A night of Swiss Italian mischief

This post should actually have taken place on July 29, sorry for the delay. =(


Heading to the bar, it all started with "Guys, bring your bathing suits tonight, we may go for a surprise swim." What does he mean, a surprise swim? How can a swim be a surprise?

What we didn't realize was that the swim wasn't going to be a surprise for us, but for the owners of the pool. Tim, Gustavo's friend, knows of a place where there is a luxury pool for rich bankers or something like that, and we are going to get drunk and sneak past the security guards to go for a 2 am swim. Sounds like fun! Well we managed to sneak past the guards alright, but when we got to the pool and started swimming with open bottles of vodka and tequila, practicing our dives in the shallow end and doing backflips off the railings, I guess we made a bit too much noise. Oooooops. The guards came and told us to bug off or he'd call the cops. "Du bist soo BORRRRING!" Here are some pics.

Dennis "can't" swim!

Dives and backflips? More like belly flops and back flips!

So after that, we decided our fun wasn't over yet, so Tim showed us to a kids play area where the floor was made up entirely of trampolines. Of course, we had to scale an 8 foot fences to get there, while watching out for the guard in his car doing a circuit around the park. This part was right out of some spy movie, I swear. When the car highbeams come into sight, someone hisses something in Italian and everyone drops to the ground and tries to remain as still as possible, or crawl on their bellies around the corner of some building and to peer around it and see if the coast is clear. We finally managed to get everyone over the fences without making TOO much noise.

Holding the fence to muffle the sound while Tim climbs over.

Although I insist that I should stand guard and play the tourist ignorance card (I don't know what cop would fall for THAT: "Uh sir, we didn't know we weren't allowed to climb those two fences and jump on the trampoline in the middle of the night"), Tim assures me that he is well known to the guard of the complex and my clever ruse wouldn't work. So Gustavo, Dennis and I climb another fence to get into the trampoline area, and proceed to jump recklessly high and crash into each other repeatedly. Tim and Michaela stay back to watch for the guard and warn us when he comes around. Since my italian is about as good as my bowstaff skills (credit to Ryan Pallett for that one), as soon as we hear anything in Italian, the agreed-upon action is to drop to the trampoline like a sack of potatoes. Of course, the nature of a trampoline is to bounce sacks of potatoes back into the air, so I don't know how effective that plan was. But it was the best we had at that point in the night. Soon enough, some local dude comes by and tells us to leave (agaaain) or he'll call the cops. "Du bist so BORRRRRING!"

So we headed to the lakeshore to finish off the alcohol and "sober up".

I don't remember what game this was, but it's a nice pose!

Having a smoke in the middle of the road at the end of the night.

I think we got home at something like 5 or 6 am, and we had to wake up at 8 because Gustavo was leaving for Leeds. I don't know how he did it, being all awake and sober to pack. I barely managed to walk out of the house and sit down on the side of the road to wait for a hitch! Thus the earlier post on hungover hitchhiking.

See ya's later!

Life is volleyball

So for any of you out there considering doing some kind of travel...stop considering it, and just do it!! Especially to Tubingen.

Early last week we found out about a place in Tubingen called the 'Freibad'. This is pretty much a soccer area/beach volleyball courts/climbing wall/ping pong area/heaven/fields to work on your tan/gigantic waterpark (with 50m pool, 25m pool, diving boards and platforms of all sizes, and water slides to boot...GOOD water slides where you can do spinsies and threesies and races and no lifeguards threaten to throw you out). A place like this in Canada might cost you $20 or $25 dollars for entry...here, a mere €1.40. I repeat. A place like this in Canada might cost you $20 or $25 dollars for entry...here, a mere €1.40. That's no international punctuational (huh?) mistake, I really mean 1 euro and 40 cents. Have I mentioned yet how cheap beer is? I'll get to that.

I'll get to it right now, actually, with a handy dandy side story in the grocery store: Ryan's mouth LITERALLY dropped open when we did a quick calculation to find out that cheap German beer is about 5 to 6 times less expensive than $1 beer in Canada, and as I'm sure you can imagine, low quality German beer and low quality Canadian beer can not even be measured on the same scale.

Back to volleyball: Our lives for the past week have consisted of sleeping, eating, drinking (the beer is too cheap NOT to drink), and VOLLEYBALL. "20% Chance of rain today...100% chance of VOLLEYBALL!" can be heard at least once daily. I usually say it three or four times, just for kicks. Sometimes I vary the percentage chance of rain, but percentage chance of volleyball remains at 100%. How unimaginative.

So we'll head to the Freibad sometime in the early afternoon each day, play volleyball until we are caked in sweat and sand and our arms are bruised and swollen and my left hip sorta-dislocates, and then we head over to the swim park and Ryan and I have slide races and try for double spinsies on corners and do all sorts of silly tricks like head to head and foot to foot (and head to ass once by accident, that wasn't cool...mostly because it was my head and Ryan's ass) that usually ends up with me bashing my head on the slide at some point or another...what fun! I guess the ridiculous part is the only people who use the slide more frequently than us are 10 year olds. WHATEVER, we could outrace them anyday.

Sooo um yeah, if you're worried about us, don't be! Other than my eventual hospitalization due to an over-stressed hip joint, we're having a G-rate time! And as I said earlier...get off your ass and travel!!

Gustavo the mountain goat

"I have a lot of packing and other things to get done while you're here, so I apologize in advance that I can't show you around as much as I'd like," Gustavo warns us when we arrive in Lugano, south Switzerland for a visit. Alright, no problem, we have been wandering around most cities without a guide so far this trip, so why should Lugano be any different?

Of course, what Gustavo MEANT was "I am going to show you the most awesome places in Ticino (the Italian part of Switzerland) and then apologize that I couldn't show you more." Yeah right! First stop was Valle Maggia, a spot on one of the mountain rivers that had some slower currents to swim in, with beaches and lots of Swiss German tourists! "It didn't used to be like this, with all these tourists," Gus assures us, and promises to take us to a place only he and his friends know about later. I was already impressed!

Valle Maggia, the illin' and chillin' beach by the mountain river in the Swiss Alps. Unfortunately you can't see the beach in this picture.

Next stop was on the side of the highway between two nearby villages...time for a little bit of offroading!

Offroading: a.k.a. climbing down a mountain valley, using any obstacle in your path to slow your descent!

We follow Gus through a Mr. Rogers-esque landscape, into valleys and over moss-covered rocks, under trees and through rivers, up waterfalls and ... down other waterfalls.

Following Gus the sure-footed mountain goat like a pack of lemmings. (Are two lemmings a pack?) We crossed ground that I wouldn't think was passable if Gusti wasn't leading us!

Dennis and I are impressed with the wicked-awesome waterfalls.

So impressed we jump off them. Gustavo isn't sure how deep they are, so he advises us not to pencil dive.

We spent several hours trekking through jaw-droppingly beautiful Swiss landscapes, ice-cold and crystal clear Swiss mountain streams, surrounded by lush Swiss botanicals. What a paradise!

Dennis and Gus posing on boulders.

Dennis in the ice cold jacuzzi. How long can YOU last??

Afterwards, Gustavo showed us the secret forest location of their old outdoor psychadelic parties! COOL!

Psychadelic party field, doubling as the helicopter-water-fill-up-point. Do not swim! Yeah right.

Stereotypical postcard Swiss landscapes...how much do these cottages cost?! I want one!

Later on, Gus drove us up to Monte Bre, the highest peak in the vicinity for a great view and a Swiss Rivella, the national soft drink. The way up was quite entertaining, with roads that can barely be considered wide enough for one car used as a two way road, and the eventual change from paved city roads to pebbly "offroading", while zigzagging up 180 degree turns every few hundred metres on quite a fearsome slope! Does that even make sense? Anyways, here's the view:

The view.

The much more entertaining part of the trip was the way down! Gustavo has spent the majority of his young life in those hills, and he knows them like he knows music: VERY well. If you thought Gustavo was cool before, wait until you're whipping around 180 degree turns on tiny roads in the Swiss Alps at 70 kph (it SOUNDS slow, but if those roads were in Canada I think the limit would be 20) with Prodigy pumping bass into your skull!! What a rush.


Here is a video of some of the fun:

"I think between the three of us, we could fend off any other hobo packs."

That was one of Dennis' infamous quotes after the night of our fire party with Salvi outside of Basel. See post: 'The life of a hobo' for some background story on that.

But I promised I would fill you in on fire party, so here goes!

The party was taking place in a protected conservation area in the middle of a forest outside of a small town called Lausen, half an hour from Basel. As I mentioned before, Salvi drew us a map of the area, and how to get to the party (I really should take a picture of the map, it's a thing of beauty on its own). So we end up hiking through some forest for about half an hour, not really sure where we are or if we'll ever find anyone, when we finally come upon a clearing in the forest. Soon we find a rather large pile of logs soaked in gasoline (10 litres, to be exact), and assume we must be in the right place. Salvi and his gang were hanging out in the trees not too far off, having a smaller BBQ fire and some music and lights running from a small portable generator.

After some introductions and drinks, it's time to light the fire! The die-hards headed down into the clearing to start up the blaze, and the rest of us stayed at the lip of the clearing for a better view. After a failed attempt at a fireball, someone lit a small stick and tossed it on the pile. KABOOOM, the shockwave could be felt all through your body, and we were almost 150 metres away!! Salvi was ecstatic, running around the fire and cheering. I don't blame him, he spent two days cutting down enough logs to burn!

Boom! View from 150 metres away. Those flames are probably about 15 feet high.

The party moved down towards the fire, but we couldn't sit closer than 20 feet because of the heat of the fire! I have never seen a fire so hot before...at one point, the rocks in the embers started exploding! More on that later.

Cooking sausages was quite a challenge, since if you got this close to the fire, it felt like your face was burning off. Luckily, this Swiss guy was drunk enough to do it for us.

He was also drunk enough to start firewalking. At least he had his shoes on the first few times! Then he dared anyone to try it bare foot...and stepped up to his own challenge. Someone suggested wetting his feet in a pool of mudwater, so after a 10 minute swim (more what I would call a wallow), he proceeded to walk over the burning logs of this ridiculously hot fire naked down to his boxers. Leaping out the other side, he realized with dismay that one of his toes was on fire, but not until someone informed him of that fact.

As the night went on, more and more people went home to their beds in the surrounding towns. The three of us (Dennis, Ryan and myself), having nowhere else to go, were determined to stay up and party with Salvi and his close friend the whole night through. Unfortunately sleep eventually overtook us, and we found a comfy spot in the rocky dirt next to the fire, trying to keep warm. The fun part was when the rocks in the fire started exploding like popcorn. Ryan comments that he noticed shrapnel hitting his head, and whizzing past his face while he slept. He thought at first that someone was throwing stones at him. Dennis was a bit more unlucky. While he was sleeping, a red hot rock exploded and landed on his stomach, leaving a hardcore burn scar. When he woke up in pain and brushed it away, Salvi informed him "We are throwing rocks into the fire...it is very dangerous." So Dennis went back to sleep. I love Salvi.

We woke with the first light of dawn, about 6 am. To "help us wake up", Salvi threw a pack of firecrackers into the fire. Did I mention that we were standing about 5 feet away at the time? After running madly for cover, we managed to clean up the campsite a bit. Ryan, finding a full, unopened beer bottle, asked if anyone wanted some beer. "Give the fire a beer!" Salvi insists. Ryan complied, and we watched as the bottle cracks and beer foams out into the fire...fairly unimpressive, so we went about our business. A few minutes later, when no one expected it, the beer explodes with a hail of glass shards raining down all around the fire, where we're still cleaning. "F***ING COOL!" Salvi proclaims, in a typical Salvi-an fashion. I was still crouching 10 feet away covering my face from any errant glass shards...but yeah...cool. We continued cleaning in the same fashion, throwing everything with the potential for neat explosions onto the fire...you know, old lighters and stuff like that. I don't think I've ever run from a fire covering my head so often.

Insane.

This is all that was left of the giant bonfire the next morning. Ow @ the exploding rocks.

Yeah, so the next day is pretty much summed up in my post about the life of a hobo...we helped Salvi clean up the rest of his equipment and walked it to his place. At that point, we realized we had nowhere to go at 8 am anyway, so we went back to the fire, took our pants off, and considered building some kind of lean-to for a permanent hobo residence on the conservation. I'll see if I can put up some of the videos from that day, they're fairly entertaining.

Later days!

Jeff

A series of visits extolled through pictures.

Given that my primary reason for returning to Europe was to visit all the friends I promised I would someday visit, I thought I should at least upload some of the pics we've had catching up with old friends! I'll do my best to keep them chronological...

Dennis sleeping for the majority of our two and a half days in Amsterdam.

Visiting Celine at Madurodam in the Netherlands =)

Made it to Tübingen, our first hitchhiking destination! Having some drinks with Sonja and Nadine.

When we told Sonja we were planning on hitching to Zürich next, she decided to join us! The Swiss are very patriotic, as you can probably tell.


"Baking" a pizza with some sidewalk chalk in Zürich. Why did we have sidewalk chalk? Because it was only 2 Francs! EVERYTHING is a good deal if its 2 Francs!

Next hitch stop: Überlingen. Partying with Miri, Lena and Lilli!


Dennis playing in the rain like a bit of a homo.

I FINALLY made it to Switzerland to see Gustavo again, he was quite upset I never made it last year. That's his house in the background on the hill overlooking the whole of Lugano. Yeah, that's a cow in his backyard. Awesome!

Hitchhiking to Basel to hang out with Martina and her friend Michelle. Problem: All stores are closed on Swiss holidays, so we had to walk across the border into Germany to buy our booze. This is us calculating how much we were each allowed to bring back across the border into Switzerland. We got just enough: too much.

The only university I know that fashions its clothing after alcohol. Quality education indeed!

The result of all that alcohol was a midnight swim in the Rhine, the river running through Basel with a hearty current. At one point in the night, Ryan suggested going for a leisurely jump off the bridge, and Michelle cleverly countered: "I'll do it only if everyone does it!" ...so we all did it. If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it?? As I said, it was clever.

Taking our clothes off and standing on the bridge for 15 minutes attracts quite a crowd! They wanted to see if we'd survive the jump.

Ryan and Dennis prepping for the 20 metre+ drop.

Wet, tired, sore-assed from a poor landing, but exhilarated! Let's do that again!

Bis später!
Jeff

A stranger is just a friend you haven't met.

If there was a slogan for hitchhiking, this would have to be it!

WHAT a rush. I can't even begin to describe how much fun it is to stand on the side of a road for hours at a time, boiling hot, dehydrated, and dancing my ass off for a simple ride down the street. Some people pay to go dance in a club, I say it's more fun on the sandy shoulder of a well-driven highway! Sure, most people think you're insane (they may not be entirely wrong), and all the people at the local bus stop point and stare, but the laughs and smiles you can evince from a few of those people are well worth it! My favourite are the motorcyclists, they always seem to have a good sense of humour when I suggest two more passengers with bags almost as big as ourselves!

Dennis the artiste...severely hungover. Do not hitch while hungover. Uncool.

On the side of a motorway heading to Tubingen. No probs!

So I keep forgetting where I left you off at on our travels...I promise I will fill in a few stories soon! One time we got dropped at a gas station on the wrong side of the Autobahn...and I know it's illegal to cross the highway on foot back home, so I just assumed it wouldn't be much easier on a road with no speedlimit. Cars that were on the horizon 20 seconds ago zoom past with what I swear should classify as a shockwave. After about 5 minutes of trying to gauge ridiculously fast traffic, I assume that my mother would rather me find another way across.

Lucky that I happened to spy a bridge we crossed over about 500 metres back in the direction we came, maybe we could cross under the road. And so we were off!

Off to find a safe way across the Autobahn.

True blue, we found the bridge and waddled down through some thick and spiky foliage to get to...a barbed wire fence. Awesome.

But barbed wire fences can't stop us! Dennis, pass me my bag!

Passing under the bridge, we ran into another problem on the opposite side...

Shit, how are we going to scale a GATE with our bags??

...Oh.

So that was that story. I thought the pictures did a pretty good job there. We actually ended up getting a lift before we even put the name of the city on our sign. We put our bags down on the grass at the gas station, opened up our maps and Roegen pulled up asking us (in German, of course) if we wanted a lift! Score!!

Another random story: we hitchhiked from Lugano to Basel and met Salvi, a super cool Swiss German dude who was heading our way and was kind enough to give us a lift!

Salvi and his "piss light".

Salvi is pretty much the epitome of the quote I have in the title of this post. Within a few minutes of our drive, I already considered him a friend and a really cool dude. Sporting dreadlocks, a reggae drum hanging from his rearview mirror, and a hilarious laugh, Salvi has to be one of the nicest and most unique people I have met on the road! Since August 1 is a national holiday in Switzerland, Salvi was throwing a huge forest party outside of Basel with music, drinks, meat, and a huuuuge bonfire. He told us about all the fun his friends had at those parties in the past, and drew us a map so we could join in on the fun-making! Awesome! But the events of that night are much too entertaining to be recorded in this post, so you will have to wait a few days!

Alright that's it, I'm done for now!

Ok, one more pic so you know we haven't lost our sense of humour. What? That's not funny?? ...Says you.

The best way to learn how to swim...

is to jump off the deep end and hope for the best!

Ain't that the truth. Whether it's working for a fast-paced technology company, learning a foreign language, taking up a new sport or hobby, or jumping out of a plane (perhaps a bit more literally), the only way to really find out if you've got what it takes is to stop wondering and start doing. You can spend five years in school learning all you want to learn, or asking all the questions you want that you think will prepare you for what is to come, but the real test of your mettle comes when the kettle starts to boil. Does that make sense? Whatever, balls to the walls, lets find out if we sink or swim!!

The life of a hobo

Some may say that for the past few days, we have lived the lives of homeless bums. They would be right. But I would also add that we have explored new frontiers, challenging all those societal precepts that one wouldn't think to question until he absolutely must. And we have subsisted, at the very least.

Us subsisting on the side of a road...we literally stood/crouched here for about 15 minutes wondering what we were doing with our lives...and where we were going to sleep that night.

I will give you an example. When you have the option of sleeping on a dry patch of rocky ground or say, in a mud pit, most people would choose the rocky ground. But after a few nights on rocky ground, you may find that it's not quite what it was cracked up to be. And...if you are a bum, and have no one to impress with your appearance and general odour...who would be upset if you were covered in a little mud? Is a good nights sleep worth what those civilized people call being "NOT covered in mud"? That is a question that I cannot answer you yet, because we found a hotel before that line was crossed. But I tell you, I was eyeing that mud puddle.

Dennis napping near (but not IN) a mud puddle in the middle of a restricted conservation area. Note his proximity to the ditch...it adds just a touch of class.

Natural hobo deodorant...I love the smell of lilacs.

I don't remember if I've kept you in the loop about our recent activities, but we've been hitchhiking around Germany and Switzerland for the past few weeks, and we recently met up with Ryan, a good Canadian buddy of mine that I met in Leeds. We've been hanging around in Basel for the past few days, and as Dennis so adequately put it: "If anyone could see all the things we've been doing around Basel, I think they would ask us to leave." Starting with not paying for trams, bumming around the city with our packs, sleeping outside in front of hostels, eating whole chickens outside the grocery store with our bare hands, illegally jumping off of bridges into the Rhine, swimming in forbidden areas, entering/consuming alcohol/sleeping on protected conservation areas (in the dirt, no less), and playing "threesies" with the local hotels (i.e. squeezing three people into a two person room)...well, I guess that's enough.

The always classy "if-you-can't-get-a-room-in-the-hostel-try-
sleeping-outside-until-they-have-pity-on-you" trick...it didn't work. (Are you kidding? We had a room booked at the hostel...I think we were just too lazy to check in.)

Ok, I really do have to write an email to the fam, so I'll fill you in on our trip to Lugano with Gustavo and the aforementioned forest party later.

Later!

Update: I'll try this video uploader thing, see how it works.