Aight, much has happened since the last time I posted. We had two weeks of intensive language courses in French, supplemented with German classes and orientation ones. Basically every weekday we were in a classroom together with white walls and uncomfortable seats and teasing views of the alps and just the 9 of us and whichever teacher from 9 am until 5:30 pm... it was brutal! We also had a "term paper" in French on a research topic that was 8-10 pages--how much bullshit is that? Two weeks is no where near as long as a term and this thing is not even graded. Anyway... the course did definitely fine tune my French and refresh my German so I guess it was okay. All of us were going a bit stir crazy though and every one in turn had a major freak out in class; good times.
Last week, I took my bike and explored and went to a nearby village called Marly and along the way I saw all of these buildings that were basically crumbling they were so old. The whole time I was thinking how beautiful it will be in the spring. It was sweet though I found an old entrance into the side of a mountain. I also realized that biking up mountains is difficult and biking down them is fucking scary.
I went out last Friday first to a party in our basement then to an Irish club. When I was invited to the party, I asked whose room it was in and was so thrown off when they said it's just in the basement... No hiding behind closed doors! How weird to be legal. I drank my first bottle of legally purchased wine (the label was like an old Spanish pirate map!) and met all of these international Erasmus students. One came over to introduce herself--Ollala a girl from Spain--realized I didn't know anyone, and made me meet all of her friends! Everyone just assumes we are Erasmus too, and I don't bother correcting them.
Irish has a bar downstairs and a dance floor upstairs. So we went up and dominated the dance floor. Half of the floor was Swiss and the other half Erasmus and unfortunately the Swiss are not very into mingling with the foreigners, but they still did their fair share of staring. It's kind of hard to dance to techno music, but there was some apple bottom jeans and justin timberlake so we made it work. They also played Infinity and that song about over the rainbow, so high, and that spanish song that are staples at European clubs. By the end of the night (around 3 am) I could barely swallow my throat was so dry from dehydration / second hand smoke / singing, but the dancing was worth it. I walked back with two of my friends, and these Turkish guys that were with Erasmus were like oh, you're leaving? And followed us home. THEN i go up in the elevator right, and one of the Turkish guys doesn't get off with his friend so I'm like you live on the fourth floor too? And he mumbles noo 2nd, and then the doors open and he lunges at my face, which I fortunately dodged and had to run to my room and slam the door when he followed me out of the elevator. Moral of the story, stay away from Turkish guys (more on that to come).
Then I get to sleep in for the first time since I got to Fribourg and wake up at noon to a message from Rachel asking if I wanted to explore Geneva with her that day. I figured why not? And caught the next train to Geneva. (I love that I can wake up and take a train to Geneva.) It was grey but Rachel led me to all the toursity sites like the lake, the flower clock (probably better in the spring), the chess park, the old city, and the UN. I was surprised that we only took the bus in the wrong direction once and only got really lost one time too--good job, Rachel!
So we decided to play a game of life-size checkers in the park, and of course I'm dominating her when she makes a bad move and this old man barges in with his umbrella, shouting at us in italian. He pretty much kicked her off and continued to talk loudly in italian to me about where I could/couldn't move as he quickly checkmated me (I didn't even know you could be checkmated in checkers!). It was hilarious though, I felt so helpless.
Then we found our way to the UN and stayed there just long enough to take a picture and get out, so that we could get back to warm up our feet--mine were wet and obviously on their way to frostbitten, of course.
We got back to Rachel's dorm building slash ex-brothel and hung out with Helaina/made some dinner. Then I caught the train that is free for me after 7 back to Fribourg. On the way back when Control went through checking tickets, I had my feet up on the seat and I hadn't signed my demi-tarif temporary pass, so she got angry at both of those things and made me show her my passport and other stuff and being American didn't help my case.
I made it home though, and tried to get to bed early to wake up at 5:30 am the next morning to get fresh tracks at Verbier! Verbier is an enormous ski resort in the Valais which is in the south of Switzerland. My friend Dan and I took the 6:26 train--really three trains and a gondola--to Verbier after it had snowed the whole day before. The avalanche warning was only 2 out of 5, but I was still nervous and had him teach me all the safety things you need to do in case you get caught in one. That was comforting. The snow was absolutely incredible though, they had 8 inches of fresh, dry, fluffy powder on top of a ridiculous base and the top of the mountain was above the clouds in the sun and there were blue skies. The top 2/3 of the peaks are above treeline so it's just one big sea of whiteness (gotta watch out for cliffs tho). Off-piste skiing was incredible and we got fresh powder all day. Each run top to bottom takes about 50-90 minutes which is incredible if you think about 3 minute runs top to bottom in Vermont. The powder was up to my waist at times.
We took this rickety old tram that only had one car up to an unpatrolled/unprotected peak. I was super nervous the whole way up, but then I realized that I'm not scared of skiing in the steeps with waist-deep pow so the way down was fine and actually really amazing. Dan however basically rolled down this run, haha.
We went in for lunch which was ridiculously overpriced. You think lodges are overpriced in the US? Think again... How about 12 CHF for a small bowl of smelly soup? Then a big fog rolled in and the lack of trees/unmarked hazards made it difficult to ski, so not wanting to waste our day there we headed lower into the glades and again got fresh tracks in steep, wide open tree trails. It was incredible. Then when we were taking our last run, Dan starts screaming and I have no idea where he is. He doesn't ski with a helmet so i'm pretty sure I'm going to have to carry him out on my shoulders, but somehow he managed not to die. Basically he skied off a ledge into a large tree trunk, Kennedy-style, and ricochetted off with only a lot of pain and bruising. When I got there his skis were implanted into the tree and all the lower branches were missing. Close call. He bought a helmet yesterday.
Too bad there wasn't one of these around:
I don't really remember the order of how things happened this week, so I will just tell stories as they come to me. We learned the origin of Fribourg, but since we learned it in French from a guy with a heavy fribourgeois accent, this is what I think happened: Some rich guy named Berthold IV made a pact with the devil, but didn't pay him back so the devil got pissed off and when he came to fight, Berthold turned into a dragon as big as the Saint-Nicolas cathedral is today and kicked the devil's ass and then went to Freiburg, Germany, picked up a bunch of houses, came back and dropped them in the Sarine river and that my friends, is how Freiburg came to be in Switzerland and Germany! Woo! Apparently they have this big carnavale every year to celebrate where people get dressed up and they burn shit down, im pretty sure that's next week.
We walked around the German side of town and up the funiculaire railway steps, which are steep and many. I guess the point of this anecdote is that the railway is run on sewer water so its good for the environment but smells terrible. Speaking of the Swiss and energy efficiency, the washers and driers here are much more energy efficient than in the US so they take way longer to dry... and you also have to put them through like 4 times so in the end I'm pretty sure they end up using way more energy, who knows.
On Wednesday night, even though I wasn't feeling so good and was super tired I went to an Erasmus event. First I went with Olalla to her other spanish friends' appartment to chill, which was really nice and I met a lot more people and a British girl (native English speaker! who gave me her perspective on the Swiss, but I think I will leave that out). Then we went out to a club called Spirit Club, and again I forgot my ID and almost didn't get in but I was able to use a mixture of American-accented french and innocence to get in and it worked. The British girl bought me some tequila to welcome me to Switzerland, very nice. Then fiiiinally a dance party arrived and I ended up staying at the club till like 330 am dancing mostly with the spanish girls who are so much fun and so friendly that I almost wish I studied abroad in Spain. This kid Carlo that I met from Italy bought us all a bottle (super expensive), so we were allowed into this exclusive lounge with cool things hanging from the lights and trendy black leather chairs.
I got Carlo and his friend to walk me home, but that did not prevent two more Turkish boys from sexually harrassing me. For real, I am staying as far away from drunk Turkish boys as possible. They just seem to love following me home and doing creepy/unnecessarily forward things that make me have to literally run away from them. Anyway, going to bed at 4 then getting up at 8 for French was a terrible idea and I had no voice for like two or three days. Whatever, it was worth it.
We had to register for classes this week since they start Monday (which is weird because I will be registering for next semester in like 2 weeks). And classes here are based on ECTS credits, the majority of which are 3 ECTS and you need to take at least 30 for Tufts to count your term abroad. As it turns out though, Tufts being the cocky POS that it can sometimes be, doesn't give ANY credit to anything less than 4 ECTS. So after doing all that research I couldn't take any of those classes, freaked out, and had to start all over again. Now I am doing these ridiculous discussion-based classes, with oral presentations, research projects, and written/oral final assessments. All in French. There goes my easy semester. Boo.
I went on a run after it snowed up this mountain which turns out was not the best idea. Every step I took I slipped farther back and it was on the side of a cliff. Scary shit, but it was beautiful and will be even more beautiful when it is dry and I am not fearing death.
I have chocolate 3 meals a day here. I think I may have died and gone to heaven. I'm still getting used to processing it in the morning though, it's very rich especially with whole milk and my lactose intolerance which is coming back again with angst. But there is sometimes this chocolate muesli that I put hot milk into and the chocolate shavings melt into the milk and the chocolate squares and grains... it just tastes like rich and delicious hot chocolatey cereal.
The rest of my stories begin with Friday/this weekend so I think I will save them for my next post. The most interesting things seem to happen over the weekend. Plus I need to go to bed to wake up at 530 to ski at Jungfrau (which in English translates to Virgin) in Interlaken. Holler.
New thoughts on Swiss/Switzerland:
-Girls wear pants to workout inside, making me the immodest American girl. Isn't it too hot though?
-Migros (this crazy conglomerate grocery/electronics/restaurant/pharmacy/etc) owns this country.
-I'm still waiting to make Swiss friends.
-It is legal to drink in the streets!
-There are clearly 3 strong and independent cultures (French, German, and Italian) so it's hard to generalize over all 3.
-Fribourg looks the same as it did in the middle ages--I saw it at a museum.
-They love fountains.
-1,001 Things You Didn't Wish You Ever Knew About Avalanches
-They are definitely Euro, you should see some of males here.
-They are generally thin and dress well.
-Dogs and other animals are allowed in public places like trains, buses, and restaurants.
-There are signs EVERYWHERE! Unlike boston, it's nearly impossible to get lost.
-They are cold at first, but I hear they warm up after awhile... I'll update you on that.
-They don't budge on the sidewalk, even if they are taking up the entire width.
-J-walking = attempted suicide. They will drive faster.
-They have orange m&ms!
So I guess these posts will usually be this long, because I probably won't update unless I have plenty to talk about.
Happy valentines day!!
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