The Matterhorn!

Last weekend, the 27th and 28th, was the Rotary Matterhorn trip. It was an awesome weekend with over 100 exchange students! I started out on Saturday morning riding from my house to Zürich HB (Zürich's main train station), there I met up with probably 9 or 10 other exchange students. We took a train to Bern, and met with about 20 more. From Bern we rode to Visp. Waited there for about 20 minutes when the rest of us came. Rotary reserved a train car from Visp to Zermatt. Zermatt is the home of the Matterhorn.

The train ride from Visp to Zermatt was crazy! there weren't enough seats for all of us, even with the reserved car. So we were all over the place sitting on the ground, in the door way, on the bag racks, people standing in between all the seats. At one point, Yoda and I played Hide and seek.


The gang from Bern to Visp.







We get to Zermatt, and walk about 15 minutes to the hostel where we stayed the night... We got a lot of looks as there were 100+ people walking down the street, none of them speaking German. Cause we're exchange students... we don't speak German when we are all together.



We get to the Hostel, and are split up into countries... here are a few of the Americans... But if we say we are from America, the Latinos will get mad... so here is a group of the USA students!




After we all got our rooms, we all met in the middle of the village, and split into groups of 5 or 6, and had a scavenger hunt. It was lots of fun, and the things we had to do were a little weird. We had 5 tasks.
1. Take a picture of the Mattehorn with a Swiss flag in front of it.
2. Take a picture of a wedding couple, or a picture of a picture. Also find a fried egg.... For free, "FREE"... doesn't exist in Switzerland... ever.
3. Find the price and place of the most expencive hotel room, and the cheapest hotel room, Price of ski rentals for a day, and price for an area pass for a day. The most expencive hotel was at a 5 star hotel, and it was 3,030 Franks for one night.... that's just about the same in USD.

For this next one, you have to know a little bit about Swiss German. It's not like Swiss German is universal for the whole country, You travel an hour away, and they use different words, and speak differently as well. So here's what we had to do.

4. Find 10 phrases in Swiss German that are unique to the Zermatt region.
5. Trade a cookie cutter (heart shaped) for something cooler or of greater value. (also not easy to get swiss people to give you something for free when they don't get money in return.) We ended up getting a magnet of the canton Valais flag.

That night, we had Fondue for dinner. It wasn't the best... but that's alright.

Sunday morning we went to the top of the Little Matterhorn, a neighboring mountain top of the Mtterhorn. It was snowing and REALLY COLD! So we couldn't see anything from up there really at all. But here is the group of most of us.

What can I say... Looked just like a GIANT Toblerone.
















The Family!... well some of them.













Louis and I on the way to school one day... I'd say I'm startin to look pretty Swiss.