Ohh Switzerland where have you been all my life...

Zermatt, Switzerland- October 10-12, 2008

From Dumb and Dumber:
Lloyd: What the hell are we doing here, Harry? We gotta get out of this town!
Harry: Oh yeah, and go where? Where are we gonna go?
Lloyd: I'll tell you where. Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called Aspen.
Harry: Oh, I don't know, Lloyd. The French are assholes.

American Song of the Week: Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World by Neil Young at The Papperla Pub in Zermatt. Sorry no great story, just a great song.

This Week’s Travel Tip(s): In the words of my cousin Kirk, “Be careful, Europe is addicting.” I would guess the majority of people that travel to Europe make multiple trips back. If you come once, it’s hard not to start planning your return trip because there is so much to do.

Friday afternoon we took the train into the mountains of Switzerland and the beautiful ski village of Zermatt.

Going back to a previous travel tip of expect the unexpected, we had an unexpected fee of 25 Swiss Francs, very close to U.S. dollars, to make the one hour last leg of our journey up the mountain. Then 25 back down. As you can imagine, skiing in Switzerland is not cheap so this was a bit of a shock as we already were scared of the amount of money that was going to be spent. But again this time in the paraphrased words of one Jim Slater, “don’t worry too much about the money, you can work when you get home.”

We got into our hostel Friday night around 11:30 and four of the six of us found our beds. Two of the guys’ reservations did not go through so they had the fun task of searching the hostel for free beds. Luckily they both found one and did not bother too many people. Sometimes that is the life of a hostel.

Saturday morning we got up early and this was the view right outside our hostel.

We then rented our equipment (expensive), got our day passes (expensive) in which we only had about 5 hours to ski because the hours are limited during the “offseason”. We then followed the 200 Asian tourists who of course were taking pictures of anything and everything, and got on our first lift up the mountain which took about 5 minutes. We got off of that, got on a gondola which held about 120 people we’re guessing and wrote that up about 15 minutes to where you would normally get off for the winter skiing.

Waiting for the Second Gondola

This area is not snow covered until the end of November and is good through about June. We hopped on our next gondola and went another 10-15 minutes to the very peak, got off, put on our ski’s, and started an amazing day of skiing in the Swiss Alps. Nobody got hurt, we saw a guy skiing in a chicken suit, and we had the most amazing view I’ve ever seen (which seems to be a common occurrence on this trip).

Keith, Wyatt, Me, Sarah, and Robert

That was a straight drop right behind me...

We wrapped up skiing, made the hour commute back down the mountain, got something to eat, and took a well needed nap. We got up Saturday night, had a couple of drinks, felt the tiredness from skiing and went home and went to bed. When a pitcher of beer costs 15 dollars for 1.5 Liters that will make anyone call it an early night.

Sunday morning we did a little hiking in the woods which unfortunately we did not set enough time aside for. A cool little thing in this ski town, there were no cars. Only these funny looking adult sized electrical cars.

We went to some ski shops, laughed at the prices, got on our train and had a smooth ride home! Very relaxing, very fun weekend….I skied the Swiss Alps.

Dad: Thanks for those days at Spicy Run ski resort in Latham, OH…they paid off.
Kim T.: Thanks for the Torrence updates and I hope you are enjoying the pictures from your old home.