Let’s see, I left off in Zermatt I think. I’m on a train
headed to Munich now so I’ll fill in the gap.
We couldn’t find anyone to couch surf with in Zermatt so we
opted for the hostel option. We booked it at 3am the night before (morning
of). This isn’t the last time we’ll be
winging it. May is the time when Zermatt practically shuts down and the workers
of the town go on holiday. The hostel was huge but practically empty. We almost
had the room sleeping eight to ourselves save one lone traveler. For our first
and hopefully last hostel experience we lucked out. Dinner and breakfast were
provided and were of the quality of the rest of the hostel: superb.
After a comfy night, Amanda and I finished off the ski
season on Paradise Glacier at the top of Zermatt reaching poking above 3500m.
Unlike in Tignes, this was true summer skiing: very limited runs, no fresh
snow, icy in the morning, and slush by the end of the day. Going off piste was
out of the question so a carving day it was. I skied a pair of Volkl AC 30
Unlimited which carved extremely well.
Originally the plan was to head straight to Munich for the
weekend after skiing. The night before skiing we discovered, much to our
dismay, that the route went through Austria. While I love Austria, our rail
passes do not. The rails passes only cover Czech Republic, Switzerland , and
Germany. We needed to head north and
then east to Munich to avoid a large lake at the northern end of Switzerland.
The only city directly north of our location that I had heard of was Freiburg,
Germany where I have a standing offer to work next summer.
So Freiburg it is! Where to sleep though? We spent part of
the night in Zermatt frantically browsing the couch surfing website. By the end
of the ski day we had offers from an exchange student from UT Austin and a
native who offered to take us rock climbing. We chose the rock climber and
Amanda handled the details via text messaging.
We didn’t meet the rock climber at the station. Instead an
older man met us and whisked us away to his car. At first we thought it might
be the girl’s dad but after a couple of minutes it became apparent he was not.
Amanda had also received an offer to couch surf with this older man but she
never replied or so she thought! The website goofed up and the final message to
girl with Amanda’s phone number was somehow sent to this man instead. Amanda
had been texting the wrong person the entire time!
On the ride to his house we found out he was a physicist at
the University of Freiburg and was a pilot for a skydiving company. We kind of
mellowed out but both of us were still very concerned. However, this mistake
couldn’t have gone any better. We arrived at a gorgeous house and he said we
could drop our things here quickly so he could take us on a tour in a more
suitable vehicle. That vehicle was a sporty convertible Mercedes. We drove into
the Black Forest at lightning speeds reaching 210 km/h at one point! No speed
limits for the win. We then popped back into the city to walk around the main
area of Freiburg where no cars are allowed.
Everyone we meet seems to be somehow connected to
neuroscience. While eating in the medieval section of the city, our
conversation eventually drifted to neuroscience. Turns out our host does a lot
of computational physics for the neuroscience department at the University of
Freiburg.
On Saturdays, our host flies for the skydiving company. It
was raining in the morning so he headed off to go shopping in France and we
started towards Munich. If it weren’t raining we would’ve went skydiving. It’s
only 30 Euro here!
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