Landhaus Hotel Bern

... 3 families: von Allmen, Brunner and Feuz. With 130 townsfolk sharing hte 3 surnames. To keep prescriptions and medical records straight, the doctor in nearby Lauterbrunnen goes by birth date first, then the patient's name."<br><br>It is definitely one of those places where if you were able to located some brocade curtains and stich yourself a pinafore, you could twirl around, channel Maria von Trapp, and belt our a rousing rendition of ...

... could best be described as German-Italian --I had risotto with sausage. It was a neat setting, and not a tourist spot -- as you probably know, tourists always try to avoid the tourist spots. We sat around for close to three hours and spent most of the conversation discussing the importance of caring about women's rights and trying to figure out how on earth men came to rule the world, and then discussed the modern transition of what womens rights are today. It ...

... to check out the Einstein Museum because he lived here for a few years and supposedly worked on his famous E=mc squared theory. Well guess what? It's Monday and the museum was closed. I think that's my 4th museum that was closed on me. Nuff said. I headed into the Old Town and did find the Einstein Apartment which wasn't too exciting. It was basically a studio apt that he lived in with his wife from 1905 for like two years. Not to be ...

The weekend has arrived! I I decided to utilize my transit pass and hopped on a train out of Basel. I settled on Bern for no good reason other than the capital city seems like a good place to start. I plan on making a lot of day trips on my free weekends so it really doesn't matter where I go first. Bern turned out to be a good choice. It's easy to get around, well signed, and a lot of the sights are fairly close together ...

... me to say goodbye before i left, and secondly - her house was just around the corner from the football stadium where we were going to watch a a game that night! It was sad to start saying goodbye to everyone even though i still had 2 sleeps to go! We hung out in the appartment with Leila and Michael for a couple of hours, and then put on all of the warmest clothes that we had (i was wearing thermals under my clothes, plus 2 jackets and 2 scarfs!) and we walked over to meet ...

... toilets have more water in them than usual!! Occasionally they have major problems with flooding, especially in the cities etc where there are many houses along the edges of the rivers. But of course the benefit of so much rain is everything is beautiful and green! The drive back down the hill was gorgeous, like one of those car ads where the car is driving along the tree-lined country roads, with all the autumn leaves flicking up and blowing around as it drives past. We ...

... Peter, Doris, Julia, and Daniela) but everyone connected to the farm ie. eating horse with Aus (pronounced orse), he is the vet, to Fondue with Monica and Hinndrick, to catching the cable train up the Niessen with Annarós. We are as sad to leave here as we are excited to be going to Itlay. Sorry guys! I just tried to upload some photos but the computer didnt want to have a bar of it. We`ll give it a go some other time though, these photos are too good to miss!

... the river. The churches and monuments are really pretty too. Even though we were staying in hostel type places we had a balcony that looked out onto Lake Luzern which was beautiful. Matthew got to do some paintings from the balcony and they we headed towards.....THE SWISS TRANSPORTATION MUSEUM!!!! I don't know if I've ever seen Matthew so happy...he was pretty excited about all the exhibits....I was too, although five hours later my enthusiasm for old trains, cars, boats, and ...

... has 'met' a couple guys from other Contikis. Dana and Strati in Munich. Strati and Jessica... Who said Contiki was just a f**k bus, shag fiesta or a copulation coach? :) We just stopped a the Swarovski outlet store. Man - talk about crystal for Africa. Trudie spent Euro 250! No lunch for us tomorrow. At the top of the highest resort in the world! Pilatus in Lucern, very very cool! It's 2100m/7000ft up and the view is great. I'm drinking French beer, eating Bierstick ...

... program... then Lois left for vacation with Maurice (the guy I live with & her fiancé), and later she went back to America (LA, CALI). So, at that point, I was alone (you know, not really alone, but in the wanting to make you feel sorry for me "alone" kind of way). Everyone else on the ministry team needed a vacation. August is their only time for it, so who was I to stop them. OK, OK, I admit I tried! The selfish American in me said, "common guys! shoulder to the ...