I Went to Switzerland and All I Got Was This Lousy Adrenaline Rush

 

Guten tag, as the Swiss say, I’ve just returned from a weekend trip to Switzerland! And must I say, it is quite a beautiful country.  I woke up around 2:30 am, after dozing off during out nine-hour bus ride from Florence, to a flurry of snow going on outside my window.  The snow accumulation was so much that it looked like q-tips and snowmen were growing instead of trees.  Because of the view outside, it took me a few minutes to realize the fact that our large coach bus was winding around a narrow, snow covered street on a mountainside. My head became filled with thoughts of how this bus does not belong here – not because of the size of the road, but more so because I felt like I was in the barest landscape where humans could never survive without their technology or machinery.  To my right was a cliff covered in wired fence to keep boulders from cascading down and crushing any car that may be unfortunate enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.  To my left, the cliff continued down to a barren, white plain with a tiny village lit only by the fires I imagined roaring inside each home to keep the family from freezing to death.  How fortunate we are to have created such technologies.

At about four in the morning, we arrived at our hostel called Funny Farm.  At the door was a behemoth St. Bernard laying as if she was another piece of furniture installed in the lobby (Spliff, was her name, as I would soon find out the next morning lolz).  The hostel was an interesting place to say the least.  I think the only difference between a hostel and hotel may be that the s in hostel stands for shitty.  Walking into our room, I felt like I had stepped into the 1970s.  Our bathroom had a flowery hippy curtain and fake vinyl tiles that reminded me so much of the Brady Bunch house where Marsha and Greg would start their mornings.  Now, if only I had Alice to clean it up for me. 

My alarm went off at 8 am, playing its usual “Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl…” tune that so often jolts me out of bed.  Our all inclusive breakfast was not so much a breakfast as a loaf of bread that you could put jam on (for the big eaters, of course).  I’ve actually noticed that Europeans don’t really eat breakfast…very strange.  And bad for your metabolism.  Anyhow, I grabbed a piece of bread and darted out the hostel in excitement for my activity soon to come – sky diving.  But not just any sky diving, sky diving out of a helicopter.  What’s the difference you ask?  Do let me enlighten you:  when you jump out of a plane you actually decelerate from 180 mph to 140 mph (because the plane is already moving when you jump); however, when you jump out of a helicopter, the chopper is stationary which means you go from 0 to 140 mph in just seconds.  I know, I’m a badass.  To my parents…sorry I had to put you through reading this just now.  But now that it’s over, we can joke about it, right? That being said, stop reading this paragraph because you may not want to read what I’ve got to say about the experience.  The feeling that I experienced instantly after stepping off of the helicopter platform is like nothing I have ever felt before.  To say my stomach dropped like a roller coaster wouldn’t even begin to compare.  It was like I left my stomach in the helicopter while the rest of my body plummeted 14,000 feet over Switzerland.  Sheer adrenaline shot through me as I fell from above the clouds, then through the clouds, and finally felt the yank of my parachute slow me down to a glide.  Andrew, the man attached to my back, handed me the parachute controls as we did circles and I screamed in ecstasy.  This was by far the coolest thing I have ever done, and would honestly do it a thousand times over just to feel the rush again.

Even at 140 mph, I still thought to blow kisses.  If that's love, baby, I don't know what is.

Okay parents, you can resume reading here.  For lunch, we headed to the top of a ski mountain, which proved more difficult than expected.  Two trains, two gondolas, and lots of headache, we finally got to the top and had an interesting meal.  Let’s just say meatballs in Switzerland are nowhere near the same thing as meatballs in Italy.  Something gets lost in translation…

 

Our included chocolate tasting came next.  Yes, Mom, it came before dinner, sorry.  When I walked into Swiss Chocolate Chalet, I was delightfully surprised to see the cutest little Swiss Willy Wonka standing with a platter of chocolates.  The different types of chocolate flavors and shapes was enough to make Augustus Gloop poop in his pants.  (For Ricki: “Somebody save my Augustus! He is drowning!” No but really, If I’m ever drowning in a Swiss Chocolate river, please, I beg you…do NOT attempt to save me.  I’m enjoying myself more than you’ll ever know.)  The man went on to tell us how to taste chocolate, what the percentages and hours stated on the labels mean, the whole time feeding us the creamiest, most interesting flavors of chocolates I’ve ever placed in my mouth.  White chocolate with lemon and thyme, dark chocolate with pieces of chili pepper, champagne truffles, cappuccino chocolates that even LOOK like cappuccino, and anything else this little man dreams up in his chocolate factory.  I brought some back to Florence to bring home, but we all know that there is a slim chance I let that chocolate sit in my room all by its lonesome.

 

The next day I got to ski the Swiss Alps.  I got off the chairlift at the top of a mountain, looking eye to eye with clouds.  The views from up there are really something else.  Glancing around, I felt the mountains seemed so stoic.  After years and years of people climbing them, jumping from them, skiing all over them, they still retained the natural beauty and seemed unbothered at all that people were exploiting them for a quick shot of adrenaline.  The snow glistened in a way that looked like a child was pouring glitter in front of a fan and blowing it all over the place.  I was in my own snow globe and wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world at that moment.  Then I looked down at all of the runs to be skied down.  I pulled my neck warmer up and my goggles down and booked it down the mountain.  My skies disappeared under the knee-high powder in between the trees and before I knew it, I had reached the chairlift again.  I admit, the mountain is a bit hard to navigate since it’s rarely marked (except for where not to ski) and everything is written in German, but you get a hang for it after a couple of runs.  This day was something I’ll never forget.

I told my mom that I was in love with Switzerland.  But I had also told her when I got to Florence that I was in love with Florence.  For giving my heart away so willingly, I was called fickle. I choose to refute this accusation, and instead I say that my heart is big enough to share with whatever country can steal a piece of it.