CouchSurfing Will Change The World

Ok, maybe it won't, but it sure is a lot of fun to be part of it! CouchSurfing is based on the idea that it is so much more interesting and a hell of a lot cheaper to travel, if you can stay on a friend's couch. Since none of us have friends in every country, every city, every village, wouldn't it be nice to create a community of people offering you their couches? Yes, yes it would.

Of course there are lots of safety measures in place and you can deny any CouchSurfing requests you don't feel comfortable with.

Personally I have so far only hosted one person - I guess St. Gallen is not the popular tourist spot that I thought it was. Anyway, this Saturday I had the opportunity to discover what I like the most about CouchSurfing - big group gatherings with people from all over the globe, good food and alcohol. You can't go wrong with that! All this was brought to me and the CouchSurfing community courtesy of a lovely member in Gossau who cooked Paëlla for 130 people, let us camp in his backyard and even got us breakfast. Pictures are here. Thanks Vince!

State Tetris!

I have a new addiction: State Tetris. It is also a completely pointless addiction, since it is a game that is relatively easy to master and after that there is no point in playing anymore. But I just. can't. stop. I you're into something more challenging, try this.

Freeze!

My mum gave me a freezer which finally fits more than one bottle of vodka and a few measly ice cubes. I plan on filling it up with cheap sushi from Aldi. Yes, I'm crying, but they are tears of joy!

Hey! Teachers! Leave Them Kids Alone!

...But I won't! Hahaaaa! *evilgrin* Looks like starting mid-August I will be a substitute teacher at the KV in Altstätten, teaching VBR (Volkswirtschaft, Betriebswirtschaft, Recht) to 1st and 3rd year BMS-students. I am absolutely terrified and it will be a lot of work, but I think challenges are supposed to be a good thing, so I'll give it a shot - adhering to my University's motto: "Wir fordern und fördern Persönlichkeiten".

Walensee Is Pretty

This weekend was the WakeSurf Festival at the Walensee in Murg and Roman, a friend of ours, was competing, so a bunch of us decided to go and cheer him on. Me and my friend Petra only got there on Saturday evening though, so we missed Saturday's competition and Sunday's was cancelled due to bad weather. We managed to have a great time at Saturday's party though and we celebrated Roman's coming in 4th place at the competition! Congrats! Pics are up here and on my facebook/studivz profiles.

Ups and Downs

What's the difference? Exactly 18 minutes. It takes me 20 minutes to walk up the hill to my local outdoor swimming pool, pushing my bike. It takes me exactly 2 minutes to get home.

Speaking of ups and downs, my landlord, a beautiful woman in (I guess) her early fifties, almost started crying in front of me today and had to walk away, when she told me her husband had left her for a new (I assume younger) model after 3o years of marriage. Classy.

Gröschtigraben?

Does anyone know why the "Rütli" is called "Grütli" in the French part of Switzerland? Seems kinda random. Although "Prairie du Grütli" does have a nicer ring to it than "Rütliwiese".

Road Trip!

Alrighty. So, I got back from Hungary yesterday morning, convinced I'd be doing all kinds of stuff like swimming, cleaning, unpacking my bags etc. Much to my surprise (not), I didn't. Oh well, there's always "mañana"!

Anyway, Hungary was fun. We left last Sunday morning (only around 1.5 hours later than planned, which has got to be some kind of record for my mum) and headed straight to lake Balaton (biggest lake in Europe! Or central Europe! Or something!) and got there right in time for a nice BBQ dinner.



My mum's goddaughter, her husband and 17 month old son were already there and the baby and I of course immediately fell in love with each other. I think it helped that my name is fairly easy to pronounce for a baby, so he said it a lot. I melted every time. Have I mentioned that I have loved babies ever since I was a baby myself?


On Tuesday the weather turned swiss, so we decided to take our road trip up to Budapest, my mum dumped me at our friends' place and went to check on our little cabin in Leányfalu, a little village outside Budapest.

Wednesday then was our dentist day, which makes it sound a lot longer than the actual dentist visit was ('bout half an hour for both of us). Thankfully my teeth are still fine and I can still not empathize with peoples' dentist phobias. They were always my favourite doctors, they never hurt me, paid me compliments for taking good care of my teeth and gave me little plastic toys I got to choose from a big basket filled with them. I love dentists!

Since our dentist lives fairly close to the Slovakian border, we decided to pay my dad and his family a little visit. We had a nice lunch together, chatted a bit over coffee and finally it was time for Mum and me to get back to our cabin (via a pretty ferry ride at sunset!). There my mum put together the bonfirest bonfire that ever bonfired, we had dinner and knocked back some Hungarian Schnaps and some red wine. Nice.

Daddy & Family
Danube
Cabin

Thursday night we then headed back to Budapest to our friends' house yet again, Friday I went for all - you - can - eat sushi with a friend, Saturday was lunch with whoever's left in our batshit crazy family (and really, whose isn't?) and then that was it - we left Saturday evening, drove all night (can you hear Céline Dion playing in your head?) and you know the rest.

Grandma
Cousins
Aunt

All in all a wonderful, unproductive but eventful and very calory-fueled week and probably an ultimately boring post for all those of you who weren't there, which means all of you.


Have a nice week everyone!

Es ist vollbracht

I finished watching all Battlestar Galactica episodes! I know, you're just as excited as I am! But seriously, what a wonderful show. Great acting, great story. In other news, I'm still in Hungary (Budapest to be exact) and I'm stealing someone's wireless. Tonight we'll be heading back to Switzerland and tomorrow I'll bless all of my faithful readers with a longer post about this week. I know you can't wait!

Kein Alkohol ist auch keine Lösung

More than a week has passed since my last post, and some stuff happened, so - Bullet Points!

• The Openair St. Gallen Festival last weekend was fantastic and I managed to see Placebo, LCD Soundsystem, Kaiser Chiefs, Arcade Fire, Wir sind Helden and Snow Patrol. I also consumed inappropriate amounts of alcohol, slept very little and gathered a couple of bruises that I can't explain and some that I can. Weather-wise we were very lucky, it only started raining during the last concert on Sunday, I was very happy about that since I had expected three days of rain which quite frankly would've sucked (pics from the festival are here).
• Monday to Friday this week I slept a lot. And I am now at episode 9 of the third season of Battlestar Galactica. Oh, and I went to the Uni on Wednesday to take care of some administrative stuff with regard to my exchange. These are literally all of this week's achievements right there.
• Last night was Zürifäscht. Zürifäscht was fun. The fireworks were pretty and we watched them from the roof of a tall building which was great. Also, I may or may not have embarrassed myself due to alcohol-induced verbal diarrhea. Oh well, if I had a Franc for everytime...nevermind.
• Tomorrow I'm going to Hungary with my Mum for a week. Yay! We'll be visiting Lake Balaton, Budapest, a little town outside Budapest and whichever town my mum's dentist lives in, 'cause she managed to break off part of a tooth and according to her that's rather uncomfortable. I'll be going with her because if you can't remember the last time you saw a dentist, then it's probably been to long. Let's hope that I can continue on my lucky streak of no - problems - with - teeth - whatsoever that I've been on since birth.