"Living the Dream" in Luzern...

Let me first start off by saying that in Up with People, if you happen to miss your departure time to your next city, or country for that matter, the bus WILL take off without you...after this last week, I speak from experience. On Monday morning, departing Milan, Italy, my roommate Sayuri and I went to the wrong departure location, missed the bus, and had to find our way by train to Switzerland. As horrible as that may sound, we enjoyed our train ride through Northern Italy into Switzerland...passing beautiful countryside such as Lake Como. We also passed through a great deal of tunnels entering the Swiss Alps, including one measuring 18 km…the longest in Europe. By the end of the day, we were together again with our cast in the city of Luzern, Switzerland.
Luzern is an amazing city surrounded by mountains and beside a large alpine lake. Our host family codes, upon arrival Monday afternoon, were different types of Swiss chocolate. This meant that all the host families had a certain Swiss chocolate with them and we had to match it with the chocolate written on our allocation sheet. I found my host dad Enzo with the pistachio chocolate I was searching for. He lived in a flat just a 10-minute walk from the main downtown in Luzern. To my luck, after having the ability to speak no English in Italy, Enzo could speak great English. His parents were originally from Italy, but he has lived in Switzerland his entire life. To go back to my missing the bus story, another problem was that I had put my bags on the UWP equipment truck before leaving and because of problems with border papers, it never made it to Switzerland until Thursday night…Tough to wear the clothes on your back for 4 straight days...Thanks to Enzo for the extra clothing.
On Tuesday we had a regional learning day. We loaded a boat from Luzern for a 2-hour ride to the base of Mt. Pilatus. It was a cold morning, but a beautiful ride with the fog coming off the lake and the green countryside all around the water. At Mt. Pilatus we loaded what I learned to be the steepest cog railway in the world. It reaches a slope of 49 degrees at one point. At the top of the mountain, we would have enjoyed an amazing view, but the fog was so thick that I didn’t give us much. There was a man playing an alpine horn, so I got to check that Swiss stereotype off my list. We rode down on the other side of the mountain inside a large gondola and stopped at another point to ride the alpine slide.
So…my next 2 days in Luzern may have been the best of the entire tour. I decided to sign up for a special CI (Community Impact) project with room for just 10 students. We were going up to a farm high in the Alps to work and stay the night for 2 days with a Swiss family. It was a 30-minute drive outside Luzern, and the only access to their home was by a 4-person gondola that seemed to climb a mile up the mountain. When we got to the top, we were told that our work site was another 40-minute hike, higher up onto the mountainside. It was cold and foggy, but the most beautiful hike I have ever made. You can see in the pictures the green mountainside, waterfalls, amazing vistas, and autumn leaves. I stopped nearly every step to try and take the whole experience in. The work, as expected, was difficult! Our job would be twofold…clear one of the large fields on the mountainside of all small pine trees, and dig a massive trench to lay a water pipe for the barn near where we were working. Those cutting trees had to be careful because of the steep slope in which they were working on. After sawing a tree, they would tumble down the side of the mountain…extremely exciting to watch. As for the ditch, it was the rockiest, muddiest, most ridiculous soil I have ever attempted to dig in. Our stats for the day: 4 broken pick axes, 2 broken shovels! The food we were served was amazing. My favorite was the “Alpine Macaroni” as it is translated. Massive amounts of Swiss cheese, potatoes, and onions cooked in. Most everything we ate was from the farm. Salad grown on the farm, homemade dressing, milk straight from the cow, fresh churned butter…it was heavenly. I even had the opportunity to milk my first cow. It was so hard! You need to grip the utter in the perfect way to get milk out. I sprayed all over myself! It’s really warm and kind of awkward! If you have good form and aim, it’s easy to squirt the people watching. The milk was separated from the cream, and then we literally just boiled it and drank it warm. Tastes nothing like the normal milk anyone is used to. I prefer mine with coco mix!
The family we were staying with had 2 children. The fathers name was Zep and only spoke Swiss-German. He was probably the most legitimate mountain man I have ever met. The farm has been in their family for four generations. They literally own an entire mountainside; I think it was about 40,000 acres. Everything they do at their farm is for them…nothing is sold. They are basically fully self-sustained. I was so tired after 2 days of work, but so completely satisfied by the entire experience.
Saturday was show day in Luzern. Earlier in the afternoon we had a German culture presentation by our German cast member to prepare us for the next 2 cities. The only difference in our show for the week was that the MC’s were done entirely in German, and we added a short Swiss song that everyone in the audience knew. We had a great time with a large crowd including over 80 Swiss UWP alumni in attendance. More amazing was to see Zep and his entire family at the show…it was so cool that they decided to come.
On Sunday, my host dad Enzo and I took a trip to Zurich. It’s one of the largest cities in Switzerland, and famous for being home to the bulk of the major Swiss banks. We first visited one of the famous chocolate shops and ate some of the best, and most expensive, chocolate I have ever had. We then went to Enzo’s favorite Bratwurst stand to eat and have a beer. They eat their Bratwurst by itself with a bread roll on the side…delicious. I also tried Maroni, which is a type of chestnut, cooked over coals. It’s a winter snack that warms up your entire body. That night we ate dinner at Enzo’s girlfriend Claudia’s house. We had a famous Swiss dish Raclette, which is melted cheese with potatoes. There is a hot tray in the middle of the table with slots to melt you cheese, and then you drizzle the cheese over potatoes. Enzo and Claudio also presented me with an awesome Swiss army knife before I left. The perfect gift from their country! Shout out to Enzo and Claudia!

Swiss Tips:
1. Don’t try to make small purchases with your debit or credit card…I tried to purchase stamps and postcards with mine and both my host dad as well as the person behind the counter literally laughed at me.
2. Don’t visit Switzerland unless your planning on gaining some weight…the Swiss food is great and you are likely to eat a pound of chocolate.
3. Beware of stinky Swiss cheese. Almost every cheese is amazing, but there are exceptions…be careful!
4. Spongebob Squarepants is way funnier to watch in German!

Off the Zell am Harmersbach, Germany…If you made it through this blog, Congrats! Hope to hear from everyone…make a comment or send an email.

If your interested in some more pictures from Switzerland...visit http://flagler.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019182&l=95a7e&id=29800101

Cast B in Europe - Milano, Italiano!!!

Ciao! I apologize for how late this update is, but I have quickly realized that the Internet is not as accessible some places in Europe as it is in the States. That being said, for those of you who don’t already know, my Up With People tour has left the US and I spent the last week in the North of Italy. Here is our travel summary from Las Vegas, Nevada to Milan, Italy:

• 28 hour bus ride (including stops) from Las Vegas to Seattle, WA
• 12 hour wait for our flight, spent by the cast in the airport…although I was picked up by my brother Chris and spent the day with him. Shout out to you brother!• 10 hour flight direct to London
• 5 hour layover in the airport
• 3 hour flight to Milan, Italy
• 1 hour bus ride to our cast drop-off

All together, our total travel time was clocked at 61 hours. We spent the night in a gym because we had arrived so late. By the time we were up and going, it was Wednesday morning…remember, we left Vegas Saturday at midnight. No bed for 4 nights! But enough whining about our travels…we were in Italy!
On Wednesday, we went to downtown Milan and did some sightseeing and a scavenger hunt. We had to take pictures of our home team doing different things around the city. Downtown Milan is so beautiful with amazing old architecture. We visited one of the most famous churches in Italy. I met my host family on Wednesday night. My roommate was Sayuri from Japan, and we stayed with an amazing Italian family. Our host Mom and her husband lived in one part of the house with their 3 young children and in another part of the house lived her brother and his wife whom had 2 young children. They didn’t speak any English except for Mateo who spoke just a bit. It was a tough task to try and communicate even the simplest topics. I remember one night spending 15 minutes trying figure out when were leaving the house in the morning. That being said, I felt that we were able to bond with one another on a different level than other host families whom I could have a normal conversation with.
We ate the best Italian food you could ever experience. Here is what my lunch consisted of on Sunday; hand made pasta with fresh tomato sauce, octopus, salad, homemade bread, fresh caught tuna cooked over coals, tiramisu, and cake with fruit…of course lots of vino (wine), and bubbly water. It took 3 hours to eat lunch, and I was so tired afterwards that I feel asleep until it was time for dinner! That’s my idea of a good day!

Thursday was our CI day in Italy. Our cast worked in some elementary age schools and a school for the mentally disabled. I went with our admissions team to do promotions at the main University campus in Milan. It was a daunting task to talk with students about our program and the show. I learned a few phrases to explain UWP, but if they started asking questions I had no idea what to say…quite an adventure. Our show day came earlier than usual in the week, being on Friday. I rode the train, then subway, and finally walked to find the show site in a nearby city. We had to ask for directions about 8 times, but I was with Lesley and Clara who both speak Spanish, so they were able to communicate in some broken Italian. Our show on Friday night started at 9:00, which I guess in Italian means start showing up around 9:15. We had a sold out crowd with some people even standing against the walls. Our cast performed 3 songs in Italian and I even delivered my MC in Italian…although I forgot my lines and had to pull a note card out of my jacket. Someone later told me after the show that it was all right I spoke poor Italian because, “bad Italian sounds sexy.” Good thing! The Italian audience was great and chanted for our first Encore, which we had been preparing for in Europe.
Saturday was an internal education day with also a culture presentation on Switzerland. We had letters returned to us that we wrote 3 months ago in Denver staging. They were “letters to ourselves” talking about where we hoped we would be at this point in the tour. It was a great moment of reflection for our cast. That evening was going to be a free BTS (backing track show) for people in the small town we were staying…although we had such a huge response for the show that we decided to do another full performance. It was an exhausting day, but I’m glad we had the opportunity to give back to the community with this full performance. The highlight for me was singing, “What Color is God’s Skin” in Italian with the entire audience singing along. It was a really cool moment.

European Comments:
1. So seriously, Italian Gelato is just as good as it’s hyped up to be. I’m pretty sure I could eat that stuff every day of the week.
2. Beware of European breakfast. People told me it was pretty scarce…but seriously? I had these little mini toast things that were the size of small cracker each morning…tough situation for an avid breakfast eater like myself. What I would do for an Ego waffle right now!
3. One Italian espresso = the strength of 3 Starbucks espresso’s! Size can be deceiving…
4. Europeans try to play tricks on foreigners by hiding every toilet flush button in a different place. I’ve seen them on the toilet, on the floor, on the wall, hanging from the ceiling, some I just stopped searching for after a while…beware, and be smart!

That’s all for now…On to Switzerland we go!