek words. Well, c'mon, the Greeks have plenty of stuff to their credit, let's let this small Swiss village have a thing or two. Fortunately no one was turned to stone today. Then we went to a paper mill, and saw how the keys of a printing press are made (answer: wicked-awesome liquid metal). In the gift shop, I bought a signet thingy and some sealing wax. Oh, and for the record, pigs DON’T have wings. There. I just saved you the time. Walking back to take the bus back to Luzern, I walked along the side of the Rhine. It's...big.

And now, pictures! Pictures for looking!

A goofy fountain near the beginning of our tour. It would have maybe been more interesting if all the fountain parts weren't frozen solid. Seriously, look at 'em. That ought to tell you something about my receptiveness to a two-hour walking tour outdoors.

A basilisk appears! Fight/Magic/Item/Run?

Bernoulli is buried in Basel. So you better be on your best behavior, boys and babes. Fun fact: I was the only person on the tour who cared at all about Bernoulli or his grave. Ironically, everyone on the trip had flown on a fixed-wing airplane just to be in Switzerland in the first place. No respect, I tells ya.

SERIOUS BUSINESS

This is the inside of a paper mill, and not, as you may suspect, the inside of a giant piano. The six hammers are driven by a mill wheel, and are pounding a slurry of pulp into, uh, even pulpier pulp. They made an endless rhythmic "KLONK...KLONK-KLONK...KLONK...KLA-KLONK KLONK" sound that was either relaxing or madness-inducing depending on the subject.

Interlude: Planeswalker Kirbys

When you are sitting around in a hotel room without Internet access, but with Photoshop access, you kind of go crazy. This is the result.

(click to enlarge!)

This is my interpretation of five Kirbys who have swallowed the five Magic: the Gathering Planeswalkers from Lorwyn. If you or anyone you know fully understands this, congratulations, you or they are a nerd.

Ahh, boredom!

The Swiss Saga, Day 3: A Clockwork Brown, Or: Relatively Interesting

We took the train to the city of Bern (Motto: “Berninating the countryside!”). Went on a walking tour, saw a Gothic cathedral, a view of the river, and a clock tower. Inside the clock tower, we saw the huge complicated mechanism that turns the clock, and watched it ring 12 noon. So you know, medieval clockwork consists of a fascinating series of metal gears and joints and flywheels, every last one of which could totally kill you or at least take off a couple fingers.

Afterwards, visited the apartment that Einstein lived in when he was working on the theory of relativity. It...well, it looked like a 20th-century apartment. We watched a little video on the life of Einstein, but it was really just one of those "go there so you can say you've been there" kind of things.

Finally, we took a trolley to the Paul Klee Center to have lunch. I didn't feel like eating any of the pretentious, expensive art gallery food they served, so I went and checked out the gallery before leaving to grab some food elsewhere. The art gallery was on the theme of weird bio-genesis-microcosm-squiggily-artsy-dealies. The captions and musings were in French and German. I can read (if not speak) French pretty well, but I got a headache trying to read a bunch of artistic nonsense like “la recherché artistique est reconstitutee par l’excellence de la tranche de fromage attaché aux pieds pendant qu’on se trouve la biogenisisme,” in the most artistically nonsensical language of them all. I was given money for lunch and dinner, and ended up eating cold bread and salami sandwiches for both. However, this method cost me only 20 of my 60 CHF for the two meals, so I’m gradually accumulating souvenir money, which I could say with a straight face until approximately six hours later, when I had blown it all on booze. Well, I don’t know about you, but I must have been traveling at nearly the speed of light, because it seems like the day just flew by! (Little astrophysics humor for ya. You can keep that one, it’s free.)

Note: What follows is a real-time account of the evening's debauchery, written at approximately 3:00 AM of the night it describes. It appears unaltered from the original transcript. The following contains graphic youthful stupidity. Viewer discretion is...well, since you've read this far, viewer discretion is obviously nonexistent to begin with. Enjoy!

In the evening, drank truly insane amount of vodka and went out clubbing until 2:00 AM. Not feeling so good. OooOooooggghhh. Some fun, but didn’t score with any of the chicks (I.E. totally rejected). Had to borrow clothes in order to be fashionable (who knew I needed to bring a button-down shirt on travel in order to be admitted to a club?) Blew nearly all my spending money. Oh well, you’re only young once. Drank half (or so) a bottle of Smirnoff lime vodka, went to a French restaurant at 10:00 PM and drank a screwdriver, went to a British pub and drank a “Archer’s and lemonade”, went to a club and drank one and a half more screwdrivers. One girl was a really weird drunk who wouldn’t listen to anyone when she was drunk. She wandered off and I hope she found her way home. Remember to ask her tomorrow if she got home okay, assuming she’s alive. I knew I should have gone with her. Now I’m worried that she froze to death trying to get back to the hotel and her death will hang over me like a pall for the rest of my days. Wow, I’m incredibly coherent when I’m drunk and it’s 3 AM. Death before grammar errors!

We apologize for the previous. But the truth had to be told.

And for some more truth, check these fantast-pics!

A carving of the Last Judgment over the door to a church in Bern.

The clock tower on the outside...

...and on the inside.


I went there! See?

Interlude: The Word of the LOLrd

On my trip, we learned a bit about the Protestant Reformation and its impact on Switzerland. We learned about how Martin Luther translated the Bible into German so that the common people could read it. That is now irrelevant.

This is what Martin Luther wishes he had been cool enough to do.

The Swiss Saga, Day 2: Snow's Your Old Man!

More of my adventures in my journey from Switaly (Italian-speaking Switzerland) to, uh, Swermany. I would have preferred Swance, but you know what they say, that's just the way the swookie crumbles.

It snowed all night and into the morning, an naturally I discovered at that point that not only had I not brought snow boots, my regular shoes had contracted shoe leprosy and were falling apart. And of course, up next was a walking tour of Lucern. (The phrases you will be hearing most frequently in this travelogue are "walking tour," "took the train," and "for the love of Christ, can't you go five minutes without a cigarette?")

In spite of the snow, it was lovely, and I saw a bunch of 700-year-old houses and bridges, or in some cases, recreations of those things since the originals had burned down repeatedly. We went inside a Rococco church that looks like it was decorated with pink frosting, and I believe I genuinely found religion therein, because only a just and benevolent God could have made the church so warm and comfy. Actually, I think it was just hypothermia setting in.

Ate at same restaurant as the day before for lunch, had a meat pastry thing and raspberry sorbet for dessert. It was not quite as excessive as the previous day's fare, but it was still at three-course lunch, so make of that what you will. We took the train to a town called Einsedeln, and the hypothermia process was only exacerbated as we went north to even colder climes. In Einsdeln, we toured a monastery founded in the 9th century by a monk apparently named Meintraat or Mynd Rädt or Mind Rot or something, who went on to become the patron saint of video games (or possibly death metal). We went to the cathedral and then to the library, which has 200,000 books dating back to the 10th century. They included Bibles, journals of history, Malleus Maleficarum, De praestigiis daemonum, and of course, the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. After surreptitiously snapping pictures of a few vital pages of the Necronomicon, we watched the monks chant the vespers and then left on the train back to Luzern.

And now, for some pictures that aren't of twisted non-Euclidean nightmares!


Oops, no, sorry, this IS a twisted non-Euclidean nightmare. Specifically, it's the lengths to which I had to go to protect myself from the piercing cold. Well, the half-bangs thing is just me being dumb. Anyway, while dressed like a Tusken Raider, I went out and saw...

...this monastery, which contained...

...this very big library, featuring books such as...

...these.

Night of the Living Ducks! Well, swans, mostly. The story goes that the first pair of swans was given to the city of Luzern by a visiting German prince back in ye olden days. The swans have stayed there ever since of their own free will, which makes sense, considering all the delicious tourists, such as me, they have to eat.

The Swiss Saga, Day 1: Some Cheesy Pun

And so, in the grand tradition of bringing you the latest news, days or weeks after it actually happens, I begin my series of short day-by-day descriptions of my academic vacation in German Speaking Switzerland!

On the day of, I woke up at 6 AM, fretted for an hour, walked to the train station in the windy cold, sat at the train station for an hour, tried to buy breakfast with a credit card but they only took cash, and wandered around looking for an ATM for an embarrassingly long time. When everyone showed up I found out to my dismay that pretty much everyone but me seemed to smoke cigarettes, in the same sense a scuba diver smokes compressed air. I got on the train and chatted with people, but mostly I just hovered on the edge of wakefulness.

When we got to Luzern, we deposited our bags in the hotel and went to lunch. Lunch which was a sort of potato and macaroni and cheese casserole of truly monstrous proportions. Afterward, we got on another train (this will be, by the way, the most train-intensive set of posts I will ever make) to Schwyz (Motto: “Th Tywn Wythyt Vywyls”) and took a walking tour. We saw the original charter of the Swiss Confederation, from 1291. As the day waned, we went to where any weary traveler in a new land would go: the cheese factory. Really. It was there that I found out all about the cheesemaking process, and that it is as complicated as it is disgusting as it is delicious. I also learned from a tour guide, speaking shaky English, that full-fat cheese can be used as a replacement for Viagra. Really. I say his English was shaky, but then again, I sure as hell couldn't say something like "our cheese cures erectile dysfunction" in any of the foreign languages I'M familiar with...

For dinner we were treated to fondue, made with homemade cheese. Of course, "homemade" in this instance means "made with various giant stainless-steel tubes and vats," but you get the idea. When we finally returned to the hotel, I went straight up to my room and passed out, possibly from some kind of cheese-related hemorrhaging. Interestingly, I would have been sharing the room, but my roommate, who is passionately (excessively) in love with his girlfriend who is also the trip, slept in her room that night and every night subsequently. It was mixed blessing, in that I got the room to myself, but that I was constantly reminded that I am alone...so very alone.

And now, time to inflict-a-pic or two from day 1 of my exodus into the hoary Teutonic foothills! They will be culturally enlightening and highly informative (or just immature pictures of funny German words)!

The square in Luzern outside the hotel. Some of the buildings date back to the 1400s, but most of them are younger than that, because apparently Luzern has fires ALL THE TIME. Seriously, I cannot count the number of times we were told, "...but then it burned down" over the course of our stay.


The store next to our hotel: Mephisto Footwear. The devil really DOES wear Prada!


Now THERE'S the money shot.

Th..iss...aga...Houston, we've got...ksshhh...

9 days without inter...can't qui...come in, Command, t...in Zurich, tomorrow w...ack to Lugan...pdate blog as soon as I...

...losing...

ksssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

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!