Switzerland Holiday 2013!!

Greetings to you all my dear family and friends! I recently just returned from my second holiday this year to Switzerland! Finally a country that I haven't been to before. I was lucky enough to have two friends both in Switzerland and for me that's huge as I really enjoy going to places where I know people as it gives a bit of a more unique tourist experience. Plus it's fun to see people. Now both of these great people I met in Camphill, one was a coworker last summer and ended up dating a guy she met here and so she came a lot to visit to Ireland and I got to know her through those trips. The other one is an ex pupil of my house mother and drove to Ireland from Switzerland and planned on just staying a week or so and ended up staying for two and a half months. I was lucky enough to get to spend time in the country and the city parts of Switzerland, which isn't very big but the parts are of course quite different and I was so excited to see the differences and compare and contrast. There are a lot of stereo types about the Swiss world in Ireland, centered mostly on the fact that swiss people are very organized, hard workers, they have a lot of money and there are rules for everything. So I will begin! Part 1: Fribourg with Lea: I first went to visit Lea in Fribourg. Fribourg is a bilingual city, half speaks French and the other half speaks swiss German. Lea comes from a bi-lingual family so in her house she speaks both, sometimes they will speak, german, french and english all in the same sentence, without even thinking about it. Amazing...but I digress. Ok, So after a day of buses, trains and planes I arrived in Zurich Switzerland. Lea picked me up and we took the hour and a half train to Fribourg. By that time I was really tired and just wanted to sleep, which is what I did. Lea is still in school and so she went to school while I explored the city of Fribourg on my own. This city has very modern parts which big shopping complexes and then very old parts with cobbled streets dotted with cafe's and restaurants. I was more partial to the old parts because they were just gorgeous to look at and take long walks on, enjoying the amazing houses and apartments. The afternoon we spent at the pool with her class where we played bad vollyball and did some laps, got to meet some of her friends and just relaxed in the sun. Lea was in two concerts while I was there and so friday night she had rehearsal so I relaxed. On Saturday we stayed in Fribourg as I didn't have train tickets until Sunday. It was super warm so we went up the cathedral that it's town and walked to the top that has gorgeous views of the city and the alps. We ended up being alone up there so we sunbathed for about ten minutes until people came up and gave some weird looks for laying on top of a cathedral with exposed stomachs. But so nice. The afternoon we stumbled upon a festival happening in the old part of the city where bikers decorate tandem and regular bikes up and bike the same circle in the city for twelve hours. So we sat eating sausages and watched amazingly decorated bikes go in circles.

We planned on getting up early Sunday and going to Zermatt to the mountain that the Toblerone candy bar is based on. We brought a picnic and went up into the mountains. We had about a two hour journey on three trains and beautiful weather that let us into a lovely mountain town where we took up a three minute cable car into the mountains. The view when you got out of the cable car was just stunning, it looked fake.

We brought an amazing picnic of cheese, chocolate, beer, and meat and bread!! The swiss appear to go everywhere with cheese, a swiss army knife and chocolate! This is a proven fact :). That evening we simply relaxed, it had been quite hot for the past two days and we'd been in the sun both days so we were both quite sunburned and dead tired. It was then my amazing time with her family came to a short end as I was the next day going into the country to see my other friend. Part II: Emmental with Christian Christian and I met at the train station in his small village where there is a famous biscuit factory that I was told by several people we have to go to, that is famous not only because of the amazing biscuits but because of the fact that you can go into their factory store and they have huge bowls of biscuits you can try in every flavor imaginable. So we went quite early at like 9ish and so we weren't really in a biscuit mood but we ate enough to tide us over until we had lunch. We then went up in a cable car to one of his favorite places to paraglide. Where we went hiking and I was made to try a famous swiss drink called Rivella which has a weird ingredient: Milk. It was gorgeous, all you did was stare at gorgeous view.

We then drove to his house, which is a typical swiss farm house, that is gorgeous and huge. We ate lunch with his family outside before we started work in the afternoon. It of course was super hot again which in the summer on the farm means haying. So everyone helps on hay days. After lunch I got a huge tour of his house. He is a carpenter so was showing all the cool features of his house. He then went to work while I played with his nieces, who are beautiful and speak no english so the three year old spoke german and I had to figure go by her gestures as to what she wanted me to do. There really aren't words for how cute a three year old is when she speaks swiss german. After which I was asked to help on the farm which is code for sit next to Christian in the hay machine that he was driving, where I learned the art of swiss haying....plus not to fall out of the car when the hills get steep.

We spent the early evening with everyone eating ice cream (tradition on hay days) and swimming in the nearby river. His family takes care of kids who need some extra support and who are a bit hyper active, so we always had about three 9-12 hyper boys around us all the time, who were great. Just imagine spending the evening playing ping pong with a boy who should really run around the house seven times first before tackling ping pong. We were asked to stop playing games in the yard because we were too loud...oops. After the boys went to bed Christian and I went up the hill where there was a stunning view of his valley and we sat and listened to the cows wandering their fields all with huge bells around there necks. Which for me was a new sound, really special and amazing. For him and other farmers they no longer register that sound, but I loved it.

The following day we went to Bern in the early morning and wandered around the countries capital which is a gorgeous city, it was designed by the same person who designed Fribourg so both cities have a huge river running through the middle. We went and saw the free bears that have a caged habitat set up in the middle of the city near the river, really amazing to watch bears just wander around. So great. We then walked along the river, where he went swimming before heading back to the farm to work.

That evening Lea, Christian, and I all went to the head gardener of camphill dingle's mothers house where they just sold a huge farm that had been in there family for seven generations. They were one of the first few farms in Switzerland to produce blue berries and have made quite the name for themselves. They also own a huge tree farm where were went up their woods and learned so many interesting pieces of information about what a proper christmas tree has to look like to be sold in a huge stor apposed to just have a family pick it up at the farm. Really interesting. We then went to the farm itself and saw the horses that are boarded in their stables, really gorgeous. I of course was all up in there faces and petting them.

Okay, So this is the majority of my trip, the last bit I will follow up with later, I need to remove my eyes from the computer screen, soo many hours! I hope you enjoy this installment. love to you all. Elsie x