Money, Mountains, Cheese & Chocolate

Switzerland in a nutshell, or at least that`s roughly how Etienne described it last night. So, we made it to Fribourg! The rest of Zermatt was pretty low key - Ali took the train up to see the Matterhorn, and we walked around later and got some hot chocolate and browsed through a few stores - you know, the usual 1500 frank (about 1500 dollars) jackets and stuff, no big deal... yeah, Switzerland is expensive. Europe in general is expensive, but especially so here. The CHF (Swiss frank) and dollar are almost even - and it`s just shocking to see how much everything costs. Okay, even McDonalds is expensive. Burger meals are what, around 5 or 6 bucks back home, and about 12 dollars here.

Anyway, we`re staying with Etienne, a friend of ours who did an exchange in Port Angeles when we were in high school. He teaches English to middle school aged kids, so we went with him this morning (and woke up before 7 a.m. to go) and he had the kids ask us questions for the period. One of our favorites was, "Have you contacted stars?" - as in celebrities, although Ali thought he had asked if we were conducting research :) - and then they went through their names and asked us to pronounce them, and we definitely butchered those with our harsh r`s and such.

Last night, Etienne`s dad, Linus, cooked us the most amazing fondue that any of us has ever eaten, hands down. I asked for the recipe, but he used some special local cheese so we probably wouldn`t be able to recreate it quite like that. But it was just delicious! It was just bread and cheese, but it was incredible. We didn`t think we`d be able to finish the giant pot on the table, but oh yes, we did. Quite easily, in fact. And later, we went out for a drink and had ourselves a nice political discussion, talking about healthcare, social security, government, etc. But please don`t ask us about any of that stuff when we get home, because we still are quite ignorant! We can tell you the main world headlines right now, since CNN and BBC are usually the only English-speaking channels on TV (in addition to EuroSports).

So, today we are going to go to a chocolate factory, where we can get lots of free chocolate! Ciao for now.