Around the world in 2 years!

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Trying to catch up

OK, I admit…I’ve gotten pretty lazy lately and haven’t been updating this thing like I should. I think the last entry I wrote was about my Oktoberfest experience. A good bit has happened since then. To continue with my weekends – after Munich we decided to stay in Switzerland for the weekend and upon recommendations from a local, we spent our weekend traveling to both Interlaken and Montreux via train.

Between 2 lakes in Interlaken and then off to Montreux on Lake Geneva!

10/5/07 – 10/7/07

So PC and I were originally supposed to go to Ljubljana, Slovenia for the weekend, but when we mentioned this to our local PwCer, he laughed at us. We thought that staying in Switzerland for our last weekend before coming back to the States would be enough time here, but apparently we were quite wrong. This guy, Robin (PwC), has traveled a ton – and all over (US, Asia, Europe)…and basically said that there wasn’t anything in Slovenia that would beat Switzerland. And that there was sooo much to see in Switzerland! He showed us some really beautiful pictures he took of various areas around the country and I quickly emailed my fellow co-workers who had already been to Slovenia and recommended that we go. I inquired as to what they did there and it was stuff that we had planned to do in Interlaken, Switzerland anyways. So this caused a little dilemma and we ended up canceling our hotel and flight to Slovenia (not without a bit of a fee, of course) and booked train tickets to Interlaken and to Montreux. We intended to go to Interlaken Friday night so first thing Saturday morning we could go Paragliding and then Canyoning afterwards. After our activities, we were going to take a train to Montreux to spend Saturday evening and Sunday and then head back to Basel Sunday evening. It was just a little tour of a couple cities in Switzerland.
I think I’ve mentioned how much I love the trains here, but really…they’re amazing. Not so much the trains themselves, but the views from the trains. Going in and out of mountains, riding next to lakes, seeing the hillsides covered by vineyards…just beautiful! Throughout the whole weekend we were really lucky with our “train-ride” weather and had some really outstanding views of the mountains, lakes and country-side. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the rest of our weekend weather….Let’s start with Friday.

Friday & Saturday: 10/5 – 10/6/07:
We jumped on the train right after work and had a really enjoyable 2 hour train ride down to Interlaken and then arrived at our hotel with just enough daylight left to see the gorgeous view of the mountains from our hotel-room. We got up Saturday excited about our extreme outdoor activities planned for the day, but we looked outside with more disappointment then you can imagine…an unplanned foggy/cloudy/rainy day L. We kept optimistic and got ready as if our plans were to go on as scheduled and then called the Outdoor Interlaken people to find out if the weather would allow us to continue our Paragliding adventure that morning at 10:30…and the Pilot gave us the disappointing news came that it wasn’t going to happen.
Luckily Canyoning doesn’t really revolve around the cloudiness of the day, so despite it being slightly chilly, we were still set for our afternoon’s activity. PC and I took this extra time in the morning to walk around town and explore. Interlaken is definitely a tourist’s town…too cute, but all the stores were souvenir stores and unlike much of the rest of Switzerland – EVERYONE spoke English without any hesitation. Another hint that we were in a tourist town was that I saw more of “my people” (Indians) than Swiss people! It was pretty odd for me, but understandable as it was such a great little town.
So canyoning…there was a total of 9 people in our group. We realized earlier in the day that there weren’t too many “young” people walking around town and found out that all the “young” people were staying in the Basiler Hostel right next to the Outdoor Interlaken building. It was a little awkward because I was so excited to hear their stories about where they’d been and most of them didn’t know eachother but formed some sort of bond by staying in hostels…I felt left out because PC and I couldn’t join in. When they asked us where we were staying and we told them that we were staying in a nearby hotel and that we were in Switzerland for work…well – the conversation pretty much came to a halt. I felt like we were being reverse discriminated against!! Usually when I walk into a fancy schmancy store and I’m not dressed up, people tend to snub me…but this time I was snubbed because I had a job that brought me overseas and was able to stay in a hotel as opposed to a hostel. Tough to get a break!
Oh well – their loss I guess ;-). We still had an amazing time canyoning though! Basically we got all geared up in ridiculous wet-suit outfits and drove/hiked to the top of a mountain where we then proceeded to work our way back down via the river. We only did a 2 ½ hour canyoning trip, so this wasn’t the most challenging route we could have taken but it was still a lot of fun. You cross over rocks and jump into pools of water, we repelled down some steep cliffs and walked under waterfalls. The wetsuits helped keep us from freezing our tails off, but my hands and face were still pretty numb! I wish we had some video or could have taken pictures, but obviously you can’t really bring a camera to something like that. The 2 guides that helped us with our journey down the mountain were pretty good – 1 Irish guy and 1 New Zealander….The Irish guy teased me a lot towards the end because every time we were about to do a jump or something that involved us taking turns, I would always be the first one to volunteer! I guess I get a little over-eager when it comes to adventurous stuff like that…sorry Mom!
After our fun-filled afternoon of canyoning, PC and I decided to enjoy teatime at the Grand Victoria Hotel. This is the nicest hotel in Interlaken and apparently has a great teatime. So we took quick showers and despite the fact that we were all scrubbed out, we went to this gorgeous hotel. Obviously we were pretty out-of-place, but the staff still treated us well since we paid entirely too much for tea time…it’s times like this when I love my job! The snacks were AMAZING and the tea was tea – always enjoyable. I probably had about 3 cups (small ones) and PC had 4 throughout the 2 hours that we stayed there; definitely a great way to relax after our canyoning craziness. After our afternoon tea, we grabbed our luggage from our hotel next-door and booked it to the train station. Next stop – Montreux!

We arrived at the Montreux train station around 8pm and found our way to the Best Western hotel. Actually, a very nice hotel and right on the lake! Our local Swiss PwC friend, Robin, had suggested it since he had been there and it was a good thing we listened to him. The location was pretty central to places to eat and there was even a club right across the street. PC and I intended to have dinner at this restaurant (also recommended by Robin) called the Beef Bar and then hit up the club nearby. Unfortunately exhaustion hit us (more me than PC) from our days activities and we ended up at the hotel restaurant and then called it an early night.

Sunday, 10/7/07
We woke up the next morning at our leisure and were disappointed to see that it was another cloudy day. We avoided rain, but what would have been a wonderful lake/mountain view from our hotel room ended up being a mediocre view of the lake and nothing more. We decided that we would take a nice stroll to the Chateaux nearby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chateau_of_Chillon
Our stroll lasted a good several hours as we stopped at the Beef Bar for lunch since we didn’t go for dinner the night before. The main dish was ok (PC had the perch and I had a burger), but the chocolate molten cake was to die for! I’d have to say that chocolate molten cake is probably right up there with cheesecake and gulabjaman as my favorite dessert ever!
We were pretty stuffed after lunch, so it was a good thing we had a few hours to walk it off and the walk along the lake turned out to be really nice as the weather slowly cleared up. I took a ton of pictures
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25566&l=bce54&id=500066404
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25567&l=19f90&id=500066404

and just enjoyed the walking and people watching. It was a fairly short day since we didn’t want to get back to Basel too late, but a good weekend of exploring all the same.

I think I’ve somewhat procrastinated on this entry because I feel like it wasn’t enough of an “exciting read”, but it is what it is… I find myself struggling between wanting to see stuff and make the most of these trips and wanting to relax and see what I can without getting burnt out. After all…there are so many hours in a day and we usually only get a day and a half on the weekend to see things (plus, I’m a big fan of sleep and I get it whenever I can!).

Monday, October 8, 2007

Tour of Switzerland

So I'll add the update soon, but here's where we went this past weekend.

View Larger Map

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Oktoberfest in Munich 2007

9/28/07 – 9/30/07

Munich. The beauty of the city pleasantly surprised me, but that’s not really the TRUE reason why we went there this particular weekend. An event that’s an experience of a lifetime – Oktoberfest, was calling our names. Us being PC (Christina), myself, our co-workers from the France audit (5 people), and our co-workers from the Netherlands audit (2 people). Overall, a rather large group, but there wasn’t as much craziness as you would expect. I can sum up my day (yes, just one day) at Oktoberfest quite easily: Beer, Pretzels (among other food) and lots and lots of people! But that’s what Oktoberfest is all about. Not being a huge fan of ridiculously large crowds (and people entering my personal space), I only lasted from 10am – 7pm on Saturday and opted not to go back on Sunday despite our late flight out. I’m glad I went…it’s definitely something to see. The huge tents lined along both sides of the “street” and in the middle, just crowds of people walking along, drinking and eating to their hearts content. There were tents (tents being massively large beer tents that were sponsored by various German Breweries) that held up to 10,000 people and smaller ones that only held around 1,000 people. Inside these tents are rows and rows of picnic benches and tables as well as souvenir stands and waitresses (only women) carrying from 6 – 20 huge liters of beer to tables. Food pretty much consisted of pretzels (the largest I’ve ever seen!), chicken and bratwurst. I can’t complain though – I tried all of them and it was yummm!!! But then again, I rarely complain about food these days….maybe just that I eat too much of it.
So we arrived at the Beer Tent (Hofbrau) at 10am sharp and already came in contact with a HUGE crowd of people waiting outside to go in. You could reserve a table inside the beer tent, but even 9 months in advance people find it pretty difficult…you basically have to know someone to get a reservation or even get into a tent. It’s so ridiculous (and personally not worth it to me, but that’s my opinion). After 3 hours of waiting and getting to the “front” of the line, we realized that they weren’t planning to let any more people inside. So we gave up and just decided to enjoy the beer garden right outside! The only problem is that unless you have a table at the beer garden, it’s pretty difficult to find a waitress to serve you. That’s when our luck changed. My co-worker Holly and I got separated from the rest of the group and 2 random guys tapped me on my shoulder from behind. Typically it’s Holly who meets and talks to random people, but I played my part today. We briefly talked (they initially thought I was Latin/Hispanic) and then they offered to let Holly and I join them at their table for beers. By the way, these guys were mostly from Italy – apparently it was Italian weekend at Oktoberfest as I met NO Germans that day and lots of Italians. I grabbed Holly and we talked to these guys while they ordered us beers. We found my other co-workers and the group was back together! The random Italian guys were nice enough to order beers for all my co-workers too (we all paid for our own beers…we just sat at their table so we had access to a waitress). I wasn’t too interested in talking to these guys for very long, despite the fact that we ended up staying out in the beer garden for a good 5 hours, so I floated around (as I usually do in large crowds) and talked to random people and my co-workers. There’s only so much beer I can drink and only so much I can deal with drunk people – I was NOT drunk by the way…not wanting to take the chance to get separated from my group of have anything crazy happen – I enjoyed watching the craziness but didn’t partake in any myself. Around the time I was getting hungry/wanting to leave, one of my co-workers, Kevin, apparently found a way inside the tent. A waitress (an older one at that) happened to take a liking to him and offered to let him sit at one of her tables. He of course said yes but that he had to grab the rest of us. So we all ended up inside this tent – 1,000 people in total all dancing/singing on tables or drinking. We ordered some food and chowed down…around 7pm, I was just plain tired of the scene and was ready to head back to the hotel. PC and my other co-worker, Amanda, were ready for the same, so we left and cabbed it back to the hotel. And THAT was the end of my Oktoberfest experience. Most likely not as crazy as you would expect, but that kinda chaos is just not my thing. I definitely don’t regret going, but won’t be heading back there any time soon.
On Sunday, we had most of the day to kill before going to the airport, so PC and I decided to take a guided walking tour of Munich. I really enjoyed this!! It helped that our guide, a communications student herself, spoke wonderful English and did a fantastic job explaining the buildings that we saw. This is when I realized what a cute and clean city Munich is! We also wanted to check out the “Sleeping Beauty” castle a few hours outside of Munich, but no time for that one. We’ll have to go back at some point.
So that was Munich in a nutshell…beer, pretzels and people. Boy I need to hit the gym!