Erin Miller

We had ten days off school for Spring Break. My roommate, Crissy, and I took
12 days and went on a mini-tour of Europe. We went to Gimmelwald, Switzerland,
Amsterdam, Barcelona, Girona (on accident), and Alghero and Palau on the
island of Sardegna.
We bought our train tickets to Switzerland at the train station in Perugia. We
asked very specifically if we needed to reserve a seat or a bed, and how much
that would cost, but the women in Perugia informed us that there was no way to
know what the train would look like before it arrived in Florence. So we got
our 55 Euro tickets and headed out of Perugia to Florence. When we got to the
train in Florence we were told it was full, and that we couldn’t take it to
Interlaken. The men we were talking to tried to tell us we would have to spend
the night in Florence and try again tomorrow. Apparently our 55 Euro ticket
was only a ticket and not a reservation, and thus, not worth a spot on the
train. After a brief moment of panic a woman came over and helped us figure out that for an extra 20 euro we could take the train most of the way to Interlaken and then make a few transfers and arrive in Interlaken in the morning. We were thankful to be able to get to Switzerland, we jumped on the train and slept.
(This type of situation has occurred before with the train system in Italy, as
it always seems a little disorganized. The tickets for the trains in Italy
contain very little useful information. The time the train leaves, or arrives,
or what transfers need to be made, are not written on the ticket. You must
look it up on line before leaving, or hope that the person at the ticket booth,
once asked in near perfect Italian, will be nice enough to print off an
itinerary, which is occasionally correct. )When we arrived in Switzerland (at
a Swiss train station) we were in for a pleasant surprise. When we got
off the train, we were greeted with a recording in four languages, including
English, which told us how to make our transfer and which track our next train
would be arriving on. There were digital signs along the platforms containing
the platform number, train destination, arrival and departure time. Even the
trains had digital screens ON EACH CAR with their destinations. It was so
easy, it almost felt like cheating. We returned from Spring break thankful
that the Italian system is cheap, particularly compared to the German one, but
a bit disenchanted with its services.

Gimmelwald
Upon arrival in Interlaken we took another small train to a smaller station, a bus from the station to the bottom of a gondola, and a gondola up a sheer cliff face to Gimmelwald. Gimmelwald is SMALL. Of course, it is built on a
cliff and accessible only by gondola. There are three places to sleep and one
place to eat in the whole town. The local population can’t be as high as 100.
There are a few farms with some cows that make excellent yogurt and cheese, a
brother that makes candied almonds and a sister that makes cookies. Despite my
best efforts I think that my parents must have worn off on me a bit. I think
that Gimmelwald may have been my favorite stop. I enjoyed the clubs of
Barcelona and the beeches in Sardegna, but hiking the Swiss alps was probably
my favorite. We spent two days walking in the mountains and returning to our
tiny cliff side pension in the late afternoon. The weather was glorious and I
think we got more sun drinking a beer on our balcony in Gimmelwald than
sitting on the beech in Barcelona. I spent the evening hanging out with a
crowd of Germans that were staying at the hostel next to ours. It was a group
of 30 friends who rent the place out for a week each year. I met up with them
on the middle day of their vacation which meant that groups of them were in
competition to win some prizes from the people that had organized the trip.
The competitions involved water balloons, drinking, and skits with men
clothed in dresses (notably, not the last time we would see men in dresses on
our trip). They all spoke terrific English, though I discovered that German is
actually very similar to English in its formation, and I was able to
understand a considerable bit considering I haven’t studied it a day in my
life.

Amsterdam
From Gimmelwald, we took a night train to Amsterdam. Amsterdam was a blast. The people of Amsterdam celebrate Easter with a carnival, which had a great haunted house and Ferris wheel. Weed, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and
prostitution are all mostly legal in Amsterdam. We spent some time in coffee
houses, which are establishments that sell weed at the bar (chosen and ordered
from a menu) and allow their patrons to smoke it. We met up with some of the
coolest people we would meet on our journeys while wondering in the red light
district. There were some guys running around in dresses, kilts, and costumes
(scooby doo and superman) so we started talking to them. They were a rugby
team from Cambridge, England and they invited us to their game the next day,
they said they shouldn’t lose by more than 100. So we went. They arrived in
dresses and costumes. They had toured the Heineken factory that morning and
had each “tasted” about three mugs full of beer. Their warm up consisted of
drinking a few pitchers of beer and smoking a joint. The other teams wore
things like uniforms and warm-up suits and tossed a ball and ran drills for
warm ups. The guys from Cambridge were right though, they didn’t lose by more
than 100, they only went down by 80. We spent the evening dancing with them at
the Rugby club. Then, we all headed back into Amsterdam. For the night, one
guy put on a grass skirt, and only a grass skirt, but no one in Amsterdam
seemed to notice or care — go figure. We didn’t spend ALL our time in
Amsterdam partying, Crissy and I did see the Anne Frank House which has been
made into a great museum.

Barcelona
From Amsterdam we headed to Barcelona. We took a train from Amsterdam to
Frankfurt to catch a flight out of Frankfurt. We had enough time to drink a
German beer and take a walk along the Rhine. In Barcelona, we met up with
one of my good old family friends, Sean, who is studying there. He oriented us
in the city and showed us to our hostel. We spent the first day on the beech
and ate dinner with Sean and a few of his friends in the evening. We went out
to several clubs and got back to the hostel around 5am. Crissy spent day two
on the beech, but I, being the nerd I am, went to the Catalan History Museum.
To a history major, the museum was impressive. The exhibits were explained in
four languages and covered the history of the people in the region from
nomadic hunters and gatherers to the year 2000. We ate lunch at a Tappas bar
and drank a traditional, cultural Spanish beverage, Sangria. Time passed
faster than we thought and we had to make a dash through the metro to the bus
station to try to get to the airport in time for our flight to catch our
flight to Sardenga. We took the metro to the wrong bus station, got to the
airport 7 minutes after they had closed check-in, and missed our flight.

Girona
Exhausted, we decided to take the next possible flight the next day and we
took a bus from the airport to the nearest city, Girona. Girona provided a
relaxing break from our hectic travel schedule. The town is beautiful, full of
intellectuals and students. The modern city with the train station is
separated from the historic center by a river. I went to a Jewish museum
which explained the destruction of the Jewish quarter of the city during the
crusades. I also visited the Cathedral, which sits some 900 steps from the main
square. It has more steps than any Cathedral in the world. I also walked along
the impressive city walls, which had been converted into a park. We were
finally able to eat some traditional Spanish paella for lunch. We left Girona
in PLENTY of time to make it to the airport.

Sardegna
We arrived in Alghero, a major city on the north-west corner of Sardegna. We
wondered along the city walls (a pattern) which bordered the sea and ate a welcome-back-to- Italy pizza. Early the next day we headed to Palau. We stayed in a Bungalow at
a camping village on a beech. The atmosphere was friendly, relaxing, down to
earth, and not at all touristy. Unfortunately, after great weather during our
entire trip, as soon as we arrived in Palau, famous due to its world-
renowned beeches, it started to rain. It rained for the full two days we were
there. We spent one day hiking around the nearby La Maddalena Archipelago,
where Garibaldi, the famous liberator of Italy, and Bill Gates both visited
frequently. Garibaldi died on the island. We also spent lots of time talking
to some local fisherman and the families of the men that run the camp sight,
as we all spent lots of time in the restaurant at the camp sight in order to
get out of the rain.
We left the island late Monday night on a night ferry and were back in Perugia
in time for classes Tuesday, but in desperate need of a vacation.