Switzerland exceeded every bit of expectation I had.
Of course, I don’t know how much expectation you can really have for a place when your first night is spent trying to sleep sitting up straight on a marble bench with no backing. Arriving in the Zurich station at 2am wasn’t really conducive to finding a place to stay. We were going to hop on the first train to Schofhousin (I completely butchered that name) in the morning to meet up with Blaine’s friend, Kevin. “Friend” is kind of a loose term, as Blaine had really only met the guy on an airplane once. This doesn’t sound sketchy at all, right?
After a horrendous night of “sleep”, we hop on the train and meet up with Kevin. He is one of the NICEST guys you’ll ever meet. Our luck was finally turning around. Not only did he give us a Mediterranean breakfast from a local market, but he let us use his washing machine! I now have clean clothes!!! Kevin then took us out to tour the town and go rafting down the Rhine.
Now, Switzerland is picturesque, the people are kind, but the absolute BEST thing about Switzerland isn’t any of that. The thing that I was so desperately searching for in the past countries was finally here, which immediately bumped Switzerland up to #1 in my book. They had drinking fountains. Now, these aren’t just normal drinking fountains, these are little decorative fountains that spew out fresh water. They. Are. Incredible. Thirsty? No problem, just drink straight from that epic medieval fountain gently spurting out cool, refreshing water.
After I finally calmed down from my fountain excitement, we went out rafting on the Rhine, a river on the border of Switzerland and Germany. I can’t begin to describe how beautiful this place was, but I can tell you that the water was freezing. I jumped off a bridge (everybody else was doing it) about 5m high into this water and I felt like I was hyperventilating. Nevertheless, we were taking the overnight train to Rome that night so we had to say goodbye to Kevin and our short-lived Switzerland trip. It was short, but sweet, and I can tell you that this traveler knows they put the “fond” in “fondue”.
You know how they say that when it rains, it pours? Well, the opposite must be true, because Rome was another bout of good luck. The overnight train is much cooler as an idea than it is in practice, but we were so tired we didn’t really mind. After our Longjumeau experience in France, we decided not to book any kind of accommodation in advance, just to be safe. This led us to stumble across the Ostello Morello, the hostel I’m writing this in right now. It’s a quant little place in the middle of Rome run by nuns. You’d think there’d be a lot of rules since it’s a Catholic hostel, but there’s no curfew, and they let you drink in the rooms (either that or we haven’t gotten caught yet). Definitely a great place to stay if you’re ever travelling to Rome on a budget.
We spent the next few days roaming Rome (ha). At first we started wandering aimlessly, and within two minutes we found the Coliseum. We turned a corner and it was just there. Epic. We’ve seen so many other sites, such as the Trevi fountain, Pantheon, and Vatican City (a place where indeed “all roads lead to Rome), which is another country I can cross off my list. We were able to experience a little night life too, in which I sang a karaoke “Brown Eyed Girl” in a bar at 1am. This means I have successfully done karaoke on 4 continents. Alright. (I use “successfully” very loosely)
Food report: Italy rocks. I’m sure that was obvious though. Panini, pizza, pasta, this place has everything you could ask for, including cheap good-quality wine. All I want to do here is eat. Blaine and I also have a gelato store we frequent multiple times a day. The lady knows us now… Here in Italy there is literally a gelato store every 50 feet, and they are all DELICIOUS. There’s also some kind of free juice here at the hostel. It’s a blood-orange juice, and it is some of the greatest stuff in the world. Right now Italy is definitely in first place for food, and I’m gonna need to see some strong effort from the other countries if they plan to boot the boot.
We made it up to Florence today, and we’re heading to Venice tomorrow, then to Budapest, Prague, and ending in Frankfurt. I was planning on going to bed early tonight, but it seems everybody else goes to bed later here, so I decided to write this. You know how it goes, when in Rome…
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