Hey Party People,

After an excrutiating 17 hour day of travelling, Cadry and I have made it back to Glendale California!  We ended up not going to Greece after all and spending the last week of our trip in Switzerland, after realizing that we would eat up an extra 3 days of travel time to go to Greece.  By this point in the trip we were over trains, planes, and (in theory) boats, so we decided to chill in our favorite of the countries we had seen so far.

We spent 3 days in Lucerne, one of the most charming and beatiful cities imaginable.  Whilst there we took a train (the steepest train in the world - it ascends at a 45 degree angle) to the top of Mount Pilatus, so named for the legend of it being Pontius Pilate's burial place.  Then we moved onto Zermatt and took another train to see the Matterhorn, the real mountain which lent it's likeness to the Disneyland ride.  This was by far the most impressive sight of the entire trip.  The mountains were covered with fresh snow, and the whole area looked like it was straight out of an animated Christmas special.  I kept expecting to see the Cold Miser or the Abominable Snowman come around the mountain!

Oue final destination was Zurich, and here was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had.  We ate dinner at a restaurant called "Die Blinde Kuh", or "The Blind Cow".  This restaurant is designed to give you an idea of what it is like to be blind, and thus the entire dinner is carried out in complete blackness.  The servers and chefs are all blind or partially sighted, and we were led to our table by holding onto the shoulder of our server.  He took each of us to our chairs individually, and explained where our utensils were and what he was bringing out to us.  Then the evening carried on like any normal dinner, but with absolutely no sight!  We had to feel for our food and drinks, and were never quite sure if we were going to end up with more food on our clothes than our plates!  The experience was even more surreal since everybody else in the establishment was speaking German, so we felt completely isolated in our surroundings.  When we finally left after dinner, the light outside was so painful that we couldn't open our eyes for a few minutes, even though it was deliberately kept dim.  I highly recommend this if you are ever in Zurich, or if you come across a similar place somewhere else.

The next morning we woke up at 4:30am Zurich time to get ready to fly back to the States.  It had been an incredible trip, but we were also pretty exhausted, not to mention broke.  We did manage to hit one more country on the way out though, as we had a 90 minute layover in Deselforf, Germany.  We took advantage of the opportunity to buy a frudge magnet there so we could say we had a souvenir from every nation we visited!

Well that's all for now - I'm sure I'll be boring you with pictures and/or details when I see you in oerson!

Auf wiedersein,

David