Switzerland

It's been a good week here in Switzerland. Nalle and I have managed to dodge the rain storms here and get some climbing in. Magic Wood is a really cool bouldering area, with hundreds of boulders scattered around a steep, moss-covered hillside. The living here is pretty simple. No fees for climbing, we just hike from the camp site. I have been sleeping under the bivi shelter at the camp to avoid the periodic rainstorms that come and go.

Sometimes when I travel I feel like a total world-beater who can speak the language of the locals, navigate by the stars, and find good food and cheap beer like he was born there. Not so on this trip. I've been stumbling around and failing repeatedly at the most basic tasks. Here is a partial list:

Grocery shopping:

Spent 20 min trying to find inexpensive meat. (there is none)

Bought a $8 sausage (cheapest I could find).

Threw away about $7.50 worth because I found out it was made of horse.

Arrived at check-out to find that Visa was not accepted. Delayed lots of people. Borrowed money from Nalle.

Camping:

Needed to pay for camping, so went to ATM. ATM gave me a single 100-Franc note, so I needed change. Went to change machine. Got 10 10-Franc notes. Need smaller change. Went to other change machine. Put in 10 Franc notes. Received about 5 lbs of coins. Return to campsite, filled envelope with too many coins. Envelope broke putting it into slot. Figure it's okay. Next day, camp host comes and speaks Italian to me for several minutes and is very angry with me.

Phone:

Go to gas station to buy phone card to call Sarah. Tell the clerk I need to "use telephone to call USA". She takes $10 and gives me a paper receipt with numbers on it. Looks good. Proceed to Swisscom phone box. Code doesn't work, so i call customer service. Wait 10 min for english customer service. Wait another 10 minutes for other english customer service. They tell me I've been sold the wrong type of code. Return to gas station and get other type of card. Return to phone box. Enter codes. Sarah's phone goes straight to voice mail. It starts raining*.

*hyperbole.

The cool part is that when I watch the footage coming off my camera it somehow makes it all worth while. Here's me at work: