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  Interlaken, Switzerland
Monday, June 13, 2005

I'm finally leaving Switzerland tomorrow, and it looks like in good tiem because it started to rain here today.

I've basically been relaxing the past couple days, and i've really began to feel like a local. I've picked up a few of the words in the local dialect, been giving new people in the hostel advice on hiking, and gave up using maps days ago. It's actully been nice.

But tomorrow I move on to Tours France to hopefully see some chateaus. I have no accomodation because every place I called was booked, but I'll find something when I get there. It was fun trying to call the places in the small towns and they could only speak french. Well, that didn't work well for me and the only phrase I knew in French ;pale vouz ingles? There's not much I could do when the response was no

Cable car up the mountain

.

I'll be moving onto Barcelona from there and again accomdations were hard to find. Of course there I could speak some spanish but they all spoke english. I did manage to speak some spanish and it was great until I totally forgot the days of the week, but luckliy I remembered the numbers. I did find a place a little off the main road so maybe i'll actually be able to catch a few hours of sleep.

I've continued to meet amazing people. Yesterday there was a girl from Hong Kong in my room who learned english with a British accent. It was really interesting listening to her talk. She gave me tips for traveling in China and told me some strange stories about things that happen in China. Apparently chinese think that dark soy sauce is better quality so some manufactures were using chinese hair (because it's black) to make the soy sauce darker. She was full of these kinds of stories. Very entertaining to say the least.

Then tonight I met a guy who I think is basically a millionare. He's been working for Intel since he was 18, he's 28 now, and is incredibly smart. He's going through some type of "who am i" phase and gave one of his two cars away to kids he coaches in the intercity and took a three month paid sabatical

Hiking in the snow

. He's put himself on a budget though and I actually met him in the kitchen cooking dinner. He feels money was too important to him and he's staying in hostels when it's obvious he could stay in hotels because he wants to meet people. He realized work wasn't everything and had been too much of his life so he took a break; honestly at some points in the conversation I felt like I was talking to myself, except for the millionare part:) I would actually probably continue to travel with him if I hadn't made my travel plans for the next week. We might meet up in Greece though.

Tonight a girl who lived in Spain is in the room so I'm getting advice on Barcelona. I'm beginning to remember just how much I loved meeting new people from all over. And only much later in the conversations does the "what do you do" question come out.

One thing about hostels is that people tend to leave food in the kitchen when they leave since most don't want to carry it. This hostel is very very good about throwing out things that are bad, but let me tell you, it's hilarious how we all become scavengers. Last night I saw someone make almost a complete meal out of leftovers. Today I scored some awesome granola bars, and the millionare guy gave me a glass of wine and cheese because I tried, but failed to locate a corkscrew for him (although that is where the handy swiss army knife souveniour actually becomes helpful).

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Wishing I could hike the mountains forever

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