Welcome to Switzerland

I just spent 6 USD on two cheeseburgers. Am I out of my mind?

Not quite the welcome I was expecting in Zurich. A little bit of research later and I come to find out it was on the top 5 most expensive cities...in the world. Brutal.

Despite that, the atmosphere here is COMPLETELY different than Germany. The people here are all dressed much more fashionably, you can't go two inches without seeing a man dressed in a full on suit. The woman sport much more makeup and tighter fitting clothes. Judging from peoples body language and hard looks I feel that money, power, and physical attractiveness are very important here.

After checking in at the hostel Matt and I realized we had a serious issue. We were going to run out of money. Zurich was going to do some serious damage to our wallets on food alone, the lodging was a whole new story. So what do college students do when we run out of money for rent? Sleep on peoples couches. Enter couchsurfing.com, the holy grail for broke vagabonds across the world. Matt and I spent the night creating a profile and trying to find somewhere for us to sleep...Our phone ends up ringing after about two hours of perusing, a woman whos name I have forgotten while writing this offers to put our entire group of 5( Eilis, Matt, Myself, Lee, Michael) up for two days! This is great...I think. Haha. We meet up with her tomorrow evening, so if my blogs suddenly end you know where to look.

Other than meeting our host for the next few days we will be exploring all of the museums and culture we can fit into a single day. I will write again soon. Also, I have not forgotten about my Balu y du post Mr. Lucien I will write it ASAP.

-Billy
It has been awhile since I last blogged, here is the catchup:

Munich was wild. I never knew Bavaria had so many different breweries and that all of them were excellent(I don't think my taste buds will ever adjust back, I just had a beer in Zurich and nearly spat it out). We were lucky enough to attend a brewery tour on the second night in Munich which allowed us to experience all of the differing brewing processes, all the way from top down to bottom up. Our tour guide was Eric from North Carolina, he actually moved to Germany for the beer and has lived here for 37 years. That just goes to show you how good it really is. Did I mention it was served in liters? Have fun.

After experiencing some of the Bavarian tradition we opted to explore Fussen the next day with Tuckers family. The goal in traveling to Fussen was to hike up to the castle of Neuschwanstein, which is what the famous Disney castle is based off of. We arrived at Fussen and began our hike, we realized it was not going to be a fun trip up, maybe the brewery tour the night before was a bad idea. We powered on and made it to a waterfall near the castle. I can begin to describe the scene...It was something straight out of a storybook. Pictures later! After snapping a few photos Tucker, Matt, and I decide to run a little bit ahead of the group(well Tucker decided and Matt and I followed...I should have learned not to follow Tucker anywhere in Osnabruck). We ended up climbing an additional 50 or so feet up the side of the mountain. Did I mention that this was in no way a constructed path, and that we were clinging to roots and rocks the whole way up? Tucker is crazy and Matt and I are worse for following! But we lived to take pictures at the top, and they were definitely worth the trek up. Great experience, in fact I think that hiking was more enjoyable than actually visiting the castle.

We parted ways with Tucker and his family that evening with the promise to go to Montana with them over Christmas Break. I'm really looking to forward to that. After our goodbyes, we were able to sleep soundly knowing that we conquered Munich and were on our way to a new country in the morning.