German, Zurich, and Train Stations.

Hello everyone.

It's been a pretty interesting and fun week.  Monday marked my first day of the German language class.  Every morning I take the train from St. Gallen (in the north-east) all the way to Zurich, where the class is.  All of the exchange students in Switzerland are required to take this class before they go to school, so while school is going on right now, I will not attend for another two weeks when my language class ends.

The St. Gallen train station where I take the train every morning.

The language class is nice because my German has been getting a ton better, but to be honest it can get very boring at times.  In school we are changing classes every hour and a half, so there are different subjects and a 10 minute break every time you switch classes.  With this language course, just like school it goes until 3:00, but you are always in the same room learning the same subject.  A nice thing, however, is that we have a little over an hour for lunch.  Our classroom is in a higher floor of a building which is part of a shopping center, so at lunch we go down to the first floor where they have restaurants and food stands where we can get something to eat.  

My favorite thing that I've got in Zurich so far, it's a sandwich made out of a pretzel and salami.

Yesterday (Friday, August 21st) I went with one of my friends from the language class, an exchange student from Columbia, into Zurich to see the lake and hang out for a bit.  It's really an amazing city, with lots of cool buildings, statues, and other sights.  It was also the first time that I had been to the Zurich main station, which was really cool (when I go to Zurich for class, I arrive in an different section of the city called Oerlikon, so I never see the main city or the station).

Zurich Main Station

First thing we noticed when leaving the station was this statue.  Don't know who it is of.

On this bridge that spans the Linth River, couples will lock locks with their names on it.

The Linth River

A large square in front of this building that was next to the lake.

Lake Zurich

Very nice building in Zurich.

On the train ride home from Zurich in the afternoon, there are quite a few of the exchange students that take the same route and get off halfway to St. Gallen in the town of Wil.  One of them, however, stays on the train with me all the way to St. Gallen.  He's from Columbia as well.  He speaks a little bit of English, but not very much, which I actually love because it means I get to use my Spanish!  I'm really happy about this because I feared that I might start to loose it since nobody in Switzerland really speaks it.  

Taking some selfies with my Columbian buddy!

The countryside outside of Wil.

Finally, today I went with Marianne, Sarina, and Elena to the city of Appanzell to watch their younger cousin Janna in a bike race.  I met Janna last Thursday at the party for Janine's birthday.  From Appanzell, I was also able to see Säntis again, the place where we went hiking last week.

The view of Säntis from Appanzell (sorry, it's a bit crooked :-/)

That'll be all for this post, but I should some more interesting things that happen over the course of this next week.  Also, if something happens or I have pictures or anything that I want to post about before the end of week, I may do that.  I do apologize for all the unreliability, but Rotary makes in clear that my priority while I am here is to be immersed in the culture here and not worry so much about things back home, however I will still try and make sure to keep the blog updated!

As always, please ask questions! Anything you want pictures of? Something you want to know more about? Drop a comment on the post or send me an email at ethankiffmeyer@gmail.com and I'll try and get back to you!

Bis Bald,

-Kiffy