Switzerland: Day One

Ok, so we got on the CISAlpino train which heads north out of Milan to Switzerland, and interestingly it turns out that our reservations (which were made in Venezia) were right next to Bo and Jason's, which were made weeks later in Castiglion Fiorentino. Odd. So the train took off and we started playing with the camera.

A beautiful town we passed on Lake Como


Another view of cool stuff on Lake Como


Dave


Bo


Jason


Me


Dave trying to break the camera

As we entered Switzerland I noticed the scenery began to change. First of all the train stations began to look different, and the signs were all printed in four langauges in this order: German, French, Italian, English. I think those are four pretty good ones to know. Toss Spanish and Japanese into the mix and you've basically covered the industrialized world. So anyway the scenery was quite different, have a look.

A nice town


Brig, where we switched trains


More of Brig


Jamie and Natalie

So in Brig we bought tickets to get to Gryon, or I should say I bought tickets while a bunch of other people hoped they wouldn't get checked. This was my introduction to the Swiss Frank, which is a really cool unit of money. I have to say they do money well in Switzerland. It's a bit odd though, they have no bills smaller than 10, they have coins that are .5, .20, .50, 1, 2, and 5 franks. Yeah cool, so that's swiss money. I saved a few of the coins to bring home. Oh and the other cool thing, 1 dollar gets you like 1.3 franks. Nice reversal from the euro. So then we continued on to Gryon.

The Alps!


I wasn't prepared for how STEEP they are


The sunlight coming out from behind the mountains was fantastic


The view entering Gryon


A church in the mountains


A friendly reminder from the hostel staff

So we arrived at the Hostel which was really nice and cosy, we got our equipment and stuff, ate emergency pasta, and crashed. The hostel was packed with people from all over the english-speaking world and provided a nice break from the previous months of "no inglese". Anyways by now I was sound asleep which brings us to the first morning of SKIING!!!