Swiss Chocolate

It’s officially midterms week here in France. I’ll admit, this has been the least stressed I’ve ever been over midterms in my life considering that I only have one test (on Wednesday) for my seven classes. Albeit, I’ve had to do a few presentations in the past two weeks—business French, marketing, and organizational behavior—which has taken up the bulk of my time, now I’ve got Spain on my mind. The weather in France has taken a turn for the worse in a matter of days. I feel like we skipped fall and went straight to winter; I’ve had to turn the heater on in my studio. Luckily fall break is coming up and I leave for Spain on Friday. The forecast for Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona looks very promising. I’m very excited about everything, especially the food! First, I need to be able to get to Paris. The ongoing strikes have been way more than I expected. Gas stations have either been closed because they don’t have any gas or have been full of cars. Gare Lille Flandres is a zoo. There’s only one door that’s unlocked and the police are guarding that door heavily. Over the past few days things have gotten better. At the beginning of the week, there was one TGV for every two. Then yesterday it was two for every three, and today there are three for every four. I’ve been looking at the EasyJet website as well as the SNCF website to make sure my plane and train are on time; I’m actually rather lucky that both of my have been unaffected by the strike.

The term “life changing experience” seems to be thrown around freely these days, but since the last post, I really had a life changing experience. The last time we left off, there was a picture of the Verzasca Dam. Since then, I’ve taken the plunge down from there, only a quick 220 meters down. Needless to say, it was the greatest experience of my life. What made it better was the fact that it was in Switzerland, perhaps the most beautiful country in the world. Furthermore, what made the trip to Switzerland better was the hectic journey to get there. The Verzasca Dam is located in the southern tip of Switzerland on the Italian border. In order to get there, I needed to take the first TGV from Lille to Paris, hope on a plane to Milan, where I met Alex and Ryan, then took two trains to Switzerland. In total, I traveled nine hours that day to get where I needed to go. It was worth it. Even from the train you can see the pristine lakes splitting the Alps. The little town of Locarno definitely exceeded my expectations. I came in expecting a tourist town full of tourists. I couldn’t be anymore wrong. This was a typical Swiss town with boats, expensive cars, and really nice people. On that note, Switzerland is very expensive. I knew that Switzerland is expensive, but just like the dam I definitely underestimated the magnitude. The picture below explains it all. Oh yeah, a Swiss Franc is almost equivalent to a US dollar.

Now to the jump. There really aren’t words to describe the jump and the hours leading up to the jump. We were already so excited and full of adrenaline, but we decided to hydrate with some Red Bull and PowerAde beforehand, just in case. When we first got a glimpse of the dam, it was nothing like I expected it to be. This is a little bit of an exaggeration, but I actually underestimated its size by about 100 meters or so; it’s that big. Once we were up on the dam, it was really windy, but the views were stunning. We had an appointment, but in Europe, time doesn’t really matter, so we had to wait about an hour before we jumped. That one hour, however, seemed like an eternity. When it was our turn to jump, everything seemed to fly by. When we were getting our safety lesson, I really wasn’t listening to the man talk because I was just way too excited. Once on that platform, my mind went blank. Then the actual jump. It takes seven seconds to take the 220 meter plunge. Aside from the first second when you realize that you’re jumping from something really high AND that there’s nothing to stop you, it is actually the most peaceful and calm thing I’ve ever done. I thought I was jumping for about five minutes and I had this amazing high. I think my favorite part of the jump was just yelling randomly at the bottom of the dam and hearing this loud echo. There’s so much more that I could say about this jump, but I’ll just let you look at some pictures. 

My last trip was an Oh My Globe! sponsored trip to Reims and Champagne. I haven’t been on a lot of trips in France, which I would like to do more of because there’s so much language and culture in this country. Nonetheless, on the trip we tasted different champagne and visited the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Reims, where French kings were crowned. The church has a striking resemblance to Notre Dame in Paris. The churches are not only similar in name alone, but in their overall architecture.  

 

The last thing I’m going to talk about today is something that I consider a big accomplishment for me here in France: getting a haircut. Now, in France, I’ve opened a bank account, got healthcare and social security, traveled during train strikes, and done presentations in French, but for me, all these things seem so easy in comparison to getting a haircut. All these other things use everyday colloquial vocabulary; well they utilize vocabulary that’s essential to every business major in a French school. Getting a haircut is different though. How often am I going to use the word hair clippers or other haircut vocabulary? For those of you wondering the word for hair clippers in French is the same thing as lawn mower: pelouse. In the end, my hair was becoming a Chia Pet and I needed a haircut, and got one.

First French protest.