Poppin' & Interlaken

Note: This is the first post in a series of posts that will be coming in the next week or two related to my ten-day whirlwind backpacking adventure through central Europe. During those ten days I more than doubled the amount of countries I’d visited in my life, travelled about 3,276 miles, and spent an inordinate amount of Euros, francs, and crowns. It was a truly unforgettable experience and unlike anything I’d ever done before. I’ll let this video I made with a program suggested to me by Chris Cooley serve as an intro or preview of the posts to come, and try to make me and the trip look as cool as possible. And for the time being, try to ignore such questions as “Why is he pointing so much?” “Why is he wearing the same thing in every picture?” and “Does he seriously think I click all these links?” Enjoy.

If you had asked me before how I felt about Switzerland, I probably would have said, “Neutral.” However, after visiting it during the first leg of our trip I am now definitely biased. We flew into Geneva by way of Barcelona and headed to the information desk to see whether or not we needed to change our currency. The lady at the desk told us that we did not, gave us a map, told us the places we should see in Geneva, and gave us all passes that said we were there for the World Telecom conference and entitled us to free public transportation for the whole time we were in Geneva. Awesome, right? So what did we do? We jumped on the first train we saw and proceeded to miss the stop for Geneva, therefore rendering our free passes useless. However to be fair, the train was so nice and it was so much fun sitting on the red velvet couches that it would’ve taken me about an hour to figure out that the train had started moving. Whatever, no big deal, we heard Geneva was lame anyway so we just got off in Lausanne, hometown of the talented Swiss douche, wait for it…Swouche, Roger Federer. That meant that in two weeks time I had visited the hometowns of the top two tennis players in the world. Andy Murray, I’m coming for you. We spent the next four hours or so seeing basically everything the city had to offer. We paid homage to Rudy at their Notre Dame Cathedral, saw the first Olympic Museum (Lausanne in the headquarters of the IOC and considered the Olympic Capital), and enjoyed a magnificent panorama of Lake Geneva. After we exhausted all of options in Lausanne we hopped on the train to our main Swiss destination, Interlaken.

We arrived at our hostel just in time for happy hour at the bar in the basement of our hostel, the biggest bar in Interlaken. Now, everyone we had met up to this point in Interlaken had been American, and we figured we were in for more of the same as we headed down into the basement. We walked into the bar and were smacked in the eyeballs with the image of nothing but dudes, and of course they were all hoodie-wearing flat-brimmers. I spent the first hour or so in awe of the fact that, one, there are so many HWFBs in the world, and two, that so many of them and found their way to Switzerland. At this point I decided to open up my ears and I realized that no one in the bar was speaking English. They were all locals, just dressed like scrubby Americans. This made me warm up to the place a little, and girls eventually showed up, but it turned out that the “biggest bar in Interlaken” was really just the place to be for local high schoolers with flat brims and braces.

The next morning we woke up at 6:45 to head to the front desk to sign up for all types of fun activities. However, I can’t get through two days in Europe without rain so of course it was pouring rain. I was crushed. I planned on going skydiving over the Swiss Alps. Really, I was so excited. I was even more crushed when the woman at the front desk slapped us with a “When It’s Raining” flyer and told us to check back after breakfast to see if there were some things that weren’t cancelled. The “When It’s Raining” flyer included hardcore activities such as going to a spa, a chocolate show, and indoor pool, and renting a movie. Extreme.

We lucked out though because it turned out that they would still be taking a group out canyoning. Canyoning is basically when you get dropped off at the top of a mountain, repel down into a canyon, and then continue down the canyon by jumping off rocks into water, sliding down rocks into water, zip-lining over rocks into water, and gingerly walking down rocks into water. It was sooooo much fun. First we repelled down a 150-foot cliff that went straight down in the pouring rain. I have to admit, I was pretty nervous about leaning back over that ledge with nothing but a rope keeping me from plunging to my death. I know a lot of you are saying to yourselves right now, “But Jim, you’re a really tough guy. You can grow a pretty awesome beard except for those spots where your mustache connects to the rest of the beard. Surely you weren’t scared.” Well believe it, and if you don’t believe me, just check out how awkward I look in this picture.

From there we jumped and slid off rocks and just had a general hardcore, super-fun time. I eventually got comfortable enough to take a picture where I look kind of cool.

After we got out of the freezing cold, Swiss Alp water, we all took a quick nap and then went to the chocolate show from the flyer. I know I was complaining before, but I have to admit that the idea of a chocolate show sounds awesome. No I didn’t shower, this is Europe. The show was definitely worth it. We learned the Swisstem of making chocolate and then ate enough free chocolate to make me sick of chocolate for about four whole hours. After the chocolate show (ok I was a little disappointed, I hoped they would do tricks with the chocolate) we went to dinner at the greatest restaurant in the entire world. It is called Bebbi’s and is located on the main drag in Interlaken, amidst gorgeous view of the Alps. The food, whatever, who cares, its fondue, anybody can do that. What makes the place is Bebbi and the atmosphere. I knew we had made the right choice when Bebbi led the five of us plus the two NYU kids we picked up canyoning into a “party room” type table, sat us down, grabbed the row of giant cowbells hanging above the table, rang the hell out of them and started screaming “FREE SALAD!” at the top of his lungs. He would go on to do this about five more times, even after we had already eaten the aforementioned salad. Bebbi is quite the character. He is jacked (said it was because he ate “cheese fondie” everyday) and is obviously on something because he did not stop the entire time we were there. He waited on tables, deejayed, ran around the restaurant waving giant Japanese (half the restaurant was Japanese), Swiss, and American flags, blew on his giant horn, and yelled “free salad” to anyone that would listen.

After our great meal we decided against going back to the swiddle school dance (last one I promise) and just played card games with our new friends. Interlaken turned out to be a phenomenal start to our trip, despite the essy weather. When we went to the train station the next morning the weather had cleared up and we could see how truly beautiful the scenery was. There were snow-capped mountains surrounding gorgeous turquoise lakes. We barely even minded the 14 hour train ride to Prague because we had such spectacular views of all that and then later the tiny German towns.

Switzerland, I’m on your side.

And for those of you who didn't get the title of this post, you need to familiarize yourself with poppin' and lockin' dancing, Ozone, Turbo, and the movie Breakin'.

Besitos,

Jim

Mallorca, Your-orca, Our-orca

Alright look, we all know that Germans are weird. But being that I’ve never really traveled beyond our shining seas, I’ve never been properly exposed to the perpetual freakshow that is the German tourist. This past weekend in Mallorca I was thrown headfirst into this strange sea of short-shorts and sausage. Not knowing anything about the island, we booked a hostel close to the airport and five minutes from the beach. And since we were sneaking in two extra people, it was very cheap. How cheap? I slept on the floor and paid 14 euro for three nights. That cheap. We were all pumped about our hostel situation until we left to go out at 2:30 am. As we walked down the streets we realized that everyone was speaking German, all the signs were German, the food was German, and the women were German. Woof. Apparently the Germans have invaded Mallorca like it was Poland in 1939. Heyooo. Since we had only been on the island about three hours we didn’t really know where we were or where we wanted to be, so we just went to this German disco called Regine’s and decided to make the best of it. Regine’s actually worked out pretty well because they had a nice special going from 3-4 and we all ended up spending very little money, although it certainly did not feel like it the next morning. The one really strange thing about that night was that they had a lip-sync band. This wasn’t karaoke, this wasn’t “everybody get on the stage and lip-sync;” this was “let’s pay a group of people to pretend to sing, play guitar, bass, and drums while people dance to these CDs we bought.” Something about it just seemed so…German. By the way, Lola is watching AVP right now. That’s Alien vs. Predator. Anyway, don’t get me wrong: lip-syncing in front of a group of people is a lot of fun. The stellar Summer ’97 performance of “Men in Black” by Luke and I at Lakeview Pool is probably what immediately comes to most of your minds. But the weird thing was how serious they took their job. Well, the fact that it is their job is also pretty weird. At one point during the night, I made it pretty apparent that I knew the words to one song and was doing some pretty impressive fist pumping, so these German dudes thought it would be a good idea to put me on the stage. I can’t remember exactly what song it was but I’m willing to guess that it was “I Gotta Feeling,” because I’m pretty sure there's a Spanish law that says it has to be played at least one time for every other song that is played. Clearly I thought this was a great idea and proceeded to try and take my turn with the mic. Well, the “band” didn’t like it, so my proposal was rejected, and the “singer” gave me dirty looks the rest of the night. Despite all the German oddities, Thursday night was pretty awesome and we capped it off by skinny dipping in the Mediterranean and watching the sunrise from a lifeguard stand. Well, we couldn’t really see the sun because we were on the southwest side of the island, but we watched it slowly get light out. It was breathtaking.

I’m going to chalk Friday up as pretty much a waste because we still didn’t figure out how to get out of what a club promoter on the beach called “the German ghetto.” That is how spoiled I am right now; a beautiful day at the beach just isn’t enough for me. Luckily things picked up when we headed into civilization for what is starting to become a tradition in Spain: the perfect dinner. After the now traditional espresso we shot pool at a bar called “MacGowan’s.” Although it kind of dampened my sense of adventure knowing that I wasn’t the first of my clan to set foot on the island, I had fun there. I knew it was an establishment worthy of the McGowan name when they obliged my request for two road beers to bring along to our nighttime visit to the cathedral. The cathedral was beautifully lit and it was very cool just walking around while it wasn’t crowded.

What can you say about Saturday? Was it the best day ever? Period? I can’t be sure. What I am sure of is that it was the best day in Spain so far, and the two-plus hours I was in the kayak were well worth the price of admission into this gorgeous island with the slight German problem down south. We took a day trip to Porto Cristo and laid on a white beach with spectacular views and everybody spoke Spanish. Then seven of us decided to rent kayaks and snorkels to explore the cliffs and caves on the coastline. We paddled past Rafael Nadal’s house (he’s from Mallorca) and stopped at an inlet a little further up the coast where two naked couples were…swimming? We ditched the kayaks and snorkeled around a little, shaming them into getting out and putting their clothes on. There wasn’t that much to see (both snorkeling and on the old people) but it was fun to be diving in that beautiful blue-green water. After the snorkeling we climbed up on the cliffs and started debating on how deep it was and if we would suffer serious injuries if we jumped off them. Being the oldest, I did the honorable thing and decided to jump first. After all, I have to enter the work force in May don’t have as much to live for as those whippersnappers. I’m not going to lie, I was pretty nervous, but I remembered that the present is a gift, so I jumped anyway. It turned out to be really deep and everybody eventually graduated to jumping off while posing for stupid pictures. (See below). After we got back we had some food and drinks by the dive shop and marina before we had to catch the bus back to Germany. It was exactly what we were looking for in Mallorca.

Saturday night we wanted to rage so we headed back into the city in search of the disco. I followed my finger and we found one. It was fun, there were some interesting international exchanges, and we danced to some hits, most notably a Grease medley, for which I was apparently dressed perfectly. The night went well enough for me that the boys decided to push two of the beds together and let me sleep in the middle. It harkened me back to that wonderful week first year after Vic was banned and before Charley ruined everything. But really I probably slept better on the floor because one of the beds was about six inches higher than the other and I was sleeping on the crack.

We didn’t fly back until late Sunday so I just laid on the beach all day, sleeping, listening to music, and reading an excellent biography of Ben Franklin. Our favorite forefather got me thinking: in America we take pride in sharing our freedoms, classrooms, needles, purple mountains majesties, etc. with all types of people. The Spanish have welcomed me into their country and even allowed me weekend-use of their islands. As I looked around at all the giant German bellies spilling out of their tiny trunks, I realized I was more than happy to share it all with those crazy creatures. Besides, I’ve had enough good times for all of us.