Switzerland by the numbers

Pictures are up on Flickr, and also make sure to check out the two videos I posted on YouTube (especially the one of Dan falling off a sled). Rather than tell you every detail of what happened over the weekend, I thought I'd keep it to the essential facts.

60 - amount, in Swiss Francs, I won playing blackjack at the casino in Interlaken on Thursday night.
130 - amount Dan won
2 - number of minutes we stayed there after we realized we had won money (we were very proud of our self-control).

10 - number of feet we could see in front of ourselves while sledding (yes! Sledding in the Swiss Alps!) on Friday. We went with Kristen, the girl who was staying in our room as she travels Europe alone for 2 months.

3 - number of new friends we have from Liverpool
about 12 - number of words I actually understood when they spoke to us (in English...I think).

3 - number of falls Dan had while skiing on Saturday, out of more than 15, that were so dramatic, traumatic, and terrifying that we had specific names by which to call them:

....The One Where Dan Fell off a Cliff
Dan has trouble stopping on skis. So, when I told him I thought he'd be fine doing some harder runs, he agreed to try them. We both quickly learned we were wrong. On this occasion, early in the day, he sped off in front of me so far that I couldn't see him any more. I got to a convenient stopping point where I figured he had probably purposely fallen to stop...but didn't find him. So I went on to the bottom of the slope, thinking he might be waiting there. No sign of him. I started panicking. We hadn't set a meeting point in case we got separated, and it was quite clear to me that he wouldn't have made it to a meeting point anyways because he had obviously fallen off a cliff and was dead and it was my fault. I took a chair lift back toward the top of the mountain so I could get a birds-eye view of the slope. For five minutes, no sign of him. Then, a lump of clothing lying on the side of a trail suddenly looked familiar! "DAN!!!" I shouted, with relief! "Yeah..." He responded, in pain. Turns out he had spun off the course into a ditch, and his skis and poles were 25 feet behind him.

....The One Where He Hit the Fence
Right after I finally caught up to him, we continued down the slope, headed for easier trails. But alas, Dan could still not stop and started speeding down again, only to fall at a convenient point - he flipped through the air a few times, finally crashing his thigh into a fence post and landing in a ditch. When he got up, he said he was having trouble seeing.

....The One Where He Almost Died
He gained some confidence. We realized his boots had been unstrapped the entire time, giving him almost no control over his skis. So, I thought, let's try another tougher one. We went up this terrible kind of lift thing where you have to stand the entire time, only to find ourselves at the top of another peak, in a dense fog. Dan was terrified. But there was really no other way down (if it was a real chairlift, he could have taken that back down). So we started, slowly, making our way down the slope, when it took a sudden drop (which surprised me so much that I fell too). Dan, unable to slow himself down but committed to staying standing, sped down the hill at what had to be 45mph, finally beginning to fall at the top of another drop. He slipped out of my sight. When I found him again, he was lying on the ground at the bottom of this steep part, his equipment scattered on the hill above him: first a ski, then a hat and goggles, a pole, another ski, a pole. He had done three front handsprings before finally coming to a halt, his shirt bunched up in his jacket and his body covered with snow.

1:00am - time at which we thought check-in closed for our hostel in Geneva, which we had to get to on Saturday night so we could catch our early flight
3 - number of minutes it took for us to rush to the other side of Interlaken, only to find out that the train we had to catch in order for us to make it on time was actually a bus and had left without us. We caught a later train and had some peace, thanks to Mom, who found out the place was actually open 24hrs.

10 - minutes I spent talking to Gonzalo, a random Portuguese guy with whom I struck up a conversation at the end of the train ride (he was VERY inebriated). When he heard we were American, he started naming American DJs...none of which I've heard of. So our conversation essentially consisted of "You know Carl Cox?" "No, sorry man" "Oh he's..." etc etc etc. He asked for my phone number, and instead of giving it to him, I got his.

8 - amount of time, in hours, we spent at the Geneva Youth Hostel on Saturday night.
9 - amount of time, in hours, that actually elapsed during that period as a result of Europe's change to "summer time." We didn't miss our flight, don't worry.

5 - number of days, including today, we were in Switzerland
2 - number of showers I took. There was no way I was showering at the Geneva hostel, and we didn't have a room where I could shower after we skied. So I was just gross until this afternoon. Pleasant, ain't it?

the opera and the slopes

What a sweet two days! Our Czech language instruction ended with a scavenger hunt written by our teacher (the wonderful Bara). The hunt took us up Petrin hill (an area I had yet to explore, and was planning on it) to the 1/5 replica of the Eiffel Tower and a sweet mirror maze, ending at the world famous Bohemia Bagel for lunch and declaration of winners (I had a bagel, lox, cream cheese, capers, and onions, and it was amazing. My dad is proud, I'm sure). You have to love a country where your teacher can give a bottle of alcohol as a prize.

In the remainder of the afternoon, I went to the train station and bought my ticket to Krakow for next weekend. As it turns out, I'm going on what seems to be the "in" trip to take next weekend, which I have mixed feelings about. I bought my ticket with 6 other guys (including Evan W), most of whom I wouldn't exactly be best friends with. But, as Mom said, we don't have to be best pals; it'll still be nice to take my first trip with other people. It will be interesting to tour Auschwitz (on my birthday) with all million people who are going. It will be a story.

That night, the program treated us to some very cheap seats at the State Opera House, where we saw Verdi's Nabucco. The building is ridiculous (pics soon...I actually think that's the building in The Living Daylights, not Municipal House). Of course, the opera was sung entirely in Italian, but there were supertitles. In Czech. I still managed to stay awake the whole time, probably because the orchestra was awesome (and so were most of the singers), and because I bought a 47Kc English summary.

Afterwards, Steph Beren (Taryn B's friend and future roomie at IU) and I grabbed some dinner around the corner. Steph is awesome. I drank my beer and half of hers and was feeling toasty (seriously, I've been here for almost 3 weeks, drank nearly a liter of beer a day, and still have no tolerance).

I went home early, because this morning I woke up at 6:10am to catch the bus (with Zuzana and Jonas) to a ski slope near the border with Poland. Zuzana called today a "demanding day" and I would have to agree, especially coming from the guy who hasn't skied in a very long time (...and who's not athletic. There, I said it. Happy?). When Jonas and I got off the bus, I didn't really get what was going on - the bus was stopped in the middle of the street, and it didn't seem like everyone was getting off, so I sort of hung out there with most of my gear, and watched as the bus drive away with my poles...a looooong walk in ski boots later (wow painful. At one point, BOTH feet fell asleep in the boots), and I had a new Czech friend, and a new Israeli friend (from near Haifa) who studies at Charles University and speaks nearly perfect Czech.

The mountain we went to was really nice (though I've been horribly spoiled by my trips to Colorado/Utah/Tahoe), but unfortunately the weather this morning was not. At the peak, the snow was falling in big pellets, like small pieces of hail, which would have made a nice powder had it not been for the wind howling like a hurricane. I would have been afraid of falling down the hill, but the wind honestly could have pushed me back the other way.

After two trips down the slope in this weather, I was already ready for a break (it made me feel ridiculous saying that to Jonas and his friends). My legs are still adjusting to the amount of walking I'm doing here, and the hike before the skiing wasn't helping either. (Yeah, I'm making excuses. I can hear my mother and sister calling me a wimp already. Let's face it folks, Evan has had a storied history with skiing...). A quick recharge and I was back in action, though. The weather cleared up, and the skiing was, as Jonas would say, "quite nice."

I also got the chance today to get a good sample of Czech chocolate and Czech cookies, which I have been eating the entire day. Hells yes. I'd have to say, though, my favorite part of the day was the trip back home, which we did on public trans, carrying all our gear from the tram, up Baneofmyexistence Hill. Czechs make you have to deserve their cookies.