June 16, 2009
Today we traveled. All day.
Julio drove us to the airport in the a.m. and left us with mandatory hugs and a shoulder shrug. Sandra, Ali, and steph met Tanya and the Szymanskis in the United line. Off we were on a great adventure. Ali gets the pat down, “I am now going to touch you with the back of my hand...”
First stop, Chicago, where the salad is delicious and the pizza is not delicious...or even remotely good. Why do all these places boast about their Chicago pizza? Disgusting. Tanya and steph had to go back for a second lunch while the others nibbled on their old lunch. Sheets of rain kept us from taking off on time, then the captain kept telling us our line up on the runway...”lookin’ good folks, we’re up to 6th place, should only be 15 to 20 minutes from here...” then two hours later we left the ground into the blackness of the clouds and steph prayed that today was not her day to die as the turbulence violently shook the plane.
Next stop, Munich. We watched several movies on the flight, though most of them had a weird high-pitched noise throughout... to the point steph had to watch it in French to avoid going insane. The girls all bought neck pillows and had neck pillow parties and looked down on us with smarmy countenances. steph put on her not-quite-Skull-Candy headphones and tuned out the sound of the plane...mmm...heaven. Take that neck pillowers! Because of our delay in Chicago we only had a narrow window to make our flight to Zurich and for some reason steph held the only boarding pass. Why didn’t anyone else get one? So, more line waiting and flight missing. Luckily we only needed to wait an hour.
Final destination, Zurich Switzerland; the land of the purest drinking water available at every fountain. Amanda met us in the Zurich baggage claim and later benefited the most from the fountains. Ali’s bags, sadly, did not make it. We mourned her loss and rejoiced when she received her gift bag from Swiss Air - all the fixins, including undies and shirt, high quality too. 
We joined tour director, Vera Gomes, and hopped on a partially filled tour bus. On the bus already was a group from the lake of Chelan Washington and a small but rowdy crew of 4 from Houston (a country in and of itself). Our Italian driver, Enzo, smoked like a chimney, slicked his hair with coconut get, and drove through traffic like we were in an Italian sports car. We swung by downtown and picked up the backwoods kids from Maryland’s Latin club, need I say more?!
The bus weaved in and out of traffic and then out into the countryside which then led to the famous Swiss mountains for our hotel stay in Einsiedeln. Tanya obsessively tried to capture, on film, the artistry of graffiti while flying by, with eventual success. The land is beautifully green and quaint. Midway Utah is as close as we can get to Switzerland. We pulled up to a door, mid-building, stopping traffic (to which no one honked nor did they throw up any kind of hand gesture), and unloaded all of our luggage into the cobble stoned street.
Hotel St. Gorge, and something about a stork, would be our residence for the next two nights. After three flights of stairs, with our luggage on our backs, Sandra and Steph were pleased with their unusually large, for Europe, room. Amy and Amanda barely fit around their room, Amber and roomie Jo Ann were in a room similar to Amy’s, while Tanya and Ali were in a randomly build room at the front of the building. The doorway, built for Hobbits, made us laugh plus the room heavily slanted to the left and had a slight smell, but it did overlook the street. We used our few free minutes to freshen up and settle in. We noticed that these rooms only recently had bathrooms added to them. They threw up some flimsy walls and put in plumbing, but we mocked in gratitude that we didn’t have to shower down the hall.
We ate separately our first evening, mandatorily meeting “the others”... they seemed nice enough, this just might work out. First thing after dinner, fill water bottles in the natural glacier watered fountains. Then a walk through a town, shut down for the evening. Whilst we stood in a circle remembering the long day and telling “by fars” a bird did his business on Ali’s shoulder, adding to her already rough day. We laughed in compassion and headed to bed, with the sun still shining.
Tanya Escobar, Steph Doyle, Amanda Pettingil, Amber Szymanski, Amy Szymanski, Ali Cole, and Sandra Forsyth.
1 comment:
Your trip already seemed like an adventure and this is only day 1! Poor Ali, not so good with the baggage and birds in the luck department - but so funny! Can't wait to read about the rest!!
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