from A to Zurich: road trip part l

because our managers love working so much, they are in the office pretty much seven days a week. holidays may come and go- but work at obelis never stops. realizing we may be able to capitalize on this idea, william, cade and i decided to save up our two belgian holidays and take them off on the same weekend. our bosses don't care when we celebrate the holiday as long as the work gets done. the result: a makeshift 4 day weekend.

we took advantage of the opportunity by planning the most intense road trip this side of the atlantic. we rented a cute little car, recruited another byu intern who works at different company, and set off. our first destination: switzerland.



switzerland is a strange country. they have decided to not become a part of the european union; yet, they still enjoy most EU luxuries. i think they do this mostly to charge ridiculous amounts of money to get through border control. this, however, did not stop cade from becoming this swiss lady's bff.

border patrol for life!

after a first, long leg of driving, we finally arrived in the city of zurich. beautiful! it was already night, but a small canal ran straight through the city and the city lights made it all look perfect.

i should have known that going on a road trip with 3 boys was going to be an adventure... within the first ten minutes of parking the car in zurich, cade had relieved himself in a public park, jony got lost and william found his way into a closed church and beckoned us to follow. once inside the church, we realized that the people were too busy preparing for some huge event to notice us. they were putting up beautiful flower arrangements and setting up sound equipment as we wandered around. it wasn't until i heard my name being whispered by cade from a balcony a few stories up that the church people finally realized we were there and told cade he needed to come down.

we strolled through the city a little while longer and eventually ran smack dab into a huge public demonstration. the streets were packed with teenagers all holding candles as they walked. all their signs were in swiss or german, but after asking a few people, we found out they were rallying for peace as they walked to the church. not wanting to miss out on an opportunity like this, we were given candles and we joined the march.


i know this video is dark, but i couldn't resist putting it on here. towards the end, cade approaches a group of teens and when he asks them to say something, listen hard... the girl replies, "we no smoke weed." it's always nice to know people think we're on drugs.

after barging into the church earlier, we decided not to follow the peace rally into the chapel. it was getting late and we still needed to drive another hour to get to the town we wanted to sleep in. we had borrowed a gps from a ward member which led us to the next town over. there were no street lights and the buildings and homes were so far apart from one another, we felt like we were in the middle of the woods. we couldn't see anything! finally, we found the only hotel in town and slept.

little did we know that this was the view waiting for us outside our window the next morning.

straight out of 'the sound of music.' this little town called appenzel is the most charming place in all the world. all i wanted to do was buy a few sheep, a small house and a pair of galoshes just so i could call it home. we managed to find a small cheese factory where we bought our breakfast and ate as we overlooked the hills.




after breakfast, we took a cable car up to the top of a nearby mountain which gave a gorgeous view of the alps.



this is how cade and i spent our 6 month anniversary. leaping in the swiss alps.

with how short our trip was and how packed the itinerary, we had to get back on the road towards munich, our next stop. even though we maintained a tight schedule, that didn't keep cade from picking up hitchhiker #1 (yes that hints that there are more to come...).

i can honestly say that switzerland is one of my VERY favorite places we have visited thus far. i loved the people, the land, the cheese and the goats. it was straight from a book and i look forward to going back some day.