My First Two Months In Switzerland Benjamen Charles

My First Two Months In Switzerland Benjamen Charles My first two months in Switzerland have been an absolute blast, and I honestly cant think of any else I can compare it to. Getting here was quite daunting to say the least honestly, there was so much anticipation on leading up to me leaving, and then once the day was finally here that we all flew out, I was so overwhelmed with excitement and nerves, and I couldn t wait for the year to finally start. I m pretty sure it took nearly exactly 24 hours to get from my home in Australia, to my new home in Switzerland, and the plane flights felt like they lasted for ever. However the planes were a good chance to get to know some of the other exchange students that I ve ended up spending quite a bit of time with here in Switzerland, and despite the fact that I only got about 3 to 4 hours sleep on the planes between Australia and Switzerland, I was quite surprised that I didn t suffer from very bad Jetlag, and I even managed to stay up the whole day (because we landed in Switzerland about 9:30 in the morning I think) and get used to the new timezones. When we got of the plane in Singapore I was so lost in thought, anxiety and excitement that I said G-day to a couple of people by accident as we were walking to our next flight. I also couldn t believe how big the airport we went to in Singapore was, it wasn t like anything I d seen in Australia, and it took us a while to find the meeting zone for our next flight where, I met all of the other exchange students that would be going from Australia to Switzerland with us. From Singapore we had one more 13 hour flight to Zurich in Switzerland where I met my knew family, (Marie- Louise, Roger, Nils and Jael Braun) that were waiting just outside the door of the international flights section, and there was a lot of commotion as we all walked through and went to greet them. After all the greetings were out of the way I went with my host family to have something to eat and drink in a little cafe at the Airport. However I didn t have anything to eat as I was still feeling a little off from all of the plane food. We then walked to the car together and started the journey back to my host family s house, and the drive home was absolutely amazing, seeing all of the different buildings, and the different landscapes, and just all the new amazing things and places that I could now call my new home. And the greatest thing was that it also started snowing on the drive home, and despite the fact it wasn t my first time seeing snow, it was sooooo amazing, and I couldn t wait to be in the snow. When we got home I was greeted by an amazing greeting that my host sister Jael had set up for me with a sign on the door reading Herzlich wilkommen Ben. I then carried all my luggage inside and my host family showed me to my new room, which had a very well decorated door, courtesy of my host sister Jael again, and a very nice arrangement of chocolate on the bed. I unpacked all of my clothes and things and settled into my room, before having a tour of the house, and then lunch. After lunch we went for a walk up a hill near our house which has a great view of the whole town. When we got back I settled in a little more and got everything unpacked and put my suitcase away. After dinner my host brother asked me if I wanted to play a game with him and Jael, and I said yeah for sure, and I thought we were going to play a board game or something, but we went down into the attic and it turns out that they have a small room where we played hockey, soccer, European handball, and a number of other games in for a couple of hours,

until my host mum Marie-Louise came down and told us that it had been snowing outside, and so we went up in ran around and had a snow fight. I was only at my host families house for about two days before I went off on my first adventure to the amazing town of Bischoftzell for the language course with all of the other knew exchange students. There were 27 of us in total, (19 Australians, 4 Kiwis, 3 Argentinians, and one Brazilian) and we all got to know each other very quickly, and made plenty of memories in just those ten days. We learnt a lot of German, which was very good, because it was very difficult in the beginning, learning all of the basic gramma and how to construct sentences, as well as a very large new list of vocabulary. During the language camp we also went to the Stein am Rhein, which is the largest waterfall in Switzerland, and it was absolutely amazing, as it was also next to a huge castle (of course). The language camp was also kind of a great introduction for all of the new exchange students, to get to know more about Switzerland, as we went on a lot of adventures in our free time, and saw some amazing places, and took loootttttts of pictures, and also got know more about how to act in Switzerland, (as we got into a bit of trouble for going for a swim in a river on Australia Day), and also that you could by nearly half a kilo of chocolate for under 2 franks (about three and a half bucks). After the language camp I spent one more night at my host families house before leaving very early in the morning to go to Austria for a week on a ski camp with the school. The ski camp was a good chance for me to get to know some of my new class mates, and some people that I d see around school, and to make some friends before school actually started. The ski camp in Austria was the first time I had actually skied in about 5 years, and so when I first started I was a little rusty, and fell over a lot. The first thing I actually did was go down one of the ski slopes, and realise that I can t actually turn, and so I was flying down the ski slope until I eventually just bailed and dived into the snow. One of my skis flew off and I slid about 20 metres down the slope before I could get up again, by which time a lot of people were watching me and laughing, and I have to admit it was pretty funny. However one of the instructors ended up taking me on my own for the day, and teaching me different techniques, and how to control myself while I was skiing, and by the end of the camp I was able to ski down the black runs and keep up with everyone else in my group. There was this one time when we were going down a really steep black course, and there was a little jump which I decided to try. So I went over the jump pretty fast and got a good amount of distance, however when I landed one of skis wasn t straight, and so I ended up flipping over at full speed down this really steep course. I ended up sliding for ages, but I managed to flip over onto my gut, swing my legs in

the air, and dab as I slid halfway down this black course. One night we were supposed to go sledding in the dark down one of the sledding tracks that had been lit up, but there weren t enough sleds for everyone, and so me and a couple of others stayed behind and decided to make up our own fun. Because it was dark and all of the ski slopes were closed, we decided to walk over to one of them and see who could front flip, and roll the furthest down the ski slope, which I ended up winning. However we then had the problem of trying to get back up the ski slope, so we decided to make another game out of it and each suggest a different way of trying to climb up. We ended up pretending to be frogs and leaping up, burying our heads in the snow and crawling up, do Butterly and swimming up, and many more different and very weird methods of climbing a ski slope. I was a little sad when we left, because I d had such a great time skiing, and I couldn t wait until I got the chance to go again. After the ski camp I managed to get another 8 hours sleep at my host family s house until I had to go to the Rotex winter weekend on the Rigi. The day didn t start so well as I missed my first train and my host Marie-Louise ended up having to drive to the next town so I could get on the train again, and we only just caught the train there too. I then took another train to meet up with all of the other exchange students that were going to the same winter weekend, and there were so many new people there that I d heard off, or spoken to over text, or in group chats, and it was good to finally meet them all for the first time. The weather on the Rigi wasn t very good when we went unfortunately, however we still managed to have a great time jumping off the edge of a little hill and rolling down in the snow, and I even managed to freeze all of my hair solid. A couple of the exchange students and I decided to go for a little walk to see a frozen waterfall that was pretty close to where we were staying for the weekend. Everyone was asked if they could bake and bring a dish that was well known form their home country, and we all had to present them, and get a chance to try some after dinner. On the second day we all hired a sled, and took a little train to the top of the mountain, and sledded down the hill, a couple of people stopped after the first time though, because it was lightly snowing, however on the sleds when you re going pretty fast it can hurt quite a bit, especially when the snow is flying in your eyes, because then you cant see where you were going either. But thankfully a couple of the exchange students and I had brought ski goggles, and so we were able to sled all day until we had to leave to catch our train home again.

On my way home, I managed to turn a perfectly good return plan into one of the scariest and most stressful nights of my life. The plan was that I would catch a train from the Rigi to Lucerne, and then a train from Lucerne to Willisau. And the plan was going perfect until I got on the train to go to Willisau. I was with one other exchange students who was taking the same train but getting off at a different stop, and we got onto the train fine, and found our seats. However about ten minutes after the train departed it stopped and sat on the tracks for about another twenty minutes, before returning to Lucerne. I m still not entirely sure why the train returned to Lucerne, but anyway Lauren (the other exchange student) and I had to find another way to get back to our towns and our host families. However the problem was, neither of us had a Swiss Simcard yet, and so our phones were pretty much useless, we couldn t contact our host families, and we couldn t look up any other routes to get back. After about an hour of flandering around endlessly, looking for a pay phone, we ended finding one hidden inside a little section of a wall, (the door to go inside was exactly the same as the wall, and it was impossible to see) that ended up eating all of my money and never actually working. And so after another half hour or so of flandering around we managed to find a bus that would get us to where Lauren needed to go, and then from their I could catch a bus to where I needed to go. So we got on the bus and headed to Laurens stop, and we got there perfectly fine, hopped of the bus at here stop, and then realised that the bus were on was the one I was meant to take to my stop. We managed to find out that there was another bus coming through and going to the same place in half an hour though, so Lauren went home and I waited for the next bus to come. And of course, me being who I am, I got on the wrong bus and ended going to the completely wrong place. I managed to start specking to someone on the bus though, and said that if I got of this stop, and went to the next town, I could catch a bus from there to my town. So I got off at the stop, caught the right bus this time and got to the next town, and then it turns out that the bus the lady had told me I could take to my town wasn t running that day. By this time I was completely over it, I was so lost, and so worried, I didn t even know (and still don t even know) where I actually was, I had no way of contacting my host family or anyone, and of course it was the night of Fasnacht. I ll have to explain Fasnacht to make it relevant how much worse this made it. Fasnacht is one of the biggest carnivals in the canton Lucerne, and basically everyone dresses up as gouls, and different crazy looking creatures, and some really creative things. However at night they all go out and get really drunk, and so not only was I lost and alone, I was surrounded by drunk gouls everywhere. I eventually managed to asked some people who were reasonable sober if they could help me, and I eventually got it across that I am an exchange students from Australia, with limited German, and that I was completely lost. One of them ended up ringing my host mum, who then had to drive to pick me, which I was very relieved about. I then had another week of school because of Fasnacht holidays, (thats how big it is) and my host took me out skiing again to a ski resort near where we live. I was soooo happy to be skiing again, and this time with my host family. Nils and I are really into going fast, and doing jumps, and so for most of the day were just going down steep slopes really fast and doing jumps in the FunPark. However since this was only the second time I d been skiing in Switzerland, as you can imagine I crashed a lot, and even managed to fly off the edge of a cliff at one point, lose one of my skis, faceplant off a huge jump, and fly off a pole, as well as numerous crashes just going down the regular slopes (most of the time because I was skiing backwards). However we did get some pretty good jumps, and a lot of good photos as well.

Once I d recovered from my night of getting completely lost, Marie-Louise, Jail, Nils and I all dressed up and went to Lucerne for one of the Fasnacht day celebrations, and it was amazing the amount of time and effort some people put into their costumes, and the things they take to Fasnacht with them. I also couldn t believe how big the event was, the streets were just packed with thousands of people, with everyone dressed up, and I got so many amazing photos and videos. Another big part of Fasnacht is the music that they play, there were so many bands that all rotated and walked around to different places, and the music they made was rather odd, but really amazing as well. We spent about half the day there before coming back and getting out of our costumes as well. The next day we then went skiing again on one of the bigger ski resorts in Switzerland, an it was so amazing, because there were so many ski slopes, and so many different ways to go, and I even got to ski down the slope they go down in the world cup. However the world cup pist ends at a rather bad spot on the mountain, and so the only thing we could do was go right back to the back bottom, and take the cable car back up. However that was really cool, because to get to the cable car we had to go through the town, and they had tracks through the town specifically for skiers coming of the slopes, and I just found it really cool to be skiing through a town. We skied for pretty much the whole day until we were all so sore that we couldn t even ski for any longer, and there were plenty more crashes, and plenty of successful and unsuccessful jumps and tricks. After we were finished skiing we went to Marie- Louse parents house and stayed there for the night. It was really nice to meet them, and they were really nice to me, and quite interested in asking me questions, and showing me different things. However it was a little difficult because they don t speak any English, (Gerhard, my host mums dad actually speaks German, French, Italian and Spanish) but we were able to have simple conversations, and they were able to explain different things to me, and I actually learnt a lot in the one night I spent there. Gerhard also owns a wood business, that has been run by his family for about 150 years now, and just below their house is the big warehouse where he runs he business, and the one night we were there, there was a group of people practicing playing those traditional trumpets that are usual played up on the mountains, and they were so cool to see, and they also sounded amazing.

After that my host parents wanted to go out skiing again, but Nils had to do homework and study for a test, and Jael had broken her thumb, so they just took me out for the day again, and we had a great time. The weather forecast for the day wasn t very good, and it was predicted that there would be some low fog on the ski slopes, so we went to a slope that was higher above the fog, and from the top it looked so amazing, because we all we could see till the horizon was fog, and was like an ocean that just went on forever. I actually had a great day, and didn t crash so much which was amazing for a difference. There were some really good jumps there as well, which of course I tried, and failed a number of times, but I did get some good photos and videos again. The hardest part of the day was getting back down the bottom to the car park again, because we didn t really know what the weather conditions would be like, and so we had to decide weather we would ski down, or if we would take the cable car back to the bottom. But I asked if we could ski down, and so we got about a hundred meters down, turned a corner and lost all vision, the fog was so thick that we could only see about a meter in front of us, and it took ages to slowly get down to the bottom. After the Holidays I finally had to go to my first day of school which was fairly daunting at first, meeting all my new class mates, and trying to find all of the classes, and especially because all of the classes are in German. However it has slowly gotten better each day, and my German is beginning to finally progress. I have now been attending school for around 4 or 5 weeks, and I am slowly getting into a routine of getting up and getting ready for school each morning, and then coming home for lunch, (which is something I ve never done in Australia) and then going back to school for a couple of hours longer than I usually would in Australia as well. I then have Handball training every night except for Thursday, after school with my host brother, and while I don t play any of the games at the moment, I think it is essential for me to even be just showing up to the training sessions, and get to know a different group of people outside of school, and be a part of team. It is also essential because I know that I would otherwise get fat with all of the Swiss food that I am consuming each day. Some nights after school, if Nils and I have some free time between handball and homework, we go for a bike ride. One night we very spontaneously decided to go for a ride, and we only planned to go for a little ride around to a place with a good view of the town we live in, so we didn t take helmets or a phone with us. However we ended up riding into a forrest, and then ended riding around at random for so long that by the time we got home it was pitch black, and we had a little difficulty finding our way back through the forrest. So when we got back home my host mum wasn t very impressed with the stupidity of what we d done, but thankfully she saw it from the funny side of things too and was just glad we didn t get hurt. So Nils and I decided to grab a phone and a speaker and head back out into the forrest in the pitch black without any lights again. The next day after school we went back into the forrest to go along the tracks that we d ridden the night before to see what we had actually ridden through, and to be honest I was quite surprised that one of us hadn t crashed, because the trails were covered in fallen branches, pot holes, small creeks flowing across the track, and prickle bushes everywhere, (which I have to admit I did actually fall in a couple of prickle bushes the night before).

Then one Saturday I was lucky enough to be invited by my host family s grandad Gerhard to go on a small tour around the city of Lucerne, and visit some amazing sites, and the greatest museum of transportation I have every seen. In the morning Nils, Jael and I went down to the train-station in Willisau to go to Lucerne, where we met Gerhard and a couple of Nils and Jael s cousins. We started by going to a famous wooden bridge in Lucerne that goes across the river that runs through the city. And then went to an see an amazing painting of when the French army had to retreat into Switzerland. The painting was a massive 360 degree portrait of the French army marching into Switzerland, and dropping all of their weapons and belongings as ordered by the Swiss army, as a clear sign of salute and need for help. We then went to a protected sight in Lucerne where the city used to be buried under a massive glacier millions of years ago, and the glacier was moving, and leaving some amazing markings and structures in the stone below. There was also a mirror maze at this sight, which we all had heaps of fun trying to find our way through without face planting into any mirrors. Then we went and saw a famous statue that was carved out of the side a cliff, of lion that had been killed by a steak in the heart, where I also bought a card to right on and mail to my family back in Australia. We then went to have lunch at a very nice restaurant, and we all had very nice meals, and some of the biggest schnitzels I have ever seen. I also tried to speak to everyone in German, and I managed to have a basic conversation with a bit of help from Nils with vocabulary and gramma. After that we went to the Museum of Transport, which was a collection of about five buildings, that took up nearly a whole block. The museum was so big that Nils and I ended up having to run through some of the displays just to get a look at everything before we ran out of time and had to leave. The museum had everything from the very first steam engines, trains, cars, motorcycles, ski lifts, cable cars, jets, planes, helicopters, satellites, space shuttles, and so much more that I couldn t even think of trying to list them all. After the museum we went back to the train station and had a drink in a cafe while we waited for our train to arrive. The next day I went to meet some exchange students in Interlaken in the morning, to celebrate the birthday of Chloe McCann, however before meeting them I sought up with another one of the exchange students called David, and we found a great spot on one of the rivers to take some good photos, and being who I am, I decided to try and do a handstand on a cinderblock out above the river, and I thankfully didn t fall in because I didn t have any other clothes to put on after. We then went exploring around the town of Interlaken, and David and I ended up walking off onto a trail that went up a mountain, where we found a dead old tree that had been half cut down, and we decided to climb on top of it and get some cool photos of the view (although it was a little difficult as there was a lot of other trees in the way.

Over these easter holidays I am going to go away for one week skiing with my host family in the amazing San Moritz, and I cannot wait to get back out on the skis and on the amazing slopes of Switzerland. I then have another week off school, and I am planning to make a number of day trips to places all over Switzerland and do plenty of sight seeing, as well as meeting with all of the exchange students. We have organised a trip for some of the exchange students to go to the CERN institute, which is the worlds largest hadron collider, and I cant wait to see it because it was one of the things I wanted to see the most on my exchanged in Switzerland. I cant wait to see what the next couple of months bring, and the amazing memories I still have to make in this amazing country. I ll be sure to keep in touch more regularly, and keep everyone up to date with how things are going.