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?

Unfocused Rambling: Snow!

Well, when it rains, it pours. Or rather, snows.


On the off chance that you have ever waded ankle-deep in beef stew, imagine it. Then imagine the beef stew was freezing cold, and instead of hearty chunks of beef and carrots there was naught but chunks of ice, and it was slowly killing you.

That was basically the situation here the other day. It actually started the day before, with a day-long thunderstorm. And then that thunderstorm turned into a blizzard as night fell and the temperature dropped. That blizzard continued into the next day's afternoon, when the temperature rose again, and it turned back to thunderstorm.

So yeah, someone up there likes us.

When I wasn't slogging through the unflavored Slushee that was the roads and sidewalks, I was partaking of a few rounds of good-natured downhill plastic lunch tray sledding. I wish I had gotten pictures, although in some ways I'm glad I didn't, because if I had that would mean I would have had to bring my camera, which would subsequently have gotten soaking wet.

I was, however, accosted by the stone-throwing devils of LDV residence (stands for Leonardo da Vinci, and it's where I live, which is something I probably should have already mentioned), who from their perch on the second-floor balcony rained icy death on random passersby.


None escape their imperious gaze!

Naturally, I deflected their attacks with kung-fu ninja skills, but soon I tired of the game and went into the door beneath them. They thought themselves the victors...


But then I was among them, like a tiger falling upon the helpless flock! Blood flowed like a silken carpet! Each in their turn fell to the mighty sword of the Cimmerian!

Oops, got myself mixed up with Conan for a bit there. Never mind.

So anyway, in the end it turned out fine, except for a car accident that caused one of my classes to be canceled. Only now I've made myself really hungry for beef stew.

Unfocused Rambling, chapter the first

Well, now that I've got THAT out of my system...

But seriously, though, I'd just downloaded Portal last night, and, naturally, had finished it before dinner. But what it lacks in length, it makes up for in brevity. Also awesome, awesome gameplay. And an excellent Half-Life 2-ian story. It is mysterious, chilling, and darkly hilarious.

Between Portal ("The cake is a lie") and Psychonauts ("Take that, genetic memory of Napoleon!"), which I also recently downloaded on our glacier-slow Steam connection, I believe I have found the motherlode of sheer quotable awesomeness.

I am, naturally, a little late to the Psychonauts train, which departed for Sleeper-Hit Station in 2005. However, I can tell you with confidence that it is perhaps the most enjoyable 20 bucks you will ever spend in gaming. It, like Portal, is not terribly long, but it is consistently hilarious and enjoyable on many levels. Part of the fun is looking at a situation you're in and realizing that no other game could possibly feature such circumstances. For instance, when you're doing acrobatics in a circus made out of raw meat, which is a mental landscape you've entered, produced by the co-mingling of your own brain and the brain of an insane military general, which occurred because you sneezed your own brain out of your head and then used psychic powers to throw it into the cockpit of a brain-powered tank. It is every bit as awesome as it sounds.

So, I hope you leave this post with two impressions: First, Portal and Psychonauts are things of purest beauty. Secondly, this blog will ramble. I will talk about all sorts of things that I like and that, by extension, you should like as well, and not necessarily about my trip to Europe. Because, honestly, that will get boring, and plus I haven't even left yet. So let it be known that if you don't want to hear about my DnD characters, cool video games, or other pointless junk, I advise you to read a different blog.

However, that different blog will likely be as unfocused and self-obsessed as this one, but with far worse grammar, so maybe you're better off just staying here. Perhaps it is best if we die.