Kafischnaps Zürich

... after he handed Jesus to be crucified and once he climbed to the top, saw the lake which was in the shape of a cross and realised he'd done something dumb and jumped off the mountain and killed himself...hence the name Mount Pilatus. Interesting myth.....

We only got to catch the lift up to 1500ft cause it was too windy up the top. There was about 10cm of snow where we got to and had ...

... is pretty charming. For dinner, the hotel made us turkey and mashed potatoes and a "Thanksgiving Cake". not quite like home...
Every morning we have to listen to presentations for three hours, which are really interesting about half of the time, and the other half of the time we are all trying to entertain ourselves with Sudoku and hangman.


Well, that's all that's really gone in my life over the last week...

In den letzten zwei Wochen habe ich einiges an neuer Ausrüstung zusammengekauft. Unter anderem ein neues Zelt und warme Winterkleidung.

Letztes Wochenende habe ich meine neue Ausrüstung das erste mal ausprobiert und bin am Freitagabend mit ...

... the outside of the city wall. We wandered through the old town and then went to see the lion monument which was carved into a huge rock. We had lunch on a bench by the river (salami, I am so sick of salami) and then walked through the covered bridge and our tour of the town was pretty much complete. We passed a beach and some large parks on the way back to the hostel and decided that it would be a really nice town to spend ...

... was play in the snow...the only other people that were playing in the snow were the 3 year olds...but I couldn't pass up the chance of making a snowball and chucking it at Leanne!! So I did!! Too much fun! I made a few more just for fun...I'm pretty sure everyone thought I had never seen snow before...little do they know where I come from! haha. Once my hands had lost their feeling...I moved on for a bit. We walked through some caves in the ...

... I commented that with many more newer double deck EMUs in service on the system that Zürich may be coming close to being the second city with an entire double deck suburban fleet (the first is Sydney). The classic highlights of the central part of the city were taken in by our twilight walk from the station down Bahnhofstrasse almost to the lake, then across to the other side of the river, past the town hall and back up to the station. I had planned for us to have dinner at a nice ...

... 10 minutes we were there, we got out as soon as we could.. We just walked around the town a bit longer before stopping by the co-op store (this seems to be huge here as we even spotted a co-op bank!) to pick up a few things for dinner because the train journey from Zurich to Innsbruck would be about 4 hours. As we wanted to use up all our Swiss francs before we left Switzerland, we headed back to Sprungli and tried to spend our last 13 ...

Monday in-flight

Last day in Europe. Sigh! Packed up and sorted out gear for our plane trip, then left our packs at the hostel. Caught the train out to Schloss Schoenberg which was the summer residence of the Hofbergs, even though it is 10 minutes from the centre of Vienna. When they went there they took a retinue of 1500 so it isn't small. Walked around the grounds for an hour or so, and visited several of the outlying buildings. The ...

... to lie down after the navigation fiasco we all went through to get there. We set out to explore the old town area. Our hotel was a nice through a park and beside a lake. The water was clear and blue and apparently potable. We walked past old churches, old buildings, and posh shopping areas. Out of hunger we stopped at an Argentinian restaurant. It turned out to be a good choice because we all had amazing steaks and an amazing bottle of wine. We took 3 hours to walk back to ...

... beautiful Fraumünster Church to have a look at the stained glass windows by Marc Chagall and Augusto Giacometti. We all went to the Circus Conelli at 2 pm for the last show of the season. We enjoyed acrobats, jugglers, high wire acts, and comedy in a nice, closely-knit arena. It was perfect for families: everyone could see, and the performance area was not gargantuan like in the big sporting event halls. Afterwards we walked back home in the ...