Switzerland

My time in the land of chocolate and pocket knives is coming to an end. Tomorrow (Friday) I will be leaving on a train to Paris.

I want to apologize from the start of this post. I think it is my most babbling type of post that I will have... hopefully at least. So this post being different the rest of my posts, goes along with the part of my trip being much different than the rest of my trip.

As I said in the last post, I have been spending most of my time in Switzerland being relatively lazy. I have mostly enjoyed my time around the apartment and eating Algerian food. However, I did make one trip. Before I left for this trip, my dad said "If you go to Switzerland, you must go to Lake Luzern". So, I promised him I would go.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly about the trip to the lake.
The thing about Switzerland is that it is beautiful, but expensive. I had figured out that my day trip to Luzern would cost me much more than I hope to spend on any other single day during my trip. In fact, I don't even plan to spend half of what I spent to see Luzern. Hence, price would qualify as the ugly. The weather would qualify as the bad. When I was buying my tickets the lady said to me "I'm not going to lie to you, today is probably not a good day to see the lake and the mountain, tomorrow or later in the week would probably be much better". I didn't care, I was going anyway. Here's why: I try to have very little expectations when I go somewhere. I find that when a person has very high expectations, they tend to be let down. This is probably due to the person building something up so much in their head, that their expectations could never be met. Additionally I don't have expectations, because I want to make each thing I do, unique to myself. It is great to get a recommendation about a place, but I don't want to experience a place as a guide book or even a friend says I should. I want to experience it in my own way. I want to have my own reactions to something. I don't want to love something because everyone says I should love it, and I don't want to hate something because everyone says I should hate it. I wish to only form my own opinions and then discuss with other people.

This leads to the good. The whole day overall was great and I will walk you through it as best and simply as I can. First the 3-4 hour train ride to the lake. A train ride anywhere in Switzerland is worth the price in itself, magnificent views are everywhere. I arrived to the lake and took an hour long boat cruise on the lake. The lake itself is beautiful and it is surrounded by small picturesque towns. Additionally the "bad" weather made a fog surrounding the lake, which gave me the feeling of entering the unknown. Along the way I met some very friendly Koreans, who I would spend the rest of my day with. When we arrived at the lakeside town called Vitznau, we hopped aboard what is supposedly the oldest rack railway in the world. At first we had some decent views as when ascended on this railway, but the farther we got up, the cloudier it got. It eventually reached the point where I could not even see 10 feet in front of the train. Again, the feeling of entering the unknown. We eventually reached the top of the mountain called Rigi Kulm. Even though the weather was "terrible" we decided to go exploring around. We really had no idea where we were walking as you could barely see a thing. Somehow the Koreans and I eventually reached the absolute top of the mountain. At this point it was different than being in a fog, it was like staring into pure whiteness. Whichever way I looked, it was pure white, not fog, but white like paper. It felt like I was truly in an unknown area. I had absolutely no depth perception, I thought things were much farther away then they were. I would only find this out because the weather eventually cleared up after lunch. I have never experienced anything like it. It was like pure peace, no sound, no color, just nothingness. After lunch when the weather cleared we got to see the great views of the lake and surrounding area and had a very fun snowball fight... yea that's right, how many of you can say you had a snowball fight on top of a Swiss mountain with a group of Koreans :P. We eventually made our way down the mountain by use of a gondola, which also gave us beautiful views. Then another boat ride across the lake and I was back on the train to Geneva. So in the end, I spent a lot, but I did get roundtrip train, roundtrip boat, another train, and a gondola ride.

Even though the lake was out of the way and expensive, I have absolutely no regrets about going. It was a great time and I met great people. I got to see the Swiss mountains and experience the Swiss cold weather. Even if I had an absolutely terrible time, I would still have no regrets. Each experience is unique and you live and you learn.

In other news... I bought myself a pair of gloves at the biweekly market in Geneva. I also bought myself a new book to read. I am a very fast reader so I bought myself a big book so I wouldn't finish it as fast as the last one... The title of this almost 700 page book, "The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997" by Piers Brendon. It should keep me occupied for a little bit.