Well it's not exactly Switzerland...

I cannot believe it’s only been one full day in San Francisco. I left cold and snowy New Hampshire at 6:45 yesterday morning and arrived at my hostel here nearly 20 hours later…jeesh what a big country!!

As some of you may already know, my reason for coming to this city was primarily a job interview, and job searching in general. I was originally supposed to be a ski instructor in Gstaad this winter, but recently found out that the Swiss government denied me a work visa. Boo. So, somewhat impulsively (but also because SF had been on my radar for a while and I desperately needed to work on a plan B after having waited and waited and waited for a visa that never came), I flew out here thanks to some of my dad’s frequent flyer miles (thank you!).

Sign outside a fancy Swiss watch store--apparently Gstaad hasn't left me! 

Soo day 1 here we go: It started at 7am (actually before then because let’s be honest, even my sleep-loving self is itching to get out of bed by 10am…which was the equivalent time on the east coast). Fortunately, my hostel provides free breakfast—a nice way of feeling like this insanely expensive city is hurting me a bit less. At breakfast, I furiously typed away at my computer, catching up on emails, and of course…job hunting. I also met some friendly fellows, including 3 guys from Germany (who admitted that they cannot understand Swiss German).

Then off to visit Elle at Strava. I would love to work there, but unfortunately they don’t have any openings right now (although Elle has been a true sweetheart in trying to pull strings for me). The office was just as my ski coach (whose son was one of two people to start Strava) had described it—a big warehouse from the outside, beautiful hardwood floors with high ceilings inside. Yep, made me want to work there even more.

Strava office

Then off to my interview with the Fund for the Public Interest, my primary reason for coming out here. On our early morning, snowy car ride to the Dartmouth Coach, my dad and I practiced rehearsing some things that we thought might come up in the interview…What would a typical day be like? What is their primary source of funding?...Overall, the interview went great, but I’m not so sure the job is for me. It’s mainly canvassing (i.e. flagging down people on the street) and I don’t really like to bother people. Also, the entire office consisted of a dirty carpet, one fold-up table, and four fold-up chairs.

One part of the application that I had to fill out included the question: “What is the biggest problem you see in our society today?”

I couldn’t help but compare the glamorous loft-like space in the Strava office to the tiny, grungy one I was currently sitting in, and search for a deeper meaning in this juxtaposition of work places. Why does writing code for software that tracks bike rides from GPS data pay 2x—or 5x, or 10x?—more than preventing big oil companies from fracking private lands in California?

So that’s what I wrote: “The biggest problem I see in our society today is that the jobs that pay the most do not necessarily benefit our society the most. And particularly for younger generations fresh out of college, many of whom have hefty loans to pay off, choosing a job that they find meaningful, even if it aligns with their morals, is that much less appealing if it doesn’t pay well. Therefore, many young, talented recent graduates (including myself—although I didn’t say this), are incentivized to go for corporate jobs or start-ups (corporate jobs often being linked to big oil, and start-ups…more on this later…).

So by now it’s lunchtime and I figure while I’m here I should try to eat something one cannot find back east. So I head to Chinatown and find a Chinese/Vietnamese place that looks reasonably priced from the outside. Wrong. $15 and some odd cents for tofu, rice, and a few spring rolls. Oh golly, why am I so good at finding myself in expensive cities…

After lunch, I wander back to the hostel to do more job searching. As I pass homeless person after homeless person, I become overwhelmed with guilt. $15 for lunch, so does that mean I don’t have any more money to hand out? Or does it mean that I most certainly do? Who do I choose? If I were to live here, would I be loyal to one person as a way of easing my guilt? How would I choose that person? Can they tell how much my purse cost? What are the stories behind all these people?

Now I’m back in the hostel, doing a major google search for San Francisco start-ups. Damn it, why couldn’t I have more of an engineering brain? It would be so much easier to get hired around here…I scroll through hundreds of listings, looking for jobs that require minimal knowledge in coding or engineering, and try to comprehend the summary of each startup’s description: “Interface connecting Facebook users to Twitter accounts, minimizing the gaps in social media and promoting easier connectivity for users,” “Advertising startup in its beginning stages with much promise from investors for growth,” “Online food line that promotes freshness through grocery e-commerce.”

WTF.

What is any of that supposed to mean, why do we need any of it, why does it pay so well, why does it make any sense to invest in a company that doesn’t actually produce anything tangible, and WHY DO WE NEED TO BUY GROCERIES ONLINE? (I had actually joked with my mom about this the other day, saying “you’ll know we’re doomed when we start buying our groceries online,” and she responded, “actually, that’s already happening.”).

Okay I’m starting to be quite anxious and irritable and jittery now, sitting at my computer while the man next to me furiously speaks through a thick British accent with a supervisor at Amazon, because he ordered batteries and not dietary supplements, dammit.

It’s time to go for a run.

I haven’t ever seen the Golden Gate Bridge, and Elle says Golden Gate Park is a great place to run, so I make that my destination. Boy, it’s quite far out though. I arrive in time to see the sunset and am tuckered out, so decide to take a series of busses back downtown.

Sunset at Golden Gate

pretty self-explanatory ;-)

An old man, black with grey dreadlocks, asks me for the time as we wait for the bus. He holds a cane in one hand and a black sack in the other. I assume he’s homeless, or at least semi-homeless. We step on the bus and he doesn't pay the fare. He chats me up and doesn’t stop. He asks me where I’m from, why I’m here, what my job interview was for, what my name is, when my birthday is, if I’m a Capricorn…He introduces himself as Happy. He tells me to dress in layers because the nights are cool. He tells me to be careful with my ziploc bag of money, not to expose it while on the bus. He tells me not to settle for just any job because if we settle for anything, then we no longer stand for something. He asks me if I can feel the love in the air—the air is less thick than in most places, he says.

Back at the hostel. My head is spinning. I’m ravenous. I shower, put on some warmer clothes (because the nights are cool after all) and head out again to buy some fixings for dinner. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I head for a Whole Foods.

At the salad bar, a man, in his late fifties I would guess, asks me how it works—do you eat it here? Can you mix things? I say sure, I don’t really know. It’s only my first day here. He replies that it’s his second. I here an accent in his voice and ask where he’s from. “Originally, or where I live?” he responds. “Oh- either.” “I live in Switzerland.”

I bubble up, telling him that I lived there this past summer. “Where? What were you doing? Oh Bern, I’m from Lugano. The best.” And before I know it, he asks me to dine with him. Oh gawd. I was hoping to bring my salad back to the hostel and meet some people [my own age] there. But instead, we pay for our dinners and share a table inside the Whole Foods. We talk about all the consumerism we’ve witnessed throughout the day, my studies, his travels, whether he should take advantage of the exchange rate that’s in his favor (he wants to buy a new computer and asks me if I think he should—I tell him about the rare earth metals that go into them), and our Jewish blood (turns out he’s originally from Israel). I ask him what his profession is, since we haven’t gotten to that yet. I’m still not sure if I heard him properly, but I’m pretty sure he said that he organizes cults.

Okay. I’m just about ready to buy some things for breakfast and be on my merry way now. Fortunately, he finishes his food before me and signals that he’s ready to move on. “Sorry to rush you, my dear. It would be lovely if we could keep this going over Facebook.” He gives my hand a hard squeeze and takes off.

Okay, now I’m really ready to head back to the hostel and go to bed. Wowzers, what a day. As I cross Mission St, I pass blocks towered high with chain stores ornately lit up for Christmas, and low down at street level they’re lined with homeless men and women, mostly men, setting up for the night. I listen in to tidbits of conversations. Someone mentions the recent Progresso CEO controversy. A gay couple passes me in the opposite direction, one of the men wearing a rainbow flag across his shirt. One woman tells another why she likes to buy local produce. I look up. It’s the iconic Apple logo lit up in bright white, nearly blinding against the night sky. I think about what I told Mr. Switzerland in Whole Foods, how progressive San Francisco claims to be, how the city would have gone bazurk if Steve jobs had made an outright comment against the LGBTQ community, but that the inhumane history of the rare earths that go into Mac Computers is in the far-off distance so no one bats an eye. I look at all the Christmas shoppers jumbled with all the homeless. I think about how f***ed up we are and what a confusing city I’ve landed foot in.

I think it’s time for bed.

Oh gawd....it's a food blog

I want to apologize to my dedicated readers because it has been quite the dry spell, hasn't it. I have been dedicating most of my time to my project, to training, and to soaking up these last few weeks in Switzerland. I don't really know how to go about sharing all that has been my life lately, so I thought I would begin by describing some of my culinary choices...because after all, it is not so difficult to eat like a king [queen] here.

But I promise--this will not be a regular occurrence. There are WAY too many food blogs out there and as I am not 1. a professional chef, 2. a food critic, or 3. a profession food photographer, I don't see any reason to add to the continuous volume of food writing and photos currently in existence since I will not be able to compete with the 5% of material that is of high quality and will merely be lost in the 95% of less-professional more blah food, more blah writing, and more blah photos that are infiltrating the interwebs, especially within the blog realm. 

After having just written that, I am going to completely contradict myself and add some volume to the world's mediocre food writing. 

Okay here we go.

1. Starting the Day

How do the Swiss start their days? Mit Birchermüesli, natürlich! And the Birchermüesli itself is natürlich, let me tell you. It was "invented" around 1900 by the Swiss doctor Maximilian Bircher-Benner as a form of health "therapy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muesli). 

To make it:

Soak oats/Müesli (uncooked granola) in water overnight in the refrigerator.

In the morning, drain remaining water. Mix soaked oats with yogurt, fruit, and nuts (optional, especially if müesli already contains nuts).

In my version below I added:

rhubarb yogurt (yes that is a normal thing in Switzerland...omg)

raspberries (less expensive if bought frozen)

grapes

dried cranberries

apples

coconut

If you have the time, you can chop the fruit fresh each morning--that way the drained oats/yogurt mixture keeps longer. If you mix the fruit in right away, the müesli only keeps for ~1 week. Also, the proportions of oat/yogurt/fruit/nuts don't really matter--it's just personal preference. Swiss Birchermüesli tends to be quite yogurt-heavy. 

2. Starting the Day part II

Mochaccinos. I was only an on-and-off coffee drinker before I came to Switzerland. I saved coffee for those rough mornings with 7:45am drill after a late night of language flash cards, thesis writing...or talking with friends till the wee hours of the morning. 

But once I was introduced to the strong, stronger, or strongest varieties of coffee that exist in Switzerland, I was hooked ("I'll take a stronger today, danke"). 

One should note that stronger coffee does not mean the same amount of coffee as "normal" (okay I am comparing to the U.S. here) and also stronger. It means less, like way less, and stronger. For example, this is what you get if you ask for a large:

As a formerly non-regular coffee drinker, I must admit my weakness with regards to the strength of coffee here. A good wake-up jolt for me means the amount of espresso-strength coffee pictured above + 1/3 that much milk well frothed (good thing the apartment I ended up in owns one of these...they are my favorite kitchen appliance) + a healthy dose of sugar + another healthy dose of unsweetened cocoa powder:

Yup, so that's my morning. Trying to act all Swiss with my müesli, and knowing that I am not at all Swiss with my foofy coffee. 

3. Eating Out

It has not been at all economically sustainable to eat our here on a regular basis since lunch usually starts at around $12 and dinner around $25--even a pot of tea goes for about $7.50. But since my advisor and the PhD student I share an office with have been away on-and-off all summer, and since I do not have a key to my office or even a password for the internet at the university, I conceded to the fact that I would be hunting down some cafes since working all home would make me go bazonkers after a while (the public library is nice too, but is often crowded and their internet kind of stinks). 

One quite "affordable" (for Switzerland, mind you) place I have discovered is called Wander (as in "hiker"--I love this word though, because I like to think of it as "wanderer" too). They serve lunch and their dishes are healthy, delicious, and generously portioned. One day I ordered a delectable lentil salad for "only" CH8. Here is a Spanish tortilla--love the toppings on the salad that comes with it. 

4. My Own Salads

Wander inspired me to try my own lentil creations. I think they were a success since I made a big batch and couldn't stop eating it...who knew that could happen with lentils?

Featured here is a lentil-beet salad with tomatoes, fresh parsley, chives, and cornichons. Dressing = olive oil, white wine vinegar, a little sugar, salt, and pepper. 

Then I kept going with the whole salad thing. Here, baby greens and chards, shredded beets, apples, and gruyere. Dressing = balsamic vinaigrette with a little maple syrup thrown in:

Then we had smoked salmon in the apartment one day. So what did I do with it? Greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, onion sprouts (a new discovery- spicy!), chives, dill, salt, pepper, lemon juice, olive oil:

More of that lentil-beet salad--I'm hooked! On top of the baby greens and chards this time:

5. Drinkable Concoctions

One summer when my sister and I were little, we would mix flowers and fruits and water and goodness knows what else and try to make perfumes (or did I do this alone and tried to convince her to join me? I don't remember). Anyway, apparently I've always been fond of creating concoctions. Nowadays I prefer my ingredients to be more like lemons and ginger, rather than grass, twigs, and cherry blossoms, but aside from that I pretty much like to make drinkable perfumes. 

Here: lemon juice, ginger root, honey, water. Maple syrup is also delicious instead of honey, but then I would leave out the ginger (too many flavors). I also like to boil lavender in water, let the lavender "tea" cool, then mix it with the lemon/honey/water combo. 

6. Soups

It has been a wee rainy lately--perfect soup weather. One day I was really craving Lodge Tomato Soup (as in Moosilauke Lodge), but that calls for cream cheese and we didn't have any (though it is surprisingly easy to find in Switzerland). So instead, I just heated up some canned tomatoes, cream, and Sbrinz cheese (the Swiss version of Parmesan). Added a dried chili pepper, and some salt and pepper and was good to go! 

Well I hope this has not been too much of a bore, though I am fully aware it lies within the 95%. At the very least, I hope you are rest assured that I have not gone hungry from the astronomical prices (in general, food here is not too badly priced, especially dairy products...sorry for you vegans out there).

Happy eating a drinking everyone!

Thoughts from Shavasana

“Ahh-ohmmm. Ooo-ohmmm.” The room billowed in and out, like one big heart, vibrating to the varying tones of the yoga students’ ohms.  We were led by a female instructor, a petite woman with clear, olive skin, sporting bright pink striped tights. Her eyes were closed as her voice produced multiple notes at once--or so it seemed. She played some sort of instrument I had never set eyes on before, a mix between an accordion and a piano perhaps. The fingers of one hand pressed keys that were obstructed by the instrument’s wooden box, which she pumped with her other hand. Bringing air in and out, back and forth, she added to the billowing energy that controlled the sacred space.

“Day-ya-na oo-da-nah,” her sweet voice rang, leading the class through rounds of Sanskrit verses.

“Day-ya-na oo-da-nah,” we responded, in a lower tone.

This call-and-response continued for several minutes until the song was finished. Then, one moment of silence until, perfectly on cue, the 8pm bells began to ring from a nearby church.

From one culture to the next, I thought. The nightly sound of the bells, always the most dynamic at 8:00, reminded me that I was in a yoga class in Switzerland. That is yoga’s beauty and power, I thought. It can transcend cultures. It is absent of culture. 

The instructor began to give instructions to the class. I would have been completely lost if it weren’t for her occasional translations into English as well as the many bodies surrounding me performing the same series of poses. I was lost at times, twisted up like a pretzel, leading with my left instead of my right, facing the wrong side of the room.

Funny, because when we were singing in Sanskrit—more foreign to me than Swiss German—I was right there singing along. I wasn’t belting, but I could imitate the sounds and follow along with the tune.

When we reached the end of the class, an hour and a half later (after sweating next to other bodies who were also sweating, and using my legs much more than they appreciated on this “rest day”), we finally lay down in Shavasana. The pink-legged instructor walked around the room, switching off lights so that all was darkness aside from the flickering glow from a few candles below a picture of the Hindu god Krishna.

When meditating—or lying in Shavasna, which is essentially a prone meditation, I try to imagine looking down past my nose and focus on a single color. Black is usually the least distracting. If I am successful, I feel like I am seeing very far into this black space. I can also transform the environment in which I am lying to any environment of my imagination—sounds of water become an ocean wave, or the instructor transforms into Kindness personified.

But as I lay there, none of this happened. I thought of my friend and wonderful dance and yoga instructor, Marie, and how she calls these distracting thoughts that inhibit reaching full meditation the “monkey mind.” “Don’t judge your thoughts, just let them be and let them slip away,” she would tell her classes through her French accent.

But they wouldn’t stop and they wouldn’t slip away. Instead of looking deep into that black space, my vision stopped at my nose. It was a shallow gaze, obstructed by the color white and by the many images that came to me.

How powerful we are, I thought. We lie in the most passive of the poses, Shavasana, yet no one can harm us. How could anyone walk into a room of people, lying peacefully, each one trying to achieve a state of relaxation so deep that one is disconnected from the world? If only our wars were fought like this. Instead of killing one another we would lie on the ground, detach ourselves from the present woes, fights, injustices, differences, prejudices and surrender, all of us becoming one with the forces of a greater universe.

***********************************************************************************************

Throughout my entire time in Switzerland this summer I haven’t been able to see "past my nose." I can't help but wonder if being in a place of constant comfort makes searching for depth more difficult. No one and nothing is pushing me really. Few things bother me. People seem happy and healthy, and from my current vantage point, the world appears a pretty lovely place. 

In the past, I have used meditation as an escape from hardship. During times of stress, deep sadness, escalating anxiety. When I least want to meditate is when I know I need it the most. And when meditating seems like a pretty nice thing to do with fifteen minutes of the day, is when it is least effective. 

Isn't that ironic then, that the more peaceful I am, the more difficult I find it to enter complete meditation--the epitome of finding inner peace?

So, as I exit this class (that normally costs CH30 or about $35--fortunately I was able to get a discount), I wonder if maybe we aren’t meant to pay for expensive yoga classes. Maybe yoga is supposed to be more of a way to approach life-- and that it is most helpful when one's mindset during the practice is in greatest contrast to one's day-to-day mindset. 

So then, there still remains a bigger question. Am I living a life of "happiness as fluff" right now, a term that a friend of mine wrote in an email to me. This travel experience differs so greatly from my time spent in Morocco and Finland, which each involved their own form of hardships. This travel experience is so much more enjoyable. But then again, I didn't go to Morocco to enjoy myself. I went to Morocco to be pushed around, jolted, have my world turned upside-down and right side-up again. And, as evidenced by the fact that I attempted to buy a plane ticket home at least three times, I sure as hell achieved that. I would not be the Rosalie I am now if it weren't for those eleven weeks of toughness and roughness in Al Magrib. 

But surely life doesn't have to be one or the other--"happiness as fluff", or complete suffering--does it? There must be a balancing point somewhere in between. Where people and things are there to give you a little shove, life is a challenge so you aren't able to slip too easily into a predictable routine, but at night you can go to sleep and feel relaxed and look forward to the following day of challenges--as opposed to viewing them with dread or anxiety. 

And, if you are one who likes to practice yoga, when you finish going through all the sweaty, grueling poses and let yourself take a final rest in Shavasana, you are able to see past your nose into a deep infinite space obstructed by no one and nothing. You have done your work in this world, you have tried to make it a better place, and now your gift is the ability to temporarily escape it.  

A Day on the Aletsch

Hiking across a glacier is not something I would normally do. I don't like heights, steep drop-offs, and not knowing what is under my feet. I don't even like to ice skate on ponds and lakes for that reason (besides that I am terrible at it and falling on ice hurts).

But when I received a text from Matin Nellen, an employee and mountain guide at ProNatura, a nature conservancy founded by the famed Art Furrer, I couldn't resist. "Come for a walk on glacier tomorrow morning," he wrote. "Bring warm clothes, 1L water, and pack a lunch."

Art Furrer is "world famous in Switzerland." He's known for performing
crazy ski tricks in a cowboy hat--and for founding Pro Natura

The following morning, after waking up at 5:45am and taking part in Bern's parade of bike commuters to which I had been oblivious, thanks to my naturally later wake-up time, I stood above Riederalp. By 9 in the morning, there I was, watching the mist clear above the mountains, opening up a sky that transitioned from a mild glow to clear blue.

"You must be Rosalie," said a sturdy man wearing an official red Bergfürer (mountain guide) jacket. I immediately knew I could trust him--the way he rolled the "r" to the extreme when he pronounced my name, the intense gaze that stood out from a tan face, weathered from decades under the mountain sun. Two German men also joined for the day, and when the three of us got off the gondola that takes you above the town of Riederalp, I burst out laughing.

Looking down at the massive white expanse below us--I was in total disbelief. There it was--the Aletsch. The biggest glacier in Europe. I had seen pictures of it online and in textbooks, and thanks to my Earth Science professors could point out some of its features, but I never thought I would have the opportunity to walk across a glacier--and especially not this one.

For at least a half hour, the four of us wound our way down a steep face in order to reach the rock rubble that lines the ice mass. 150 years ago, the glacier, we would soon learn, extended to the top of the cliff--no downhill walking was necessary.

As we approached the ice margin, a background rumble began to increase in intensity until it turned into a deep roar. That was the sound of melting ice rushing beneath the glacier in the form of a river. At this point I noticed my emotions transition. Not only was this experience "cool," "awesome," an "opportunity of a lifetime," and a grand "hello" to Europe's largest glacier, but it was also goodbye. With 25cm/day of melting, if I was ever to come back here, the landscape would look entirely different--unrecognizable even.

Martin showing the differences in glacial extent over the years

When the loose rocks that we carefully traversed transitioned to ice, Martin reached over his shoulder for his ice pick and hacked into the sidewall so that we could more easily climb up it.

Oh my God we were on top of the glacier. What was I doing? What were we doing? There were crevasses everywhere, water rushing in little meandering streams, and that river!--where was it exactly? It was under us somewhere, but the roar had now transitioned back to a distant rumble.

"Just trust this man," I tried to remind myself. Martin had just demonstrated to us how to put on and walk in crampons, and was jollily walking up the glacier whistling Beatles songs as the rest of us struggled to properly attach the spikes to our feet.

Soon enough, I was no longer listening for the distant rumble and envisioning a crevasse splitting apart as I stood on it, resulting in my having to perform a split before deciding which ice block to choose. Or worse--falling to my death in a deep crevasse unless some rope could miraculously pull me out.

No, I sure was no Martin Nellen, but I did begin to relax. I started pointing out and inquiring about geological features that I recognized, and I began to enjoy the Hoch Deutsch my fellow companions spoke--a nice break from all the incomprehensible Swiss German.

Every once in a while, we would stop, analyze a glacial feature, or perform an experiment for the ProNatura foundation. We learned that 3 glaciers above--the Ober Aletsch, the Jungfrau, and the Viktoriaplatz--met up at the Aletsch to form 2 mid-morraines--which are essentially snakes of rocks that the glacier "spits out" when it retreats (since moving glaciers carry rocks with them so when they retreat the rocks are left behind).

Collecting bug samples

Checking the temperature

One of the mid-morraines

A "mushroom rock." Martin says that within 10 days the snow
beneath it will have melted and the rock will topple over. 

At one of our stops, Martin took a water bottle and placed it under some dripping glacier water. "Very special," he said as he handed some to me in a clear plastic ProNatura vessel, so that I could see the sulfury blue hue. Suspicious of its cloudiness, I took the tiniest sip possible and exclaimed, "That's not glacier water! That tastes like licorice."
"Like what?"
"Licorice. Réglise. Anise. Sorry I don't know the word in German."
"Ne, das sind Kräuter."
"What kind of herbs?"
"Absinthe. They grow it in the Jura over there. You shouldn't have too much--it makes your mind go crazy. And I hope you're not pregnant."

Ok. Wow. "No I'm not pregnant. Glad you asked me first."

At this point, the two Germans had already downed a cup full each, so Martin, determined to finish the water bottle's worth, drank twice as much in order to make up for my abstinence. "This not my normal life. I usually climb higher--then I don't drink Absinthe. But this is only easy walk."

"Now we go over there." Martin pointed to a section of deep crevasses. We would climb over them and then down into one and follow it for a while.

Great, so you put alcohol in us when we need our senses the most. I couldn't help but think of all the differences that existed between this tour and the equivalent if it were to take place in the U.S. We never filled out a waiver signing our lives away to any liabilities...and we got served Absinthe.

Martin pourring "glacial water"

The next section really was worse for me. My initial horror images came back and just before jumping over one crevasse that I should not have looked down, I whined, "I don't like this." Martin stopped, came back, and reached out a hand for me to assist with the jump. A few seconds later he looked back to see if I had recovered. I smiled, then he did too. This routine repeated until we were fished with the crevasses.

"This is a man you can trust," I had told myself. Absinthe and all.

After climbing partway back up the steep face where the glacier once reached, we parted ways. "So nice to meet your Rosalie," he said, giving the "r" a great roll again. We shared 3 bises, my sunburned cheeks meeting his tanned, leathery ones.

"Und vielen Dank! Tschüs, ciao, hoffentlich bis Später." I made sure to give the proper multiple-word goodbye.

For another hour, I followed the lower extent of the glacier's ablation zone until I parted ways with it too, a final goodbye to my reason for this journey. As the distant rumble of the underground river faded into the distance, so did the massive ice that covered it. Europe's largest glacier began to look like yet another ice chunk nestled between rocky alpine slopes, its deep crevasses merely wrinkles weathered from millennia beneath the sun. When its peaks and valleys had caused my heart rate to spike, and its sharp ice granules produced blood on my hands, this white giant of a glacier appeared invincible. But as I stood above it, drenched in beads of sweat and sipping the remains of my water, I wasn't so sure. I couldn't believe that I was the only one looking to escape the sun's relentless rays in hope of finding shade, and better yet, a cold front to stop this wave of heat that seemed to be without end.
******************************************************************************************
Once I returned to Bern and exited the train station, I took part in the evening rush hour. The stereotypically slow Bernese waltzed their way up the station steps and back onto the streets towards their homes, while the fast-paced Zurich dwellers pushed their way frantically onto the train departing for the bustling banking city. "So that's what it's like to get up at Bern time and spend a day at the office," I facetiously thought to myself as I passed professionally-suited workers porting leather briefcases.

And what an office that was. I just hope it's there next time--not just for my sake, but so that anyone can wake up at 5:45, throw on some hiking boots, load up a backpack, and head to "work,"--returning home having learned so much more than if one had remained in their climate-controlled office, its floor standing sturdily beneath their feet, its desk piled high with papers, some being read, some being discarded, many being placed back into a leather briefcase at the end of the day.