Double Doozer

Haha. I made a great supper tonight. I was quite pleased with it. Two of the interns that have just finished up their one year internship were leaving tomorrow, so we went out to lunch with them today to an all you can eat Thai restaurant. Only 16.50CHF, which is fairly cheap. Anyway I didn't find out about this until just before lunch. One of the things I have loving so far is grocery shopping. I shop after work so it's later in the evening and the grocery stores are about to close (they close at 7 or 8 depending on the day). Anyway I think that about 50% of the stuff that I buy, I buy when it is 50% off. Because it is the end of the day or about to expire, they start going around putting the 50% off stickers on stuff. And I follow those people. I know all the spots in the store where they put their clearance stuff. I think my favorite of these spots is the bakery one. I get random things that are sweet in my mouth and cheap in my pocket and I usually have no idea what they are. Case in point, tonight I bought some kind of rhubarb pie like substance. Goodness in my mouth. I will probably go eat some more when I finish this. Anyway, yesterday I found some sushi that was half off. It was just a little package with a couple rolls, but it looked very good and the sushi here is usually expensive so I bought it. So when I found out that they were going for a last day Thai, I thought I should go but I thought it wasn't the best idea to leave my clearance sushi for to many days before I ate it. So I went with them, but just ate my food. But I tried some of the leftovers and it was really good Thai. So I decided to make Thai for supper tonight (again mostly coming from clearance goods). Anyway I was very pleased with the result and thought that it was some pretty legit tasting food that I would have been pleased with at a Thai restaurant. Afterwards I had some chocolate (I go through about one large chocolate bar a week, sometimes more, but hey I'm in Switzerland) and some of that delicious pie like goodness that I just mentioned. So I sat down to write this post and was smelling my finger thumb because it had a strange smell and I was thinking about what I was going to write. As I was thinking I realized I had smelled my finger numerous times. And I laughed. And that is where it all came from.

For those that are following, you just got a story about clearance food to get to the sushi to get to the thai lunch to get to the Thai supper to get to the afterwards food to get to my finger to get to my laugh. That really just happened.

Weekend 4:

So the weekend after my last post I didn't end up doing a "Blind Booker" flight. On Friday I didn't have anything planned but decided I wanted to do something so I went through Couch Surfers (I don't remember if I told of what it was in my last post but I think so) in Switzerland. That is all I searched, just anywhere in Switzerland rather than a specific city, and then I just went through scanning profiles and sending a message about coming to stay with them for the weekend. I think I sent about 20 messages to people all over Switzerland. That afternoon I got one reply, and that was where I staying that night, Bern. When I got home from work I made supper and then I caught a train (free for me because it was after seven and I have the "Gleis 7" which gives you free rides after 7) to Bergendorf I think it was called. I met my man at the train station and we proceeded to have a quick look at his appartment before he took me for a tour of the local brewery and discussed our different travel adventures. He has traveled a lot of Europe and Australia via hitchhiking. It first started when he was with another guy in western Australia and they were talking about buying a buss ticket to get to a different town and the other guy says "I'm not going to pay just to get a ride to that place". And that's how it began. I asked him about how long he usually waits and some questions to kind of scope it out for myself, and told him that he probably wouldn't have much of an easy time doing it in Canada because I am the only one I know who has picked up hitchhikers (I've only picked up a handful in my days). He told me that usually people stop and he gets in and they tell him that hitchhiking isn't common and that no one would have picked him if they didn't. That's what everyone says. So maybe it's a good thing that hitchhiking isn't common. Anyway the next day he drove his parents off for a vacation they were going on (Canada ironically) and I caught a train into Bern. There are bears in Bern. Also Einstein was living there when he came up with his theory of relativity (E=mc^2). So I wandered the little old town area (really nice city and I think I could live there), and then I met up with him for lunch as we joined one of his football friends. It was 33degC I believe that day, and so after lunch we went and floated down the river. It was flowing really fast, so we had the great idea of setting our stuff down in the public swimming area on the edge of the river and then walk up the river and float back down to our stuff. We weren't the only ones with this idea. The walking path along the river was packed, shoulder to shoulder traffic for the full 20 minute walk up the river we did and the river was full of people already. It was pretty sweet. We did it twice. The zoo in the town is along the other side of the river, so for part of the float you could get some free zoo glimpses.

That night we went to an English pub to watch the World Cup consolation (Germany won). I decided there wasn't alot to do in Bern the next day, so I caught the last train back after the game was over. I was beat (probably from the heat and bears) and so on the first train ride I asked the people beside me to make sure to wake me up at my stop, because I had to switch trains once on my ride back to Baden. I was awake however, and switched okay. The first ride was about 2/3 of the journy, but some how I fell asleep as soon as I got on the second train. I woke up while we were driving and thought that we must be close, right before we pulled into Zurich. Zurich is the end of the train line, 20 minutes past the stop I wanted. So I got off the train at midnight, and went and looked at the giant train departure board and couldn't see one going back to Baden. I checked and asked and the only thing I could find was the one leaving the next morning at 530 and I didn't want that to happen. Finally I saw that there was a night train leaving at 1. So I went and sat at this obscure platform trying my hardest to keep myself awake for an hour. I stayed awake, I made the train, and I arrived in Baden.

Weekend 5:

I just went back and added the weekend headers and then decided to check my calender and I actually missed a weekend. Weekend 4 was Zurich fest (Bern should be 5). It was kinda cool. Like the Calgary stampede with lots of vendors and stuff going around the main area of the city and sweet 30 minute firework shows over the lake at night. Not a lot of exciting things to talk about though.

So real weekend 6:

Two of the past interns that had been here.........

I started uploading pictures onto facebook and then started writing this, then went back and stuff had gone down and it wasn't working so I tried again and then my computer got mad at me and then finally I took a long time and got them all up, but it hadn't rotated them so I had to go through a rotate and throw in some commentary, and now it's 1:22am and I should go to bed, so I will continue on the Wildstruble hike. The pictures for that one are posted on facebook now if you want a sneak peak, but I also thing I say what happens so that might ruin the surprise and drama.

This weekend I am going to Ticino which is in the southern Italian part of Switzerland for a 3 day weekend with IAESTE (international student organization that organizes trips). The first day we do a 40km bike ride, but it only take about 3 hours and is all down hill, then we also do some hiking, some site seeing, and....the bungee jump that James bond does in Goldeneye. That's right, it's not actually in Russia. 220m of free falling goodness. I'm stoked.

Have a good weekend.

without wax

O and I think it is some kind of mechanical grease or something. The smell on my finger.