Dreams

I had a lot of dreams last night. Here are a few of them: The Nightmare in the Making In this dream, the subject was a young girl who was part of my family, although in real life I have no idea who she is. I also had a brother. Anyway, this takes place at night. We're in the house and I'm asleep. I wake up to a noise, which I slowly realize is my sister screaming. I walk outside my door and a hand grabs me and pulls me towards it-this is my sister, who tells me that some creature is crawling on her bed threatening her. I tell her it was a nightmare and go to sleep. At the same time my brother (in real life I don't have one) comes out of his room and mentions something about a creature, though he is calmer. I decide to sleep in my parents' room, locking the door. This happens three more times-the sister wakes up, screaming over and over again, until my parents and I are convinced that this creature is real and if we don't do anything about it, we'll all be killed. We all end up in the same room, afraid to sleep, the sister still screaming about the creature and the brother oddly calm. Terminal Illness A few students were asked by a science teacher to take a trip to a science museum, at which point my boyfriend and I contract terminal illnesses and are placed in care in the museum because, for some reason, they have a hospital. We talk to each other and wonder about going home. It turns out the teacher is responsible for our illness. Beach Front House In this dream, I am talking to my roommate about how we practically have a beachfront house at college; there is a huge body of water with a beach nearby, where the waves are calm and the water a brilliant blue. I end up driving around this area, when I hear from my ex-boyfriend that he thinks I cheated on him when we were together. I disprove this but learn that he now has another girlfriend. Meanwhile another guy in my car decides that he wants to date a girl but isn't sure if he should because he's a junior in college and doesn't want to leave a relationship. Meanwhile, my roommate is upset about living near the water because she doesn't like to swim. She says that water is dirty and unless someone is trying to clean the body of water each and every day, she won't swim in it. I try to convince her that swimming is fun. I show her how blue the water is and how close we are to the water. She is still unconvinced. My ex-boyfriend goes off with his new girlfriend and me and another student try to convince the junior guy to ask the girl he likes out, because he has a year and a half before he leaves, and he'll figure out what to do if the relationship is really worth it. Trip to New York As a continuation of the previous dream, the Junior guy, the other guy (who is apparently from Pakistan), and I have to go to New York City for work. We board a large boat (rather like a smaller version of a cruise ship) only to find that the captain is gone. I decide to drive the boat, and end up navigating through narrow streams, unsure of where to park. Someone tells me that I have to park in Brooklyn, across the river from Manhattan, so I dock the boat and tie it, and a few of us board the subway. On the subway we purchase tickets back, and we also try to refill our metro cards. One guy's metro card gets stolen as soon as he fills it by some guy who intends to sell it for more money. As a result, this first guy doesn't have enough money to pay for his destination across the river into Manhattan. He decides to jump off the train at the bridge. The conductor tells him that it's fine and that he shouldn't jump off, but he does, to the horror of the other passengers. As a result, the remaining passengers and I hide our money and metro cards more carefully. Manhattan is in a state of disrepair, rather like 80's Manhattan that was full of danger and drugs and run-down areas. None of us feels safe upon exiting the train.

Story Stories Project

So after discovering that there is a website for people who want to start awesomely creative projects, I decided to start one myself, combining my favorite things: photography and writing! The result is this:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cbarlett/story-stories

Any support would be appreciated! Or just check it out and tell anyone you think would be interested! Thanks!

The Wedding of River Song

Yes, I know it has been two weeks since the Doctor Who episode of the same name. And I don't care. Mainly because school has gotten in the way of me writing a review of Doctor Who properly. It's still getting in the way but I'm taking a break before my actual break to say this:

Steven Moffat (head writer, for those who don't know or remember or came here by mistake), you dissatisfied me with your timey wimey explanations. But at least the questions have been answered. I think. And at least we're getting new companions. I think. And at least a lot of things.

Doctor Who needs something new, fresh, and better. Hopefully Series 7 provides just that.

Doctor Who: For Those of You Too Lazy to Keep Up

I don't know if anyone has realized this yet or not, but I am a huge Doctor Who fan. Perhaps you can't tell from this blog, because the only real mention of anything Doctor Who related was the post about David Tennant. (But given that Tennant was the Doctor, I feel like that's a pretty big thing.) This past season has had a lot of interesting things happen, and by interesting things I mean confusing as hell plotlines in some episodes and complete irrelevancy in others.

With this new series (6, for those keeping track), split in two parts and given a stronger overarching plotline than any other season so far that stretches back to series 5, head writer Steven Moffat has attempted to make a clever plot that will keep the viewer guessing until the end and then make everyone think that he is the best and most clever writer ever. But in the mean time we've gotten nowhere near the plot and have figured out that Moffat does not actually have the same talent as previous head writer, Russel T. Davies, with regards to weaving in an overarching plot seamlessly with individual episodes (or with characters...or with not ending things with love as the solution...but I digress). So here's my recap of all the episodes of Series 6, right up until the penultimate episode. The last episode will probably determine how I feel about this series' episodes and set-up. It could ruin Moffat or make him into a good writer. So far here's what's gone down (SPOILERS):

The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon
(written by Steven Moffat)
Two part opener in which we're given a lot of questions and no questions answered from the previous season except this one: who are the Silence? And we find out that the Silence is a scary as hell alien that you forget seeing when you're not looking at it. There's a fantastic scene where Amy, deciding to mark her skin with tally marks to remember each time she's seen a silence, is in a dark abandoned house walking around. She's walking and then there's a flash of lightning and suddenly she's covered in marks, having seen the Silence dozens of times but not remembering any of it. That is the one really good part of the episode. Apparently the Silence have been influencing development on earth in huge ways, such as the Moon Landing, just so they could get astronaut suit technology out of it. And why? Because there's a person in an astronaut suit who's going to shoot the Doctor dead at the episode's beginning. We're given no other explanation for the Silence or the suit, there's some fun with Nixon, and also fun with filming scenes in Utah. Amy keeps seeing a lady with a metal eyepatch in the walls. River Song, who could be the Doctor's wife but also is probably way more important than that, has something to do with all this. And even though the Doctor is the only Time Lord around there's another Time Lord girl running about. She regenerates. End of story. If that seems like a lot of new things it is. Moffat has a lot of explaining to do. Particularly about the part where THE DOCTOR DIES. Because I'm sorry, but I don't want the show to end with Matt Smith, good as he may be. Or with Moffat. So then we move on to...

The Curse of the Black Spot
(written by Stephen Thompson)
Now why the hell would you put a pointless episode about pirates after a season opener that brings up so many questions? Especially when said episode does not answer any questions, the soul purpose is to see a sexy siren in action and Amy in a pirate costume waving a sword around, and the episode is supposed to be "fun" but is mediocre at best and is even more infuriating because of it's placement right after the most overarching plot heavy episodes of all time. Episodes like this should not exist when super heavy overarching plot action is at hand. But this one does. And I kind of hate it for existing. Oh...and Rory dies.

The Doctor's Wife
(written by Neil Gaiman)
That said, I should hate this episode too, since it doesn't answer any questions and perhaps is the most detached out of all the episodes of Series 6 from Moffat's Grand Master Scheme. And yet it is imaginative and well written and the characters are given more character development and emotion than in any of Moffat's episodes thus far. The TARDIS is personified, and we get to see the Doctor interact with the one being that has always been there for him, taking him not where he wanted to go but where he needed to. Amy and Rory also have some heartwarming moments in which through some excellent storytelling we see how much they love each other. The ending between the Doctor and his TARDIS is both heartbreaking, when he loses her as a person, and spirit-lifting, when he realizes the TARDIS will always be there for him. So for an episode that doesn't do anything for the overarching plot, well, I don't mind it being here.

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People
(written by Matthew Graham)
These episodes are interesting concepts. that copies of yourself called 'the flesh' and made of melty things can gain independence and want to live their own lives...or the lives of the people they're supposed to be. Rory is a badass. And Amy is not. Other than that the episodes, which are not as well written as they could have been, are really boring and long in places. The only really interesting bit is at the end, where after three long episodes of practically nothing Moffat finally decides to take pity on the poor audience and reveals that Amy is in fact one of these melty things, the eyepatch lady she keeps seeing is her midwife and, oh yeah, she's pregnant by the way and giving birth AS WE SPEAK and now the Doctor and Rory have to find her. So yes, Amy hasn't been real since the first two episodes. If you're wondering what is going on, so am I.

A Good Man Goes to War
(written by Steven Moffat)
"A good man" also refers to the person River said back in series 4 she killed. But many people think "a good man" can refer to the Doctor or Rory, both of whom go to war in this episode to get Amy and her child back. And both of who couldn't. Now this is where Doctor Who starts to get into "this will all be really crap writing if the resolution at the end is also crap" and it kind of veers into soap opera because the most ridiculous thing that could have happened, happens. Amy's baby is part Time Lord because it was conceived between her and Rory in the TARDIS and somehow the Doctor didn't know this, otherwise he would've warned all his companions to not have sex in the TARDIS lest they want their children to be a DIFFERENT SPECIES. Not only that, but, it gets better, Amy's baby is RIVER SONG. Who is part Time Lord (which, okay, we could have guessed that part.) Who's real name is Melody Pond but due to linguistic difficulties of other planets is translated to River Song. We still don't know why the Silence, who are behind all this, are doing what they're doing. Also, Amy's baby River/Melody/Time Person gets stolen right when they get it back. Or they were tricked. Either way Amy leaves babyless and Melody/River/Whoever is taken to be trained to kill the Doctor. Which leads to...

Let's Kill Hitler
(written by Steven Moffat)
This episode title gave me doubts. And it is doubtful. Hitler appears for 5 minutes and gets punched in the face by Rory before being locked in a closet. I could have used that for 45 minutes for a good laugh but instead we get 40 minutes of crap writing. Turns out that Amy and Rory had a best friend, who we've never heard of before this point despite having been in their hometown before and having had a series and a half gone by, who got them together and is actually River Song ensuring her parents become her parents. She was known as Mel back then and looked different, obviously, but regenerates to become the River we all know and are confused by. Who then tries to kill the Doctor because that's what she's been raised to do. The episode ends in some heartwarming idiotic resolution in which River, having poisoned the Doctor to death, saves him (because he already died in the first episode so he can't die again) by giving him all her lives so she can't regenerate again. Amy and Rory are appalled at their daughter, who is older than them. And looks it. It's weird.

Night Terrors
(written by Mark Gatiss)
I'll write this episode off as having nothing to do with River Song or anything important. There are creepy dolls, an alien kid who needs to know he's loved, and the Doctor saves the day.

The Girl Who Waited
(written by Tom MacRae)
Finally, finally after two and a half seasons we get some character-focused episodes for Amy and Rory, who are the most plot-deviced and least emotionally/at all developed companions in the new series so far. And now we see what Amy would be like if the Doctor and Rory couldn't save her--a bitter woman who hates the Doctor and who wants nothing more than to live, who is so hardened to reality that she wouldn't save her younger self because that would mean the her who wasn't saved would no longer exist, and she doesn't want to lose that memory or herself. It's heartbreaking and brilliant. Rory's love for Amy is shown so well, especially with lines like "I'm not upset that you got old. I'm upset that we didn't grow old together" (that's paraphrasing but it's really close). The Doctor shows a bit more alien harshness when he lets older Amy die after lying to her. Any actual overarching plot progression? Hell no! But like Neil Gaiman's episode this one is good enough for me not to care all that much.

The God Complex
(written by Toby Whithouse)
Also brilliant, in a depressing philosophical way. A monster that feeds off faith, requiring the Doctor to break Amy of her faith in him if he wants her to survive. We also find out that Rory has lost faith in anything, apparently. And that the Doctor fears something about a TARDIS. I liked that whole concept, especially Amy losing faith in the Doctor. But even more heartbreaking and also PLOT MOVING FORWARD is the Doctor saving Amy and Rory by leaving them back in England to live out their normal lives. Because traveling with him is dangerous. For about the one millionth time in the new series he's realized this, but this is the first time he's been the one to bring a companion home because of it.

Closing Time
(written by Gareth Roberts)
Without Amy and Rory the Doctor goes back to my least favorite temporary companion, Craig, who's two stories both seem to be solved by the power of love. Urgh. Lazy writing if I've ever seen it. And don't even get me started about the laziness of having this main story end and tacking onto the episode a three minute start of the next episode showing River Song being put in the astronaut suit so that she can be the astronaut person that killed the Doctor at the beginning of the series. It answers one question and jump starts the next episode, which I assume will answer many questions, but in such a sloppy way I'm not even too thrilled about it.


So in order for me to not write off Moffat as a head writer for Doctor Who, next week's episode, with the title "The Wedding of River Song" (the title is juicy enough to draw people in even if nothing happens, naturally) had better be extremely well written, clever, GOOD (with good character development) and wrap up all the questions and mysteries Moffat has been flaunting before his audience for two years. Otherwise...Moffat should leave and stick to writing Sherlock. Which he is clearly much better at.

Telling a Story in Three Different Ways

These past two weeks have involved a lot of work, and a good chunk of that work has involved learning how to tell stories. As someone who wants to be a writer I should be extremely happy for the opportunity to be learning three different modes of storytelling, but when those three different things are in the same week it can be kind of stressful. And writer's block doesn't help and always comes at the worst times.

This past week I've had to come up with two and a half different stories to tell in three different ways. One was a short story for my fiction writing class, one an episode of a television show my screenwriting class is the 'staff' of, and a short film that was more for experimenting with a camera than for story telling but at least had to be interesting.

All of these projects except the video are still in progress in some way, mostly through still being written, rewritten, or critiqued. And coming up with ideas is hard. Which is why the first draft of my story failed miserably, because I had no idea where to go with it.

But that is, as I've learned, the benefit of being in a class. Other people have ideas, and their ideas are usually better than mine, or at least they know what I meant to think of before I had the chance to think of it. Either way, the advice is like inspiration; it gives me an idea of how to write. So next week I'll have many new ideas to rewrite my short story and start writing my screenplay with.

Both of these things could end up complete failures. And because all the writing I do leads (or doesn't lead) to advancement there is a lot of pressure to do well. So hopefully...that doesn't happen.

Attribute any lack of coherency to a lack of sleep.

I forgot to mention that I also get to tell stories through photography because I'm on the school paper's photo desk. But...that was not nearly as hard so I'm not going into detail about it. In fact, it was awesome. That is all.

When All Attemps at Free Time Fail

School started not too long after my last blog post, and now I'm surrounded by stacks of books and papers and camera equipment. This is what class does to me. So I haven't quite had the time to review the rest of the plays like I wanted to, let alone read anything new. But hopefully in the next few weeks I end up with more free time to do more literary things.

I am in a literature and medicine class. Which should, in theory, lead to more literature and some interesting discoveries (on my part at least, because I'm not a doctor) about the medical world. I'm also in two creative writing classes. So there is still some literaryness in me yet! Despite all the work.

More to come. Maybe not Shakespeare, but more.

The Longest Blog Post Ever

Well. It's been awhile since I posted last, and a lot has happened. I'm going back to school in two days, so I'll probably write the rest of my play reviews there (hopefully, I'm a HUGE procrastinator.) But now I'll turn to something quite different; detailing what took place after I left that wonderful Shakespeare program in London and Oxford. A lot of people went home and some went on to travel for a bit. I met my family in Amsterdam and we did a 10 day trip to some interesting places in Europe, which I'll detail here. So...

Final Day
My flight was at 3:15pm, late enough that I could leave Oxford after a final breakfast. Quite a few people were there, because a US Airways flight that originally would've left really early that day was cancelled, so a bunch of people on that flight were stuck in Oxford another day. I caught a bus afterwards to Gatwick Airport, which took two and a half hours to get to. And then, after a check-in process that could've been horrid due to the luggage belt breaking but was actually really efficiently handled by British Airways, I got through to the gate. Actually, not to the gate. Gatwick doesn't announce the plane's gate until the plane is at the gate and it's time to board, rather like a train station does with platforms, but I've never seen that before with an airport. But board I did, and I ended up in Amsterdam. Curiously enough, it was in Amsterdam that I got the most intense questioning at immigration (not at London, where I had to get a student visa, or even coming back to New York through JFK Airport!). That really didn't give an accurate view of the city, though, where the people are so laid back that they sometimes don't do things right. Or at all. But no worries, there.

Amsterdam
There are a number of things you can do in Amsterdam...if you're not traveling with a family. When you are traveling with a family, it's risky to walk through the Red Light District for fear of scarring someone for life, and those coffee shops that really sell weed are off-limits--though there were enough of them that I wondered if it were possible to get a contact high just from walking past so many. That said, Amsterdam is a really beautiful city, but not a city for anyone who is in a big hurry. Being from New York, this is quite the odd concept. Fast food restaurants don't open until 9am there, and these are usually the first to open. There's no rush hour. The nightlife is rather contained. It's very...relaxed...for a city.

But beautiful, as I've said, with the wonderful tall canal houses and house boats lining the canals. What my family did do: We wandered through the Anne Frank house and learned a bit of history. We were also surprised that the house was so HUGE. It was definitely bigger on the inside, though I imagine all canal houses appear that way. We walked around to the center of Amsterdam, Dam Square (which doesn't have a dam in it) and ate some pizza that wasn't really pizza. There was some walking through the Red Light District and yes, we did see the schools nonchalantly displaying themselves in the windows. The thing that got to my younger sister, though, was probably the more explicit sex shops that displayed their...interesting products in the windows.

Finding food to eat was hard because food in Amsterdam is ridiculously expensive for some reason. But we ate pancakes (both savory and dessert ones) and liege waffles (awesome and not quite as awesome but still good) and even got candy from a candy store (they sold weed chocolate bars; we did not get those). Our last day we went to the Van Gogh museum, where many of Van Gogh's paintings and certain ones of artists that influenced him were displayed along with interesting text narrating Van Gogh's life and how it influenced his paintings from beginning to end. This was extremely interesting and definitely a highlight. I want to get Van Gogh's letters because many excerpts from them were included in the museum texts.

The next day we left and our plane was delayed. Consequently we arrived in Munich after our connecting flight had boarded but our plane de-boarded at the tarmac, not at a gate, so we had a bus take us directly to our other plane, also not at a gate, which left on time for Prague, where we did actually land at a gate.

Prague

Prague is like an Italian city. In fact, they have really good Italian food and gelato. And the buildings kind of look like the ones in Italy. And the streets also look like the streets of an Italian city, Florence maybe, and they even have squares like the ones in Italian cities. Being there reminded me a lot of the experience of traveling through several such cities in Italy during a school trip three years ago. The differences are that Prague is actually in the Czech Republic and therefore the people actually speak Czech (among other things) and unlike in Italy, they use crowns, which are actually worth less than the U.S. dollar. So this was the one place we went that was pretty cheap.

That said, Prague is beautiful. The narrow cobblestone streets, wide squares full of people and food venders and cafes, and the colorful buildings, many of which had designs and pictures painted on them, all made for a LOT of sightseeing without actually going to a major site. The first night we walked to the Astronomical Clock in Prague's main square. The clock is extremely ornate and tells not only the time but the day, month, seasons, and much more for anyone who can actually read it. We walked past there through more narrow streets lined with stores--a LOT of jewelry stores, stores selling marrionettes, and many restaurants and gelato stands. And one Belgian chocolate store from which I made a purchase. This all led to the Charles Bridge, a bridge lined with statues of religious imagery with a statue of Jesus on the cross in the middle, and on one side a stone that grants a wish to anyone who touches it. The bridge leads over the river to the Old Town of Prague, where Prague castle is located on a hilltop. From the bridge there are magnificent views of both sides of the city, especially the castle because it is up on high. What looks like a castle spire is actually part of a cathedral on castle grounds.

The next day we actually walked through Old Town, which was the same sort of colorful buildings and narrow streets, but uphill, all leading up to the castle. The castle itself doesn't look like an old castle, but rather is a huge building or two in a square, a few stories tall, and guarded by uniformed men with cool looking guns. Past the main square inside the castle is the cathedral, which, dark with tall spires and detailed stained glass windows, looked more like a castle than anything. It actually looked, from a distance, like Hogwarts. It was beautiful from the inside as well, with the stained glass showing off all its colors and the details of the artwork. We then walked across a bridge over the moat (yes, there is a moat) to the gardens, which were mostly made up of some flower beds put into designs and lots of nicely mowed grass. There was a good view of the cathedral from there. We then walked down the steep hill to the moat area, which had a path adjacent to a small stream serving as the castle's moat which ran all around the hill that the castle sat atop. We walked halfway around this moat until we decided we were too hungry to continue, and so we climbed back up to the castle, and then back down into the main area of Prague.

Prague had a LOT of good food. The best of the trip, I'd say. We had some excellent pizza and gelato, and I had a real Italian hot chocolate, which is basically chocolate melted down so you can drink it, but really it's more suitable to be eaten with a spoon as a dessert because of its thickness and richness.

Our last day in Prague was spent wandering through the main square again, and then through the Jewish Quarter, which contained some pretty synagogues and the most expensive stores of, well, anywhere. We'd see a lot more of this in Switzerland, where expensive was common with watch sellers, but here all the expensive designer stores were on one street. We saw a Cartier ring being sold for over 2 million dollars.

Later we returned to the airport for a later flight into Zurich.

Switzerland

Landing in Zurich, again not at a gate, we were taken to the airport's main terminal. The path to the baggage claim was...the most expensive I've seen. Lined with advertizements for watch stores and Lindt chocolate, ending with a duty free shop on either sides before opening up to the actual bag claim area. The message: Switzerland is expensive, they know what they're good at, and they're not messing around. Which was mostly true.

After staying overnight in an airport hotel we took the two and a half hour train ride from the airport to Interlaken in the Alps. It was an interesting train ride, mostly during the second half when the Alps started to emerge in the distance, and then the train was traveling into them alongside one of the lakes that give Interlaken its name. And the lakes and rivers in Switzerland are beautiful--all of them have this turquoise blue/green color that is incredibly striking to look at, and very clear when looking down into. We switched trains at Interlaken to go into Lauterbrunnen, the small town in the valley of the same name where we'd be staying for the next few days.

Lauterbrunnen is...incredible. The valley is beautiful everywhere you look; there's no avoiding it. The town is one main street from the train station, which also includes a gondola station that takes people up a cliff-face to higher-up towns, past several hotels and restaurants, ending at a waterfall that cascades down a cliff into the valley. The valley itself is extremely narrow, less than a mile across with sheer cliffs on either side, and thinning even more the further in one travels. Looking towards the back of the valley, the taller Alps, each over 10,000 feet tall, are visible, snowcapped and looming above the rest of the greener mountains and valley. A white-water river runs through all of this. It was this view: of the taller Alps and the waterfall, that we had from our hotel room window. The tallest mountain full of snow even in August is Jungfrau, at nearly 14,000 feet tall. This mountain and another mountain, Eiger, create between them a pass at 11,000 feet from which glaciers can be seen, as well as the two mountain peaks and the adjacent valley on the other side of the mountains. This pass, called Jungfraujoch, has a train station and a look-out point, among other facilities, for tourists. Known as the 'top of Europe' it is the tallest point one can access in Europe in the Alps without having to climb. It was this place that we planned on going.

The only problem: weather. We had a forecast for clouds and rain the entire time we were there, with only two windows of sunshine and good weather--the afternoon we got there and from 8am-12pm the next day. After talking to a hotel attendant, who further confirmed the variable nature of the weather at such heights, we decided to go for the small window the next morning.

That afternoon we instead took a gondola up to the clifftop. It's interesting that the Alps have such a good transportation system, made up of trains that are capable of going up steep terrain, gondolas, and lifts so that the towns higher up can all be accessed, in addition to the ski areas. This particular gondola connected to a train, but we walked 3 miles along one of the mountain sides at 5,000 feet to the town of Murren, towards the back of the valley area. The pathway we walked offered beautiful views of the mountains across the valley--the lower (and by lower, I mean 5,000-10,000 feet tall) mountains, all vibrant green and occasionally full of cliff-faces, as well as of the taller snowy peaks occasionally covered in clouds. Murren, bigger than Lauterbrunnen and sitting at the edge of the cliff, offered restaurants and more great views, and a gondola ride down to Grimmelwald, a lower cliff town, from which another gondola literally plunged (you could see the steepness of the cable, looking like it plunged straight down, and you could also feel the drop as the gondola dipped over the edge of the cliff) into the valley back to Lauterbrunnen.

The next day we woke up at 6am to catch the 8am train out of Lauterbrunnen up to Jungfraujoch. This train ride includes one transfer and takes two hours, so we needed that earlier leaving time to make it up to the mountain pass before the clouds came in. The train ride up was beautiful, and as we passed the final town at 9,000 feet and ascended in the tunnel up to the pass, the affects of thinner air could be felt. Or I felt them--my sister and dad didn't, but my mom also did--I was more light-headed and jittery, and a bit slow in moving. The train made two stops where passengers could get out and look at views of the valley below and glaciers, before finally stopping at the final station 11,333 feet high. We made our way through the network of tunnels up to the viewing station, which offered beautiful views of the valley (and some smaller clouds) below. It was weird, being higher than some clouds and as high as some airplanes. On the other side was a huge glacier that wound between both mountain peaks on either side, and off to one of the sides was a research station with an igloo and many red tents dotting the snow, as well as an area for helicopters to land (which one did a few minutes after we got there).

Afterwards we actually went onto the snow to explore a bit. It was actually a bit warm for 32 degrees, with the sun more directly on us than at lower elevations. My sister and I walked up the snowy path towards the other side of the pass for a good distance, but did not make it all the way to see what was on the other side, as neither of us were equipped with proper shoes. We instead admired the beautiful scenery around us; the two peaks on either side still towering more thousands of feet above us, the gathering clouds that were impossibly close, the glacier that looked like a river of ice, and the snow! As we were about to leave the snow from one of the cliffs surrounding the area slid down with a thunder-like noise in a mini-avalanche.

We caught the 11:30 train out, having successfully taken advantage of the window of good weather, which proved to be forecast accurately when, after half an hour in the tunnels, we emerged to find the peak AND valley covered in clouds and fog. Once the train reached Grindelwald, the main town on the other side of the mountains in the wider valley, it had started to rain. Luckily the rain stopped once we reached Interlaken, where we walked around and popped into stores and had truffle cake, which is as mind-blowingly good as it sounds. Especially with Swiss chocolate.

It rained again once we reached Lauterbrunnen. One thing about the Alps: beautiful as they are in the sunshine, there is something wonderfully beautiful about seeing them in the rain, the greens of the mountain sides are a bit greener, the low clouds forming near the waterfalls and the mountaintops, shifting so that each time you look the view is different and if you're lucky, you'll get a view of one of those white mountain peaks. And after the first day and a half of good weather, these were the views we got as the storms moved in and took hold, giving pouring rain to the valleys and heavy snow to the mountain tops.

The following day we took a two hour train to Luzern; the most beautiful train ride I've ever been on. I feel like the ride to Luzern was better than the actually city of Luzern; the train road past the turquoise Lake Brienz, surrounded by tall mountains, into one of the valleys and then carved a path into the mountains on one side of the valley so that the view for much of the time was of the valley below and mountains opposite, not as tall as the ones in Lauterbrunnen but still beautiful, especially against the turquoise lakes. As we neared Luzern, and again as we left, we were given a wonderful view of tall Mt. Pilatus that loomed over Luzern and a particularly beautiful lake that preceded it on the way in; not Lake Luzern, but one near it.

The actual city of Luzern included one of these lakes and a turquoise, wide river cutting through the city, and straddled by two beautiful flower-laden bridges build with wood and each with a tower and a few other bridges as well. The older part of Luzern resembles Prague in that the buildings are colorful and some have designs painted on them. We wandered around for a bit and came across a food market on either side of the river where venders sold flowers--in particular beautifully vibrant sunflowers, and food venders sold fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, cheeses, and breads. We got dried strawberries to snack on, which were delicious. Then we browsed the stores, some cheap, some expensive, some found back home. There were some chocolate stores that were very tempting. But we managed to get back on the train relatively early and get back to Lauterbrunnen by dinner time.

A note on the food: it's expensive and not all good in Switzerland, at least not in the region we were in (I hear it differs). But some of the better food were, of course, the desserts. I had a delicious apple struddel with vanilla sauce. There was that chocolate truffle cake. And gelato. And Swiss chocolate in general is good. We also had Rosti, a potato dish like hashbrowns but not as fried, with stuff in it--in our case, bacon and cheese.

Going Back

For me going back was a long time coming, after two months of not being home. And for all of us going home was a long time going. We got to Zurich airport after a two and a half hour train journey that had started at 6am only to find out we couldn't check into our flight at all until 11am, so we had an hour to spare. Our flight was delayed an hour, and we had to go through four passport checks (in addition to the actual security check) before getting on the plane. The plane ride was nine hours long with only two movies played--the middle portion of the flight was them showing the flight progress map on the screen (this plane didn't have personal screens) for two hours, which is just painful to look at, and when it arrived in Kennedy International Airport the gate wasn't ready so we sat on the tarmac for half an hour. Surprisingly, immigration literally took five minutes because of the huge immigration area in Terminal 4, in which, smartly, all of the booths were occupied by an immigration officer to speed up the process. And then, after a two hour ride we got home at 8pm, or 2am European time, 20 hours after we had left.

This trip was one of the best I've ever taken. I saw some amazing places and beautiful sites, learned some cultural differences, particularly about food and dining practices (some good, some not so good). However, being in other cities also made me miss London a bit more; I think London may remain my favorite city in Europe so far, not because it is more beautiful or has more sites, but because I formed such good memories of all the things I did there. It's the city I spend the most time in and got to know really well, and that makes it really special.

That said, my favorite place, possibly ever, was being in the Alps. Just the sheer beautiful of everywhere you look, the majesty of the mountains and the unchanged wonder of nature. Being on top of a mountain from which you can see other mountains and clouds and valleys made me feel on top of the world, like if I tried anything I could succeed. And looking up at the mountains, past the green grass and waterfalls up to the rocky cliffs and snow, made me feel absolute awe that such things could exist, and it made me feel inspired, and at peace. Something about the beautiful mountains and valleys just put my mind at more ease than it had been in awhile, and perhaps in another life I would live there. But that is very unlikely. And I can still be awed as a visitor. I'm not sure how I would handle seeing that beautiful every single day. It would be amazing. And yet I'm not sure if I'd know how to channel that excitement.

And now the traveling is over and I return to school. But hopefully there is more travel to come!


These pictures are out of order, but:


View of the glacier and adjacent peaks at the mountain pass Jungfraujoch, over 11,000 feet up.


The hotel we stayed at in Lauterbrunne, with cliffs in the background.


The cathedral at Prague Castle, looking a bit like a castle itself.


Boathouses lining one of the canals in Amsterdam.


Lauterbrunnen Valley in the rain and at sunrise, on the last day. View from our hotel room.