Aug 18, 2012 - Lugano 1 - 3 Languages, 1 Day

I sound like a broken record talking about 'we saw the best views yet'..but they simply get better every day! We headed down from Crans-Montana through a valley taking us from French to German to Italian Switzerland, I'm confused already. To get to our final destination of the Ticino region we had to wind the car through the Furkapass and Gotthard Pass which were absolutely breathtaking. You can see why for much of European history the Alps are a major barrier..without roads this area is impassible. On the way up to the Furkapass you could...

Jun 8, 2012 - Day 8 Travel to Lugano, Switzerland

Day 7 Our Adventure to Switzerland We were up at our regular time around 7:30 but we had no food or coffee in the apartment. We headed off to a local general store down the street below us to find some food for breakfast. The produce at the store did not look good so we left there and went to check out the 2 restaurants down the street from the store but they were not opened for breakfast so we decided to trek back to our apartment. There was a different staircase on our walk so we headed up this path and at the main street (where our...

Jan 3, 2011 - Sick. Homesick. SwissSick

Всем привет! Возвращаюсь к хронологии происходящих со мною событий. В воскресенье 2 января на рассвете отправилась в Швейцарию. Провела чудный день в горах и… магазинах! В Швейцарии уже начались распродажи!! В магазинах толпились русские, продавцы говорили по-русски, атмосфера была до тошноты родная. Кусочек Русской Швейцарии. Вернулась поздно вечером домой. Новый старт – Швейцария. Альпы. Лыжи! 3,4,5 января – три замечательных дня в горах, позже срочно придется возвращаться в Милан. С 6 января – начинаются распродажи! Кажется, что вокруг...

Dec 27, 2010 - Mega Sex shop & A piece of Italian Swiss

Сегодня понедельник… и я традиционно начинаю новую жизнь! Распорядок дня: подъем в 8, пробежка, фруктовый завтрак, прогулка… ! подъем в 12.. в 13 в спешке в машину с сендвичем в руке. Дорога в Лугано. Моя прекрасная Швейцария! По дороге за окном вижу Mega Sex Shop. Масштабы магазина поражают… Минимум 1,5 IKEA. Обязательно туда вернусь, должна выяснить, что же продается на таких просторах! Ваши мысли??? А пока спешим на озеро Комо. Чудесное место. Мини-пристань. Утки. Пальмы. Горы. Крутилась на месте, потому что не могла выбрать, куда...

Jul 10, 2010 - Imogen's Switzerland

Hi everyone We’ve had a busy week in Switzerland. After we got off the train in Paris we rushed to another train station to catch a train to Beaune to see a house mum and dad are thinking of buying. The lady met us at the train station and took us to see the house straight away, and we really liked it. After seeing the house we went back into Beaune for lunch, and then caught another couple of trains to Switzerland, changing at Dijon, Lausanne, where we got on another train to Geneva, which had a playground on the top floor of the train!...

May 2, 2010 - Classes

Today was our first day of classes. we are taking 18 credits this semester but they are separated into about 3 week cram sessions. Our first two classes are Italian and Consumer Behavior. I am excited to start learning Italian so it will be easier to communicate with the locals and find our way around. We have each class for 3 hours each day with an hour break in between for lunch. After class today we had a group aerobics class taught by a local. She was pretty intense but it felt good to work out. The only bad thing is that after classes...

May 2, 2010 - Arriving in Lugano

I am going to try to update this blog about my recent travels. i am currently living in Lugano, switzerland for 4 months but will be traveling to a different country just about every weekend. I arrived in Lugano 3 days ago and have been spending the weekend getting accustomed to the time difference, meeting the other students in my program, and just exploring the city. the program i am in is associated with my college, Virginia Tech. We will be taking 18 credits while we are here in Switzerland so we have classes every day during the week...

Apr 21, 2010 - San Salvatore Hike

Yesterday, Dr. Brinberg and Julien took 13 of us on a hike up and around San Salvatore. Due to the volcano that erupted in Iceland a week ago, and the travel hindrances that ensued, we had two ‘volcano days’ this week. While class did convene today to introduce the NGO we will be developing a grant proposal for in a week, we were still short six soldiers, somewhere in Europe unable to return to Lugano. The other six should be arriving within the next 24 hours, we hope, while the rest of us enjoy the beautiful Lugano springtime and work on...

Feb 2, 2010 - Interesting dinner experience

This week is going to be really busy. We have our final project in Consumer Behavior as well as our midterm in Italian. Our final project is on obesity and we have to talk for 25-30 minutes so everyone is working very diligently on it. Last night at dinner we had some students of Dr. Brinberg who go to USI come to dinner. They were all very nice. When we started eating they hadn’t gotten there yet so we all just started eating our “meat” night dish. We were all questioning what the diner was, but still eating it. We thought it was pork or...

Jan 20, 2010 - First Week of classes

We started classes this Monday, with Consumer behavior taught by our leader of the trip david brinberg at 1:30. Good thing I left early because it took me a while to find University of Switzerland (called USI). It is gorgeous and everything is a little different but it’s weird not seeing hokie stone! The first day we bought pizza (which I have eaten at least once a day since we’ve been here, for only 4 francs! It’s basically a quarter of an entire pizza. DELICIOUS. Tuesday we started Italian bright and early at 9am, getting up that first...

Jan 20, 2010 - 1/8

The next day most people didn’t wake up until noon or later, due to the horrible jet lag. Me and my roommates woke up and decided to go into town. We got some groceries and school supplies, from the six story department store called manor. Later we met up with Emily, Meredith, Kristen, kyle, Jason, and Christian. We decided to walk around and site see near the lake. We ended walking very far, that we ended up in the next town, Paradiso (Which is my roommate, Stephanie’s last name) We climbed very, very, very high looking for a bell tower we...

Jan 12, 2010 - Schooltime

Today was our second day of classes at USI. Consumer Behavior and Italian seem like they are going to be pretty tolerable, and maybe even interesting. The only hurdle is getting through the three hour classes, especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays when we have them back to back. Last night, we had aerobics taught by a Swiss girl in the gymnasium of the highschool. This year they are implementing two workout classes a week so that the VT students and USI students can exercise together and hopefully get to know each other better. Last night,...