Salut!
So right now I am on the train travelling back to Belgium from Switzerland. I’m currently stopped in the middle of nowhere and I have no idea why. When I was going to Switzerland the train was really really slow going through Belgium so I hope that won’t be the case again now. I should be getting into Brussels at 10:45 tonight (Jan.7) so hopefully its not too late! I had a really good stay in Switzerland with Cecile but it was very hard to say goodbye to her! A lot of me wishes I could’ve just stayed there with her but I know that wouldn’t be possible. I know it wouldn’t be the same if I was going to school and actually living in Switzerland but its just really nice to go around and do whatever we want and its just really nice to be back with a real friend again. We saw so many cool things while we were there and we spend A LOT of our time on trains! I think everyday expect maybe two or three we took a train somewhere. I got to go skiing in Switzerland with Cecile and that was really cool! The mountain was very nice and the scenery around was beautiful! I missed the mountains so much! There was basically a hill you could see outside of Ceciles house and I know if I were back in Canada I wouldn’t have though that was a mountain but it seemed pretty big to me now that I’ve been living in flat Belgium for the past 5 months! And yeah that’s pretty crazy that I’ve been here already for 5 months! Everyone that I’ve talked to says that the last few months fly by so that’s what I’m expecting. My return date to Canada is confirmed for the 7th of July so that is pretty exciting. Between now and that time I have a lot of things to look forward too as well so I’m happy about that. In March I’m going to Amsterdam on a Rotary trip and in April I go on the Italy trip which is 11 days long. I also might have a few people be coming to visit me from back home and that is VERY exciting! After my Italy trip I have another trip to Prague in June and then school is over! I have to admit I will be very happy about not having anymore Belgian school! I’m not too sure if I will be looking forward to be going back yet but I don’t think it will be too bad! At the end of June until July 4 I will also be going to a big music festival in Belgium called Rock Werchter with a few of my friends! I already bought my tickets and it goes on for four days. Really good bands go to the festival and this year there has only been four bands confirmed at the moment but already the bands confirmed are Coldplay, Kings of Leon, Iron Maiden, and The Chemical Brothers! Coldplay and Kings of Leon are a couple of my favourite bands and I never thought I would get to see either of them live! I am so excited and I can’t wait too see which other bands will be playing. There’s usually about 10 bands that play each day and you camp there with your friends.
But I should write more about what I did in Switzerland! I already said that we went skiing one day and that was a lot of fun! The snow wasn’t super great but it was a beautiful blue bird day and it wasn’t too cold so it was nice! I also saw a really nice Church my first day in Switzerland with Cecile’s family. I can’t remember the exact date that the Church was built in but I just know it was really nice and really old! It was kind of funny because outside of the church there was a sign that said Beware: Roof Avalanches and we had Cecile’s dog, Onya, with us so Cecile’s parents tied the dog to the sign while we went inside the church as a joke. Cecile and I also went to the French speaking part of Switzerland to a city called Lausanne and also another city called Geneva. Cecile hadn’t even been to those cities before so it was new for both of us. We saw a really nice Cathedral built in the 1200’s I think and also a castle built around the same time period. We also went to a big museum while we were in Lausanne. In the museum they had artifacts that dated back later than 800 B.C. It as crazy! They had found a lot of artifacts from burial grounds from around Switzerland and they even had a few coffins with skeletons in them and a lot of jewellery. We thought that museum was really cool and it was free so that was a bonus! Cecile and I also went to apparently Europe’s largest waterfall in the north of Switzerland . I was kind of expecting it to be a lot larger but it was still really nice! It was really wide but just not very tall. In order to see the waterfall you actually take this bus for about 25 minutes to an old castle and then there are trails that lead down to the viewing point. It was really cool except for the fact that Cecile forgot her wallet on a bench while we were waiting for the bus to go back down to the city. She only realised about an hour later that she left it up there so then we had to take the bus for another 50 minutes. In the city there was another castle that was built in the 1500’s. We got to go inside of it into this huge brick room with pillars in the center and we also got to climb this spiral staircase to get to the top and see the view of the city ! It was so cool being in something so old! Yesterday we also took the train to the capital of Switzerland, Bern, and had a tour of the Swiss parliament buildings. I couldn’t understand the tour because it was in German but Cecile explained the main point of it I think. We did a lot more stuff as well but I think this is getting a bit too long so I will stop writing now. I will just have to post this tomorrow or something as well as the one I wrote on the train when I was going to Zurich!
À Bientot!
