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

Dairyland for the Lactose Retarded

My plan for Switzerland had been Geneva, Bern, Zurich.  However, when I sent out my request for a couch in Bern, I got a reply from a couple in the nearby town of Fribourg (pronounced Free-bore).  Lauren had a friends that had visited there and heard it was beautiful.  After a brief google, I quickly accepted.

Xavier and Elise sounded like fun people and I couldn't pass on such a cute little town.  Plus, Bern happened to be situated between Fribourg and Zurich, so I could still make a visit if I wanted.

Xavier was the principle host online, and while they had no hosting references, they had been surfers before.  Plus, with a girl in the household I don't feel near as exposed.

I was so glad I made the exception, because Fribourg was absolutely gorgeous.  It had, what I would consider, extremely hilly streets, which only added to its dynamics.  All the buildings were old and made from stone, with little street lamps hanging above the doors. 

Just a ten minute walk from the station to their flat and I was already in love.

Both Xavier and Elise walked me back to their flat.  By sheer coincidence, Elise had actually been on the same train from Geneva.  While we were just on the edge of the French part of Switzerland, both of them also spoke German in addition to English.

Now as it turns out, I had come at a very important time in Switzerland.  That night was the Swiss hockey championship final game.  Bern vs Zurich.  Elise had to get up early the next day, so when she went to bed, Xavier and I headed across town to watch the game at a pub with his friends.

I had thought that since Fribourg was so close to Bern, that they would side with them.  However, Bern had beat out Fribourg, so everyone was backing Zurich instead. 

By the time we got there, it was the last period.  It was a 1-1 tie game, until Zurich scored two seconds before the buzzer.

Afterwards, we went for a victory beer.  Most of Xavier's friends peeled off to go home, so it ended up just being three of us.  We mostly ended up talking about music. 

He had an interesting taste in a wide variety of music, as I had already heard some samples back at his flat.  He also was a bit of a promoter of music in Fribourg.

Xavier had bought an old public transport bus and turned it into a party bus/business hub/backstage hang out: Le BusPoint.  Some major carpentry work went into this thing, as well as plenty of electrical planning.  He used it to rent out to customers as well as a band interview venue for local festivals.  One of which festivals was actually put together and planned by Xavier and some of his friends.  Kind of amazing really.

The next day, Elise had to work but Xavier only had a short meeting in town, so he offered to show me around a bit.

Fribourg is an absolutely beautiful old city that's partially in a valley next to a river, and the rest of the city was situated above with various hilly streets. 

It was a very long hike up the hill on the other side of the valley, but the view was so worth it.  You could see literally the whole town.  Xavier even pointed out his apartment building from clear across the city. Everything was very green there.  On the way down the hill, we passed a flock of sheep and other various small groups of farm animals, including these adorable baby goats. 

After fully descending (and then scaling the opposite side of the valley), Xavier pointed me down a long street of shops and left for his meeting.  I walked this street pretty much until I started to see more livestock than people. 

I headed back to the flat, as Elise was supposed to be back soon, and that night they were making traditional Swiss fondue for dinner.

Fondue is too good to let something like dairy intolerance stop me from eating it.

My mother makes a cheese fondue for holidays using various cheeses, mostly different types of cheddar I believe, and beer.  The Swiss use two types of cheeses, Gruyere and Emmanthaler, and dry white wine.  It is difficult to make such an authentic fondue in the states because the Gruyere we can buy is almost guaranteed to be pasteurized, as in Switzerland it is not.

We dipped bread into the fondue, and it wasn't impolite to just eat straight of your skewer.  My hosts put a bit of tabasco on their plate to dip their bread in, but Xavier said his father would be appalled if he saw him doing that.  The tabasco was a nice addition.  I also mentioned that in the States, we would dip apples in the cheese to.  They had never tried it, but agreed that it sounded like a pretty tasty idea.

That night we decided to watch a movie.  They asked if I had any suggestions as to an American film they hadn't seen.  I mentioned the movie Crash.  If you have never seen the movie, I highly suggest it.  I'm pretty sure it won several awards.  The film is really five our six stories that are all interconnected, and each story has to do with stereotypes, racism, and religious stigmas.  There's no way to explain the movie, you just have to see it.

Elise and Xavier loved it.

I explained that not everyone acts like they do in the movie, but everyone has at least a hint of each stereotype in the back of their mind.  They may not act based on those stereotypes, but the thoughts are still there.  We can't help it.  The mind creates stereotypes and schemas to process information faster, sometimes they are generalizable, sometimes not.

After the movie (and checking the score of the Chelsea match), we all hit the sac.  The two of them had to work the next day, and I was stopping in Bern on my way to Zurich.

Salut Fribourg
Tegs

Peace, Love, and Large Hadron Colliders

It was good to be back in a French speaking city.  Finally, I could read shop signs and bus ticket machines.  I could guess my way through Italian, but Hungarian, for instance, turned my brain to noodles trying to make sense of it.

I had just one thing I had to see in Geneva, or I wasn't leaving.

CERN

CERN stands for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire.  The name has since been changed to European Organization for Nuclear Research, but they kept the acronym.

CERN contains quite a few different scientific contraptions.  Some work together, others work alone.  All are for a common goal:

To discover the Higgs Boson, and better understand the beginnings of our universe.

In a nutshell, CERN smashed particles together at high speeds and looks at the chunks that fly off.

Specifically, they're looking for the Higgs Boson.

Now I don't pretend to know a lot about this part of physics, I've yet to take any quantum classes at all.  But from what I do understand, the Higgs Boson is a hypothetical particular type of elementary particle.  It has certain properties that, if it were confirmed to exist, would help to explain how other elementary particles have mass.  It would also hopefully help gain evidence for Super Symmetry, a concept I'm not comfortable enough with to explain.

To see an actual out of commission collider and get the full tour, you need to book reservations WAY in advance.  I checked over two months before I left for Europe, and I still could not get a reservation.

Not to be disappointed, there are two other free to the public exhibits.  One was a more interactive physics lesson.  You started with little demonstrations that proved the basics.  Copper coils with magnets, lights shining through holes, gold foil and fake alpha particles etc.  Then it slowly eased you into less tangible concepts until finally you got into the hypothetical.

I really would like to go back for the full tour after I take a few more classes. I learned a lot, but I also think there was a lot that I missed.

The other part of the CERN exhibit was a huge globe that had all these interactive touch spheres that showed you how CERN operated more in depth.  There was also a "movie" that played every fifteen minutes in a different language.  The"movie" played on every surface on the inside of the globe.  It explained why they were smashing particles and what new discoveries could mean.  Each collision produces insane amounts of data that are sent and analyzed by different scientists all over the world.  I thought the collision patterns themselves were kind of pretty looking.  You can google LHC collision images, or there is one you can sort of see an example in one of my pictures.

The only other ambition I had in Geneva was to see the Palace of Nations.

The Palace of Nations was originally built to be the headquarters of the League of Nations, which was formed after WWI by the ideas of Woodrow Wilson.  Speaking of which, as a president we learn so little about (all I knew is he was the only president with a PhD), he is pretty popular in Europe.  At least in Geneva alone, there were several buildings and such named after him.

Anyways, the League of Nations fell apart at the start of WWII (ironic, as preventing war was one of its higher objectives), and after WWII came the modern United Nations.  The Palace of Nations became the Geneva UN headquarters.  Fun fact, it was the Geneva UN headquarters since 1946, but Switzerland did not join the UN until 2002.  Now, while the main headquarters are of course in NYC, certain branches of the UN are actually run from Geneva.  The United Nations Human Rights Council is stationed there.  The other ones I can recall especially also had to do with human rights, some aspects of war, and also genocide.

When you arrive at the palace, you MUST have your passport.  When you enter the grounds, you are actually leaving Switzerland and entering a neutral zone.  I actually arrived just in time, as you must also be with a tour guide, and they only run two sets of tours per day.

The tour mostly consisted of seeing the conference rooms, from both spectator views and member views.  On the floor of the UN, each seat had headphones that they would select to hear one of six channels.  Each channel was one of the six spoken UN languages that six interpreters would be simultaneously translating whoever was speaking on the floor at that time. 

This meant that in order to be a UN representative, you must speak either English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Arabic, or Russian.  These were not chosen randomly though, they are the six most spoken languages in the world.

One of the more interesting aspects is the UN logo.  It is a globe surrounded by two olive branches symbolizing peace.  The cool thing is, the globe is actually looked at from the north pole, as to symbolize that no country or continent is above another.

We saw two particularly remarkable conference rooms.  One had extremely large sepia murals, by I believe a Spanish artist, representing the succession of humanity.

They. Were. Amazing.

The other conference room that was beautiful had a ceiling designed by Miguel Barcelo.  He used different materials and was advised by many different engineers to get the desired stalactite effect, then followed it up with spray paint.  Apparently the artist's research and brainstorming process was just about as long and as costly as the actual finished project itself.  It was definitely interesting and beautiful, but it makes you think, couldn't that money have been put towards helping people?  They spent tens of millions on this ceiling.  Which sort of leads to a deeper question. 

Developed countries spend millions and millions on art and other types of aesthetics.  Meanwhile, undeveloped countries may not have clean water.  Shouldn't we be forsaking art until the rest of the world reaches a higher standard of living? That isn't necessarily my opinion, as a producer and consumer of art, it would be very difficult for me to see that happen.  But it does make you think...

The day out and about concluded with dining in.  The next day, Gabe would fly to Belgium for a short business trip, and I would also leave for my next city.

If your interested in more Switzerland, or what its like to be an American living in a new culture, Gabe and Lauren also run a blog.

Au revoir Geneva
Tegs

Water Under Bridges

It rained the next day.

In fact it rained the ENTIRE next day.

Sadly, Alison and Julian left early that morning, but us three remaining couch surfers and Alberto were all to go into Venice together.

After the compulsory half an hour bus ride.  We just took of into the city.  Venice is not arranged into any sort of navigable grid.  The lack of right angles and abundance of small allies make using a map sort of pointless.  You would literally have to hold it the whole time.

Once you put it away, you'd be lost again already.

So we just wandered off.

We ended up making what I think was sort of a large figure eight.  It didn't matter where we went.  It was beautiful EVERYWHERE.  Every building was old and gorgeous. Every time we crossed over a canal I could have taken at least six postcard photos.  Vines with flowers grew up the sides of antique door frames.  Even the window frames with their peeling paint and warped panes were worth admiring.

Eventually we started to follow signs that led us to Piazza San Marco (the most famous square in Venice, the one in all the diamond jewelry commercials). 

Now it was raining of course, and despite my very adequate rain coat, Alberto insisted upon holding his umbrella over me.  Which at times was a bit annoying (did I mention my bubble?).  At other times, it was rather hilarious. 

Venice has tons and tons of tourists walking around it's tiny winding alleys. Pair the already cramped space with shop awnings and an over sized umbrella, and you get some rather humorous physical comedy.  Every once on a while, Alberto's umbrella would get caught on something and yank him backwards.

I may or may not have purposely navigated some tight spaces, just to see it happen. (I know you're reading this Alberto, my apologies for being evil, now you know my true nature)

Once we made it to San Marco, I must say I was rather disappointed.  It looked just how I had imagined, plus five hundred tourists with Nikons around their necks.  It wasn't especially beautiful or picturesque anymore.  We quickly moved on to the shore.

We walked around the shore, practically a fourth of the way around Venice, it felt like.

All the while, my feet are positively sloshing inside my boots.

Cobblestones had worn holes in the bottoms, and so there was consistently more water in my boots than there was on the sidewalk at any given moment.  Literally, at times there were bubbles coming out of the toes.

We walked around for four or five hours, then I said I couldn't handle anymore.  My feet stung every time I took a step.  The extra weight of the water had also given me shin splints that only added to the misery.

I tried to keep quiet as long as I could.  I didn't want to ruin Zuzanna and Jacek's visit.  Which brought me to another realization, I much preferred traveling by myself.  I hated constantly thinking about how to see what I wanted to see, while still pleasing the other half of the group.  Being considerate of others
is kind of tiring, being selfish is easy.

When we got back, I found that my feet had been rubbed completely raw.  Every step was like walking on hot coals.  It took a week for them to go back to normal.

After returning and hanging our shoes up on the heater.  We got some pizza from a shop literally ten meters away.  And they were really, really good.  Clearly we aren't doing it right in America.  The one pizza, called "pony", had, guess what kind of meat? If Alberto hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known it was anything different than beef.  All of it was so worth the belly ache I got later from all the cheese.

We followed up dinner with some drinks.  One was awesome, the other was truly terrible.

The first was Alberto's homemade limoncello creme.  And I mean homemade.  Like he grew the lemons.  It was just like traditional limoncello, only thicker with some vanilla flavor to it.

The other drink was Mezzo Mezzo, meaning half and half.  Half being Asian melon liquor, the other half being rhubarb liquor.  Sounds good right? Wrong.  Either they have a different breed of rhubarb over here, or they use the leaves rather than the stalks.  No clue.  But it was bitter, and terrible, and reminded me of that foul black candy they had in Scandinavia.

I have yet to fully recover from its taste.

That night, with Julian and Alison gone, Zuzanna and Jacek got the upstairs bed.  I told Alberto I would take either the floor or the couch, not the same arrangement as the previous night.  Being a gentleman, he took the floor.

Once again, with the Polish couple upstairs, Alberto tried to convince
me to stay.  I felt a little bad for the guy.  With the way he described Italian women, it didn't seem as if they would have been very compatible.  I said that I could not stay, we left it at that, and went to sleep.

I was abruptly awoken by a cellphone light and someone sitting over me on the couch.  It could have been five minutes later, it could have been fifty minutes later, I have no idea, because I had been sound asleep.

He asked if I would kiss him.

Now when I am woken from a really deep sleep, I'm typically incoherent and have no ambitions to become coherent.  I just want to go back to what I was doing.

I turned my face into the back of the couch, said no, and tried to get back to that REM cycle I was in the middle of.

Imagine trying giving medicine to a four year old.  I'm guessing that's kinda what I looked like turning my head away.

I'm not sure how long he sat there trying to convince me otherwise (incoherent, like I said), but I remained with my head turned until he gave up.

That morning, I had to get up super early to catch my connecting trains to Geneva.  The Polish couple was not awake, but Alberto was.

As I was packing to leave, he asked that I would never forget him.  I said of course I would not (after all this had been a one-of-a-kind surfing experience).  He then gave me his last bottle of limoncello creme, and told me to take it with me, and think of him when I drank it back in Ohio.  I was very honored with his gift, as making the liquor is not a quick process, and also that last bottle was supposed to go to a party he was attending later that evening.

However.

One must understand the sheer weight of a 750mL glass bottle full of dense creme liquor.  I knew when I took it, there was no way I could carry it for seven more weeks.  Even if I had, the chance of it making through customs was risky at best. 

I took it, intending to offer some to my future hosts and share some of the Venice I experienced.

Later, when I asked Alberto if I could write about him in my blog, he said of course.  He said to write whatever I wished, good or bad. He also later apologized for his behavior.  An apology, I told him, wasn't necessary.  It was all part if my experience in Italy, and I wouldn't have had Venice any other way.

Ciao Venezia
Tegs