Swiss Family Willis

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.

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Benjamin: Noah and I go to the Altwis school which is just down the road. The teachers are pretty easy going. They don’t mind if you talk at your desk. And there are headphones you can put on if you don’t want to be disturbed. My class has 23 children and two teachers. There are kindergarten (5 year olds), year 1, 2 and 3 in my class. It’s a really little school with 46 kids and two classrooms.

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There are Hofladen everywhere. Every farm seems to have one – that is a shop where farmers sell their own, and other, local produce. Fresh, organic, in-season, affordable fruit, vegetables, meat, cheese, pressed apple juice, eggs, wine….

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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.

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Visiting Berlin was a bit of a last-minute decision. I’d always wanted to go and it’s only a 3-hour drive from Wroclaw, so we went for it. As we had less than 24 hours in this very cool city, we made the most of our time, knowing we’d have to come back one day and spend more time exploring.

It felt comfortable, more familiar back in a German-speaking country. We could understand people, read the road signs, knew the currency etc. (Czech Republic and Poland don’t use Euros except in some tourist areas)

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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.

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Yesterday we drove from Bratislava to Prague. Our first impression was coming over the hill from the motorway and seeing all the church spires all over the city. It is a huge city. So many red roofs and churches. Some of them looked like haunted houses. (Like the Fortnite haunted hills castle)

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Day two of our road trip brings us to Bratislava, Slovakia.

We arrived at our apartment in the evening. Turns out the rooms are all themed after different beverages. Ours was the Jägermeister room!

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Before the Herbstferien are over and it’s down to serious school / work / study business, we thought we’d take a week to visit a few places around Europe. The weather has been stunning for weeks and it feels like summer for us Kiwis.

I don’t know if the novelty will ever wear off but it’s crazy to be able to drive through country border after country border, sometimes without even noticing. Oh, I guess we are in Austria now!

We spent our first day exploring Salzburg. The birthplace of Mozart, home to The Sound of Music, castles, fortresses, and tons of history and beauty.

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Bayern Münich are my favourite Bundesliga team. We asked my Uncle Florian who lives near to Munich (who is also a big fan) if he could find us some tickets. They are hard to get but he managed to get us some.

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