Destination I: Zurich, Switzerland

First Aid Kit performing "Coming Home"...

Jose Gonzalez performing "Heartbeats"...

Just me getting crafty with the camera and St. Peter's...

A street side view of the Limmat River with St. Peter's in the background...

Kenny and I on our way to M4...

The Grossmünster, which is one of the most famous churches in Zurich. Today it is used as by the theological department of the university... Plus a cool statue!

St. Peter's clock-face. It is supposed to be the largest clock-face in Europe, measuring in at 28.5 feet in diameter. I would say I'd seen bigger, but I would probably be wrong... It just didn't seem that big.

The St. Peter's clock-face and a really cool street lamp...

So, I just finally finished unpacking my spring break suitcase... It has been sitting in the corner taunting me for the past week. Some rest and recuperation was much needed after my long Italian getaway; it felt like I went non-stop for a week and a half straight! The first stop on my vacation from vacation was Zurich, Switzerland.

I left Prague at 18:00 on Thursday night and boarded my 15 hour train to Zurich. I shared a sleeper cabin with five men: two French and three German. Interesting. I pretty much slept for the full 15 hours because silly me brought only my iPod as a form of entertainment. Friday morning I woke up, got ready, and situated my things... then I headed to the dining car to try and snag something to eat. (I hadn't had anything since the previous morning... I thought I was going to miss my train and was thus too nervous to stop before.) The men working the dining car had quite the senses of humor. After finally snagging a cup of coffee and some OJ one of them walked me to my seat and gave me a tour of Switzerland from the train. I am pretty sure this was special treatment because everyone else in the car was looking at me strangely. As the train pulled into the Zurich station I couldn't get off quick enough. It was about 9:00, and I had about nine hours to wait for Kenny's train to arrive. I started my day by finding our hostel and getting us checked in. Then I went out to explore. I covered the entire downtown area, all the major sights, and the main shopping district in about two hours. What to do, what to do? It started to rain so I popped into a local bookstore thinking I could purchase a book. I was wrong. Switzerland is ridiculously expensive, and I couldn't find a book for less than 30 USD. Oh well. I tricked the bookstore by grabbing a random off the shelf and just reading it there in the store. After an hour or so I headed out again. I think I found four H&M's that afternoon. Its a shame I couldn't buy anything, but I enjoyed window shopping. My next stop was McDonald's... yeah, yeah I know. I thought it may be cheap compared to the other places I had been passing. Wrong again. A Big Mac (not like I would ever eat one, just trying to get a point across) was 13 USD. Are you serious? How do people live in this place?! I settled on the value meal and snagged a cheeseburger and small drink for about 5 USD... then I sat and listened to music while enjoying the figure skating being played on the television. Finally I had killed enough time, and I could head towards the train station to pick up Kenny!

There were three trains getting in from Basel with in a 15 minute time frame. Of course Kenny's had to be the last one... I spotted him through the crowd and ran towards him. It hadn't been too long since he'd been in Prague, but no matter how short the time between visits is, I always feel like its been forever. We headed to the hostel so Kenny could drop off his stuff. I showed him around a little, and then we got dinner. The most amazing dinner at this place by our hostel called The Spaghetti Factory. Yummy! After dinner we headed back to the hostel and got ready for the M4 music festival. It was amazing! I was mainly only interested in seeing Jose Gonzalez and First Aid Kit. Neither disappointed. We were able to be front row for both performances, and they were both incredible. My favorite part was when First Aid Kit played their song "Ghost Town" unplugged. It sounded incredible; it was just as good as their album version, if not better. After the concert we headed back to the hostel and went to bed.

The next morning we woke up and got all of our stuff together. Then we headed out to explore the city. I showed Kenny just about everything I had seen the day before. Then we grabbed some sandwiches and headed down to Lake Zurich. We sat at the lake for a while and enjoyed the sandwiches and clouds. We went walking again and stumbled upon my favorite kind of window shopping... the stuff I really can't afford! Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Tiffany & Co. and the list goes on. Then it started raining again so we headed to Starbucks and had some coffee. After our coffee we thought we would attempt going to the zoo, so we hopped on a tram and headed in that direction. Just like everything else in Switzerland it was a rip off, so we changed our minds. Instead, we headed back to the hostel and played a game of chess. Before we knew it, it was time to catch our train to Milan, Italy. So-long Switzerland!