WWOOFing in Switzerland

One of the three castles in Bellinzona

We left the pooring rain of Innsbruck in a less than smooth fashion. After realizing that we had spent a lot more on our tickets than we should have and being refused a refund we boarded the train near the back. After a few stops we found out the train was splitting and only half was going to Switzerland. Not our half. It was no problem to switch at a stop and after another bus ride we arrived in Bellinzona where our new Wwoof host Eva was picking us up.

On top of the mountain that Eva lived on

Eva lives on a mountain overlooking the city with her sons Valerio and Florian who are just a couple of years younger than us. Eva had a huge garden, lots of fruit tress, four small fat goats and a dog named Mixi. We spent our working time picking fruit, pulling out bamboo and building another stone wall. (Our favorite!) We also had tons of time to cook which we loved and the boys loved to eat so it worked out great!

Climbing at Ponta Brola

Eva's beautiful garden

Since this wwoof was a lot more laid back we had a lot of time to explore the area. We went hiking above the house. One day we hiked to a nearby river where we found really cool natural water slides! We also checked out the castles in town. Bellinzona is known for having three castles. Bellinzina is part of Tincino, the Italian speaking region of Switzerland and we found that is was very similar to Italy in most aspects, except the cost of things which were very Swiss (expensive!).

Goats!

On one of our full days off we took the train to go climbing in a nearby area. The climbing was really easy but really fun and it was just what we need to get a bunch of pitches in fast. After climbing we went swimming in a river nearby at the bottom of a gorge. The water was freezing but the location was beautiful with white rocks jetting out of the crystal blue water giving it the fell of swimming in a glacier!

Lisa relaxing on one of the glacier like rocks

Natural waterslide!

Another day Valerio took us climbing right on the Italian border with his friend, Maro. It was like a two hour approach up hill to get to the rocks but it was worth it. Not only was the climbing excellent but we had great views of Switzerland and Italy!

Climbing on the Swiss-Italian border

Florian, me, Lisa, Valerio and Eva

We also spent a lot of time paying table tennis with Florian (it was a toss up between Florian and Lisa, I was always third) and practicing english with Eva. On our last night Valerio took us sightseeing in the area. We saw the worlds highest dam (the one in Golden Eye), and a really cool traditional town. There was a really old and high bridge that Valerio jumped off of into the freezing water at night. It was nice to get to know other young people from another culture as opposed to the older couple that we were used to. The whole family was great and we had a nice time with all of them.

Goats!

Beer, Sausage and more naked Germans

Lisa infront of the Berlin Wall

After another fantastic night in an airport we arrived in Berlin early in the morning.We took the bus to find our hostel and found it in a charming neighborhood full of erotic stores, strip clubs and Turkish restaurants. Berlin was probably our least favorite city we have been in so far. I guess Nazis, getting completely destroyed by the allies and then communist rule don´t do a lot to make a city nice to look at.

The less than spectacular Berlin Skyline

There were some really cool things there, but you had to sift through a lot of garbage (there was trash everywhere) and communist functional architecture to find it. It was however very interesting historically to see things like Hitlers bunker and the Berlin wall. One thing that is cool about Berlin is that there are a lot of artists there, so there are cool murals on many of the buildings. The best gallery was on a remaining section of the wall. My favorite thing about Berlin was the Curry wurst. (That's not saying a lot as it is just a hot dog with ketchup and curry.)

One of the many Spectacular Prague Skylines

We were not sad to leave Berlin to head to Prague. Prague was very juxtaposed with Berlin, having the most interesting gothic architecture I have ever seen as well as being exceptionally clean. Like Berlin, Prague is steeped in all kinds of bloody history which we learned about on a free city tour that we took one morning. There is a church there with a 600 year old severed arm of a thief hanging over the doorway. Just another fine example of Catholic forgivness. You have to give it to the Catholics though, history is a lot more interesting thanks to them. One thing that was very interesting but haunting was the perfectly preserved Jewish Ghetto. It is one of the few preserved Jewish ghettos in Europe because after Hitler sent all of the Jews from Prague to death camps, he left the ghetto alone to serve as a museum of an extinct race. Now, however, it is the most prosperous part of the city.

 Prague Old town Square at night

Other than just admiring all of the architecture, we had a nice glass of wine in a vineyard at the castle above the city. As usual I dragged Lisa out at night to take pictures. At one point I was on the Charles Bridge (biggest tourist attraction in Prague) laying on the ground at night to get the picture I wanted. For some reason tourists started taking pictures of me! I guess I looked more ridiculous than I thought.

Charels Bridge crowded with tourists even at night

After Prague we continued east to Vienna, Austria to meet some friends that Lisa met at Kali`s wedding (see old blog post). Vienna did not have any sights that took our breath away like Prague, but every single building was beautiful. Georg and Julia (J makes an H and it is not George) were extremely nice and I could see right away why Lisa made friends with them. It was really nice to stay in there apartment where we could feel at home instead of a loud hostel.

Me, Lisa, Julia, Georg

It was also really nice having them be our personal tour guides and to sample a lot of local food with them. We ate Giant Pork shoulders with Beer in a beer garden, Shinken Fleckel (I was told I had to try this, but it tasted like hamburger helper) in a pub, and coffee in the oldest coffee house in Vienna with extremely fancy Victorian interior where you felt you would be kicked our if you slouched. (Not exactly starbucks). We even got to go climbing right in the city center where they built a 100ft climbing wall on the outside of a building.

After three days we were sad to leave our new friends but excited to see another city. We were giving Germany another chance and heading to Munich. We were pleasantly surprised to find Munich much nicer than Berlin. Everything about Munich was Bavarian. This is the Germany of laterhosen and braided blonds serving beer to the masses. Munich had a huge beautiful park just outside the city center with Germans doing what Germans do best; lying in the sun naked. As usual most were 50+ overweight men.

Munich city center

After Munich we headed deeper into Bavaria to a small town called Fussen where the Neuschwanstein (think Disney) castle is. The castle was beautiful and, as expected, completely packed with tourists. We did find though that we could hike an extra five minutes and have a nice picnic high above the tourist all alone with a stunning view of the castle, farms behind it an mountains in front of it. The town of Fussen was also really nice and we were sorry to only stay one day. We did read that there was climbing there and we spent a morning trying to find it but never did. We wern`t too worried tough because next was Innsbruck where we knew we could climb.

Neuschwanstein

To get to Innsbruck we had to take a bus and then two trains. As we got on the last train we commented that the connections went much smoother than we would have expected. Just after this discussion, the conductor came by to check tickets and informed us that we were not in fact heading to Innsbruck, rather the opposite direction back to Munich. After a few hours sitting around a train station in the poring rain we were back on track. Once in Innsbruck things were no smoother. Due to construction the directions to our hostel were wrong. After finally reaching our hostel we went to the store to buy food to cook dinner. Turns out that the store only took cash so after a quick 5k run to the ATM and back we could make dinner. Innsbruck was gorgeous, sitting in a valley between beautiful alps. We read about some great via ferrata above the city and a lot of climbing. Unfortunately it never stopped raining. We did get a few pitches of climbing in and when it started raining again we headed to the local climbing gym (supposed to be one of the best in Europe. It was not as good as any one of the three in Boulder). We also went hiking in the rain and just walked around town. I think we have to put Innsbruck on the list of places to return to someday, hopefully in better weather.

Innsbruck

Midnight Sun and Swedish Clubbing!

We were sweltering hot in Italy and seriously in need of some cooler weather.  For that we headed to Scandanavia.  Our excursion to the land of the midnight sun started and ended the same way; sleeping on the floor of an airport.  Sort of.  We left our hosts in Sarzana at around 10 in the evening to head to the Pisa airport because our flight to Oslo, Norway was at 6:30 the next morning and we could not get a train early enough.  We passed a few hours reading and wandering around the airport before finding what seemed like a good place to sleep.  Lisa fell right asleep and at 1am I was just dozing off when the security guard came around and informed us that the airport was closing and that we had to leave.  Who has ever heard of an airport closing?  There were about 20 to 25 other people in our position so we just followed the crowd outside where we found another 30 people or so sleeping in the grass in front of the airport.  So we joined the campout on the grass until the sprinklers went on.  We then moved to the side walk to try and get some sleep.

After about a total of 20 minutes of sleep, we arrived in Oslo early in the morning and Lisa´s friend and ex-client who had just moved home to Norway came and picked us up.  We stayed with Anna and her family for a couple of days in a town south of Oslo called Porsgrunn.  We went hiking around the fjords, slowly because her kids Lena and Niklas (and Lisa too!) were more interested in picking the wild strawberries and raspberries along the way.  We also went climbing one day on an undeveloped crag but lost interest after not being able to make more than a move at a time without a huge hold breaking off.  We did get a little bouldering in though.

We left Porsgrunn and headed to Oslo in the morning to spend the day seeing the city before catching a late afternoon train across the country to Bergen.  Oslo was nice but pretty boring compared to some of the spectacular cities we had just been in in Italy.  Every thing was exceedingly clean and everyone spoke perfect English.  Not quite the adventurous feel of southern Europe.  The train ride to Bergen was stunning.  It meandered between fjords before crossing a glacial plateau with little red cottages with sod roofs in front of blue glaciers and tundra as far as you could see.

Bergen was beautiful as well, sitting on a fjord on the west coast.  The first day we were there it poored all day.  We had planned on it though because Bergen gets 340 days of rain a year.  We just spent the day wandering around town.  Our second day there was clear but cold.  It was only about 45deg.  That's what we came for though.  We decided to try and climb.  Not surprisingly though the rock was soaked.  I don´t know if they can ever climb there!  We did however get a nice consolation prize in a huge hanging ladder that we found!

We left Bergen on a night train and it was strange to wake up on the glacial plateau at 2am with light still in the sky!

We arrived back in Oslo at 6 in the morning and spent the rest of the day climbing just outside of town.  It was really nice climbing but we are upset to be getting rusty!  That afternoon we hopped a train to Gothenburg Sweden where a friend of Lisa's from high school, Anders, lives.  Anders showed us around the city our first day there.  That night we went to his friend, Stephan's, sister's house for a garden party.  That was great because there were about 10 kids between 1 and 3 running around to entertain us.  Stephan and his 3 sisters were a lot of fun as well.  They are Icelandic and taught us the differences between Swedish and Icelandic.  They are also a very musical family so we got a great private concert.  After the party we went to an outdoor bar.  We found Swedish style to be an interesting mix of 1980s pop meets the Fonz.  There were very very blond guys with dark rimed glasses, white tee-shirts and colorful sweaters.  Most people looked like they would have fit in in Ferris Bulers Day Off.

The next day we went to the local amusement park because Anders used to work there and got us free tickets.  It was a lot of fun but we felt old when we felt sick after only a few rides.  That night I made dinner for Anders and Stefan.  After dinner Stefan was excited to take us to a club where he sometimes worked because the most popular Swedish DJ was playing.  We felt really cool when the head of staff met us outside and let us in the back through a curtain skipping the huge line (and the huge cover charge)!  The club was fun and packed  (Yes Cait and Caitlin we did go out two nights in a row!).  We later found out that it was the record night for cash flow at a club in the city's history.  No thanks to us.

The next day we took a train a few hours north to Anders families summer home on the coast.  It was absolutely beautiful with granite domes coming right out of the water.  It had the same cutesy sailing feel as Cape Cod or Northern Michigan.

After a couple of days there with Anders parents we headed South to the college town of Lund where Anders generously gave us the key to his apartment.  From there we went to Copenhagen for a day before spending another night in the airport and flying out early to Berlin.  Copenhagen was a really nice city.  Again not exactly adventurous feeling because everyone spoke perfect English and everything was spotless, but it was beautiful none the less.

We went to an area called Christiana, that we thought was going to be a cool hippie neighborhood with shops and cafes.  Not so.  It was a hippie shanty town inside an old military base.  It was made up of little shacks and all that was sold there was pot, totally in the open, and bongs.  It was interesting to see and there were really cool murals everywhere but not exactly the neighborhood we wanted to hang around for too long.  Otherwise we just took up our usual wandering around the city (in the rain again) and seeing as much of it as we could.  We loved all the cool towers everywhere.  Late in the evening we called it a day and headed home to the airport.  Luckily this one did not close!