On Sunday my housemates and I went on a roadtrip to Jakobshorn in Davos. When we got to Davos we went to the rental store and I got a brand spanking new Snowboard for the day. After we had our gear we headed up a cable car, up another cable car, and then finally we were at the top of Jakobshorn (2590m).
Switzerland is a bit different to Aus/NZ - they have a different colour scheme.
This Saturday I went to Technorama in Winterthur on an IAESTE event. It was sort of like the Swiss version of Questacon. Check out the video below for some of the random things that I filmed.
The Lightning display was a fairly big let-down for the most part (it went for about 30mins but the only cool bits were in that video). But the Tesla coils were definitely worth the wait.
So my cousin Kate was in town, so I went in to Zürich to say hello on Wednesday.
In the train station now they have a giant Swarovski Christmas tree and some markets were open. Besides this, Zürich was as dull as usual, but it was good to have a chat to Kate. When I came back into Turgi I saw they now have Christmas lights up in the main street, which was pretty cool.
It snowed today! For about 5 minutes anyway. The weather had predicted snow for today, but when I woke up in the morning I was disappointed to see that there was none. Then at work I looked out the window at one stage in the morning, and noticed IT WAS SNOWING! After a few minutes when it stopped there was no indication that it had snowed at all :( Once the clouds cleared a bit you could see the trees on the very top of the hill were snow-capped, but about 15 minutes later that was gone too.
Our trip to Luzern marked Rachael’s first journey in a double-decker train, and we got to see some Swiss countryside on the way. I originally had planned for us to go the top of Mt. Pilatus, but when I checked the site in the morning it said the cable cars weren’t running, so we gave up on that idea. Also for some reason my bank card wasn’t working, so I couldn’t get out anymore money so we had to make do with the amount of cash I already had on me.
I’ll take a short break from the Euro Trip story to tell you about my first time ice skating.
I went into Zürich last night with a few other guys from IAESTE to go ice skating at the Dolder Ice Rink. The rink itself was so much cooler that I was expecting. Not only is it an open rink, but in the centre they had a massive lit up Christmas tree.
Today I went to Zürich with Anthony to make my own pocketknife at the Landesmuseum, but when we got there they told us they were totally booked up for the whole day, so we couldn’t :(
So we walked around the city in the rain for a bit, but nothing too exciting. There really isn’t too much to see in Zürich in comparison to some of the other places around. And especially when it’s raining.
I went to the Australian Outback Bar in Zürich tonight for the IAESTE weekly Meeting. It was both cool and disappointing. Cool in that they didn’t just have Fosters, they had Bundy Rum, VB and Coopers. Not cool that it was like 8sFr for a VB and 15sFr for a Rum and Coke. Also their menu had prawns listed as shrimp …
There was XXXX signs as well, but they didn’t sell it, which is false advertising I reckon.
Last night we went to Germany for some drinks for Steven’s birthday and also because some people are going home soon. The bar in Waldshut that Steven and I found is even better than we first thought. Not only are beers only 2€, but if you start singing happy birthday then the bartender will come over with some free Jägermeister shots. Oh and rather than stealing the beer glass, Steven ASKED if he could keep it, and they even got him a clean one to take home.
The hiking weekend began with the steepest bus ride in Europe. It really was quite steep in places, made the bus ride up to the Remarkables in New Zealand tame in comparison. Because it was only one lane the bus driver was constantly hitting the horn to let cars know we were coming round the corner. The swiss post buses have a REALLY loud and long horn tune.
And then began the hiking.
