done with "class"

Well, I didn't get a chance to write yesterday due to the fact that today our sketchbooks, which I've been pretty on top of, and our European Visual Culture writing assignments, which I haven't been as diligent with as I should have been, were due today. That marks the end of the "class" period of our trip and from now on we will be on our own. Another good thing is early tomorrow morning our roommates are leaving for Austria which means Whit and I might get a late start on the day.

Aside from all the catch-up I've been doing, the past couple days have been pretty relaxed. Yesterday took a nice downhill "hike" from Murren to Gimmelwald. It was a hike that could have easily taken 1 hour but we made it take 4. The highlight of it was actually leaving Gimmelwald on the tram. For about 50 feet you are only maybe 20 feet of the ground and then you go over the edge of a cliff. You look at the cables holding up the tram and they look like they are going straight down. If only it let you freefall for a second or two. That's really the main difference between the mountains and valleys here in Switzerland and in Utah. Logan is actually a higher elevation than we were there but while the tops of the mountains are comparable to the mountains in Utah, the bottoms of the valleys are much closer to sea level.

Today was the chocolate factory day. Truth be told I did have images of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in my head before going. I could picture myself grabbing bars of chocolate and stuffing them in my mouth whole, drinking from a chocolate river and an incredibly eccentric tour guide. When it came down to it I was actually quite bored. It started off with this movie that reminded me somewhat of the Dick van Dyke show, then we had a tour guide tell us about the difference between white and milk chocolates and then we went to the tasting room where after about 10 small morsels I started to feel nauseous, a feeling that continued on for the rest of the day.

From there we went to Gruyeres, a quaint little town that is home of the H.R. Giger museum, which was incredibly disturbing. It was nice though, while I was sitting on a shady bench drawing, a band started playing those long horns that you always picture when you think of the Alps. It was really a very nostalgic moment.

Oh, and check out this kid we saw at the chocolate factory. It's not often that you see a black kid with a mullet. Who does he remind you of?