alone in the dark

on our second day in spain, we ended up in a nature reserve where the camping season had already ended. the nice lady at the office (after we spent about an hour asking her questions about nearby hikes) said we could camp there for one night anyway, since it was obvious that we had come for "el camping." BUT, as we lay in the tent that night, we kept hearing noises in the night and i was super jumpy. we were alone in the park... or hoped we were! tooooooo scary. in the end, we decided that there was too much potential for a really bad situation. so less than two hours after the tent went up, it was folded up again and we were walking down the dark road to the next town, about 7 km away. a grim situation.

after only 15 minutes though, we came to a little bed and breakfast. we weren't sure they would be awake, but they answered the door and there was the nice lady from the park office! we heard her say to her mom, "these are the girls i was telling you about!" it was pretty hilarious, but i was so overwhelmed with relief that i didn't appreciate the humor until later. i've never been filled with such gratitude and comfort by the sight of two beds in a little cabin...

just can't get enough

day (night) 1 of our spain trip. what do you do during a one-hour layover in paris? if you're me, you run as fast as you can to falafel alley and hope desperately that you don't miss your next train... it was a crazy sprint to the marais and back, i wolfed down said falafel in seconds due to the adrenaline, and s laughed out loud at my red face, vein popping out of my forehead, and hand-fanning-face-while-saying-"la stresse! la stresse!"... but it was worth it! YUM!

updated: i stand corrected! from s: "the vein was in your neck, not your forehead! not even gaston's veins bulge in his forehead! hahahahaha!"

off again

oh goodie, more visitors! s&j are coming tomorrow, then i'm going with s on some kind of tbd adventure in northern spain. we haven't figured out yet how to balance out city/beach/nature time, but we're just going to wing it. so what about all you people who haven't visited me yet? when are you coming??

hagelslag

one of my dutch coworkers brought back a box of hageslag from amsterdam. in his words:

"Hagelslag is the Dutch contribution to world cuisine, much ignored by the rest of the world (except for decorating cakes) awaits you in the kitchenette near the espresso maker and consist of very small pieces of chocolate to be put on bread. For the uninitiated, you have to put enough butter or similar on your bread lest the chocolate pieces will fall off again. It works also great with peanut butter. Maybe next
time."

basically, they're chocolate sprinkles to be eaten with buttered bread. but oh my goodness!!! it's delicious!!! dare i say, even better than chocolate croissants! because you can control the buttery-ness and chocolatey-ness. i've eaten way too many pieces today... YUM!!!

new country

one of my aforementioned hikes was on the east side of switzerland, near a gateway city to liechtenstein. i finished hiking pretty early and figured i may never be in the area again, so i hopped on the "liechtenstein bus" and ended up on my first journey (since moving here) to a country i hadn't visited before!

but actually, it wasn't too exciting. they use swiss francs, speak a similar dialect to swiss german, and it's an open border. in fact, i tried hard both ways to spot the "welcome to liechtenstein" (or opposite) sign, to no avail. no clue where the border was. anyway, at least i can say i had a meal in a new country!

you (swiss engineers) raise me up

i've gone on three great hikes in the past couple weekends in different parts of the country. (including my first real hike in the alps -- i look at my pictures and still can't believe i was actually in such a beautiful place) all of these recent hikes involved those famed feats of swiss engineering: mountain railways and aerial lifts! i.e., cable cars, gondolas, chairlifts, and sturdy trains that go up and down impossibly steep inclines.

these rides provide stunning views and take the most difficult part out of high-altitude hikes. but even more importantly, the closed-compartment ones provided me with something i've really been missing: a place to sing at the top of my lungs!!! it's not something i can do in my quiet swiss apartment, and i don't drive here, so i've really been repressed. but not anymore! sure, the cars aren't completely sealed so people traveling the other way or people on the ground may catch a bit of it, but not nearly enough to be painful and i simply beam at them so they'll just think i'm ridiculous more than a disturber of the peace. hee hee!