School girl all over again

This weekend we travelled to Vicosoprano in Bergel, a valley near Italy to visit Andri’s dad. It is a five hour train ride, which for all of you that have not been on the train much, is a lot. Luckily it was made up of about three different trains, which made it feel like a lot less time. In the last one we ate in the Speisewagen “restaurant in the train.” It was really nice and made the time fly by much fast. It reminded me of that Disney movie “Midnight Express” because it was dark in the mountains and when the train was winding around the mountain you could see the front cars and their lights. It was beautiful, but much better on the way back during the day. We rode in the panorama wagon, which proved to be worth the extra 5 CHF because there were some beautiful canyons and mountains.





While in Vico we made the semi-mandatory ride to Italy by the Lago di Como, which is a very nice lake. We also went to Chiavenna, a small town and strolled the streets for a few hours before eating some nice pizza in Como, then returning home. We also went to an Italian concert/dinner the next night, which ended in not ideal circumstances, but happened nonetheless. The music seemed sort of Irish, due to the violin, accordion, and driving caps of the band members. It was a very cool place, kind of reminding me of O’Malley’s pub in Weston, but the lead singer was kind of a douche. Hah.



For Valentine’s Day I made empanadas and was extremely proud of myself. I wish I had pictures, but they are actually much easier to make than I expected, but time consuming to prepare all the ingredients.

So today was the big day-German school started. Andri and I took the train to Fribourg, so that I wouldn’t have to wonder around looking for it like an idiot. It was actually super easy to find. We didn’t even need the color map that Andri had printed at work. So we arrived and the building is super sleek and glass compared with its other university counterparts, ones that I actually prefer. I arrived and it was incredibly intimidating, everyone standing around, ones that had probably taken the winter course also, so they knew each other. People had little groups, with the loners standing along the wall, myself included. We were then herded into a giant room for our hearty welcome in five languages. Hah.

I sat next to a Ukrainian girl, who was very nice and a few other people from various countries: South Africa, Pakistan, England. We all happened to live in Bern, which gave us something to talk about: Bernoise, the Bern dialect, which is very hard, especially for foreigners. The proficiency exam came next and that was a little more difficult then I expected, but I think that I answered quite a few questions, but had to stop when they began to use the past tense (the one that isn’t used with the past participle). That was it. German school was over for day one. I would have thought that because it costs so much to attend that we would get more out of it the first day, at least some soty of orientation.

So I went with a girl I met, Dasha, around Bern for a few hours and had coffee. This was fantastic because I had someone to talk to that wasn’t Andri. To be laughing and talking to someone is something that we take for granted and then when you are in a position where you lack that in your life it feels incredible to actually laugh and hang out.

Tomorrow we will be told what class we are in and meet our classmates, so that is something to look forward to. Will let you all know soon.