this isn’t the case with this trip. for those that don’t know, i’ve been a bit busy at work for the past couple months, and this isn’t so much a vacation i’m on as a forced escape from work. i don’t want to burn out, so i needed to get away, simple as that. in the limited planning i had done Switzerland was not much more than a good location from which to get to france and italy, not a destination i had planned to explore thoroughly in and of itself.

so, imagine my surprise that i find myself visiting nothing but Switzerland for this trip. the reasons were simple, the route to Italy was through Switzerland, giving this country enough time to impress upon me that ‘hey, wait a second, what’s all this then?’. it’s an astoundingly beautiful country. also, the Canadian dollar is almost the same as a swiss franc in value, so it’s easier to gauge expenses (bloody expensive) while the euro is more than $1.60! one quick purchase later and i had an all Switzerland rail pass and no idea what to do with it.

this, of course, is all a lead up to explain how, at 1pm today, i ended up in Gimmelwald (wow, beautiful) at the mountain hostel, where, if you’ll peruse their website, you’ll see that they don’t open until the 18th of April. ahem

Petra, the owner, was around when i arrived and graciously offered me the run of the hostel, even to stay the night in the empty hostel should i wish. it was gorgeous, and until about 5pm it was my plan to do so. after hiking up to Müren, enjoying a late lunch and a cappucino i returned to the hostel ready to get some domestic chores done, shower/shave, wash clothes, catch up on my blogging/photo processing & organizing, etc. having showered, and started my laundry i then discovered that the internet was down. faced with a long boring night in an empty hostel on a coldd mountain (it’s warm during the day, but even down in luzern it was sweater weather at night) i’ve decided to leave while i still could, semi-damp clothes be damned.

now i’m on the train, after catching the second last gondola/bus/train combo out of gimmelwald, heading back to interlaken in search of a hostel. if all goes according to plan, i’ll be posting this while drinking a beer and eating dinner. *fingers crossed*

p.s. found a wonderful hostel in interlaken – the happy inn lodge.Only one room left, a single room all to myself (perfect for drying all the clothes that was still damp), will stay another night in the dorm. joining a group going to the highest trainstation in europe tomorrow (over 3000meters!), many pics to follow.

today i went to visit titlis, a popular skiing mountain in the luzern area. there’s a train directly to the town, engelberg, where you then take a series of ski lifts and/or gondolas to the peak. the train from luzern to engelberg takes just about an hour, and it takes perhaps another 30 – 45 minutes to make it all the way to the peak. the whole thing is very surreal to me.

titlus is a mountain not merely conquered by humanity, but something more thorough. thousands of tons of steel and concrete were hauled to the very top of this part of earth’s skeletal system, all to build a playground. we truly are a spoiled segment of the human species.

if mountains had emotions, i wonder what the brothers and sistes of titlus think of the situation. what does one mountain feel for another? contempt at the subjegation, or piercing lonliness from watching a party that can never be joined.

you can see more mountain photos in my flickr set

it usually take a few days to go from ‘normal’ to ‘travel’ mode, thankfully i managed to fast track my entry into traveler mode thanks to my roommates in the hostel, a couple interesting people who helped keep me awake and fighting off the jet-lag.

Marc, from Spain.

Marc came into the room right as i was wondering how exactly i would stay awake for the next hour or two (it was around 9pm) in order to put my sleep schedule back in order. within five minutes of his arrival he was sitting next to me, giving me a detailed account of his whirlwind tour of Switzerland, complete with hundreds of photos to accompany the story.

Marc’s a young guy, living just outside of Barcelona where he’s going to university. he’s catalan, and when he started to explain to me what it meant to be catalonian vs. spanish, i was able to simply say “ah, like Quebec, i understand”.

i was way too tired to remember the details of his trip, but i know he went to Zürich, luzern and interlaken (places that i now intend to visit, in part thanks to his enthusiastic descriptions), but the one detail i do remember was his particular talent at posed photographs. i don’t think i’m exaggerating when i say he took at least a hundred self portraits with his little camera and tripod – i call it the “Marc Style Photo”

my attempt at a "Marc Style" photo

Marc, having helped me stay awake for at least an hour, left the room to take some night shots of Geneva, while I gave up and prepared to go to sleep regardless of the consequences of sleeping too early.

Kristine, a Canadian living in Germany who missed her flight to the UK

thankfully, distraction arrived again, this time in the form of Kristine a fellow Canadian (from Oakville) who had missed her flight due to a delayed train. she’s in the UK by now, visiting her boyfriend, but she lives in Frieburg, Germany while she’s doing her masters degree in materials science (studying solar cells, how cool is that?).

she was super friendly and nice, despite the crappy circumstance of missing her flight, and within 5 minutes of learning that i had just arrived in Geneva from Toronto she was trying to convince me to go visit her in Frieburg, offering me a space on her couch (apparently Frieburg is a very beautiful medieval town, worth a stop if you’re in the area).

she told me about living in Europe, and the strange combination of homesickness and attachment to Europe that develops when living here. on the one hand you miss your friends and family, the unique Canadian’ness of Canada. on the other, the thought of all the huge, unnecessary cars, the lack of decent regional transit (seriously, why can’t we have trains like in Europe?) and the lack of town squares and decent little cafe’s everywhere counts against Canada in a big way.

unfortunately in a bout of stupid i accidently deleted the photos i had taken of Marc and Kristine, i’m FB friends with Marc now, so i’ll try to get him to send me the photo he took of us and update the post

weirdo drunk guy in Zürich

Marc and Kristine helped alot, putting me into travel mode, so i was in a good mood as i set out. Zürich was beautiful as you can see from the photos, but i need to explain the photo of the drunk guy at a bar you’ll see in the set.

he introduced himself as “Voltaire”, although… ahem i don’t think that was his real name. he was several JD on the rocks into it, and it was only mid afternoon. i was only planning on stopping in the bar underneath the hotel to check my email (the wireless didn’t reach up to the sixth floor where my room was) but he bought me a beer and proceeded to talk my ear off.

ever have one of those circumstances where you only catch about a third of what’s going on? that was basically my conversation. he slipped between swiss-german, french, and english without really much warning.

the jist of the situation was that he had lost his scooter the night before. i asked him where it had been stolen, to which he explained that it was lost, not stolen. apparently after a particularly good go at drinking himself into oblivion, punctuated with a bout of bar hopping through the seedier areas of Zürich, he misplaced his scooter. now i’m no expert on the finer points of Zürich geography, but i was pretty certain he wasn’t going to find it at the bottom of his glass of JD.

he was a strange, kind of creepy guy, and by the end of our conversation i’m pretty sure he was confessing some pretty heavy stuff he had done in his life, but of course he was speaking german very earnestly and i didn’t understand a lick of what was going on. he left suddenly, after a seriously trying to get his point across to me, shaking my hand and walking out of the bar.

that’s it for the characters i’ve met. there has been some small talk with fellow tourists, but unfortunately due to my devil may care attitude towards ‘planning’ and ‘reservations’, combined with the fact that it’s easter weekend, has led me to full hostels each night. so i’ve been staying in budget hotels and not meeting people. tomorrow i head to luzern, where i have a bunk reserved at a hostel. i had planned on going to menaggio italy tomorrow, but the hostel there is full and i’m tired of hanging out alone, so to luzern!

it turns out that switzerland is absolutely gorgeous in the spring, or at least i have lucked out and hit a particularly beautiful patch of weather. 20C and sunny, warm enough to walk around in a short sleeved shirt, but cool enough that you’re never hot. so, in the interest of simplifying my life, and knowing in advance just how much i’ll be spending on transportation (it’s pretty damned expensive here), i’ve decided to stick to switzerland.

ok enough blather about my plans… going back to basics, i’ll leave you with a mini review of my dinner.

restaurant santa lucia – Zürich (all amounts in swiss francs)
1 bottle san pelligrino water – 5.20
pizza prosciutto alla spalla – 20.00

normally i wouldn’t order pizza while traveling, unless i’m in Italy or somewhere renowned for it, but it was good friday and just about everything was closed in Zürich. i mean, everything. after a long day walking the town i was pretty famished, not exactly sure where i was i eventually found a cafe that was open and had a menu with things on it that cost less than 40 francs. unfortunately the kitchen was closed. thankfully the server recommended santa lucia just up the street.

after a quick calories per dollar calculation i went with the pizza. it was very good, not as good as the pizza i had in Genoa Italy, but definitely second (this mostly speaks to the abysmal quality of pizza in Canada, i get the sense if i was really looking i’d find amazing pizza all over this part of the world).

the crust was thin, the edge was deliciousy burnt in places, the sauce just right, the cheese tasty, and they gave me some peppers in oil that went well with the pizza.

if i had one complaint, and it’s not really much because it was delicious, it was that the prosciutto seemed more like generic sliced ham rather than prosciutto, very tasty sliced ham, but not the cured variety i was hoping for.

all in all a great lunch/dinner, definitely recommend.

tomorrow, i take the train to Lugano and see if i can jaunt across the border into Menaggio Italy as per Brady’s recommendation…

p.s. you can see the rest of my photos from Zurich on flickr

p.p.s. @vasta, i’m collecting stories about the people i’ve met, will post soon i hope

enough complaining, i’m in geneva! it’s 20C and beautiful. no real stories yet as i’m tired as fricken hell, but i’ll give you some photos, and maybe a movie or two.

check out the set

but, there is one area of blogging which i do believe i have a pretty good track record. travel blogging. i like to travel, generally alone, and while travelling along nothing focuses the mind on what’s happening everyday like keeping a travel blog. in the past i’ve treated travel blogging as one off projects, first with something that wasn’t really a blog but more a thorough flickr adventure documenting my trip to italy, then with my gastronomic exploration of thailand (with a big of japan thrown in for good measure), and most lately with my first adventure into the crazy world of videoblogging (OMFG lots of work), also gastronomically inclined.

well, i’m taking another vacation (to offset the many many evenings and weekends i’ve been putting in lately, and will likely be putting in again soon) and have decided to just blog it on my main blog. also, i hope to depart a little from my normal travel food blogging (although i expect there will be lots of food related posts, don’t despair foodie friends!) and cover some non-food aspects of my trip.

so, here i am again, sitting in pearson airport, typing away on my eeepc (holy tiny keyboard batman), waiting for my gate to open. i hope to post at least once a day, let me know if you have any requests (i’m looking at you pipesdreams, i figure i owe you a custom travel blog post since you’ve been so good at the international scavenger hunt game with your awesome japan blogging) while i travel and ill do my best to cover them if they’re not too crazy

here’s the meme, with a slight edit:

the rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post. (see above)
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post. (see below)
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

i’ll share my facts, but a) i don’t like to peer pressure anyone into a meme and b) honestly (and perhaps most importantly), i don’t really think i have seven friends with blogs (many acquaintences, but really my friends are generally not bloggers).

1) the first concert i ever went to was a grimskunk show, i was fourteen and my good friend Matt (no blog, no internet at home, hardcore anarchist punk social worker) bought me this shirt. i wore it for years until finally letting it go in a purge a couple years ago. also, i can’t believe that grimskunk is still kicking and still selling the same shirt.

2) i have read and re-read the entire chronicles of narnia more times than i can count. i was given the set when i was a child, and ever since i read them when i’m especially tired or sick. my favourite is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

3) i dropped out of high-school missing one OAC credit, but graduated university magna cum laude. i think some of the most important lessons in my life were learned between those two events.

4) i managed to make it through four solid years at york university without a strike. phew.

5) i have an older brother who alternately amuses, aggravates, and challenges me. i love him for all of it (except maybe the aggravating part). assuming he passes the physical, it looks like he’s going to be joining the canadian military soon. i wonder if this will bring out a conservative streak in me?

6) i was the first ever high school co-op student at northern telecom (back when it was still northern telecom). i passed up the chance to work there the summer after my co-op term, instead deciding to work at summer camp (why? short answer: girls). while i don’t waste time on regret i sometimes wonder how my life would gone have had i decided to stick with northern telecom.

7) i am an n-generational north american, meaning i have no idea when my ancestors came to north america. on my mothers side we’re french canadian with deep roots (apparently i’m related fairly closely to the bloc MP for Gatineau) and American going back to early settlement. on my fathers side i’m less sure, but i’m pretty sure it’s all quebecois and franco-ontarian. that makes me decidely a minority in toronto, where almost all of my friends are from one to three generations away from immigration to canada. given the franco roots, it’s a crying shame i can barely speak french.

so that’s it, no tagging of people for me. although if i could i’d tag my best friend Geoff who really should have a blog but i think he’s holding out just to piss me off =P

yes i’m a geek, i make no apologies for horribly bad geek jokes.

while i’m not generally superstitious, i like to think that how i spend my birthday sets the tone for the year to come.  last year, for my 30th, i spent my birthday traveling, en-route between koh tao and chiang mai in thailand as part of a commitment to myself to explore new places and ideas for that year.

today, i intend to spend my day thinking, writing, and being with people who are dear to me. Sameer, always an inspiration, challenged everyone he knows to come up with a word for 2009 to guide them. it’s a good exercise, thinking of a single word to act as a guiding light for a year, i encourage you to give it a try (and let Sameer know in the comments what you choose, it’ll make him smile).

my word for 2009 is open.

open is a good word. if you know me professionally you know that openness is something i’m advocate for in large faceless bureaucracies, and i think this year i’m going to try very hard to push an open agenda.

looking beyond the professional open is a good word to guide me personally. for 2009 i hope to be more open to my friends, family, and myself.

open is both an ethic and a goal for me this year, i hope i can do it justice.

d_c

strangely, i’m not really pissed about this. sure i spent a couple hours on transit on a saturday morning where i might have otherwise lain in bed catching up on my rss reader, but really, that’s not a great loss. in fact, it’s probably a good thing that i didn’t spend my day getting tattooed.

first, i’m about to embark on a two week trip through north-eastern north america, which is sure to put a bit of a dent into my bank balance, so not spending $600 on a tattoo appointment is going to help that cause. also, spending so much time in a car and traveling with a freshly tattooed arm was probably not my brightest idea anyways.

second, i’m just getting better from having been sick so perhaps i’m better off letting my body heal itself completely before spending four hours with the incessant buzz and painful sting of the tattoo needle.

and finally, i really need to do some thinking and find some really good source/reference imagery for the next phase of the tattoo.

you see, Leah and i are basically making this up as we go along. Leah’s style really requires freehanded drawing on your body, and she makes some really beautiful tattoos with this method, but it’s important to have some reference material with you when you go in for a session. we started with a great design that Emily drew for me, based on a rather abstract concept that’s been floating around in my head for the better part of a decade or so, but have since tried to expand the design/concept on our own.

so far we’ve been successful, but i know that i need more source material and i’m having a difficult time finding stuff i like. i’m hoping you, my dear three readers, will be able to help me out.

i’m not going to get into a description of the concept that underpins the tattoo, the original email was some obscene amount of words and contained all sorts of unpleasant philosophy jargon, but i don’t think it’s necessary for you to help me out.

what i’m looking for right now is an organic element that will sit in contrast to a CPU’ish looking portion of the tattoo already in place. i’m not sure what it should be, i’ve looked at images of seeds, microscopic cellular structures of all sorts, different types of nervous tissues and structures, but I can’t find the image that really gels and that would work for me.

so, if you’ve got any ideas, please hook me up with a link as a comment (or send me an email darrenc at gmail), you never know, something you find might end up being tattooed for all time on my arm =D