Geneva

We left for Geneva the weekend of the 18th in July. We had a looong train ride Saturday through the mountains, we were going through a looong tunnel and when we came out, we were along Lac Leman! which is also called Lake Geneva. In France it is Lake Geneva, and in Switzerland it is Lac Leman. It is a really big lake! I think it might be the biggest lake I have ever seen. We were in the train for an hour along the side of the lake. We arrived in Geneva ready for a good time but not expecting all that was really going to happen. But we will get into that later. We wandered around and saw the English garden and the famous water jet (jet d'eau) in the lake. To get there we had to walk on a stone path going through part of the lake of the skinny side that was only about 4 feet wide. The stone path was getting very slippery the closer we got to the jet of water. When we got to the water jet we decided to continue along the stone path going through the lake to a small light house that would help the boats get into the Geneva area of the lake. Ryan made it past the water jet to the light house, then it was my turn. Instead of the stone path being 4 feet wide, it turned into about 3 feet wide. Good thing there was less people to get around. I started walking along the stone path and the wind changed. With the wind change came the water. I got pelted! It felt like water bullets were raining down on me! When we arrived at the light house we were trapped! one side was the light house, other side, water bullets. When the wind changed in our favor, Ryan went across and I followed. But for some reason right when I was going across the wind changed again and I got soaked all over again! We spent the rest of the day wandering around Geneva. We didn't see the big UN offices but wandered the normal city and saw the daily life. There was a festival going on in the English Garden, it was some kind of French Swiss and Latin festival. There was French and Swiss food with latin music and dancing. We had some good Moules et Frites (mussels and french fries) for dinner and topped dinner off with some brats. It was a great night and a we had a fun time in Geneva. That wasn't our whole trip, just what we did in Geneva. I will have to finish our trip another time.

Neuchatel

We visited this awesome small lake town called Neuchatel the following Thursday. Ryan was really 'sick' so he took the day off of work and headed north west to Neuchatel. We rented bikes and biked around part of this awesomely huge lake. Then we wandered through the French-Swiss town. We found a really neat prison, turned the corner and BAM! There was a neat castle! Ryan and I decided that if we ever had to move back to Switzerland, we would want to move to either Lucerne, Neuchatel, or back to Bern. I can totally understand why tons of Frenchies retire here.

Basel

Saturday July 13th we headed north to a town called Basel (just like the herb!). Basel is interesting because part of the town is in Switzerland, Germany and France. All the countries touch each other in the middle of the river, so we walked along the bridge closest to the borders. We went to an awesome Cathedral and a boring museum. We went into another cool museum with neat old medieval Swiss artifacts and old money which was in the basement of a cool cathedral. We ate some good kebabs and walked into France. Basel is a neat little town, not too much to do tourist wise, but still neat. Its been such a long time I can't remember all the things that we did. Oh how I wish we could go back.

Lucerne

Saturday, July 5th, we headed off to Lake Lucern for a jolly time at the mountain lake. We wandered around the gorgeous city and walked along the famous bridge, we even found some interesting things in the water, a nice camera, a shopping cart, and 3 bikes. I loved Lucerne, its a small town nestled on the side of a huge gorgeous lake, enormous mountains, lovely swans everywhere, and its not overcrowded with tourists. We loved Lucerne enough, that if we have to move back to Switzerland anytime soon, that we would move here, or Neuchatel, or Bern again. We found the famous Lion monument and found a public restroom! ahhh, free toilets. We made our way to the transportation museum. We were so happy to get in for free since it costs 25 Swiss franks a person, yikes! But it was a fun museum, I got to go inside of a helicopter, we wandered around old style planes, planes that failed, blimps, helicopters, rockets, trains, cars, boats, yadda yadda yadda. We then took a 2 hour long boat ride around the lake and found some mountains that looked pretty familiar, and we saw a small town that seemed to bring back some memories. Christy, look close at the mountains that Ryan is looking at in the last picture, seem familiar? like the same mountains that we took pictures of before? yes! those are the same ones! We found the same mountain that we hiked up, the same town with the awesome bed and breakfast with killer food and awesome dessert and the owls everywhere! I was so psyched! We tried to make it to the mountain to do some hiking and possibly rent bikes to go down it, but it was getting too late and we wouldn't have a way back home. But we are excited to go back! We ended the day with some awesome duram kebabs that put the fries inside. yum yummy yum! Probably the best duram kebab that we had so far, well, the one in Manheim was awesome and fresh and spicy. hmm, thats a close one. Oh, I almost forgot the coolest part, well the somewhat cool part. Last time I was here some 3 or 4 years ago, I went shopping into a little beauty shop and I found some awesome makeup. I loved that makeup, we were good friends, but it ran out eventually and I was sad. I looked around for it and never found it, trying the website didn't help anything, so when Ryan told me about going to Switzerland for the internship, I thought, yes! I can finally get some more of that makeup! The first thing we did when we got to Lucerne, we wandered around the town, found the same store with the makeup, and it was in the same spot that it was before, I was so happy! Now I have a nice stash of it that will last a long time. But we will have to come back to Switzerland when I need more, muah ah ah ah ah!

Fribourg, Murten, and the 4th of July

On Friday, Fourth of July, Ryan had the day off and we decided it would be fun to do a little exploring. So we went off to a small town out side of Bern called Fribourg, which is on the hills and part of it is on the side of the this steep canyon made by a small river. We had a lot of fun wandering around, eating bad kebabs and being followed around by a couple of bees. We then decided to head to a lake town called Murten. This lake was pretty neat and famous for finding tons of really old Celtic artifacts at the bottom of the lake. We ended the day by going to the ambassadors house who was having a huge party for 4th of July. The food was pretty good, but I felt so out of place. It was casual dress, but people had just come from work (The Swiss people don't get 4th of July off unless they work at the US Embassy) and were all dressed up really nice anyway. It was really nice! no fireworks though.
This concludes our story.

River

This is the River that runs through Bern. I have never seen a river so blue. Ryan is jumping off the bridge into the 18 degree water! It moves so fast that I was running as fast as I could along the river and I just couldn't keep up with how fast Ryan and our friends were going down the river. Its sooo cold, but so refreshing!

Fussen Germany and Bregenz Austria

June 28th and 29th

We enjoyed our trip to Fussen Germany so much! As we arrived in Fussen, we first wandered around the town and the woods. While exploring the woods we caught a crawdad! I didn't think they existed in Europe, but I guess they do! We went to this great medieval style restaurant that cooked our food on a spit. Some of the best German food I have ever had! plus the atmosphere was great! There was some kind of festival while we were there and saw a medieval style parade with drum music and costumes while we were eating. Twas nice. Plus Ryan ended up being put in the stocks. We had a rough night because the hotel gave our beds to other people right before we arrived at the hotel, we ended up sleeping on a cot set up in the kitchen at the hotel! In the morning, we were very tired since we had less than 5 hours of sleep and had to be out of the kitchen by 6 am, we made our way over to where the castles were. We had fun with the fountains at the first castle and took a horse ride up to the fairy tale Neuschwanstein castle! It was gorgeous! We took our guided tour and even snuck a couple pictures of the inside, they are going for about 6 million on ebay. ha ha. It was so cool! We saw the awesome views of Swan lake and enjoyed the castle. We played around in the park for a while and pretended that we were spiders and tried balancing on beams and what not. Then our train came and whisked us away to Bregenz and Lindau. The lake Bodensee is a very interesting and gorgeous lake. It touches 3 countries, Germany, Austira, and Switzerland. So we went around the lake and we hung out in Germany for the morning, had lunch in Austria, and in the evening we went to see the soccer game in Switzerland. We enjoyed our stay in Bregenz so much! We enjoyed swimming in the lake and eating ice cream!!! Ice cream is so expensive in Switzerland that we don't get any. So it is a delicacy to us. I think we had like 3 ice cream cones while we were there, yum! Later in the evening we headed back to Switzerland and watched the last and final game of the Euro 08. Germany vs. Spain. I was a little sad, we were rooting for Germany, but they were playing so bad! The rumor floating around is that they were so happy to be in the finals that they celebrated too hard and were playing with hang overs. sad. oh well, it was such a great trip! even though we spent the night sleeping on the same cot in a kitchen, it was definetly worth it!