This was fun! We visited a Christmas market in a castle close to Aarau. It is a foundation that helps people who need extra care and support by providing housing, apprenticeships, jobs. They had lots of candles, art work, wood work, paper art for sale. All made by the people who stay here. It was very creative and different to all the usual Christmas stuff for sale.
Friday was an interesting day. First, I got to school, and had a normal morning, until after lunch. (For lunch we made and ate delicious omelettes for my Hauswertschaft class). Then my entire year hopped onto a train and headed to Luzern.
At Luzern, there was an expo of different professions called ZeBi. You could look at what they do, how they do it, and what you need to know to do it. There were a variety of jobs from the Swiss Army to electricians.
On Wednesday, Noah and I missed out on school to go to CERN, the ‘Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire’ in Geneva. CERN is most known by having the largest particle accelerator in the world – the LHC, or Large Hadron Collider.
Our first stop was the Universe of Particles exhibit. It was a big wooden sphere that represented the amount of wood that grows in all Swiss forests, in one hour. Inside the dome was a lot of little spheres that showed some of CERN’s achievements and what they do there.
I started at the Hitzkirch Sekundarschule this week. It is year 7-9 and has around 300 students from 5 surrounding villages. I’m in year 8 here as they don’t start school until they are 6 or 7 years old in Switzerland.
The building where I have most of my classes
My teachers name is Herr Küng, he’s young, funny and really nice. Every morning when we arrive we shake our teachers hand and say Gruezi Herr Küng. There are 20 students in my class. I think Switzerland has the highest paid teachers in the world, and one of the top rated education systems. They really care a lot.
Our 4th stop was Wroclaw in Poland. It is a beautiful, bustling place. We had a great time there.
The city was incredible. There were lots of pretty buildings, lots of small restaurants and cafés, and lots of gnomes (there are 300 all over the city) The gnomes were a protest to communism and they’re all doing something funny. There was one gnome who was writing on his belly near a tattoo parlour.
While in Greece, we tried some of the cuisine. Especially the souvlaki with pita, which we ate at least once a day! The souvlaki (which is what we called it for short) is meat cooked on a gyro or a kebab stick and salad wrapped in pita bread with tzatziki, It’s like a cross between a taco and a kebab. The Greeks also add a few fried potatoes (fries) into the souvlaki. It’s so good. Greek salad is good too, especially if you like olives. The feta is made from goats and sheeps milk.
On our way to the Saas-Valley, we went through some impressive mountain ranges, including driving through the famous (infamous?) Gotthard Tunnel. Our GPS didn’t have much to say because we were pretty much following one road. We then came to a stop at a toll. We paid the fee (which thought was a bit strange as we already had the license to take toll roads in Switzerland) and passed on through.
On Friday, the 14th of September, we went to a swimming pool all the way out on the other side of Switzerland to a place called Brig.
It is set in a valley surrounded by mountains. It has the longest Alpine thermal waterslide in the world, at a shocking 182 metres long and it goes down the side of a mountain. Another cool feature at these pools is the turbulent pool, which had jets to push you along the loop. Every second half hour they ran the slide, and every other half hour they strengthened the turbulent pool. So we could alternate between the slide and the turbulent pool, with a 10-minute gap between them. That’s 20 minutes of the slide, 10 minutes of something else, 20 minutes of the turbulent pool, then 10 minutes of something else again, and it keeps repeating.
One downside to the pool was that it took 3 hours to get there. But on the way back, we saw some incredible sights. Mountain passes with crazy bends and huge dams on lakes.
Overall, the pool excursion was pretty cool, and it would be great to do it again sometime.
On our way to the Goldau Tierpark (a really cool park set at the foot of mountains, in a forest where tame animals roam free) we passed by the Northern Mountain Range.
There were lots of trees up the sides of the mountains, and they were starting to change colour as autumn is approaching. I could only imagine the beautiful picture when the trees were half orange and half green. And then add the Zugersee (Lake Zug), and it becomes something you’d see in nature documentaries. It filled me with joy to recognise that I come from such a beautiful land.
Yesterday, we had a blast. After lunch, we travelled 20 minutes to a nearby town and swum at the Badi (pools) there.
The Badi wasn’t large, but it was fun nonetheless. There was the main pool, a kid’s pool with a small slide, and a kid’s splash zone. The main pool had two diving boards, an area with lanes, and a ‘Wibit’. And a river running through.
The kid’s splash zone had lots of sprinklers that turned on and off at regular intervals. There were many different types of sprinklers, such as water cannons and a tall tower that sprayed water and you could change what the water sprayed onto.
After the Badi, we drove home, and it was dinner time. For dinner, we walked to the nearest park where a live band was playing. We got some sausages and beer (which us children didn’t have) and listened to the music. After that, we went home and to sleep.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
Benjamin Willis
Daniel
Michelle
Noah Willis
Tobias Willis