Welcome back! I can’t believe it has already been three weeks of living in Florence. It is beginning to feel like a home, which is quicker than expected. I am super excited to write this post, as we ventured out of Italy for the first time. The week started as normal, my usual 8:50 AM class every day, followed by a lunch at home and then homework or walking around for the remainder of the day. On Monday my roommates and I went on a free food tour, where we walked around the city and tried a bunch of different places. Starting at a karaoke bar, we were welcomed with wings and beer. I honestly haven’t drank beer since the frat lots, so it was a little bit of a shock to the system. The wings were delish though and it was nice to eat some non-Italian food. We also performed “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga which was fun, especially because there was a dude on stage that would play the electric guitar to go with the melody of each song. The tour continued with stops at an Italian family-style restaurant, where I got ridiculed for bringing in my water bottle. The waiter was kidding, but listen, I like to stay hydrated ok. The water bottle comes pretty much everywhere, especially because you aren’t given water really anywhere, and if you do pay for it you have to ration the half glass you end up with after splitting the singular bottle with the whole table. I’m taking the tiniest sips known to man after each bite. Anywho, the pasta and wine was ok at that place, and we continued on the food tour where we also got panini samples, gelato, nachos at an Irish pub, and shots. After the food tour was when the night really began. We decided to hop in on the big Bus2Alps sale that was being held that night. Bus2Alps is an organization that helps students travel to different countries and cities through providing transportation, hostels, and other amenities under one price. That night they were holding a sale, starting at 10:30 PM at an Irish pub, where you could sign up for trips at a discounted price, first come first served. Lauren, Liv and I went with the intention of signing up for a couple trips, but being the geniuses that we are, we decided to get to the pub at 9 PM to beat the crowd. A man came and wrote our names down so that we would be first on the list! Trust, we felt pretty good about that and there are a lot of things worse than hanging out with your best friends for a couple hours in a pub :)

When it started to get closer to 10:30 PM, FLOCKS of students began to enter the building and it honestly became so chaotic and crowded that we gave ourselves a big old pat on the back for staking out the ground. Our names were called first and we were able to book two trips on a discount, despite getting some feisty looks and a lot of students breathing down our necks. We practically skipped home we were so excited.

The rest of the week really flew by; suddenly it was Thursday afternoon and we were packing up to head to Interlaken, Switzerland! We went on the trip through Bus2Alps, so we went and boarded the coach bus at 7 PM that night. The bus ride wasn’t too bad… until we reached the last 30 minutes. Looking at the map, it looks like a kid took a marker to it and that’s how they designed the roads. I was hanging onto my seatbelt for dear life as our supposedly fearless bus driver WHIPPED us through the mountains. Since it was dark out, we couldn’t see the roads or mountains so every jolting turn was a shock and I think there was some universal motion sickness. We arrived at our hostel around 3 AM and after a thorough bed bug check, we slept for about 4 hours until we were up at 7 AM and getting ready to ski. We quickly ate (where there are plenty of cold-cuts and cheese for breakfast) and then headed over to the ski shop to get our gear. After 2 hours (!) of everyone getting their snow pants, jackets, boots, helmets, gloves, and skis, we finally were ready to shred the Alps. Somehow Olivia, Rivers and I ended up getting our skis last and we ended up missing the bus, so we put our independence to the test. After catching the public bus, where I actually got separated from Olivia and Rivers on accident, I boarded a train, and then eventually a gondola, which takes you up the mountain.

When I finally arrived at the top of the mountain, I was greeted by my wonderful friends who were waiting for me to arrive. I was immediately in awe of the alps the second I was sitting in the gondola. For those who don’t know, I pretty much taught myself how to ski in 7th grade after all my friends signed up for ski club. I immediately became obsessed with skiing and would always have so much fun, romanticizing the Wisconsin slopes and pretending I was skiing the Alps. I then went on to joining ski team in high school, where although I wasn’t exactly the best (proud JV team member), I had a blast every single practice and race, despite it being in the negatives almost every time. I could not wrap my head around the fact that I was now traveling up the Swiss Alps to ski! My dream trip was really happening in front of my eyes. The ski conditions were perfect, sunny with fresh snow, although I did struggle a little bit in areas that weren’t groomed. Airpods in my ears, cycle remixes and reggae keeping the vibes going, I experienced the best skiing of my life thus far. Everywhere I looked blew my mind. We skied the Jungfrau region, which claims to be the top of Europe. The runs were extremely long, taking us an hour to two hours each time. For all my skiers, greens don’t exist either. You’re pretty much forced to start at blues right away, so I did have to swallow a little of fear. At one point we skied through a village (?) which was pretty awesome but we had no idea if we were trespassing or not (we weren’t). We eventually made it all the way up to the highest point you could go without paying an extra 100 euro, which was the Eiger summit. Immediately when we stepped out of that gondola, we wondered if we made a mistake. We were all pretty confident in our ski skills, but this felt like a whole different story. It was no longer sunny, snow was falling pretty rapidly, wind was whipping around us, and we were so far up the clouds pretty much hid the view from us. Plus, hard core skiers who wear tights and shorts and use neon ski poles were flying by us. That was definitely the hardest run we did; my legs were burning despite the amount of stops we took from the deep concentration. Overall, skiing was absolute perfection and I feel so blessed to have experienced it.

The next day we explored Interlaken a little bit, of course trying chocolate and enjoying coffee other than a cappuccino. We also decided to sign up for a chocolate fondue boat on Lake Brienz. The water was so insanely clear and clean that you can actually just drink right from it, as there are barely any fish in it. We stepped onto this little raft and a guide proceeded to row us around the lake. Little burners kept chocolate fondue warm, and we were provided strawberries, oranges, marshmallows, pretzels, and biscuits to dip. Naturally, I dropped a strawberry in the pot right away and spent my first couple minutes trying to stab it with my dipper and fish it out. I continued to spill chocolate on my jeans. We were then provided with wine and tea. You’ll never guess, but I also spilled my wine all over my jeans and table. So glad I only packed one pair of pants on this trip…

The two hour long boat ride was seriously magical. The lake was stunning, laughter was flowing, the chocolate was insanely good, and the bottles of wine seemed to be endless. Our guide was fun, telling us fun facts about Switzerland. Did you know that Switzerland has specific laws about social pets, meaning if you have a social pet you must also have a friend for it! The example he gave us was guinea pigs; if you own a guinea pig as a pet you must have two so that they can socialize and essentially live a happy life. We also learned that Switzerland is fibbing a little about the Jungfrau summit actually being the “top of Europe”, because there are two summits behind it that are actually higher up but their elevation is left off of maps. Jungfrau is accompanied with two other mountains: Eiger and Mönch. Mönch lies in the middle of the other two, symbolizing the monk protecting the virgin from the ogre, which are the English translations of the German names.

We finished out the trip by going to a bierhaus and enjoying local beers and food before going out to a weird but fun hostel basement that is also a club? Still not really sure what that was about but we had a good time. After a little bit more exploring the next day, we loaded back onto the bus and experienced some unreal views on the drive home.

We arrived back in Florence, ready for our last week of class before spring break. See you next week!

Week 3: Hello Interlaken!

Madeline Cesarz

Week 3: Hello Interlaken!

Week 4: Quick Turnaround

Week 2: Starting Class

Madeline Cesarz