Unfortunate Event

So apparently I AM my mother. My original blog will not let me upload anymore pictures because I have exceeded the limit. Figures.
Anyway, I made a new blog at least for a while or at least some of March. hahah I will try to keep it contained, but most likely I will come home with 10 blogs, so we will see.
The link for my new blog spot is

haleyitalia1.blogspot.com

I have just put up a new post! :) Enjoy...if anyone reads it. haha

SWITZERLAND! --the summary--

16.2.11

Well, I have 7 pages in my journal of basically nothing ( no… lots of stuff) about my weekend trip (feb 10-13) to switzerland. Here is what I think will be the most interesting to hear about..

After many windy tunnels, including the longest tunnel in europe, we ended up in Interlaken, Switzerland. We stayed at a place called Katy’s Bed and Breakfast, which had seriously the best coffee ever. I hate coffee and I had at least 3 cups a morning.

Day 1: went to Lauterbrunnen, which I have been wanting to see for a long time. It is cool. Small. Quiet. We thentook the gondola up to Gimmelwald, which is even cooler, smaller, and silent. This town is one street that goes for about 5 minutes. The thing that makes it cooler than anything else is that it is in the ‘lap’ of the alps. Any direction you look, you see alps-swiss ones. Haha. It was the most beautiful and breathtaking sight I had ever seen. I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I’d just say guys!!! Oh my gosh! Wow! Frikiin.. oh my goshhh.. guys!  We were definitely the only people in the town except for the lady whose house I went into to buy chocolate (she also gave me a postcard and said come back in the summer when it looks like this) and the lady named erika that let us taste some alpkase in her cheese aging house.  That cheese is so good. Theee best.  

Everyone is so nice in Switzerland. They are just so happy. But at least in gimmelwald and a lot of Switzerland, I think they are just happy because they are finally seeing another human! These towns were seriously empty.

About 30 minutes later, we took the gondola again to murren for lunch. We ordered swiss cheese on toast.

This is what I was expecting, or something along these lines.

This is what I got. 

It was super good.. but the start of my too much cheese I feel so sick diet.

As we ate lunch, people skiid by on the streets. Or dragged their children on sleds. It was fun to watch.

For dinner we ate cheese fondue in Interlaken. I hate cheese fondue. The concept is awesome and I am glad I ate it, but it is just soo much cheese and totally makes the bread soggy cuz the cheese is basically liquid. I hate soggy things. 

yea.. he was just chillin in the restaurant. 

So basically to sum up this day, I ate so much swiss cheese I got sick.

Day 2:

Our visit to Bern, the capital city. This city was between a river that wrapped around on two side of the city and enclosed the town. The city was full of musical artists on the street showing their talents for money- a jazz combo from new York, an old man playing a piano, a man playing guitar and singing, a almost marching band thing with weird purple and gold costumes on, etc.  The marching band played jayz/linkin park and rage against the machine. Of course we saw a million swiss watch, swiss knives, and coocoo clock stores every where we looked, and every view that we saw got better and better.We met an old man rolling a cigarette out his window who came down to take our picture and talked to us for a while and told us to go see the bern bears! We followed his directions exactly and saw this cage thing in the ground—completely empty of bears despite the cage, the million pictures of bears, the teddy pears for sale, the bear postcards, placemats, and pencils, and the video of bears going in the next cage over that had humans walking around in it. 

As we were walking to the rose gardens we had heard about, we climbed up on a roof to see a better view. It was pretty awesome, even though we got a lot of puzzled looks. We missed the trail for the rose garden so we decided to climb up this massive and steep hill. (we definitely got adventure in bern that day). When we got to the rose gardens, yes, amazing view, but  there were NO ROSES! Well,the plants were there, but they were all cut off or withered! What is with this town? No bears…no roses.. its just kinda sad. But in any case (as my art history teacher would say—she says in any case a lot), it was a good time!

We then started our mission for chocolate..and finally found a chocolate store where they had 10 pound trobelone bars!!! Yea.. I got a normal size one. 

For dinner we decided on a place called Bebbis that I had read about. Thanks rick Steves. We got chocolate fondue to share and ended up getting a free refill.. thanks weird swiss waiter. The waiter was so entertaining. He kept surprising us the whole night. It started with a huge cowbell that he would hold with his pinky and pass off to people who would immediatedly drop it. Then he brought out a huge matterhorn, where each customer tried to play it. Thanks to my trumpet skills (haha), I got some sound out. Then he surprised us even more. The whole population except us and one other table was asian. We had no problem knowing where each asian was from because suddenly the waiter turned on some Japanese music and ran to one side of the room with his Japanese flag. Two seconds later the music changed and he ran to the other side with a Chinese flag! I told him to take the Chinese flag to the Japanese, but he was too scared. Then another change in music and he ran out with a Korean flag. When the western music came on we knew he was coming with a flag for us. After that he ran out with a Chinese mask and did a dance for the Chinese and then ran behind the counter for one second and was an emperor with a beautiful robe on and little symbols in his hands. The people were extremely happy dancing and taking pictures. IT was hilarious. 

Day 3: This day was relaxing. I got up really early and read and sketched the Bed and Breakfast we stay at. Bed and Breakfast could easily be reduced to breadfast. I always type that by accident anyway. After finishing my sketch, I went in and showed the owner. She was so happy she gave me a kiss! 

She made a copy and hung it up on her wall. :)

Later, we went on an easy hike and enjoyed all the pretty landscape we saw. I searched for the traditional swiss dish of rosti, found it, and enjoyed it, but for some reason any time I think of swiss cheese now or anything I ate there, I feel sick to my stomach. 

                                                     coocoo clocks

                                                       music boxes

                                                   cowbells

                                                       knives

                                                         watches

Altogether, I enjoyed beautiful Switzerland and being a hipster for the weekend. 

A few more observations:

cows are skinnier and taller in switzerland.

It is still Christmas in Switzerland..seriously, there are decorations everywhere.

Random happenings before Switzerland

15.2.11

So before I went to Switzerland on Feb 10^th, a few funny things happened.

Visited the chocolate festival again and again, sampling some interesting chocolate. Chocolate rum, Rum chocolate, etc. really weird.

Almost got a sweatshirt for 5 euro. As I was walking away he shouted 5 and I decided okay..ill go back. When I got back he said 10 and a kiss. I was like cya! But he hugged my arm begging me. I had to shake him off and there was no way I was buying a sweatshirt from him .haah 

I decided to attend a lecture about manikins at the British Institute library. It ended up being full of old Italians and a lot of interesting things about manikins. I will never look at a manikin the same. 

I joined the music club at FUA (Florence University of the Arts) and met some really cool people who are really awesome with their music. I got to hear so many different style voices and songs and it made me so happy because I haven’t listened to music in a long time and that is something I really miss. I could hardly contain my happiness as these two girls sang lullaby of birdland and I probably looked like a stupid little kid.. but I didn’t care. 

During photo class… I definitely put my hand in bird poop. And this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me. 

Some other highlights of the week: 

Getting cappuccinos on the roof of a designer store that had a panoramic view of piazza republica and the duomo. 

Going to the Oil shoppe for lunch. This place is known for their fresh home-made bread and they close when they run out of bread for that day. We made it before they closed and I got the famous meatball sandwich. Good..but I felt sick after. It was really heavy. But we did sign the oil shoppe guestbook. That was pretty special. 

Secret bakery #2 trip. This one was close to our house, but it wasn’t as good, but that coulda been the annoying drunk people around.

Scary Story: The other day I was walking.. and ended up in a strange alley. There was a lot of construction going on. As I got to the end of the street, I looked to my left and against the wall facing the direction I was originally walking was a man propped up staring and looking dead. I freaked out and screamed really loud. It ended up being a dummy. But it scared the crap out of me. 

Field trip with my art history class: Archeological museum.

Observation: all Italians write their ones like this- 1.. well like that but without the bottom line across. They also write their 9’s differently. 

This is our school library.

and I sketched my room.