Kyle Hepp

August 28, 2009

Yes, the country of Switzerland is now mine.

We have been in Geneva for the past week and it’s been lovely. The city is beautiful and so historic I almost can’t believe it. In the U.S. we simply don’t have anything that can even compare to the ancient-ness. Is that a word? It is now.

I mean, today, my cousin took us to a little town on the coast of Lake Geneva called Yvoice. It’s basically a medieval village that has been so well preserved or restored that you can practically feel the villagers walking around with the bubonic plague.

Anyway, I’ll have more on that with photos later. If you’ve noticed, we’ve been posting quite a bit lately. I say “we,” because Seba’s been helping me do pictures and videos, which means everything takes me way less time than it used to. Half to be exact. We’ve just been taking uploading the photos and pre-publishing them so that I feel like anyone who wants can keep up with the trip, I can share all the beauty that we’re seeing, yet we don’t have to be on the computer all the time. This is really the first time, aside from the tattoo post which I put up on spur of the moment (thanks for all the genius ideas, by the way), that I am coming to you in real time.

Yes, I am sitting here, right now, in front of the computer to tell you — I <3 Switzerland — and Europe in general, it seems.

A few things I’ve noticed about the Swiss people that I’ve seen in my few days here:

Swiss are sporty! Everyone bikes all over the place and you see ridiculous amounts of fit people jogging all the time. Seba and I took one bike ride while we were here, and while we were coming back, dripping sweat, wheezing, struggling up a humungous hill, a 40 year old passed by us, wearing high heels and a pretty dress, not exerting herself at all. Start this Scrubs video at minute 2:50 and you will get what I mean. To have an idea of the ridiculosity you HAVE to see this video.

Imagine that we are JD and this Sporty Swiss is Elliot. Except that Elliot is steering her bike with one AND SMOKING AT THE SAME TIME! These Swiss are out of control.

The next big thing both Seba and I noticed — as the Diet Coke campaign in Chile would say, “La vida es una pasarela,” or life is a runway. Everyone dresses incredibly well. And everyone looks like they should be on TV. I can’t even count the number of people we’ve seen where one of has said, “WOW. That girl should be a model.” I’ve never felt more like a giant, fat, frumpy American in my life. And we’re not even to France or Milan Fashion Week yet. AHHHH!

Oh, and going back to the way these Swiss people look — in case you were wondering, they’re not all blond. They seem to have an incredibly diverse population, although in large part that may be because we’re in Geneva which is home to the headquarters for a ton of major international organizations.

What else? Well, people are friendly, but not extremely. They’re polite. Most are nicer when I try to speak the miniscule bit of French that I know. Seba knows a lot more than me but he doesn’t speak. To people of the human race. Ever. Not even in Chile. So I guess I couldn’t really expect him to start gabbing with complete strangers in a language he hasn’t truly been exposed to since he was three.

Well, we are off to Munich tomorrow on The World’s Most Expensive Fastest Train. Scratch that. It’s not one of those speedy trains or anything. I just wanted to have the chance to point out how much the damn thing cost. Since the bus line that used to go from Geneva to Munich shut down, we were forced to pay the exorbitant sum of $339 dollars for both of our train tickets. That’s more than we spent on flights around Europe for the rest of our trip for 5 different cities. Ridic, I tell you. Europe is expensive. But, I am prepared. I have it all budgeted out so we’re ok as long as we don’t have to take too many more stupid train trips.