1st week of school

So I had my first week of classes. So far everything is going good. The funny part is that each class is divided into 45 minute lectures. Then a bell rings, yes like a high school bell, and you get a 5 minute break. If your class is 2 ects, their system of credit hours, then you stay for 2- 45 minute lectures, 3 ects you stay for 3- 45 minute lectures and so on. All classes are only once a week. First class I show up to is an 8 am class. We sit around for half an hour and the teacher never shows up. Awesome so I woke up early for no reason. Also most of the classes do not have exams, instead you write a paper at the end. This one guy wants the paper to be 10+ pages, okay cool no problem however he wants you to have 5 books refernenced twice, along with 12 other references from periodicals as and a couple of more from peer reviewed articles. I had 2 classes with this guy so I dropped one. Mind you this class is worth 1 credit hour back home. If you do have an exam, be prepared. There are no tests during the year, just one final. It feels like law school. Also they give you only 1 hour to take it. This should be fun.
I also want to punch the IT guys here in the face. Printing is an absolute nightmare. Normally in america they have a computer room with one of two printers. You hit print on your screen and it sends the work to the printer and then you go and pick it up. Not here. There is a computer room, okay so far so good, it has two printers, okay even better. However when you press print you have to select which room you want the document to print in, thats if you make it that far because all the directions are in German. Or swiss german which is a mashup of French, Italian and German. Seriously more people say Merci for thank you here than the german Danke. Anyway you select the room and then which printer. Now if I am in the computer room wouldn`t it make sense that if I hit print I would want the document to print in the same fucking room as the computer from which I have sent it from? Why would I send it to the upstairs printer or another printer all the way across the building. How about if I hit print you just print the fucking document like any other computer on earth. As you can see this really pisses me off. I tried to print twice but to no avail. Also you have to pay for your paper. Not much but if you want to put money on your student card to pay for it you cannot put anything less than 10 francs on it because the machine only accepts paper bills. 10 cents for black and white, 1 franc for color. You can probably guess which option I am going to use. Compounding this problem is the fact my laptop will not connect to the internet. So I will have to go and drop it off at the IT department which is open 1 hour a day.

All in all not bad, as you can see I am just getting adjusted to the new way of doing things. In about a month I will know how to do all this stuff in my sleep. All my teachers are nice and the workload is manageable. I am taking a course to learn how to speak German. Its 4 hours long however the teacher is good. He only speaks in German and is really helpful. My intercultural mangment class is fun and the others are not that bad either. Most of the international students are taking the same classes so it`s nice to see people you know in the classes. Off to play soccer with the guys from the dorm, I opted to play goalie. If there are a lot of spelling errors I am sorry but I am typing on a german keyboard and they are really weird. For instance the z and y keys are switched. Later

Carnival!!

So Sunday was carnival in Switzerland and truth be told it was a lot of fun. I guess this is like their Mardi Gras celebration but more towards a family atmosphere. A couple things did stick out, and I know this is a carnival in a small town however these critiques I think are warranted.

1- Instead of thorwing beads, candy, plastic cups, moon pies etc... ( you know stuff people would actually enjoy to catch) they throw confetti here. Just plain old punched out pieces of what looked like construction paper. I thought it was wierd that a country so proud of their enviromental record would let tons and tons of paper just be tossed into the streets for fun. One of the german girls I was watching the parade with commented that she was at a carnival in Cologne and they where throwing chocolate, beads and other cool stuff. But whatever, everyone was having fun.

2- Young children are actually encourgaged to throw confetti at the people in the parade. So as the people in the parade are marching they are being pelted with vast amounts of confetti. I commented that it must be insansely difficult to play and instrument while being showered with confetti. I guess thats what you get when you don't throw candy and other cool stuff at the parade. After the parade the adults would throw confetti at each other. As we are walking back to the dorm we are getting confetti thrown into our faces and backs at almost point blank range, including one of the girls getting a considerable amount of confetti thrown into her mouth. It was fun for the first 2 times it happend then it just got annoying, like really annoying. The parade was alright but instead of throwing confetti, I would suggest they throw these instead:
















That would be awesome.

3- Almost everyone in the parade wore masks similar to the one in the pic above. They actually looked really cool.

On a completely different note the dryers here suck really really bad. I had a load dry for an hour and 20 minutes and the clothes were still wet, not damp, but almost like they were never in the damn thing. So I had to finish them off on the radiator heater in my room. This is one instance where I will be violently patriotic and state that American clothes dryers absolutely blow Switzerlands off the planet. Okay small rant over.


All in all not a bad day. Had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone enjoying the days festivities. I start school tomorrow so the blog will probably be updated once or twice a week. Going to suck going back to school, but at least I don't have any Friday classes.

In Da Club

So a group of us went to one of the supposedly hottest clubs in Zurich. After a 20 minute train ride we got to the train station and then after a 10 minute walk we arrived at the club. Because we were with the student group we didn't have to pay the cover. The cover was 25 francs. Then after you get in they have a coat check. So you're probably thinking that after you have already paid this 25 franc cover that they would at least give you a free coat check. Well you have obvisiously never been to Switzerland if you think that. Switzerland just has a small way of just bleeding you dry. Pay your 3 franc coat fee and then you are in the club. For those not doing the math, thats 28 francs you have spent before you even enter the actual club. Now the awesome thing about Europe is that they, like america, have the concept of "pre-gaming" before they go out. We got some beers and went to one of the students apartments and drank before we left. We just sat around the table and talked about our countries. I showed them a video of me and my friends playing flip cup and everyone thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. "Why on earth do you play this?" " What is the point of this game, it makes absolutely no sense?" So we sat and laughed about it till we had to leave for the train station. During the pre game I watched 2 germans polish off a bottle of vodka in about an hour. And they weren't even fazed. Once we were at the bar in the club a couple of the german girls went up to the bar and found the cheapest beer they had, 7 francs. Not good, but defineately not terrible either.


The club scene takes a little getting used to. First off is the music. It's pure techno. Second no one really dances and when they do it is by themselves sort off. Me and one of the germans solved that by pullling some of the girls we were with onto the floor. Yes I was pretty drunk at the time. Anyway after about an hour everyone was on the dance floor balling it up and dancing with each other. Germans dancing with french, polish with spainish, amercians with asians etc. No body really hung out with just the people from their own country which was really nice. We sort of formed a dance circle and just basically had a soul train dance off for about an hour or two. I found out how to say cheers in about 6 languages.


A funny thing I found out was is that the German girls always drink this concoction of white wine mixed with a small amount of sprite. Before we left the train station they were all drinking out of a 2 liter sprite bottle, which of course was the white wine/sprite mixture. They order it at all the bars and clubs and it is usually garnished with an orange slice. It's not bad but a little to sweet for my taste.


On another note this goat can read your soul. This is the same goat that constantly stares me down every time I walk past him. Read the earlier post for an explanation of why there are goats where I live. I also uploaded some pics from the club to the snapfish account so check it out. Email me if you need a link again.

Willkommen in der Schweiz

So today we had a little intro class about Swiss Culture and culture shock. It was fun. We got to learn about stereotypes and did an exercise where everyone from the different countries got to tell what their sterotypes where about other countries. French were wine cheese, rude, smokers. Germans were beer and scary, and Americans were fat, fast food, spend to much money. After the stereotypes where announced the people from the countries got to go up to the front to defend their homelands. Very fun and got to know some more about the different people. Everyone was laughing about their sterotypes and it was all in good fun. I opened up a bank account and got a phone yesterday. opening up the account was challenging because I speak little Deustch and the woman at the bank spoke very little english, but we got it done.

Doing laundry is fun to. Instead of just going down to the washroom and putting your clothes in a machine and paying, you have to reserve the entire washroom. It varies in cost depending on the time of day you reserve it however you get the entire room, which consists of 3 washers and 2 dryers. You go up to the desk in the dorm and ask to reserve the room and then the lady pulls out a datebook and proceeds to schedule you in. Small, small machines but I was expecting that. On the plus side the dorm has a small herd of goats outside that is pretty fun to watch when you are waiting for the wash to be done. I'll post pics later.

Speaking of culture shock. Here are some pics from the store. I know I harp on the store alot but it is so different from back home that the differences stick out the most. Note the "grocery bag" I mentioned in an earlier post. The magazine is for a reference so you know how big it is. Note the rip in the bottom right. I was carrying the mayonaise, some cheese and a jar of Nutella.

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Out on the Town

So this is the infamous bread I was talking bout. Dry, stale sort of but it can hold peanut butter and jelly. Went on a pub crawl with all the other students. Very fun and everyone was drinking it up. It was fun listening to everyone talk about their home town and asking questions about other peoples countries. I had a girl from France explain the rules of Rugby to me, a German girl ask about the different movies in America and a guy from Portugal asking which beaches in America had the hottest women, you know all the important issues.

These are the beers in Question. 6 francs for these bad boys. Now I have to go run and get a phone and try to open a bank account, this should be fun. And Dad I finally figured out how to do the laundry.

Grocery shopping 101

So I went grocery shopping today and I learned some interesting things. No where can you find a loaf of bread pre sliced like in america, I found one but it only had 12 slices of bread and it was dry as dry could be. I found peanut butter and they had about 27 kinds of jam. I selected the smallest jar I could find. It was cherry or blueberry I couldn't tell. I bought some cheese and then bought some oranges. Here in switzerland you have to select your oranges and weigh them yourself on this machine. After you weigh them it will print out a ticket with the price on it. I think I typed in the wrong code cause when I got to the register, the lady started yelling at me and them ran back to the produce section and came back with a new bag.
Another fun thing is they do not have any grocery bags. Well I'm sorry they do but they are the same bags you put your fruit and veggies in meaning it is super thin and cannot hold more than 2 lbs of food. I also found out than bank of america will not let you withdraw more than 500 frnacs a day. I went to pay for housing but found out I couldn't because of BOA restrictions. Well Jeff why didn't you just pay with your Credit card? That is because Cash is king here. 99% of places only take cash including the place where your bill is over 2000 francs. I feel like a drug dealer walking around with all this cash. After all this I went to get my residency permit. They asked my religion, thought about telling them I was muslim, but decided not too as there was an actual muslim next to me and the people at the goverment office were giving her and her husband absolute hell. I thought it was funny. I also went ice skating last night. It went well for the last hour or so but the first was hard. All in all not a bad couple of days in Switzerland. Start school on Tuesday so the updating might not happen as much, but at least I don't have any classes on Friday.

Good God

Going to make this short as I am about to go sign up for classes. But here is a couple of things I have noticed so far.

1- It`s cold
- My room is tiny but the bed is comfortable.
- Co-ed bathrooms in the dorm so its nice to know you can blast one out while some girl is taking a shower.
- it is expensive. 2 beers at the student bar will cost you 17 francs. It doesn't come with a handjob either.
- Did I mention it's cold
- dinner or lunch will take a minimum of 40 minutes.
- I have yet to find a jukebox in a bar. They probably removed them before I came over because they knew I would take over the bar scene with my epic music selections.
- United Airlines in Pensacola sucks , more on that later.

Alright got to go. Met a ton of people, mostly from France and Germany, super super nice people.

Bout to leave

Alright since I've already watched the current episode of law and order, I'd figure I'd post this for fun. For anyone who wants to study abroad in Switzerland the only thing I can say right now is be prepared to fill out a ridiculous amount of paper work and spend an ungodly amount of time at kinkos or someother copy place. Also the Swiss goverment wants just about everything notarized. Bank statements, college degrees, diplomas, bloodwork, x-rays of soul and just about anything else you can think of.

Of course these are all exaggerrated ( not really) but the visa only took about 5 weeks to process. Then I had to send an envelope to the Consulate in Atlanta, which the post office suggested I purchase a 30 dollar envelope for both ways, not that I expected anything less from the precission like USPS. With all the bitching aside I am really looking forward to being in Switzerland. I know I will have a blast and everyone I have talked to is extremely nice and very helpful. I am not looking forward to the cold wheather. Oh well can't win them all. In case you were wondering what a Swiss Franc looks like please pay attention to the pic. I've heard Switzerland is expensive so all the money in the pic is probably enough to buy a pint of milk and 3 slices of toast sans butter. Oh well at least it looks cool. I'll update this when I arrive in Switzerland. Cheers