Lunch outside the Museum

Lunch time on the lake next to the museum... We were in Luzern, just across the water. I could see all the buildings we had visited the day before.

I tried to get a lunch time picture of the other guys.

Verkhershaus

Verkhershaus. The Swiss museum of transport.

Behold! The museum bathroom!

Inside a ship...

The first ever washing machine...

And the outside of a fighter jet...

And cars and cars and cars and cars and cars!

It was awesome. The museum was divided up into four buildings with a type of transport in each one. The buildings were located on each corner of a large courtyard (filled with full size cars, trucks, airplanes, tractors, tanks, jets, howitzers, ect. Most of which you could get in to) and inside each building was a type of transportation (trains, boats, aiplanes, and cars).

In the order of visitation:

1. trains. A narrated tour/ride on the building of one of the longest Swiss train tunnel (mannequins + cheesy special effects). Several accessible train engines and cars parked inside. Lots of interactive/educational activity centers.

2. Cars. B**t load of cars. Really nice cars. Plus of course the interactive/educational activity centers (from now on I'll call them Interedactcens for simplicity sake). But mostly cars! So many really nice fancy cars! I spent a lot of time in here.

Lunch. Meat sandwiches out by the lake next to the parking lot.

3. Space/airplanes. Lots of levels and hung from the roof airplanes. A few nifty space type model things up on one level. Tons of Interedactcens here.

4. Boats. They had a full size ferry and a riverboat of some sort outside so most of the inside was dedicated to models. Shelves and shelves of model boats (and of course the now familier Interedactcens)

Touristy Things

I was awoken the second day in Switzerland at 8:30 by Schyler charging into my room intent on attacking me. We went for a walk after a breakfast of bread and cheese. So far the most surprising thing about Switzerland has been it's similarities to the U.S.

After the walk we drove into Luzern (loosern). It's a very touristy town.

Thank goodness Tallis was wearing a black shirt. I didn't feel completely out of place in my blue.

Some cool house tattoos.

And the security system on one of the fancy clothing shops in Luzern. I took this picture while we were waiting for Schyler and Tallis to get out of the Mammut shop. And then they were taking forever so we went in to get them... and they probably left the shop while we were downstairs looking for them... and so we circled blocks until we eventually found them again. It demonstrates an important principle I've noticed over here. Separated groups will lose each other.

We finished up our day trip by climbing up higher in Luzern and taking pictures. There was a cool castle wall with old watch towers that we climbed through and along. Then we headed back and tried to figure out how to get back into the underground parking lot we came out of.

Dinner that night was fondu which was really good. The Swiss ate a lot more than the Americans (all except Schyler). Lydia was there for dinner again and her friend (I can't remember her name though...) Then after dinner we sat in the living room and a whole bunch of Swiss friends came over (and I can't remember their names either). Lots of laughing and butchering of Swiss-German words (the Swiss can't believe we only know one language... they also think that and school after high school is ridiculous). Strawberry whoop'd cream desert. Sleep much later.

And I was awokened by the goats again...

Which is cool...

This is the most appropriate image from my first night at our house. Bags dumped on the floor of my room.

Schyler and his friend Lydia picked us up at the airport in the van (and they had a parking ticket from waiting for us). I slept on the drive from Zurich to the house. The highways around the house are tiny. Barely wider than one lane in America, which is ok, because most of the cars are tiny too. Franz and Emmi and super nice, but speak practically no English. Lots of pointing and smiling. Franz gave us a tour of the house, which is super cool and covered in wood paneling and quite a few stories tall. We had pizza for dinner with Lydia and Schyler doing most of the talking. We went to bed soon after dinner. Liesl showed me the amazing windows that opened both ways and then everyone went to sleep. The Woomert boys slept in one room, the Woomert girls in another and me by myself in the last bedroom.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of goat bells out in the field.

The Traveling

This was my first stop in Seattle.

Ok... These are the main impressions I got from traveling...

1). Airports are SUPER clean.

2). Airports are filled with quiet sad people.

3). Flying is scary.

Flying is still fun, but yes... much scarier than I remembered. Mostly because the planes seem so rickety. Plus when I first flew on a plane a hundred years ago I hadn't seen so many movies with exploding plane engines and breaking off wings etc. Very cool though. I think I found the roller coaster ups and downs to be more enjoyable than my traveling companions did...

Next came the wait...

wait...

wait in Seattle...

filled with cards...

and starbursts...

I will introduce my traveling companions now while I wait for the plane to London...

The one on the right is Tivoli and the one on the left is Liesl. Tallis was the one at the top in the bathroom. We were all playing Pinochle in this picture next to the Brittish Airlines boarding spot. Which was cool since there were brittish accents constantly in the background. Tivoli and I won the card game.

Then the four hours were almost up...

A quick stop before boarding...

Boarding...

On a really big plane this time...

All four of us in a row...

And what do you know... movies... a whole big old selection of movies for our entertainment.

Take off...

"How to train your Dragon" punctuated by a dinner of orange and noodles (the orange was salmon). This is actually where I discovered that while I am not at home I will eat everything no matter what it is and enjoy it. Who'd uv thunk it. We're losing an hour for every hour we travel so it is dark by now (around ten thirty). Tallis and I watch "Wolfman" which had a lot of potential and no redeeming qualities. The movie gets over and I am annoyed by the light going on and off above me. By now almost everyone on the plane is sleeping or restlessly moving about. I figure out that I have my elbow on the light button on my armrest and move it. The light above me stops turning on and off. I take my contacts out in the airplane bathroom. Sit back down and fall asleep.

Then I wake up in two and a half hours. Three o'clock in the morning. Bright day outside. Breakfast is served soon after. Some sort of cheese tortilla wrap thing. England is covered in clouds so I don't see Europe until we touch down in London. I tried hard to see any famous land marks in the distance, but nothing showed itself (I did see a castle as we were flying away, but it didn't look very famous).

And now we are racing racing for the next flight. All metal is off our bodies already in preparation for customs. We are twenty minutes late already since out plane was delayed by heavy airport traffic. Hallways, escalators, rooms, escalators, underground trams, escalators, hallways, lines, lines, lines. We hopped some barriers to the front of a line. Went under some other barriers to skip a line. Found a Swiss family as late as we were and sprinted after them, through customs, across the airport and to our flight in plenty of time after all.

I sat by myself at a window seat for this flight. The Indian girl next to me didn't seem interested in talking (not that I actually heard her speak any English) and she slept most of the ride. After the plane drove around the airport for half an hour we took off on our way to Zurich (this is the point where I saw my castle). Up out of the mess of airport runways and dry grass (my only impression of England) through a layer of clouds, and then another layer of clouds, and then finally one last layer of clouds a million miles above everything. Some unattractive Stewardesses came along about then offering everyone crisps and biscuits. I watched as we crossed a body of water that I am assuming was the English channel and approached the coast line of the continent of Europe. France, France, France. I was flying over France. How cool is that. The plane eventually heaved and we were descending towards Zurich. I could see lots of large green hills and rivers. I saw a nuclear power plant and was reminded of the Simpsons. Another successful landing. My backpack was one of the first out on the conveyer belt. A quick walk and there was Skyler waiting with a van to pick us up.

This is me...

My name is Wesley and I am leaving for Spokane tomorrow morning...

Then flying to Seattle...

Then laying over for four hours...

Then flying to Britain...

Then flying to Switzerland...

Then blazing through as many countries in Eastern Europe as I can manage...

Then winding up in Italy...

For a semester...

Then back to Switzerland...

Britain...

Spokane (which is in Idaho, just FYInformation)...

Moscow... which is where I am now.

At least that's the plan.


This is not my bed full of stuff that needs to go in my backpack... Four months of Europe on two pairs of pants (I do have a towel). My parents are trying to get me to take another backpack on the plane, but I'm trying to go as light as possible (appearances to the contrary) so as to appear the savvy globetrotter I am not. I asked one of my experienced traveling companions to tell the grown-ups that it was a terrible idea to bring more than one back pack, but she just laughed at me and refused. I told them she was only bringing her purse on the plane.


These are my ridiculously expensive shoes that I needed for walking on Europe...



and my toes.


And here are my brand spanking new flipflops for creepy showering in Europe so as to not get "foot herpes" as my friend so eloquently put it.

They are terrible and have made me almost fall a thousand times and the left one always comes off when I go down stairs.

I think my legs look like ewok legs from starwars...

First Blog Thingy

Checking if the internet still works...