Brunch & Bears

Today was one of my favorite travel days so far on this whole trip. It was amazing. It was peaceful, relaxing, full of good food and nice people, and just wonderful in general.

Roman invited us to Sunday brunch at his friend's house in the country side. It was about a 20 minute commute through "the landscape" (so cute) to get to her adorable house. There were at least 12 people there, and we had the most delicious traditional Swiss brunch buffet feast you can imagine. So I got to check off tons of traditional Swiss food :) There was traditional Swiss bread, which is braided kind of like Challah and is very sweet and yummy. There were countless jams, an amazing cheese plate (!!), butter, eggs, "Rosti" (Swiss version of hash browns), chai tea, tons of juice, "Muesli" (yogurt with granola), and fresh fruit. Oh and meats for the bread as well as bacon. INCREDIBLE. And everybody showed up pretty early (I think most people were there by 1030 AM). Then we ate / sat around and talked until 1:30 PM. It was so great to have a hearty, healthy (ish) meal and absorb the food and nice conversations for three whole hours. So European; I love it! I wish we had leisurely meals in the States.

After stuffing our faces with seconds, thirds, and fourths we finally stood up and decided to take a walk. It was so cute - Laura and I were talking about how our friends back home would never do this kind of stuff! I wish we did though. Roman's friend lives on a farm basically in a cute, genuinely non-touristy traditional Swiss village. It is very small and is surrounded by huge, green rolling hills with cows, goats, cats, and windmills around. There's a faint manure smell but the air was so fresh it didn't matter in the slightest. We began walking up and down and around these hills and got some incredible views of the little village, another village close by, the "mini Alps", and the REAL alps!!! It was warm but windy, the sun was out and the skies were a clear blue with fluffy, happy looking clouds. We walked, and talked, and walked, and talked some more, and stopped to look at the scenery, and take pictures, and walked, and talked...for two hours. So incredibly leisurely. Eat for three hours, walk around in fresh mountain air and stunning scenery for two hours. That was our Sunday morning. Simply amazing.

Switzerland is just as beautiful as all of the pictures, postcards, and posters I've ever seen. It took my breath away. The hills are just so beautiful, the villages so small and cute, the mountains so gorgeous. It was so nice to be able to see real mountains again. And the air...we haven't breathed air that good since Seattle :) I just felt so healthy and happy. I wanted to just sit in the sun and look out and the hills and read a book all day or something. It is so serene. So yeah, might be moving to Switzerland...You'll want to move here too when you see pictures.

The funniest part about the walk was that every once in a while we would see random things embedded in the hillside at waist/eye level. Really weird figurines. Like an Easter egg hanging from a branch. Or a plastic crocodile mouth coming out of a hole in a tree. Or a baby Jesus scene depicted in these weird figurines. Or a random snail figurine, just hanging out. Some seriously weird stuff! Very funny though.

We parted ways with all of Roman's nice friends (who were completely awesome to talk to, by the way - so kind!), and got a ride with a couple of them back to Bern. They dropped us off at the Rose Garden, which we walked through to get to the Bear Park. Bern is a kind of variation of the word "bear" in German (which is Beren, I think). Roman was telling us that the city decided to name itself after the first type of animal they could catch and kill, which turned out to be a bear. So the city is named Bern now, and they got two lovely brown bears which they kept in a bear pit for quite some time. Recently they built a big park for the bears which includes a little swimming pool for them. The bears had two cute little cubs in December, which just came out to the public a few weeks ago. So we went to the bear park and saw mama bear and the two baby bears, but they were all curled up in this cute brown ball of fluff! The city has pet bears! I love it. Papa bear had a separate park right next door because apparently he was attacking his family...? We got lucky and papa bear came out of his cave to say hello. Such a large, majestic creature. He looked so fluffy. And his feet looked like he was wearing slippers because they have such big rubbery pads. So he showed off for us a little bit pacing through the park. It was really cool to see. I think we're going to go back tomorrow to see if mama bear and the cubs are awake (i.e. more interesting).

Then we stopped by a store and got ingredients to make another traditional Swiss meal called Raclette. (At the store, Roman also gave us chocolate suggestions. In Switzerland, they actually have good chocolate at the grocery store. While we were deciding, so many locals came over and mechanically grabbed their favorite bar(s). In the U.S. I feel like I never see adults, especially tons of adults, go to the candy aisle and grab a handful of anything. I love that they eat their delicious chocolate regularly!) Anyway...Raclette! You put special Raclette cheese and sometimes bacon (which obviously we did) into this melter thing that makes it all gooey and cooked. Then you spread it over special Raclette potatoes, put some Raclette spice and some paprika on it, and eat up! You also have other cool (temperature-wise) snacks to eat while cheese is being melted or to give your mouth a break from hot potatoes and cheese. These include miniature onions that were kind of sour, baby corns (!), pineapple chunks, and mini pickles. It's an incredibly rich, hearty, winter meal but it was delicious even in April! And I think it is really expensive in restaurants so it was way cheaper and more fun to make it at home and eat with Roman and Patricia.

The night since dinner has been calm, which is nice after our late night last night.

Oh, something a little random. I think I am going to leave Hans a "Neutral" reference on CouchSurfing. I am a little nervous to do this because I don't want it to come off as negative at all! But he did not seem to embody the vision of CS at all, even though he has hosted so many people. I feel like it is my duty as a surfer that stayed with him to give him an accurate reference so that other people looking for places in Amsterdam will know what they're getting into. Again, it wasn't bad at all...I just need to think very carefully about how to word it. I'm a little nervous for that! But honestly, when compared with how AWESOME all of our other hosts have been, Hans was not even in the same league. There is no way that classified as "Positive" - but somehow almost everybody else left him Positive references. I'm so confused....maybe we just really had nothing in common with him. I don't know. It was weird though.


Quotes:
"You take pictures like an Asian." - Roman (apparently I take a lot of pictures, haha).

Roman: "Oh shit...I forgot something."
Laura & I: "What is it?"
Roman: "To feed the cats!"
(He is cat-sitting for a friend and had been talking about how he needed to feed them all day! However, after dinner we were all so full we just sat around being immobile. It was hours later after dinner that he realized he forgot about the cats...so funny).

Accomplishments:
Ate so much traditional Swiss food!
Walked around in what may as well have been the set for the Sound of Music.
Saw the bears.

Nice People Alert:
Ruth - for letting some random CouchSurfers crash her amazing Sunday brunch party!

Travel Tip:
Enjoy the scenery!


I'm a little bit sad to be leaving Roman and Bern already tomorrow - two nights go by so quickly. I think three nights is the optimal amount of time to spend with a host. But we got some quality time in with him today and he more than made up for the lack of enthusiasm Hans exhibited. Back on track with our awesome CS host record!! And to be fair, I'm really excited to see other parts of Switzerland because I am completely in love with what I've seen so far :) It has been everything I imagined.