Life Lessons and German Lessons

Another week down in Switzerland. I have officially been here for four weeks today. It's weird because it sometimes feels like I have been here for a lot longer but then again, it doesn't really feel like a month has passed since I have been home. I have realized that I think I have already learned so much from being here. First of all, one of the most important things I've learned is that the first 2 or 3 weeks really are the hardest part. How many times did I call home crying to my mom or to Cody? (Not to say that I don't still do this every now and then, I mean come on, you probably know me better than that.) But now I definitely feel like I have more of a place here. I do not feel completely lost all the time, I am now pretty confident in the transportation system and the pointing and making random noises to communicate to people who only speak German. Another thing I have learned is that I went to a really challenging university. I say this because I was so surprised at my first German lesson and the amount of homework we received. The homework consisted of a single worksheet of about 10 or 15 multiple choice questions. I mean, really??? Apparently this is just how the classes are here, Heidi said that hers is the same way. I just hope that it is going to be challenging enough for me to learn the language. I came in to the 5th class, but I'm sure that I will catch up in no time because they seem to go at a very slow pace.

Speaking of not knowing any Deutsch, this weekend I went to a cow show in Maur. Yes, that's right...a COW SHOW. As in Miss America but for cows. I thought that Stayton was a fairly typical country town, but you should see Maur. The farmers here are very serious about the competition for the prettiest cow. In the picture here, the cows that are lined up are some of the contestants for this competition. Which one would you have voted for?

Because of this cow show, I had to work on a Saturday. Christian and Jana were in charge of serving food to all the people who showed up. However, my job was kind of pointless here since the kids just ran off with their friends and played with each other. So I basically just wandered around looking at cows for 4 or 5 hours. It is really unfortunate that I don't speak German yet because I would love to be able to speak to a lot of the people here. Especially when I am in a group of Jana and Christian's friends who I think are pretty cool, the ones who have spoken to me in English anyway, but I am always completely lost in the conversation. And no one bothers to translate for me, which is understandable because that would just be annoying for everyone. But I definitely find it hard to build personal relationships with people who I would really like to.

For instance, as I was eating my lunch by myself in the little tent at the cow show when this guy, about my age and wearing his cow gear (big green rubbery pants and a sweatshirt and cap) sat down next to me and started talking to some other people across from him. After awhile, he turned to me and said something in German. I had no idea of course what he said and I pretended not to hear him (yes, I know, it was mean but it's frustrating having to say that I don't speak Deutsch, especially in Maur where people usually don't know English). I waited a few more minutes then got up to leave in case he tried speaking to me again. I then walked around the place a to a completely different spot outside of the tent to watch the cows. After a few minutes there, I turned around to see the guy standing next to me again! He said something else in German and this time I had no choice but to just smile apologetically and say "I don't speak Deutsch...English?" He said something else in German and walked away. Apparently he didn't speak English which I was kind of sad about. I could have had a friend to talk to but the whole language barrier prevented this.

Above and below are a few pictures of Lucerne. This is a pretty touristy city about an hour train ride from Zurich. It was also very pretty. I decided to visit Lucerne since I had Friday off and was feeling like getting out of town. The city had lots of little shops and I walked around this area for awhile. There was a lake right in the middle, just like Zurich and there were huge mountains on one side of the city and gorgeous hills on the other side. I took a few pictures of the mountains but they did not turn out so well since they were farther away and it was a pretty dark and cloudy day. I also went to Lucerne because I heard about a Picasso gallery there. I decided to check this out and actually found the place all on my own! I was pretty proud of myself. The art gallery was really cool, tons of Picasso's stuff. There were also a few Monet paintings and some of my favorite paintings there were by Pierre Auguste Renoir. I only had about 45 minutes to look around since I came pretty late and they were closing soon. But I was glad that I went, it was very peaceful walking around by myself, but also a little lonely.

This weekend, Heidi and I decided to venture out to experience the Zurich night life by ourselves. We were a little unsure because we had no idea where to go or what to do. We went to a couple of different bars but they were not too exciting. We eventually wound up at this fun little piano bar where the pianist was American and was playing all English songs. Most of the music was either Billy Joel, Elton John, a few songs from Dirty Dancing, and some other oldies. Here we ran into a couple of people from Boston. We knew that the man and woman were American because we heard them order at the bar. We started talking to the woman and learned that they were just in Zurich for the night and were headed down to Milan to meet their family for vacation. They were very nice and after having a drink with them, they went back to their hotel and we wished them luck on their journey south. We then started talking to a couple of guys from Zurich. After awhile we went to another smaller and much smokier bar with them. This was fun, too but the bar had horrible ventilation and the smoke was stinging my eyes so that I could hardly keep them open. Heidi and I decided we were hungry and wanted left with one of the guys to find a kebab place. At this point, I really missed good old Taco Bell. For just a little kebab it was almost 9 francs and this was the cheapest thing on the menu. After eating, we realized that it was almost 5:30 in the morning! We were amazed at how late it had gotten without us realizing it. Last weekend we also stayed out in a town called Zug until 4:30 am and I couldn't believe that we had done it again! I thought I was too old for this! We caught the train back to Heidi's city where we had to spend another hour sleeping in the women's bathroom since the next bus to her stop didn't come until 7:15 am! We were exhausted and freezing so the bathroom was the best place for us to wait.

One last thing that I have learned so far: If you are going to stay out all night, stay out until at least 7 am when the buses then start to arrive regularly.