Brandon - Rome - Spring 2007

Postings from resident directors and students currently abroad, important announcements and useful infomation for planning your study abroad experience.

Man I can't believe it is already May! This means that we will be home in 26 days...but in between now and then we have a lot to do, a big project for our International Marketing class (Marketing plan, implementing Wal-Mart into Italy...lol...Cortny and I came up with it!) But more importantly, we have more trips coming up, I am going back to London, because I loved it so much! Then Cortny and I are going on another vacation! Barcelona, Spain is our next stop and we are going for four nights, leaving on Thursday and getting back on Monday! Don't worry...we are not skipping any class, we just don't have any because it got cancelled on Thursday afternoon, and I don't have class until 4:45 on Monday! Oh the hard life!

Well getting on to our trip...We left on Friday Morning for Geneva, Switzerland. We got in at about 10:30 and spent the day doing a walking tour of Geneva. We found a Starbucks and ended up spending $6.83 on our usual drinks...a piece. Even though the Swiss Franc is worth less than the dollar, things are very expensive, so we tried not to eat out a bunch, let me just say...we LOVE grocery stores!

There aren't very many things to do in Geneva, it is a place that you mainly take in the scenery and walk around the

old town. Regardless, we found enough to do for the day. On Saturday we grabbed the train to Montreux and Lausanne, two towns along Lake Geneva. They were really nice because we actually got to see the mountains, which is what we came to Switzerland for. Just past Montreux (45 minute walk along the lake), there is the Chateau de Chillon, it is a famous castle and all of you have probably seen it in pictures or on the TV at least once, it was very cool to see it in person.

After the spectacle of the castle wore off, we went back to Lausanne on the train and checked it out. It was very lively, because supposedly it is a college town and it WAS very busy. The whole town is built on a hill, so you have the view of the lake from the top, which was pretty neat. Lausanne is also the Headquarters for the Olympic Games and Museum so we made sure to go and see the Olympic Fire and grounds. Cortny and I really liked Lausanne the best out of the three towns we went to. It seemed like there was a lot to do and more people our age, which is always nice! Not just bankers, businessmen, and stuck up snobs with their Ferrari's. Everybody was very nice in Geneva and Lausanne, even though they all pretty much spoke French...lol! It was fun though trying to say, Bonjour, Merci, Si vous plah, or however you spell it.

Anyway, On Sunday I went to the United Nations for a tour, and then the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, these places were very interesting and nice to see, the Red Cross Museum was at times, somewhat disturbing, because of the Graphic nature.

Cortny and Andrea (a friend that went with us) went to the park for a picnic and relaxed while I was at the museums. When we met up, Cortny and I went on a tram ride around town and Andrea went to ride on a boat around the lake. On Monday we did more walking around and checked out this HUGE department store called Manor, which puts Wal-Mart to shame in size, but not in price...lol! Later in the afternoon, we went to the airport and caught our 3:05 PM flight.

There is our Switzerland trip in a nutshell. It was beautiful, but I think we could have done all of this in one day less then we gave ourselves, there was just not enough to do, so we had a lot of down time. We still enjoyed it though, and are glad we got to go and experience the Swiss lifestyle of high prices and beautiful scenery!

posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 7:36 AM

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