Day 49...Chocolate and Clocks - 14th August

Got up early and started what would be a long tradition of playing the weather channel at Nate to wake him up. I play it when we get ready too. It shows panoramas of the Swiss mountains and plays the most tripper oompah music and freaks him out. I love it!
Our Swiss lady said reakfast started at 6am and we thought it went for 2 hours or more, like it does in most places. I assume we committed some faux pas as they seemed surprised to see us at 7.30am and chastised us for sitting in the wrong spot as well. We got shooed into a back corner and fed. Quite well fed though, with cereal and yoghurt, and breads with sliced ham and cheese on the side.

We headed off and spent the day driving through the Swiss mountains. Mum said Lurgano was pretty good, and on the map it showed the mountains were 1800m high - but I found aroute with 3000m high mountains. Wicked. So we headed off via flat roads which got progressively more and more steep. Then it became spectacular mountain scenery. Winding valleys with little white villages at the bottom, with these huge thrusting snow-capped mountains behind them. There was always a church steeple in the middle of each town, spiking up jauntily as well. It was so frustrating on the route though - there were no pull-over points! We couldn't pull over to the side - becuase there was a mountain there, and a cliff on the other side, and we would have held everybody up. So some of the best photos couldn't be taken. The middle of the route had snow-capped mountains with white mist curling off the top - all this in the height of the Switzerland summer! The peaks got higher and higher and we pulled off near the top of one, with mountains surrounding all sides. There was a small cafe there and we decided to have lunch. Stepping out of the car, I was shocked at how cold it was! It was freezing. We hurried inside and the lady said it had been snowing there yesterday. Amazing!
The cafe was cute, and we decided to share a meal as Swiss food is sooo expensive! A McDonalds meal is $11 swiss francs, which equates to $12 australian dollars! So any normal meal is worth $20. So we halved it.
We picked the regional specialty. The lady spoke little English, so all we managed to get out of her was that it was 'wild beasts of the forest'. I asked if one was deer and she said yes, and also some other animals and flapped around her head trying to mimic them but we couldn't pick it out. Right on! Wild beasts eh? I was happy to be eating wild local produce. The main vein man! When it came out it was covered in dark, rich tasting sauce, and there were large chunks of gamey meat. It was pretty tasty. We loved it. It also came with this weird white stuff which we couldn't figure out was a vegetable or some weird pasta.

Driving onwards we passed through a mountain pass and saw a bunch of cows with a pretty mountain background. We pulled over. And the sound filled our ears! - The cows all had big cow bells on their necks and they were all bonging and chiming like crazy. They were going off like wind chimes in a snow storm. We cracked up - it was great. Chiming cow bells, swiss cows, green grass, and a snow-capped mountain background. All after a meal of wild swiss game. Perfect.

The drive to Zurich was thorugh some windy rocky passes, with waterfalls and train tunnels cut into the rock. Then past some of the bluest lakes we had ever seen! By the time we pulled over for a shot though, it had gottten overcast and we couldn't capture the colour correctly. But its definately imprinted in the memory banks.

We hit Zurich late arvo, so decided to stay rathern than punch back up to Germany. (Don't know what my parents are saying its a short drive around Switzerland. Not sure which route they took!) The TIC was in a massive train station that was like an airport, and there were big clocks everywhere. Go swiss! It had a very Harry Potter 9&3/4 station feel about it, with rounded square glass in the roof and trains everywhere.
The TIC office was still open and they found us a cheap and decent place - which was actually in my Bible as a recommendation. It was on the other side of the river, in the trendy part of town. Zurich is a really clean and tidy little city and is quite classy. We parked our car on the edge and wanderd through rickety narrow streets with our backpacks on looking for the place. I ended up having to ask a lady for directions in German and she pointed us in the right direction. Th ehotel was among the windy pedestriansed streets. Our room was tidy with two singles push toe to toe against the side wall. Bags were dropped and we wandered the streets. They were all old town, with swiss style 2 storey buildings up and down the alleyways. They are kind of like german, but have a different trimming. They have more white and colour than the german brown too. The stores were closed, mainly independent stores, but the restaurants and pubs were open. We ate at an Italian place which was expensive (but cheap by Swiss standards) and I got a bit drunk on the wine. The booze is ok priced here, so Nate got stuck into the beer. After a nice but non-descript meal, we found a cute lounge bar and had another drink. Then trotted home to bed around 11-midnight.

Its hard to do big ones, as whenever we hit the city's, its a weeknight. We somehow end up spending the weekends in the country. its bad timing. As it is, every night is 11 or later, and then we get up at 7 and do massive things. Our energy is pretty good though.