June 21 – Viva Italia, in Svizzera!

This is long overdue. I haven’t had much time for blogging since I’ve been doing so much backpacking-planning. But, since I have an exam tomorrow and I’m procrastinating, here goes.

From June 3-5, 40+ exchange students went on a trip to Locarno, in the Italian part of Switzerland. The trip was organized by the awesome Buddy System here – just wanted to give them a shoutout if they’re reading! It was definitely one of the best weekends, if not the best weekend, that I’ve had here!

We left St. Gallen on a private bus at Friday around 4pm. The drive was really nice and part of it was through the Alps. One downer of having to drive in mountains is that there are a lot of tunnels and some of them are pretty long. The air in the tunnels is just made up of fumes and, although they have ceiling-mounted fans, it’s just gross. It is the most disgusting thing to be stuck in a traffic jam, in a tunnel, with no air conditioning or air circulation, on a +30-degree day. It happened to me on my way back from Engelberg for the Tourism Systems class trip.

Luckily, this time it was a pretty smooth ride. We just chilled, drank beer, and ate chips. When we got out of the Gotthard pass (17-km tunnel through the Alps), we could immediately notice that we were definitely not in German-Switzerland anymore. I’ll explain more later.

[Swiss anal-ism alert] We were scheduled to arrive at 7pm. We arrived at the Youth Hostel in Locarno at 7:06 pm, 6 minutes late after a 3-hour journey. One of the Buddy System leaders announced to us that we were too late and, as a result, we wouldn’t have time to check in now, but we’d have to eat dinner first and leave our luggage in the lobby.

Dinner was uneventful, except for what we were eating. Each of us had a big piece of bone, with little bits of meat around it, and polenta that was too liquid one bite and too dry the next. Later, I found out that the meat was cow legs. We each had a cross-section of a cow leg. Mmmm… I’d estimate that our entire group managed to eat about 3 or 4 cow legs. At least we managed to knock over some little kids and get dessert! Haha! Ok, it wasn’t really knocking them over, it was just “reaching over them.” The food adventures didn’t end here though. There was a lemon mousse that I thought tasted like lemon-scented cleaning products. Not that I’ve tried that, but this is what I’d imagine it to taste like. Or, this is what the smell tastes like, because I find that certain smells can really have a taste associated with them, too, if that makes any sense. The ice cream was the only reliable item of the entire meal. Even the water was weird.

A little while later, we all set off to the gas station, led by the buddies, to buy some pre-drinks. This is where one girl, surrounded by No Smoking signs, smoked a cigarette, and proclaimed, “I can’t believe they let you smoke in gas stations here.” At that moment, the guys said that comment took the gold medal for the semester.

It was so funny that you could immediately tell you were in Italian-Switzerland. There were Italian guys with greased hair, wearing chains. The cars were different – more fixed up and louder. Guys in cars would make cat-calls at the girls going by (I’ve yet to see this happen in German-Switzerland). Guys in cars also swore at our group to walk faster because they wanted to get by lol.

We drank at the beach and then partied at a club, which closed, on a FRIDAY, at 1 or 2am, I can’t remember which, but it doesn’t really matter. We were all partying in full swing when the music stopped and didn’t come back. So, we found an after-hours club which closed at 3am and then wandered back to the hostel.

I stayed with Cora, Liseth, Adriana, Angela, and Ying-Ying. You can imagine what one washroom for 6 girls looked like. Products everywhere. But, we managed pretty well and it was fun, even though we really didn’t do anything else in the room except for pass out.

Saturday was one of the most ideal days I have ever had in my entire life. Let me give you a quick summary. Woke up and thought, ‘Perfect, I don’t have a hangover!’ Got up too quickly => massive hangover that hit me just as I was climbing down from my top bunk, causing me to slip, but not crash (this part wasn’t ideal). Made it in time for hostel breakfast, which was more decent than hostel dinner. Had Locarno city tour on foot. Ate warm Italian sandwiches by the lake, mmm. Went on boat cruise to botanical garden. Cruised over to Ascona. Acted as beach bums for a few hours. Swam in the lake. Sunbathed. Met up with the other half of the group for awesome, al-fresco Italian dinner. Back to hostel. Got ready for partying stress-free. Pre-drank. Partied-hardy. Passed out back at hostel.

Sometime during this day there was also some good gossiping, including the fact that one girl, while drunk, sat on her own finger and almost broke it. She had a cast on for a few days.

On Sunday, we went to the Verzascatal valley, which was really gorgeous. We chilled on the rocks, Reto had some serious ass-cleavage going on, some people got thrown into the icy-water, and then some others got sponsored to do a 220m bungee jump off of the dam. 220m is over 4x the size of Niagara Falls. It was ridiculous watching them jump. I really wished that I could have gotten the guts to do it, but for this one, I just knew I couldn’t.

Most of us slept on the bus back. After a weekend of perfect weather in Locarno, the bus was actually driving straight towards the eternal, big, black cloud that hung over St. Gallen.

June 17 – Collection of Completely Unrelated Short-to-Medium Stories, Part II, Attempt III

The entry about anal-ism got a little long-winded and ended at about 3am, so it wasn’t really a collection of anything. Then, I tried to start another one with the recent Swiss voting issues, but that one went on for a while too. Here’s my third attempt.

The longest 2 weeks of the semester

As of today, it’s exactly 11 days until Goo gets here! I’ve been counting down ever since he got his plane ticket 2 months ago. This could possibly be the longest 2 weeks of the entire semester. But, maybe not since Sally & her friend is coming to visit this weekend and Greenfield/Interlaken (3-day concert) is the weekend after that! I haven’t been able to decide whether or not to sell my Greenfield ticket. I could use the money to go paragliding, which I really, really want to do, but the more that I listen to the bands that are going to be there, the more I REALLY want to go. Another bonus is that, if I go, then that weekend will go by really fast and I’ll come back to St. Gallen on Monday – one day before Goo gets here. I’m so indecisive.

#@$(*%$)(@#%-ing Swisscom!!!!

To the folks in Toronto: don’t take your phone plans for granted!! We have awesome cell phone plans and landline plans in Toronto. There’s no such thing as unlimited calling in ANY area here with your landline. Our house pays 25 CHF per month just to have the phone. To call someone in Switzerland – even in my town – it’s 0.60 CHF PER MINUTE!!! Oh, and there’s no “pennies” here, and everything on the phone bill is rounded to the nearest 10 cents!!! Actually, I bet they just round up, those bastards!! AGH!!! I hate it! I’m so used to having unlimited calling within a reasonable area, too. This means that the phone bill usually comes out to over 50 CHF, even if you’re just one freaking person. I’m about to spend most of my next week’s budget paying last month’s phone bill. #%&@%$@)!!)_%

A homie from home! (hahah so lame)

Sally is coming to visit tomorrow!!! She brings with her some offerings from France and a friend lol. She’s staying till Monday. I can’t wait to see someone from home!! It’ll be the first time in 4 months, excluding the people who are here from Schulich. I’m going to feed her lots of chocolate and my new home cookin’.

Her and her friend are coming with me to the Uni-Fest tomorrow. It’s the biggest party of the year and get this: they hold it on campus, at the university. And no, this is not like a pub party. Imagine all the different clubs and associations at Schulich each getting to set up their own bar(!) inside of the Schulich building. Imagine YMA taking over Timothy’s, Charity Association in a break room, B!G on the 2nd floor lobby, ACE in the courtyard (Howard! I gave you the best spot!), and so on. Now add a couple thousand student partygoers. This means that the associations buy alcohol and serve it throughout the night. They’re supposed to try to make a profit, but it’s usually a loss because of all the free alcohol they give away hahah!

I was at school today and there was a beer garden setup in the outdoor area in front of the school. There were cranes and wooden beams and steel frames everywhere. There were spotlights being lifted inside the main lobby. There were bar tables in the upstairs lobby. It’s crazy.

I heard from Reto (one of the buddies, lots of fun) that they used to have something called a Vodka Pass, which cost 10 or 20 CHF. With this pass, you could have an unlimited amount of straight shots of vodka or any mixed drinks that had vodka in them for ONE HOUR. I’m kind of happy that they discontinued the pass, because vodka has become like my Achilles heel here… The reason that they no longer have this: last time, they had to start a shuttle bus from the university to the hospital.

My English is going to shit

Ask any of the students who are native-English speakers here and they’ll tell you the same thing: their English is rapidly deteriorating. It’s not quite so simple, though. At first, I started to consciously select my words carefully so that I would be sure that the other person would understand. The first step was to cut out all slang terms. Other students started to ask me to correct them when they spoke English. No problem, but this made me become anally-retentive about grammar. At the same time, I was surrounded by more and more broken English. Luke’s mom is a speech pathologist, and he says that she says that we unconsciously pick up on other people’s poor language and start communicating with them in the same way, even though we try not to.

So, now I’m careful about grammar, but I make more mistakes that I picked up from other people than I ever did. I never speak as well as I write on this blog – not even close. On occasion, I can’t even think of the simplest words and sometimes I can’t believe the things that I’m saying, never mind trying to integrate the fun colloquial (I just like this word) sayings. I hope I can still form full sentences when I get back -___- . Oh, and please excuse me if I randomly interrupt you to correct your English in the middle of dinner. Please stop me if I’m correcting strangers. I might have to continue to mutter corrections to myself under my breath before it’s completely out of my system.

The most exciting thing to happen in St. Gallen for years, I bet

A few weeks ago, we had a bbq at Rosenbergstrasse, which is THE exchange student house. This is where all the house parties are. The bbq was on their front lawn, which was blocked from the street by some tall bushes. As I was walking there, I heard the music from a few houses away – it was playing for the entire neighbourhood haha.

Anyways, there we were, a bunch of students chilling, drinking wine, eating shish kebabs, when, all of a sudden, 6 police vans drove by with sirens blaring and mini-fireworks going off (I don’t know the answer to the question you have about this). They stopped a few houses down and then all the cops ran out of the vans in full riot gear. I’m talking padded vests, helmets, shields, batons, leg guards, some big guns, – the whole package. They ran onto the street and formed a barricade. Air guns were fired every now and then. If 6 police vans full of riot-gear bedecked cops spilled on to the street anywhere else in the world, I would have ran into the house and batted down the windows. But, because we were in Switzerland, we all wandered off into the middle of the street, in front of the stopped traffic, nibbled on our shish kebabs, and tried to see what was going on.

I found the whole situation really amusing. Evidently, all this fuss was made because there was a protest coming down the street from some marginalized and/or unemployed people in response to some new law. The cops kept the human barricades up and even set up new ones for quite some time, although there didn’t seem to be any problems. At one point, we were in between two human police barricades and we were joking to each other that this must be the safest place we’ve ever been to.

Oh, I also “met” a type of person that I have never met before. There’s this guy, Mourad, and I think he’s from Uzbekistan. His brother is here visiting for a while. My friend, Angela, who lives with them, told me that one day, her, Manuel, & Manuel’s girlfriend, Adriana, were having dinner together. Mourad’s brother came in and started talking to Manuel. He doesn’t acknowledge females in the room. In front of Adriana, he asked Manuel how many girlfriends he had. When Manuel, surprised, answered that his only girlfriend was Adriana, Mourad’s brother began trying to convince him that it was much better to have several girlfriends and that he deserved to have them. Remember, this was all while the 3 of them were having dinner. The girls were speechless. Of course, I’ve read about these kinds of attitudes and cultures before, but it was still shocking to get even a second-hand account of it.

June 15 - Switzerland votes YES to Schengen and gay marriage, all in one day

On June 5, Switzerland voted Yes to Schengen by 54.6% . This means that Switzerland has to give up doing systematic border checks, but it does not mean that there’ll be completely free movement as in the other Schengen nations – that vote is coming up in September. What’s interesting, and funny, is that you could see from a geographical standpoint that the western side of the country (the French part), voted yes, and the eastern side of the country (the German part), voted no. I’ve heard that this is usually how the votes end up, with the eastern side being very conservative.

Also on June 5, Switzerland voted Yes to gay partnership rights by 58%. I actually met a girl my age who was against gay rights while on my tourism class trip. I was really curious to hear what she had to say. She was from a pretty rural and conservative canton (i.e. equivalent to our provinces) and I guess that may have explained part of it. I didn’t get to talk to her long, or else we would have had some argument.

If someone else’s decision has no negative effect on society, then who are the rest of the population to constrict their freedom? [This vote does not allow gay couples to raise children, although empirical evidence from a multitude of psychological and social studies has consistently shown that children raised by gay parents are just as “normal,” emotionally healthy, and no more likely to be gay themselves than children raised by opposite-sex parents.]

Secondly, if her argument was based on religious ideals (which I have a strong feeling that it was): there is more than one religion in the world, as well as those who have no religion. If your country supports freedom of religion, then there is no rationalization for allowing the ideals of one religion to restrict the freedoms of all people. It would be a shameful example of hypocrisy.

It’s true that a substantial amount of law is based on what is generally accepted as “right” and “wrong” within a society, and that much of this is historically connected to religion. However, this was during a period where religion was much more consistent across a given population so that the beliefs of one religion was aligned with the beliefs across a society. This is no longer true. What is taken as “right” and “wrong” are no longer as deeply rooted in religious convictions and, ergo, these convictions cannot be used as justification for applying a law to the whole of society.

I’ve definitely been going on rants lately. I expected this piece to be only 2 paragraphs…

June 14 - Lyrics of the moment that I love

So I wear the red dress, paint my toes and twirl,
Take you back to old times, when I was still a girl.
Metric – Raw Sugar

Tonight, your ghost will ask my ghost,
Who put these bodies between us?
Metric – Calculation Theme

And I'm leaning
On this broken fence
Between past and present tense
The Weakerthans - Aside

That hurried, hollow sound
Of feet on polished floor
-----
And up above us all,
Leaning into sky
A golden business boy
Will watch the north end die
And sing, ‘I love this town!’
The Weakerthans – One Great City!

One thing I know about the rest of my life,
I know that I’ll be living it in Canada!
Sloan – Rest of my Life
Not such great lyrics, but this song has done plenty to cure some of my homesickness!

Also loving:
- the entire Bleed American album by Jimmy Eat World
- Hot Hot Heat – Bandages…Jingle Jangle…Shame on You…No Not Now…Talk to Me, Dance With Me
- most of the rest of Old World Underground from Metric
- The Killers
- Franz Ferdinand, especially Jacqueline
- the obvious answer: Green Day, especially Wake Me Up When September Ends

More generally:
- the Garden State Soundtrack, which is still perfect on occasion
- ambient lounge, when the mood strikes
- mushy love songs, especially Tamia – Still…Sade – By Your Side
- retro! try Peter Catera – Glory of Love, from Karate Kid II…or the original Take My Breath Away from Top Gun…ABBA! also looking for more retro suggestions, as I can’t remember the names of these songs
- Aventura – Obsession. Who’s got more songs like this???
- at clubs: definitely hip hop, although I’ve given up on expecting good music here, which lets me have a much better time
- drum ‘n’ bass or jungle can get me energetic even if I’m in a pretty crappy mood
- classical music sometimes when I study…I like www.beethoven.com because they actually play things that I know (e.g. movie soundtrack pieces, famous composers)…and if you really want to be moved…give a listen to Samuel Barber – Adagio for Strings…I know, it’s a little cliché, but it’s the most emotional piece of music I have ever heard. To me, it’s so strong that I have to be prepared to listen to it, which I only do a few times a year.
- 90’s dance music
- songs that are perfect for flying down the 401, rolling down all the windows, and singing along at top volume at 3am ;)
- I still really like Sean Paul

Leave comments with your fave songs of the moment, or of all time, whatever. I’d like to try some new stuff.

June 13 – Planning my life away

Ok, so I’ve spent most of the last few weeks planning my backpacking trip. It took me a looong while to get the itinerary down pat and I’m still making adjustments to it. It then took me most of an entire day to organize the most unpleasant thing with trip planning: transportation. This was made more frustrating by trying to figure out which combination of unlimited rail pass days and one-way tickets I needed for my budget and preferences.

I also spend entire days looking for perfect accommodation. In the main cities where I’m only staying a few days, any semi-decent hostel is fine, but there are some locations where I’m staying almost a whole week (i.e. Paris, Provence, Tuscany, & Rome). For those, I pass many days in front of my laptop looking for cheap-and-chic accommodation that I can rent for a whole week. It’s a race between Amy and Time as things are getting booked up, and Time has a hell of a lot more freaking endurance.

This is why I’m writing a blog entry – something I haven’t done in some time. I just need to stop planning for a little while. I have a bunch of little things to tell, so here’s my Collection of Short-to-Medium Stories, Part II.

A short essay on Swiss anal-ism

Maybe it’s Brendan Schulz’s theory that culture shock is actually at its worst after 4 months in another country (it’ll be exactly 4 months for me in 9 days), but I’ve realized that one of the negative side effects – or requirements, depending on how you see it – of an incredibly efficient nation is an incredibly anal population.

Firstly, I love how efficient the public transportation system is. For example, just last night, I was able to put in an address of a hotel in suburban Zurich, find out the 3 closest bus stops to that address, including how far of a walk each one was from my exact address, choose which I wanted to leave from, input my destination and time of departure (which happened to be months away from now), and get the EXACT routes and times that I could wait at the bus stop, as well as the times of all of my connections until my final destination. Even though I’m now used to a great train system, I was still surprised that I could plan a bus trip down to the every single stop and minute. Another positive note before I start bashing: if you put a letter in the mailbox here before the daily pick-up, it’ll reach it’s destination the next day if it’s within Switzerland, even on the weekends.

Now, on to the anal-ness. This was illustrated in an earlier blog entry with all of the Schengen Nein propaganda pages. Although, in my opinion, the vote on June 5 had a somewhat positive outcome – which I’ll address in another blog entry, two other events have sufficed as evidence of the anal-ism that permeates at least the eastern, German part of this country.

Case 1:

My Peruvian roomie, Liseth, and I were walking up the stairs on our way home, which is Hoehenweg 12. There’s a small, gated shortcut close to our house. It’s a short set of stairs which then connects to a road, which connects to our street. In total, it’s maybe 30 seconds of walking. On the gate, it says “Private Pathway: Only for residents of Hoehenweg or police will be called,” or something like that. Sign on the gate notwithstanding, it doesn’t look like much of a private path. I’ve used this shortcut on 2 occasions: once, when my ankle was bleeding from a new pair of shoes, and twice, when I was walking with one of the American girls who live next door at 3am or 4am.

Liseth always takes the shortcut and this time was no different. 10 seconds from freedom, there was an old lady in the passenger seat of a car that was backing up on the road. She told the person who was driving to stop moving, opened her door (because rolling down the window wouldn’t have been enough), and said to us in a tone even snobbier than the snobbiest, nose-in-the-air, SLK-driving, self-righteous, Yorkville-residing, Rolex-watch-wearing, look-how-much-money-I’m-made-of-and-how-much-better-than-you-I-am person could say (in German), “This is a private path! Don’t use it or I’ll call the police! Good evening.” Cue jaw-drop here.

Liseth tried to protest by explaining that we live on Hoehenweg, and the sign says it’s for people who live on Hoehenweg. We know that the intended meaning is that it’s only for the people who live in that apartment complex, but c’mon, what’s the harm in sharing? Old lady with the stick up her ass replied frantically, “No! No!” This was followed by, “Don’t use it or I’ll call the police! Good evening.”

At this moment, I prayed that I could click the heels of my red sequin Mary Jane’s together three times and be in Toronto, so that I could tell her off. Unfortunately, when I opened my eyes, I was still in Switzerland and still bewildered. Since then, I’ve stopped using the path, because I know almost as well as a fact that if I were to test it, one of the residents of the apartment building would indeed call the police because the sign says that it’s only for them and everyone should follow all of the rules, even if they seem pointless.

Case 2:

I met two guys here, Alex and Jordan, both from Western and both a bit of a drag (haha j/k Jordan, just wrote that cuz I was pretty sure you were gonna read it). We’re going to make poutine as the dish of Canada for the International Dinner on Wednesday, ha! Ok, back to the task at hand, which is to convince you readers that Swiss people are generally and comparatively more anal than others. I think only one sentence is really needed for this one, although I’ll give you more than that.

5 out of the 8 other residents who lived in their apartment building conspired against them to get them kicked out of their flat. Their reasons? They said that Jordan and Alex made noise, and put cigarette butts out on the stairs as well as throwing them off of the balcony. The unbelievable part is that these reasons were enough to get them kicked out. They’ve been moved as a “precautionary measure to avoid further conflict.”

According to the guys, none of it was true. Well, I guess the existence of “noise” depends on your definition of “noise,” but there weren’t any cigarette butts on stairs or thrown off of balconies. What did happen, though, is that one of the other tenants stole all of Jordan’s socks while they were drying in the laundry room.

I’m not even going to bother to conclude here, which, incidentally, also makes this entire sentence redundant.

Have patience!

I just uploaded 40 or 50 pics from the exchange students' trip to Locarno last weekend, so it could take a while to load, but it's worth it! The written part is coming up soon.

Having a beer on the bus at 4pm

Gross hostel food...

Buying pre-drinks & pre-drinking at the gas station ;)

Pre-drinking at the beach

Liseth & I

Cora & I, still pre-drinking at the beach

Choose your poison...heheh...yea i know, cheesy :P

Cheers

Cityscape in Locarno

Castle in Locarno

Locarno & Lago Maggiore

Madonna del Sasso church

Cute town while on our cruise

Lago Maggiore (Lake Maggiore), shared between Switzerland and Italy.

At the botanical island.

Can someone identify this ugly bird?

To pass the time on the botanical island, it became a competition to see who could take the best/most picture(s) of the lizards running wild. This was the best one that I saw, by Cora.

Wouter & Petra in the "rainforest" area

Alex & I

Ascona

Ascona shoreline

Town of Ascona, so nice!

The Buddy System's version of Formula 1

We were hoping all day that we could go swimming, even though it wasn't in the plan, and we did get to :)

Relaxing at Ascona beach

Cora, Manuel, Adriana, & Angela at dinner

Petra, Susann, Femke, Wouter, & me having dinner by the lake in Ascona. That was the BEST pizza I've ever had!

Reto does Zoolander!!! Yes, he's wearing lip gloss. I love this pic!

Sophie, Angela, Liseth, me, Pascal, pre-drinking by the lake.

Those crazy exchange students

Double-shots of tequila...woo!

Liseth and I are having so much more fun than everybody else in this picture hahah

Bartenders at Bar Simba after having an ice-bucket fight

The "after-hours" club. This is where we went after the good club closed at 1am. This place closed at 2am.

Two guys and a stripper pole.

Cora, me, & Susi (who got thrown into the icy water)

Pascal in his nook

Roomies!

Chilling at Verzascatal River.

View from Verzascatal dam.

Verzascatal dam.

Verzascatal dam & bungee jump, one of the highest in the world. To put this into perspective, the jump is OVER 4X the height of Niagara Falls!

Phillip, on his way up after his jump. I have the jumps on video, but I dunno how to post that here...

May 29 – This is gonna hurt tomorrow

I just got home from an 8-hour hike. My roomies and I climbed up to the top of Speer, a mountain with 1900m elevation (although we started at about 1000m a.s.l.). Everything is already starting to hurt. It was definitely worth it though. At the top, we had a 360-degree view all around with the Alps on one side, the hilly countryside of Northeastern Switzerland on the other, and Lake Zurich in between.

There were still some snow fields close to the top, which were a lot of fun for me. In order to get down from the top, we had to ski down a slope the size of a small run at Blue Mountain, in our shoes. After that, the trail had become something of a small stream because of all the melting snow. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the most disgusting wet and muddy socks, but it was all good. I have a terrible backpack-tan, but it’s only going to get worse from here.

Liseth & Cora @ beginning of hike. We actually left our house at 6am, a miracle for 3 girls who tend to be late.