Hey guys!
Here are the Saturday 10 points I promised!
1. Our first official guests for the summer was a Troop of girls from the Chicago area. My mom sometimes talks about the Chicago accent she ran into while at collage. However, I had no idea the accent was that strong until I heard some of these girls speak, whoa. If you don't know what I am talking about I would definitely YouTube Chicago accent. We had a really nice dinner for the first official day of summer season, raclette, which is an extremely famous Swiss dish. You take raclette cheese and use a raclette grill to cook both the cheese and the veggies/meat. Here is a pic to help explain:
Nice right?
The Chicago group was impressed anyway. Which was good because they were a great group of girls, very kind, respectful and helpful! They made all the staff bracelets and by the end asked to take a picture with us! They also were sporting the new Girl Scout tie which I am posting a link to cause I think it's so cool!
Yay! Girl Scouts is finally getting with the necker movement!
2. Here in Switzerland, along with mountains, there are a ton of waterfalls! The couple I have been to have been really awesome because it is just starting to get warmer so a lot of the snow is melting off the alps and streaming off the mountains. I went with another vollie, Angie from Vancouver Canada, to one of the tallest waterfalls in Switzerland, Engstligen falls right here in our Valley!
And here is a pic from when I went!
As you can see it was very misty from all the water coming off the falls!
Another famous falls I have visited are called the trummelbach falls. These are super cool because there are 10 of them falling from/off/and through the Mountain. You take a lift up to about waterfall 7 and walk the rest of the way up. Then you walk down, in and out of caves and looking at all the falls. Here are some pics! Not my pics, but some pictures I found on google images!
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And finally the last fall that is famous that other vollies have gone to, not me yet, are the Reichenbach falls that Sherlock Homes falls off during his "final" battle with Moriarty in the books. He doesn't die supposedly in the books because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought Sherlock back to life because Doyle needed more money? That is the story I have been told before at least. Anyway there is a little Sherlock Museum and everything, it sounds really fun!
3. Here at Our Chalet we have nightly programs during the week. A very popular one is called Swiss night. First Fritz, a very old Alpine horn player, comes and plays the alpine horn. Fritz is so old that he, as a boy, used to run errands for Falk. If you remember Falk was the first Center Manager for the first 20 years after the Chalet opened in 1932. An Alpine horn looks like:
And here are the Vollies with Fritz!
After Fritz plays his horn we listen to the Vogellisi a Swiss folk song that is sung by children all around Switzerland here it is:
It is about a girl named Lisa and because vogel means bird they believe Lisa had a pet bird that was always on her shoulder as she walked around. In the story all the village boys thought Lisa was so beautiful, so they wrote her a song. In the actual song it not only describes how beautiful Lisa is, but also the village of Adelboden and the Berner Oberland, which is the canton that Adelboden is in! Fritz told us that Lisa used to live behind the Chalet, but I don't know how much I believe him...
The girls then play Swiss jeopardy which is really just facts about Switzerland. The prize is....
Yum!
4. For a day program one of my favorites is the hike to the woodcarvers. The hike is not long and usually we repel in the morning. However, I personally really enjoy going into the woodcarvers shop and I especially, especially enjoy the cafe next door. The Woodcarvers is really just one room filled with wooden trinkets. It is geared toward the scouts and guides that visit so there is a lot of Our Chalet and Kandersteg themed items. It is all really expensive, but it is also all handmade. The whole family is in to the business. There is a mom, dad, and two brothers. They are all really nice, the mother a particularly good saleswomen. The cafe next door is not so much a cafe, but the woodcarvers neighbor who decided to take advantage of all the traffic the woodcarvers bring. Her coffee is so good, but her apple cake is TO DIE FOR! Oh my gosh, it's so good!
5. Speaking of Kandersteg I know I have mentioned it before when I was writing about places Falk and Storrow were thinking of putting the Chalet, but on one of my days off I went and visited! As a reminder Kandersteg is where the Scout Center is. I am part of WAGGGS, the scout center is WOSM. Boy scouts are a part of WOSM, however around the world scouting is a lot more Co-ed. Anyway the scout center is HUGE! They can host for about 1200 people! At our fullest we can host 150 people. They also have a much larger staff which was cool because it was so diverse! Ours with ten though, is a bit more intimate. Their campsite is ginormous. Their valley is a lot different too, very flat with sharp cliffs. The boy who showed us around was from the UK. Apparently Kandersteg is the end all be all for UK scouts. We saw a few boy scouts from Florida too. It is a part of our staff challenge to hike to Kandersteg. We did not this time because of the snow, but maybe when we go to have our free meal and stay over? The staff from Kandersteg also can come to Our Chalet for free as part of the agreement. I would definitely go back, and would recommend it to anyone who is a scout!
6. On a different off day me and a few of the other vollies went to Gruyere. Yes this is where they make Gruyere cheese! We saw them making it and took a very informative tour about the Gruyere cheese making process. A cow was our tour guide through this listening tour we took around the factory. We also got to sample Gruyere cheese which was quite good. The way they make cheese is kinda weird because it is the curdles that are the cheese product. It takes a lot of time and the cheese must sit for a long time for it to be any good. We also went to a Castle which was quite pretty
and the little town was very cute
But the Giger museum was very interesting, but creepy, but interesting. Giger is a Swiss artist who did all of the art design for the Aliens movies. His museum was so cool, but also very gruesome. Here are some of his pieces: (warned probably not for kids you do not want watching Aliens...)
BUT, the best part was the Nestle Chocolate factory. The tour was ok, but the all you can eat Chocolate section left all of us feeling sick. We tried to go around and sample all the different kinds of Chocolate pieces and we were not even half way around when I started to think that I would never eat Chocolate again. But I carried through and tried them all, felt sick the rest of the night, drank a lot of water and was fine the next morning!
7. So I have already touched on a few of the Swiss food specialties. From what I have gathered there is a lot of cheese and chocolate. There is a lot of potatoes, and creme, coffee and dairy. The food is extremely heavy and is meant to warm you up. The Swiss invented fondue, and consume 59% of the Gruyere cheese they produce. The rest of the 41% is consumed by the rest of the world (America 10.3%). I have not eaten many meals out, a few pizzas which were good. What I have sampled most is ice cream and coffee. Cappuccinos are fantastic I highly recommend them! There are two things I have found that are cheap in Switzerland compared to back home: Gelato and Swiss arm knifes. The Gelato is fantastic, Swiss army knifes I have yet to try...
8. One of my favorite night programs is international night! This last event was girls from all over the US, so it was not that international. However, what made this event special was that their was a troop from NC! They were from High Point. I have only been to High Point either for soccer, or when I was younger I went against my will for *shutter* furniture shopping with my parents. Furniture shopping with my parents is a type of torture no child should be put through. They endless couches. The hours of discussion. The miles of fabric to choose from.The never ending indecision! It is a total nightmare.Whoever decided to put the furniture capital of the world so close to my house has a special place in hell. So my memories of high point may not be so fond. However, the girls were lovely and their leader reminded me scarily of my own girl scout leader. Two of the girls in the group were going to UNC in the fall and one leader had just graduated from State. It was nice to talk about NC barbecue and have someone know exactly what you were talking about! Felt like home :)
9. On my most recent off day I went to Luzern with two other vollies. The day did not start off well due to the fact that I was not four minutes away from the bus stop going to meet a bus that was coming in nine minutes when I realized I had left my wallet up at Our Chalet. Which was up a Mountain. At least a 15 minute walk up let alone back down again. So I just caught a later bus which was whatever, except we had not really made a meeting place in Luzern... But! We seemed to have telepathy because I found the other vollies straight away coming into Luzern. Luzern is very beautiful you just want to sit at a restaurant all day and stare at the water. That of course is not what we did because we had places to see, but if I had more time that is what I would have done. We went to the first Barque Church in Switzerland:
We visited an ice age museum and we walked along the historic district looking at shops and buildings! Finally we crossed the historic bridge that was built in like the 1300s and it was still pretty sturdy looking.
10. So I have talked a lot about what I have done. Now time to talk about the next plans! Me and another vollie have bought tickets to go to the eurockeennes festival in... Belfort FRANCE!!! Yay new country! There I will be seeing both Two Door Cinema Club and Phoenix!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!............... I am only a bit excited..... nope totally excited, can't wait!!!!So more on that front once I actually go to the festival. Speaking of which next week it will also be an update on Saturday because I will not be near my computer Friday because I will be jamming out to Two Door Cinema Club and Phoenix!!! yayayay!
Have a great week everybody!!!
Scarily like your troop leader? Not sure how to take that!Your adventures bring me right back to the places I have enjoyed.(How about the little metal railing on the metal stairs at Engstligen Falls? you are right about less worry about law suits! Bunderspitz - hm, we slid down slick cow poo, thought Linda was leaving this earth. Keep the posts and photos coming!
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