Ridiculous situations I find myself in, parts one and two

Part one: drenched and wearing a shirt for pants while sitting in a bathroom and waiting for a door to be dismantled while a hotel full of people wait.

Part two: wearing only a bathing suit, stuck straddling an electric fence while several cows and several dressed up operagoers watch.

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It has ocurred to me that I am probably competing for your attention with my other two fellow bloggers (solemnclosure and travelingcameron [sic], both .blogspot.com). So I did what any good capitalist would do: I opened with a couple teasers that make this post sound much more exciting than it actually is, so that you read my blog instead of theirs.

So Milan. We managed to get through the train ride without anyone checking our eurrail passes, which means we got a free ride to be used later. Woo. If only Milan itself were that exciting. We more or less killed the first day - after the previous day's antics, we were all exhausted. The next day, we went to a museum that was decently cool, but everything was closed except ok Saturdays, which prevented it from being anything too special. In fact, the excitement of the day for me was when the bathroom door lock broke while I showered, having forgotten my towel and pants in our room. Surprise! The first story is exactly what it sounds like.

There was one potentially cool part to Milan, though, which was this door next to the elevator to our hotel that contained stairs down into an underground network of rooms. Unfortunately, my faithful companions decided to turn back after not that long. But I was having fun.

Switzerland, though, is about as cool as any of us could have hoped for. We were met by finch's grandfather at the train station, and he has continued being unbelievable helpful ever since. He brings us bread and jam and honey and butter every morning, and he sometimes makes us other meals, and drives us places. All any of us can really do is gesture frantically at the food and say Danke (and sometimes buy him wine), but I hope the message of how awesome we all think he is is somehow crossing the language barrier.

Our place is a cozy cabin just in the foothills of the alps. We have an amazing view in all directions. Switzerland looks like a bottled water commercial. But just being right there is cool. It's rural yet fairly affluent, meaning you get both architecture and scenery. But mostly scenery. We look out the window, and it's like hello, alps. The novelty hasn't worn off yet.

We have taken it slow so far. We wandered the town of Schwyz, played soccer, visited finch's grandfather's girlfriend's house, etc., then watched a movie and slept. Today was perhaps our most exciting day - we climbed to a nearby mountain peak with a pub on it. Because kunal and I have anti-fear of heights, we stayed up for a bit longer than the other two. Naturally, we took the scenic route back, meaning we arrived significantly later.

Oh, and ridiculous situation #2. So we are in an apartment complex with a farm on one side and a church/opera house hybrid on the other. We get water out of a jug that must be refilled every so often from a spiggot shared with the cows (don't worry, it's clean). Naturally, there is an electric fence to keep the cows in.

We had a load in the laundry, meaning we were sitting around in our swimsuits. The water ran out and it was my turn to fill. But I managed to exit through the wrong door, which then locked behind me. The only way to the water trough was to hop the electric fence. But then it started raining, which caused a few people to leave the nearby (outdoor) ongoing opera. So I had spectators. It turns out I made it back in one piece after all.

Other excitement: our passes were not checked on the trip here, meaning we got a free day trip! We spent it going to lucerne, which was unremarkable (and extremely expensive). But they didn't check our passes again. We will probably spend that one visiting dday beaches from Paris.