Prague.

Nancy was such a liar.

Prague was fabulous.

AND cheap.

There's a reason this post is simply named Prague.  'nuff said.

This city, I opted to get a hostel.  I'd thoroughly enjoyed couch surfing, but I needed a break.  I needed one city where I could come and go whenever I wanted, go to bed whenever I wanted, and just generally be alone for a bit.  Yes i'm traveling alone, but besides the trains, I'm never really alone.  I'm always accountable to someone or obligated to be somewhere at a certain time. 

Besides. Prague was dirt cheap.  Three nights for thirty USD? That's cheap even by hostel standards, and Sir Toby's hostel was one of my favorite hostels so far.  Six bed female with our own bathroom and showers.  Plus there was a patio garden and a bar/restaurant/kitchen in the basement.  I found it by the recommendation of the young German guy from the couch surfing meeting.

Upon my arrival I bought a three day public transpiration pass for 310 Czech Koruny (20 Koruny equals 1$).  Meaning I could take any bus, tram, or metro.  Quite the bargain compared to, well, anywhere.  In London, 12£ would buy me just a day pass for the tube (maybe the buses too I'm not sure).

The hostel was conveniently right next to a bus stop.  I arrived in the late afternoon, so I headed directly up to Prague castle, hoping it would be much less crowded at that hour. 

I wish I had more to say about Prague, but its main beauty is all in its architecture and layout I've the Vltava river.  It has to be seen in person.  Pictures don't quite capture it all. 

The castle was enormous with beautiful gothic gargoyles and arches.  Walking just around the castle gave a great view of the eastern bank of the city.  By the time I made my way down the hill it was quite dark.  I had no intention to learn my way around the city at that hour (as with directions I tend to learn through my numerous mistakes and miscalculations).  So I found a bus back to the hostel, and called it a night.

In the morning, I went directly to the old town center, aptly called the Old Town Square.  There was the national theater as well as the famous Prague Orloj.

The Orloj is an astronomical clock made in the 1400's.  It is the third oldest astronomical clock in existence and the only one that's still operational.  The main dial tells the current zodiac sign, and every hour there is a display of four figures.  The four figures were meant to represent what were considered the "evils"of the time.  The first figure is Vanity, a man looking at himself in the mirror.  The second figure is Greed, a Jew holding a bag of gold.  The third is Death, who chimes the bell on the hour.  The fourth is a Turk, representing pleasure and entertainment.

Tourists are known to lose their wallets one minute to the hour.

I took a very long walk south through the city along the Vltava river.  The bank is a very nice paved bike/pedestrian way that leads up yet another hill.  This gave a view of the west bank, including tiny Prague castle in the far distance.  At the summit there was also an old cemetery with several famous Czechs, none of whom I had heard of. 

I had to rush from this view a little as I had a Skype date.  This wasn't a habit of mine throughout the trip.  Not that I didn't want to keep up with friends and family, but between finding internet and finding appropriate times when your six hours away, its a pain, and I don't want to spend my limited time here talking to a monitor.  However, life was still happening in Ohio, and I had roommate and living situations to take care of.

After a productive chat, I took a bus half way up the old town to an old church on the south bank of the river (if your wondering how the city has a bank in all four cardinal directions, the Vltava is L shaped).  There I had one ticket to see the Prague Symphony Orchestra.

I was the only patron under forty.

Not to mention the only one in jeans.

I have no idea what opera they performed, but it was entirely in German.  Which hopefully meant I want the only one that didn't understand what was going on.  The 15 person choir stood behind the orchestra, while one lady and two gentlemen stood up front, singing the main roles.

It was beautiful to hear, especially when the full choir joined in. The church had great acoustics.  I can appreciate classical music, definitely, but it had been a long, long day by that point.

45 minutes in, I simply could not keep my eyes open.  I felt terribly rude, but I was not the only one judging by the bobbing heads in front of me.

I left at the intermission, not wanting to be a bad audience.  In my defense I didn't leave to go party, I really went back to the hostel and directly to bed.

The next day I took a bus to the south end of the city and started to work my way up from there.

I visited the botanical gardens first.  I've never had much luck with plants myself, but I've always had a thing for greenhouses.  This one had ponds, streams, and a full aviary arsenal of exotic parrots.  On the other end they kept a greenhouse desert with cacti and the like.

I crossed the Vltava and made my way up to the thing I'd been saving for last.

The Lennon wall.

The small bit of wall had started out on the late 80's as a place where students would write about social and political complaints (it was under communist rule at the time).  It led to quite the feud between the youth and the police.  Even when authorities would repaint the wall, the next day it would be chock full of poems, flowers, and peace signs.  The movement was labeled Lennonism (an ironic twist on leninism).  Apparently there was once a portrait of him on the wall, and there probably is again every few weeks, but the wall is constantly changing.  Even while I was there, I saw several people with paint markers (all I had was my measly marker).

Mostly written were Beatles/Lennon lyrics, messages of love to John, messages of general peace and love, and of course the usual "we were here"stuff.

It was one of the most memorable things I've seen yet, and I wish I could visit it every week to see its metamorphosis.

When you exit the courtyard of the wall, you pass a particularly interesting fence along the same theme.  Couples in love
write their names or initials on padlocks and clip them to the fence to remain there for, well, they hope for forever.  I've heard of this being done before, especially on bridges.  Many times authorities will cut the locks off, once again to find the fences dripping with locks just days later.  I thought it was beautiful.  And really, you can't run out of fence, because you can just clip one padlock onto another.  Very deep if you think about it symbolically.

I really felt lighter the rest of the day.

Which was good, because I had a mission.

Shoes.

It was time to finally day farewell to my trusty boots that had done me so well (until the Venice Flood of O-twelve).  So I headed to to enormous pedestrian shopping street, Na Prîkopê.  There you could find ANYTHING.  Most of the shops were a little more on the high end, but there were numerous shopping centers where you could find the typical mall-type stores.

You might think shoe shopping isn't such a big thing, but when you live on your feet, there are many variables to consider.  An uncomfortable shoe could cripple my trip, figuratively and literally. 

Despite the surmounting odds, I accomplished my mission in approximately three hours.

By that time it was nightfall again.

Prague is known for its stellar night life, but alone, I didn't care to check it out.  Its a general misunderstanding that a girl alone in a bar wants to be hit on.  Not always easily explainable in a second language either.

So I opted for a movie.

What I didn't think about, was how late the movie would let out.

Just past midnight, the regular bus schedule stops, and the less frequent night bus schedule starts. Meaning I had to wait forty minutes for the bus.

Now Prague was still very much alive in the area I was in, but I suspected it wasn't quite so busy in the region between where I was and where I wanted to go.  I could have made the walk in twenty minutes but opted not to.  Perhaps movies and television blow the situation out of proportion, but I've always associated the bad side of Prague with illegal sex industries. 

After spending half an hour next to a homeless man incessantly counting his change (there were other people around too), the bus finally arrived.

The next day meant Berlin, which meant more familiar faces.

Na Shledanou Prague
Tegs

Short Stop

Nuremberg was my wiggle room city.

I had managed to fit in a one day visit on my way to Prague from Munich, but if any plans throughout the trip had gone wrong, I would have taken the day from Nuremberg and just skipped the city entirely.

I'm glad I didn't have to though.

I spent less than twenty four hours there, but it was worth it just to see a quieter side if Germany.

My host Basti picked me up from the train station and took me on a power tour of Nuremberg.

I had planned for the city simply to see the Nazi party rally grounds that I had heard about from my dad and step mother's travels through the city.

Hitler, for reasons I'm not quite sure of, favored Nuremberg particularly.  There he had many plans for Nazi related buildings and structures, hardly any of which were ever finished.

The Nazi Congress hall had actually been completed and stood next to the stadium where you've see Hitler make many of his speeches in history class.  In the 90's, Nuremberg kept the original building, but added some more modern architecture to turn it into a museum.  The museum's permanent exhibition "Fascination and Terror" explores the events behind the Nazi's rise to power, and the ways in which they rallied the people together through, well, fascination and terror.  It also had exhibits on the Nuremberg Laws, and of course the more infamous Nuremberg Trials.

Unfortunately for me, I arrived one hour too late to be able to enter the museum.  I should have really liked to have seen the contents of the museum.

The stadium however is outside and generally always open.  Although, visitors are warned to enter at their own risk.  The stadium is in extreme disrepair.  You could see where chunks of concrete had already been replaced, but you could also see how much work still needed to be done.  Basti said the city was torn between spending loads of money to fix a historical site (that they are perhaps not so proud of), or just tear it down.  I could not form an opinion on this issue either way. Both sides have their own merit.

It was obvious where Hitler stood, although the architecture definitely wasn't what it once was. 

Not by accident.

After the war, the Americans blew up anything they could.  There was once archways lining behind the main balcony pulpit.  Not anymore.  Where Hitler once stood, was no more than a square chunk of concrete.  Railings were added to prevent tourists from falling off, I presumed.

Just on the other side of the stadium was the finished, but unused, parade parkway, Große Straße (pronounced gross strass)  It was an extremely long and wide paved road that had originally held connections with Nuremberg in medieval times.  It was intended to be paraded down by the Nazi army.  Although, it was never used due to the outbreak of WWII.

Now they liked to use it for drag racing.

We headed up into Nuremberg's old town, which was built around a quiet little river.  At the summit of the town, was Nuremberg castle, which was pretty well preserved considering it was built 700 years ago.

That night we attended my second ever couch surfing meeting.  Apparently attendance was always hit or miss.  I happened to be there on one of those miss days.  There was myself and Basti, an elderly man and woman that I believe were just friends, a German guy, a Turkish guy, and then the Czech -possibly the most annoying human being I've encountered thus far in my almost 23 years of existence.

Now I don't remember his name, something typically Czech I think, so I'm going to refer to him as Nancy.

Nancy knew everything about Europe.  He didn't have opinions about anything, because his opinion was fact.

It started out with Nancy telling me not to go to Prague because it wasn't really Czech and therefore wasn't that great. He maintained that it was outrageously expensive (which I would find out quite the opposite).  I said I was sorry to hear he didn't like Prague because I had only heard great things about the city.  When I said (to Basti who had asked) that I would go there by train.  Nancy's petticoats got all twisted and he adamantly insisted that I MUST take a bus instead.  To which he went on and on about Deutchbahn train company, and how Prague wasn't worth the trip anyways.  He thought I should visit his home town.  A proper Czech municipality.

Nancy eventually turned the conversation to WWII.  Why on EARTH you would do that IN Nuremberg with FIVE Germans present (two of which were definitely alive and could remember it).  He went on and on about how Warsaw fought and they have their pride.  The young German guy was arguing with Nancy on details of the military strategies.  But Nancy, with his bonnet now completely askew, was getting all worked up about Czech pride.  They wished they would have tonight back etc etc.  To which I inserted, "But then you wouldn't have beautiful Prague!".  He was not amused.

Basti let me fire away for another ten minutes or so, then we headed home.  He had to work the next day, and I had to go prove myself right about Prague.

Güte Nacht Nuremberg
Tegs

White Out

Munich is the land of white.

And I mean this in a non racial way (although it does mostly apply).

What I really mean, is their specialties.

White beer. White sausage.

To say they are only Munich specialties, is a little misleading.  They are really the traditional food and drink of Bavaria, which is a region in the south of Germany.  Bavarians consider themselves different from the rest of Germany, and the rest of Germany agrees.  I guess you could perhaps compare it to the Midwest and the South in the states.  We stereotype the South to be less intelligent, they stereotype us as the cold northerners.

Something like that.

Munich is also the location of the world famous Oktoberfest.  While Oktoberfest is months away, I still came at a lucky weekend were I got to experience a few different festivals.

My host(s) were Julian.  I say maybe plural because they are both on couch surfing, but only one Julian technically invited me.  Ah yes, they are both named Julian.  For confusion's sake my host will be refereed to simply as Julian, and his roommate will be little Julian (he was a smidge shorter).

When I arrived in Munich, I checked my bag into a locker at the station, and went to meet the Julians and company at a beer tasting festival.  This was my first stroke of luck to come during a beer tasting, which was rather uncommon there.  In Bavaria, they make only Weissbier, meaning white beer (pronounced vice-beer).  Legally Weissbier, or wheat beer, must be made a particular way, with only certain ingredients.  Its more or less been made the exact same way for quite a long time.

At this tasting, you got four tickets for four glasses of more or less whatever you wanted to try.  They had a version of our Kentucky Bourbon Barrel that I really enjoyed, as well as another that roasted the malt prior to brewing.  It wasn't easy to find my usual preferred dark beer.  To say these lighter colored beers were light though, would be seriously false.  Don't let the color fool you.

We spent quite a few hours at the tasting, then it was back to the station to grab my bag and on to the Julians' flat. 

By this time in the trip, I had gotten used to stairs, but Julian lived on the fifth floor.  He offered to carry my backpack on the way up.  This is the one time I didn't refuse.

Throughout my time in Munich, every time we returned to the flat, my heart sank a little, knowing I had five flights of stairs before I could sit down.

That night we went to a club/pub where an electronic German rock group was playing.  I never caught their name, but the singer reminded me of Cassandra from Wayne's World.  It was tolerable to listen to but not necessarily enjoyable.

When the band stopped, Julian and company decided to invite the party back to their apartment. 

I mostly stayed quiet, as the more people drink, the more they forget I need to be spoken to in English.  I mostly just watched a group of guys test their way through the Julians' whiskey collection.  They had over ten different types of whiskey on a shelf, and each guy that wanted to try some gave a little money for a glass to taste.  I thought that was sort of neat.

The next day, Julian took me around Munich.  The main square of Munich, Marienplatz, has a very large "cuckoo"clock that has a merry-go-round of human figures at 11am every day.  The technical term is glockenspiel, and there are actually two merry-go-rounds that tell two different stories.  One being the marriage of a duke, the other being a traditional dance that supposedly eradicated the plague from the city.  The traditional dance, Schäfflerstanz , can still be seen performed every seven years at Fasching festival.  We didn't make it in time to watch the glockenspiel, Julian said it was mostly disappointing anyways.

We then visited the Frauenkirche cathedral.  It sports the famous two towers with bronze domes that have become one of the symbols of Munich.  Within the church, about
five meters from the front entrance, is the devil's footprint, otherwise known as Teufelsschritt.

Supposedly the devil came to see the ridiculous church without any windows.  See, when you first walk into the church, due to the architecture, you cannot see the windows until you move about a foot post the devil's footprint.  The devil then saw the light and was either burnt a bit or stomped his foot in anger, depends on whom you ask.  The origin of the footprint may be unknown, but what is known is that the devil wears approximately a US womens size 10.

We rounded out the old town and headed to the Deutches Museum, the worlds largest science and technology museum.  They had every thing from planes, to automobiles, to space gadgets, to ceramics, to musical instruments, to windmills, to steel lathes, to even a live reproduction of Tesla's experiment.  We spent about three hours there, and I could have spent another two more at least. 

That night, Julian and I convinced little Julian to procrastinate on his paper due the next day, and join us to the Oktoberfest grounds.  There happened to be a festival that weekend, something like our county fairs without the livestock.  The Julian's referred to it as the "poor man's" Oktoberfest, as it was held in the very same location.

There they convinced me to ride the ferris wheel at sunset to get a good view of the city.  To me, ferris wheels are among the more terrifying carnival rides.  It turned out to be worth it for the beautiful view however.  From up top, they could also describe to me how it would look during Oktoberfest.

During Oktoberfest, about five to six million people flock to the city for 16 days of unrivaled beer drinking.  There are typically 14 large biergartens, which are enormous tents packed full of picnic tables with kitchens and of course barrels upon barrels of beer.  Not to mention 20 smaller biergartens.  They only serve Weissbier, and they only serve it by the liter.

There happened to be one small (the Julians seemed to think it was small) biergarten at the festival, so we checked it out.

What an experience.

There were people everywhere, crammed into these picnic tables, drinking liters of beer, eating half chickens.  A good portion of the people were in their traditional lederhosen or bar maid like dresses.  At Oktoberfest, pretty much everyone dresses up (most men own at least one nice pair of lederhosen.  There was a live band playing traditional Bavarian music, with the occasional Queen or AC/DC tossed in.  Some people stood on the benches the whole time, but when the song was good enough, most of the tent was dancing on their tables.  About ever fourth song they'd play the short jingle Prost!, prost being the equivalent to cheers.

What blew my minds the most, was the waitresses.  Not big bosomed, blonde braided young German women.  These were forty-something beasts of women capable of carrying ten to twelve liters of beer at one time.  I'm talking arms bigger than my legs.  I DARE someone to try to drink and ditch.  I would say you might get a mug over the head, but they'd thought of that already. 

All mugs have a "safety"feature.  If you try to beat someone over the head with one, it will break off at the handle, as to prevent there from being a second blow.

I wonder how many Oktoberfests and concussions they went through before introducing that design.

Injuries are commonplace at Oktoberfest, not a complete surprise there.  Mostly in the form of falling off tables or stumbling into something solid.  Apparently nurses and doctors can make six months worth of wages in just those 16 days.

After one liter of beer, I was ready to go to bed.  Just the one beer got me warm and fuzzy, I could only imagine a day full of one after another.  Julian said it was easy to spot the first timers.

The next day before I left for Nuremberg, I had one thing left to try.

The white sausage.

Julian and I walked to the butcher shop, grabbed four little white sausage links and two pretzels.  The white sausages are made fresh from pork, and are to be eaten the same day they are made.  To cook them, all you do is boil them for 15 mins or so.  Then, you cut the casing lengthwise and pop out the sausage.  Serve with sweet mustard and Weissbier.  If your a hardcore traditionalist, you'll have the beer at breakfast, because you're supposed to eat the sausages before noon, as they are at their freshest. 

I said goodbye to Julian (little Julian had left me a farewell note before he left early that morning), and I hopped on a train for Nuremberg.

Prost Munich
Tegs

Casserole Quest

I stopped for a few hours in Bern on my way to Zurich.  I really just wanted to get a feel for a city I had heard do many good things about.

It was of course this cute old town with plenty of greenery situated around a river.  After checking my backpack into a locker at the station, I headed down the main pedestrian street.

On the sides of the street were the permanent stores for furniture, clothes, etc.  In the middle were tents selling varieties of things.  Mostly textiles, jewelry, sweets, meats, and cheeses.  Half way through the market portion of the street, I stumbled upon an over sized chess board that was part of the street.  Two old men were playing chess with pieces the size of toddlers, while a plethora of other men shouted suggestions from the sidelines.

The guy on my left should have won ten minutes into the game, but instead a draw was called about a half an hour later.  Because Bern is in the German part of Switzerland, I couldn't understand the suggestions being shouted, but some of the peanut gallery was getting intensely upset at certain moves.

I continued down the street, passing the famous clock tower, on my way to the bear park.  Bern has an open air bear park where they had four brown bears living.  I only saw the two younger ones and one older one. They were neat to watch, and they were definitely familiar with humans and illegal treats bring tossed into the cages.  The younger bears were especially dancing around, hoping for something to be thrown their way.

I took a leisurely walk back to the train station, using different roads, and boarded my train for Zurich.

Feodor picked me up from the train station in Zurich.  We then met up with his roommate Christophe to buy food to make another traditional Swiss dinner.

Want to guess what the main ingredient was?

Cheese

I was actually honored that a house full of four engineering guys was willing to cook ME dinner.

The meal required a griddle that also had a place for little metal "personal pans" underneath.  You placed the cheese chunk in your personal pan until it was all melted and bubbly.  Then you poured in over your potatoes.  That's the beginners version.  The pros also cook prosciutto, mushrooms, eggs, etc. on the top part of the griddle to be added to the potato cheese mixture.  Its really a clever little set up that I'm sure has plenty of room for creativity as well.

That night, the guys wanted to go out to a club for a bit.  But before we went out, being the resident American, I was challenged to a game of beer pong.  One on one against Christophe.

In my defense, its been a solid year since I've played pong AND the cups were much smaller than regulation Solo size.  It wasn't a slaughtering or anything, I just feel like I let down every Keystone drinking college student in America by losing to a Swiss.

Sorry 'Murca...

The next day everyone in the house had class or some various sorted project to do.  I took the metro into central Zurich to attack the national museum on my own.

The museum had a variety of interesting exhibits.  The main ones were centered around prehistoric Switzerland and the religious reforms started by Calvin.

Besides the witch burnings that took place during these times, there was actually done good ideas being thrown around, in my opinion at least.  Calvin thought the Catholic church was power hungry and abusing its holy status.  Citizens could pay for indulgences that would excuse them of their sins before they were even committed.

Kind of like a pre-rinse cycle for your soul.

Calvin also brought up the fact that entirely too much money was being put into beautiful churches and pope hats that could be better spent helping the poor.  A topic not unrelatable to modern times.  Churches built under Calvinism were painfully plain compared to the flying buttresses of other catholic cathedrals.  Needless to day, the Catholic church was somewhat unhappy with his public criticisms.  His ideas still live on today in the form of Protestants.

That night, as payment for them cooking for me, I promised I would make the guys a traditional Ohio dish.

Green bean casserole.

What's more midwestern than a casserole?

I had made it in Europe before when I studied in Maastricht.  One of my classes had a party after the final, and we were supposed to bring a traditional food and drink from our home country.  I made a joke that I could bring anything with corn or potatoes in it.  One of the Dutch girls got very offended, claiming potatoes were definitely from the Netherlands. 
Ah no. And they're not from Ireland either.

I choose to bring a casserole then because the only other traditional American foods I could think of were hot dogs, mac and cheese, or burgers.  The only tough part was taking the American recipe and converting it to metric.  Easier said than done.

Anyways.  I boarded a train to go back to Feodor's neighborhood.

Or so I thought.

His neighborhood was called Affoltern.  Turns out, there was also a neighborhood called Affoltern Albis.

Guess which one I ended up in.

By the time I figured out where I was, how to get back to Zurich, and then where to find the correct train, three hours had passed.  It was about 8:30, and all grocery stores close at 8.

I trudged back to the house with my head hung low, thinking how I could break the news to the guys.

Turns out, they knew I was going to run into grocery problems as soon as I texted Feodor that I was in the wrong suburb, so it wasn't a shocking disappointment.

I would have stayed one more night to make that casserole, if I hadn't already had hosts set up in Munich the next day.

Tschüss Zurich
Tegs

Geneva avec Famille

Switzerland brought with it familiar faces.

More specifically it was the first (and only) time on this trip I saw family.
My cousin, Gabe has been living with his wife Lauren and working in Geneva for almost a year now.

If I remember correctly, the two years working in Switzerland had come about via the same company he had worked for in America.
The two of them picked me up from the train station. This was another one of those rare occasions where picking me up meant with an actual vehicle.

We actually ended up going directly to the Swiss watch museum from the train station.  It might sound like we were rushing through things, but really it was great planning on their part.

I arrived on a Saturday afternoon, and I would be leaving on a Tuesday.  I hadn't realized it, but most museums in Geneva were closed on Sundays AND Mondays, so I just had a small window of opportunity to see some really cool watches.

I don't know if cool is the best way to describe some of these watches.  Jaw dropping might be more appropriate. I'm not even talking about the amazing accuracy of watches built over one hundred years ago.  The amount of ornamentation that went into some of these pieces was amazing.  Semi-precious stones with engravings, mother of pearl landscapes, tiny portraits of royal families and their crests. 
And those were just the traditionally shaped pocket watches.  They also came in so many varieties of different shapes.  Eggs, birds, flowers that opened, pendants, ladies' fans, any thing you could dream up.

Perhaps the most intricate were the larger clock pieces that had mechanical moving figures. Most impressive to me were the beautiful little mechanical birds that dances around while they sang in their beautiful little golden cages.  The museum was dedicated mostly to Phillip Patek watches, which is apparently still an expensive brand even today.

Afterwards, we returned to their flat, which was absolutely gorgeous.  I was actually expecting a smaller living space, given that we were in Europe after all, but this was more spacious than most of the American flats I have seen even.  First floor (meaning one floor above ground, which is 0), very welcoming open foyer/dining/living area, and even a guest bedroom (I'm always happy to take a vacation from my old friend the couch).

We ate dinner in that night and discussed the game plan for Sunday.  There were only a few limitations.  Firstly, Sunday means almost all normal shops and museums are closed.  And secondly, crazy amounts of walking were out of the question as well.

Lauren was currently in the recovery stages of not just foot surgery, but FEET surgery.  By the time I arrived in Geneva, she had graduated to walking on her own, but she wasn't about to win a marathon anytime soon.

There were several factory/museums within driving distance, so it came down to picking my favorite food group.

Either wine, cheese, or chocolate.
I had visited many many great wine regions in France.  One can never visit too many vineyards though.  I had been to the Lindt chocolate factory in Cologne, but this one sounded different.  Plus, Gabe and Lauren had not been to it either.  I'd never seen cheese made before.  That could have been interesting, but I figured flooding my system with gruyere would be something I'd regret later.

So chocolate and wine it was.

It took us less than two hours to reach the Callier chocolate factory.  Actually I wouldn't have been sad if the drive had taken us five hours.  Between the mountains, vineyards, and cute little towns, there was never actually anything to see, but it was all still so beautiful.

As we neared the factory (according to the GPS) the road got narrower and more winding.  We were sort of snaking our way down a very rural valley.  Gabe made the joke that maybe they needed all the cows to make the milk chocolate (turns out he wasn't far off!)

The Callier chocolate factory ran groups in rotations by language.  From what I could see, they were mostly in French, English, and Italian, with some German as well.  We arrived pretty much perfectly in time for the English tour.

Now, when I went to the Lindt factory in Cologne, I was promised the Willy Wonka of chocolate factories.  Sadly Lindt had fallen short, but I thought Callier hit it spot on.

The whole tour was automatic animations and voice overs that kept you in one room until it opened up to reveal the next.  It was all aimed at someone closer to half my age...which is probably why I loved it.
You started in the dark Aztec jungle, where chocolate all started.  Then we moved on to Spanish explorers, European royalty, and forbidding popes.

Eventually your brought to Switzerland, where they started adding milk to chocolate.

Apparently its not as easy as one might think to add milk to chocolate, make it stick together, taste good, AND not go bad.  It took several collaborating minds, including Cailler, to perfect the recipe.

The tour then moved into more recent times, capitalizing the huge business chocolate has become and the elaborate advertisements that came along too.

At the end, the tour talked about present chocolate making practices, including a machine you could watch through glass, as well as, what else but a tasting :)

There were probably thirty or so different chocolates laid out for tasting.  Anyone with a wrapper on got slipped into my purse for later.  I couldn't handle all the unwrapped ones though either.  We left feeling spoiled, but not uncomfortable at least.

Afterwards, we took a short drive south to Lavau.  There, the entire town was built into a hillside that overlooked Geneva Lake.  The sun wasn't shining, but it was simply gorgeous.

Amongst the cottage like houses and five-table cafes, were vineyards cut into tiers in the side of the hill.
We reached a winery at the very bottom near the lake, and it was like a movie. Lake and mountains on one side, waterfall cascading down the other side.

Really Switzerland? That's how you're going to be?

The winery itself wasn't huge.  It was rather like a wine cellar built into a cave with little high top tables to taste the wine.  The real specialty of this winery was the film it showed in the basement.

The screen was set into three long "steps"of screens, as to imitate the way in which the vineyards here were arranged. The story followed a local wine maker (or rather an entire family, as that's how many people it takes) through an entire year.
It was a very well done film, and such an interesting story. 

Wine making is a year long process.  Each plant is pruned and personally attended to several times a year, pre-grapes and with grapes.  Everything is tested and recorded.  The wine maker could tell you exactly what the weather was, and exactly what the vines were doing on any given day of any given year since he took over the wine making (it wouldn't have surprised me if he had his father and grand-father's records as well).

Pruning was a whole family event, as was harvesting. Only harvesting included a whole lot more sweat.  They showed teenage kids with these contraptions on their backs that looked like manual forklifts.  Each forklift held three or four crates that they would fill with grapes, then carry back to the truck.  Now I'm terrible at estimating volume, but these crates must have been 2x3x2 ft.
Can you imagine how heavy just one would be?

The film really pushed the idea that at any moment, an entire years work could be destroyed by the weather.  I don't think I could handle that type of devastation.

I come from a family of farmers, and weather has been unkind to us before as well.  I cannot say where our farms may be more or less work, I can say that we don't put that amount of love into our corn like these people do into their grapes.

After the movie, we of course had to taste this hard work for ourselves.  I had gone in skeptical of Swiss wine, but what I had was quite good, I thought (after willingly drinking one glass of Franzia, I think one loses all wine credibility...)

We returned to Geneva and went out to a local tapas/burger pub.  Apparently, in Geneva, it is difficult to find a good restaurant in the medium price range.

Oh yes, I haven't explained just exactly how expensive Geneva is.

Geneva is the third most expensive city in the world, next to Zurich and Tokyo.

Its impossible for me to explain, so using the "Big Mac Index"

USA=$4.20 Switzerland =$6.81

Now granted, the quality is much better here.  No GMO's, most everything is Swiss grown/made.  After WWII, Switzerland wanted to be completely self sufficient, that way they could survive even in the event of being cut off from trade during war.  You're not just encouraged to buy Swiss.  Its pretty much a rule and often your best choice anyways.

Switzerland seems like its really got its shit together.

Bonne Nuit Geneva
Tegs