The surprisingly wonderful end of Switzerland all the way to Milan

The end of Switzerland

Based on the feedback from so many of you, you will be pleasantly surprised to find out that our last day with Switzerland was wooonderful.  We walked from the waiting room in the Bern train station after finishing up our last blog to wait in front of Mc Donald’s for our Swiss friend Simon.  We were met instead by his charming girlfriend Pierina until he could get there to usher us into his tiny yellow euro-car.  We squished ourselves in between a giant boombox, his floorball training equipment, and our embarrassingly large suitcases and cruised off to his favorite bar, “Desperado.”  When we pulled into the obviously Mexican-themed bar, we forgot for a moment where we were, and thought for sure it could not be Switzerland.  His little brother Alan showed up and Simon bought us a round of “Tequeiros” which were like Corona’s with sugar and tequila in them. It was certainly not what we expected, but wonderful all the same. Before turning in for the night, Simon took us to a cool bar for some local beers on the river that runs through Solothurn.  He and Pierina laid out a magnificent breakfast spread the next morning followed by homemade (and fantastic) Rösti . We ate better than we had since crossing the border into Switzerland. The four of us crammed back into the yellow euro-car headed for the train station and said goodbye with hopes our new friends coming to visit the good ole US of A so we can return the hospitality.

Alan, Simon, and Pierina

Marseille and other Adventures

So, every long trip needs an unexpected adventure that is funny 5 years later, but horrible when it happens.  We started off with a plan to take the train from Marseille to Avignon on Monday morning, spend half the day there, and then take the 20 minute train to spend the afternoon in Arles before heading back to Marseille on the evening train.  We should have been able to spot the foreboding on that first train ride when we somehow happened to get on the one local train of the day that had double the stops and took twice as long as all the other trains. Not us, we’re Cloustons.  We thought, “okay so rough start, that just means the rest of the day will be awesome.”  Avignon was awesome. 

Avignon

We walked out of the train station to see a  city on front of us whose borders were  30ft (ish) stone walls with touring gates leading us in. We could see the remnants of what must have been a moat at one time surrounding the whole city, although it is no longer filled with water.  We walked along the Rue de le Republique stopping for fresh bread, French biscuits, and French candy on our way to see the Palace of the Popes.  What a site. In 1305 the papacy moved to France to avoid local wars in Italy.  Apparently it stayed there for almost the entire 14^th century and was home to 6 popes before the papacy moved back to Rome in 1377. This “palace” is a small city and was a wonder to see sitting so high looking over the Rhône. We were as overheated as we were awestruck, it had to have been over 100 degrees as we hiked up the gazillion steps to the top.  We got some water, checked out the famous bridge and made our way back to the train station to make it to Arles by early evening.  We were exhausted from the sun and from walking and were thrilled to have a few minutes to rest in the air-conditioned train car. We began to chat about how long the ride would be and what we would do in Arles when a woman approached and asked if we spoke English. We said “yes,” and were sort of exasperated when we realized that she did not speak English herself, and was joined by 3 other women who began pleading in French for money to feed their babies. We were really uncomfortable and not sure what to do when they immediately filled in all of the empty seats around us, shifted so each of them was looking at us, and continued to insist that we are American and so we must have money to give them. Luckily Mollie was clever enough to play the “I only speak English” card until the train police came and booted them off of the train for having no tickets.  While one always feels for those who are in need, in this situation we did not feel empathy, we felt bullied. It was obvious how uncomfortable we were, and just as obvious how okay they were making us feel that way.  This whole situation was really different for us because we are not used to that sort of persistence. This experience only represented 15 minutes in our already long day, so we decided to just look forward to what might be in Arles.

Palace of the Popes Avignon

The Palace of the Popes in Avignon



The famous bridge in Avignon



Arles

The main attraction in Arles is an Amphitheater built by the Romans and still used today for bullfights and concerts.  The original structure, made of wood, was built around 1AD. That means 2000 years ago other humans were walking in the same place. So cool.  Thumbs up Arles, thumbs up.  After walking around the amphitheater we stopped at a café for a cold drink and a dinner recommendation.  We ate in a tiny but picturesque alleyway at a little French restaurant called Le Criquet .  It was another beautiful and delicious meal by those reliable French chefs.  The best and the worst part of eating dinner in France is that you are eating dinner in France.  By this we mean that the food is always wonderful, and wine and desert are compulsory, but also that a “quick” dinner is impossible (and if possible would be blasphemous). We weren’t really looking for quick, we sat down at 6:45 pm and had to catch a 10:19 pm train, with the station maybe 10 minutes away. We had a three hour window – which we missed.  We finished our last bite of desert at 8:30, last glass of wine at 8:45 and finally asked for the check at 9.  We got the check at 10, delivered with a smile so genuine that it made us regret our annoyance, and decide running would be worth it for such a nice meal.  This worked out great until it got dark and we ran in the wrong direction.  When we realized we lost when the train sounds got more distant instead of closer. We got panicked when we realized we were off the map we had with us, and on dark back roads of a strange town in a foreign Francophone country.  This, Mollie asserted, was just the sort of situation that everyone who cares about you warns you to avoid at all costs while you are out exploring the world. Oops.  We realized we needed to shove the panic back down where it was coming from and make a plan.  Once we decided to back track to re-enter map territory, we didn’t have too much trouble getting to the train station. Only problem was, it was 10:40 and the last train was gone.  All of our belongings were in our cozy (and already paid for) hotel room back in Marseille (about 90 miles southeast of Arles) and were stuck in the Arles train station, with the next possible train leaving at 6:06 am, and no one to call for help.  Before our marathon meal, we were in Arles for approximately 30 minutes and had no idea where to even find a hotel.   Our options at that point were 1) sleep in the train station, 2) pay 400 € for a taxi back to Marseille, or 3) pay for a second hotel in Arles for the night and take that 6:06 am train out.  The outlook was not sunny.  We decided the safest and smartest thing to do would be to pay for a second hotel room. A wonderful woman who was working the night shift at the SNCF train station spoke decent English and saved our American behinds.  She called and priced hotels, made us a reservation at a place that you could see from outside the train station, and made sure we knew where we were going. Wherever you are THANK YOU.   We got to the hotel and it was all locked up and all the lights were off.  Apparently hotels close in Arles, France.  We pushed a button and a guy came down to let us in and the nightmare was over.  We ran upstairs to Skype our Mama knowing that just her voice would make everything better.  It did J We got a few hours sleep there, got back to Marseille into our comfy newly- made bed around 8 am, and sacked out until 11:30.  Talking about it the next day we were cracking up thinking about our very different ways of coping with the situation.  During our frantic wandering I had decided that I was the older sister and needed to figure it out so I wasn’t really as scared as I should have been because I was so busy concentrating on possible solutions. Mollie on the other hand, was outwardly collected, but was inwardly freaking out, more scared than she now thinks was necessary.  Fear or exhaustion, we are not sure, but I walked away for one minute at she had called a cabbie to pick her up from the train station.  After I reminded her that it would cost about 750 US dollars for that cab ride, we found a security guard to call and cancel the order.  This guy was super nice and after that phone call realized we needed some serious assistance and brought us to his English speaking colleague who saved the day. After checkout the next day, we figured out the earliest feasible time we could leave Marseille and get to Nice and the beautiful ocean.

The Roman Amphitheatre in Arles France

An inside view of the Amphitheatre

The beautiful appetizer at Le Criquet in Arles

Nice, France 

Our trip has been amazing, but definitely trying at times, stretching us in ways we haven’t been stretched before. In Nice, everything got easier.   We had been so exhausted from the last 2 days, that we hadn’t booked a place to stay in Nice. We went straight to the Tourist Information Center, which was conveniently located attached to the train station, and the staff person we spoke to asked our preferences and booked our hotel for us. We were thrilled when the hotel was a 10 minute walk from the train station and the beach was less than 5 minutes further down the road.  We ate dinner just feet from the shore overlooking the French Riviera.  We slept for about 11 hours to make up for what we are now referring to as the “Arles Atrocity,” grabbed coffee to go, and spent the day basking in the sun and swimming in the ocean. Heaven on earth.  We have been so much fun, seeing a million sites, trying to embrace every new experience, and today was the first day we were able to just relax, breathe deep, and enjoy.  

After an absolutely flawless day, we have been reliving the last few adventures in writing them down here. Luckily, they have started to lose their bitterness and become slightly humorous in the retelling. We have 20 minutes left on our 4 hour train ride to Milan, Italy, and we cannot wait to see what Italy has in store for us.

The Beach in Nice



A sign in the train station in Ventimiglia Italy... Let us know if you can figure out what you are supposed to do based on this translation.



Clouston sisters united at last: Strasbourg, Interlaken, and a little bit of Bern

After Mollie’s horrible nightmare of a trip, we were finally united at the Citadines hotel in Strasbourg at 5:30 pm on May 18^th.  Now, when I say “horrible nightmare,” what I really mean is enduring an 8 hour flight that was 45 minutes late, losing 6 hours of her life with the time change, and then missing her connecting bus to Strasbourg because of a “computer glitch” with her baggage.  So, instead of arriving for a French lunch at 11:30am, she spent all day in the Frankfurt airport.

Alas, she finally arrived and at long last my trip became our trip.

Strasbourg

We immediately went to meet the rest of the group for a boat tour of Strasbourg that covered the basics of the city.  

We then went to the best restaurant we have ever eaten at, Le Stras´.  Navigating the language barrier was certainly a challenge, but our waiter (who may have also been the owner?) was fantastic, and our food looked like art and tasted like heaven. 

The brownie looking deserts are actually chocolate marshmallows. 

Pistachio crème brȗlèe with a side of fudge.
 . 

The next morning we moved into our own room, which felt like a move for me from the school part of my European excursion to the fun part. We started our morning in search of wine tasting in the basement of the old hospital. When we heard this, our first reaction was “excuse me, did you say wine tasting in a hospital?” Well, the answer was “yes,” and it was amazing. The hospital has been there since the 1300’s and the basement is now full of giant beautiful wooden wine barrels (excuse our absent mindedness in regards to the real name of these).  We didn’t actually get to taste wine since the tasting season begins in June, but we did bring home a delicious bottle of Riesling just to keep them honest. For lunch we visited the inside of the cathedral and then shared a traditional Alsatian tarte flambe´ and 2 Kronenbergs. 

The infamous tarte flambe´

After second wonderful French dinner in two days, we fell asleep and were off for Interlaken.

This meal was called "Pork knuckle" and I ate it :)

Mollie's Strawberry Melba in an edible basket. 

Interlaken

We have had a love-hate relationship with Switzerland these last few days.  It was all lovey-dovey at the beginning, starting with the train ride. We hauled our million pounds of luggage onto the Swiss train in Basel heading for Interlaken and we were panicking because we had forgotten to activate our Eurail pass beforehand.  When the attendant finally came to take our ticket, she not only helped us figure out how to use the pass, but informed us that we were in the wrong section of the train. We were riding in 2^nd class, but our passes were for 1^st class. FIRST CLASS. We grabbed our crap and ran up the stairs to sit with our fellow classy peeps.   Then we approached the Alps entering Interlaken and the views were the most breathtaking we’ve seen. Things between us and Switzerland were really great at this point.

View from the train entering Interlaken

Then we got to the hostel. It is very aesthetically charming outside, but upon entering the reception area to hearing a group of obviously American fratboy voices saying things like “hey dude, I’m gonna do like 10 Johnny Reds tonight” we realized, we were in fact, in a hostel.  Our room was really clean and we would recommend it to any frat boys out there or others looking to party hard and only go to the hostel to sleep.  We don’t regret staying there, it was certainly an experience one should have, but that will probably remain our one and only hostel experience.  

Balmer's Hostel, Interlaken

Two parts of being in Interlaken were awesome.  The views (mountains on all sides, all the time), and canyoning. I wish we could have purchased the video of us climbing, repelling, jumping through waterfalls, and sliding on our behinds down the rapids.  Unfortunately, a girl in our gang got hurt and the video got cut short (and the video still would have cost 40 bucks). We absolutely recommend canyoning to anyone who considers doing it.

Views in Interlaken

So the “hate” part of our relationship with Switzerland is largely due to how freaking expensive it is to eat here. We were starving after our canyoning adventures this morning and considering how expensive it had been to eat the previous day, wanted to get something cheap.  We knew we could always count on McDonald’s in the cheap department and decided the golden arches would have to cut it for lunch before heading to Bern.  We were almost in tears when we put in our orders for some good ole’ cheeseburger meals with water and coffee and our bill was 35 dollars. Switzerland, we tried so hard to love you, why’d you have to do us like that?????

We got on the train to Bern slightly less hungry but SO over Switzerland.

Us at the Interlaken train station getting ready to head to Bern. 

We got to Bern around 4, ate some more Swiss gourmet food (by “gourmet” we mean a pile of melty cheese for 20 dollars that they sell here as pizza), and did some beautiful site seeing. We are now in the train station waiting for our Swiss friend Simon to come collect us. We are hopeful that he will show us a good enough time so that when we leave for Marseille in the morning we are back to the “love” part of this thing we got going with Switzerland.

Beautiful Bern, Switzerland

An old tram car in front of the tram museum in Bern. 

Walking tour of Strasbourg and chateau du Haut-Koenigsbourg

5.15.2011(Happy birthday dear Sarah)

I got up in the morning for a 9: 30 am walking tour of Strasbourg. This city is the most beautiful I have seen (although before this trip Charleston South Carolina held that honor, so there's some context).  Our tour guide gave us tons of history, which was great and I wish I could remember it all to share. The gist of it is that Strasbourg was built as a Roman fortress because of its position on the Rhine and it started to boom in the early 13th century with the fall of the Roman empire (or so I was told). It bounced back between being German and French over the next several hundred years and is now (obviously) part of France.

Building of the cathedral started around 1015 AD and it was the tallest structure in Europe til 1800ish. It is amazing.

I don't think it is possible to get the whole cathedral in a picture with my camera, so I just made the picture I did take as big as possible.

After our walking tour, we took a bus up a mountain to chateau du Haut-Koenigsbourg which is a 12th century castle. It was super cool and I took my first video there that might not make you sick to your stomach with the shaking. This castle was German until the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 so while it is France it is a real piece of German history.

Mollie in 2 dayyyyyyyyysss!!!!!

Mulhouse France, Freiburg Germany, and Basel Switzerland

The "high speed wireless internet" is "temporarily experiencing problems" at the hotel I am staying at.  So, I am at the Syracuse Unversity Center in Strasbourg and about to load a post I wrote days ago. Not exactly what I had in mind for my first blogging experience.

Mulhouse, Freiburg, and Basel

Three European cities in three days, whew.  The conference divided us all into groups of 10 to talk about lots of social worky issues and tour the countries.  The best part was that each group included people from each city – and townies make the best tour guides J  This is my wonderful group who I was fortunate enough to be-bop around with all week long.

In each city we toured a social service agency and were given a presentation. The most poignant insight from this activity was that is SUCKS to sit in a room with someone talking to you when you have no idea what they are saying. Especially when you know that as soon as that nonsense is over you can go walk around a European city you've never seen.  In Mulhouse France, the presentation was made in French, then my English-speaking Swiss friends thought about it in German, then gave me the main points in English. This was exhausting for all parties involved, and made me want to come home and learn another language. 

We ate dinner at a beautiful French restaurant and the food was delicious. The best part of this whole tri-national experience was individual conversations with kids my age from other countries with a common academic framework to anchor and encourage conversation. So, while I have no more patience for sitting in lectures, making presentations, or doing busy work, it was worth it to have that basis for connecting to the other students.

Downtown Mulhouse, France

 

I tried a local Guwertziminer and pretzel in downtown Mulhouse…so good!

Freiburg, Germany

There is a local sayint that if you fall in the stream in Freiburg,  you will marry a Freiburg man and never leave.... (kinda like the Gunk, right?)

Given the Social Justice nature of the trip... I thought the "F-You System" Grafitti was worth a pic.

At dinner in Freiburg , I ordered pancakes and white asparagus (spargel) with a hollandaise sauce that was possibly the best thing I have ever tasted. I made this choice based on my new friend Anna (who goes to school in Freiburg) who informed me that in this region people tend to eat with the seasons and that spargel is only available and on the menu this time of year. She also recommended a yummy local beer.

It is super expensive to eat (or really to do anything) in Switzerland. So, we drove out of Basel and to an Aldi in Germany to get food for a barbeque back at Schloss-Beuggen, which turned into a giant party and was a great way to wrap up the week.

Basel, Switzerland

Simon (from Switzerland), Anna (from Germany), and Me in Basel



Diana Galbaldon rocks no matter what language you speak :)

















Party-time back at Schloss-Beuggen

We got barbeque stuff and lots of local wine at Aldi to take back to Schloss-Beuggen

Doris (from Germany) and I ... long story.



Randi and Andri (from Switzerland). I could NOT have made it through the week without Andri. He (along with Simon) was my most faithful interpreter.



The American Girls!

This week was so fun, so educational, so hard. I am used to being pretty effective at nagivating new situations and feeling like I can get the hang of things pretty quickly. One cannot learn a language based on osmosis or determination. So I was lost and following people around like a little puppy most of the week.I would have died without the patience and hard work of the bi and multi-linguists who did there best to include me even when it was hard.