Trip to Switzerland 3-8.1.2007

Ja paluu arkeen on edessä... = And returning to everyday life was in front me... :)

Yeah, the holidays are finally over. It was a nice pipe of first being ten days in Finland during the Christmas time and then a couple of days over the New Year in Berlin and eventually five days in Switzerland before returning back to Berlin to start studies again.

Now I’ll write a bit how my trip in Switzerland was. First of all I must say that I love mountains. I love hiking, walking, skiing and whatever one can do in the midst of mountains. Therefore I also really like Switzerland. However this time my reason to go to Switzerland was to meet friends. I got to know some people from Switzerland the last year when we had a TWIN project with the AIESEC local committee in Bern. They were one week in Finland: half in Tampere and half in Jyväskylä. Then we, the people from Tampere and Jyväskylä, went to Bern, Switzerland and stayed there for a week. That was a VERY cool trip! We had a very cool group of people together and it was such very funny trip.
This time I flew to Zurich, Switzerland straight from Berlin. In Zurich I stayed overnight at the place of LCP (AIESEC Local Committee President) of AIESEC Zurich place. His name was Jih-Ming and he was very such a cool and hospitable person! There happened to came also a couple from Poland staying overnight at his place. It was nice to get to know them a bit by going for a beer together with them. That’s one thing I really like about AIESEC: one can ask a place to stay anywhere in the World from the AIESEC people there. I think I will start doing that more often. It has basically two benefits: first of all you don’t of course need to pay for staying in a hostel or something, second you get to know someone from the local culture and in the best case he/she will show you around including places you wouldn’t see as a regular tourist. I think it’s much more interesting way of traveling. Zurich is btw. quite a nice city. It also has mountains and nice views right next to it:)

From a mountain next to Zurich, Alps behind


View of Zurich from a hill

The second day I traveled from Zurich to Bern. In Bern I first met Olli, a half Finnish and half Swiss guy who I knew from the TWIN project. It was really nice to meet him again and hear how he was doing and what has happened in his life. Olli, I would like to thank you for your hospitality!!! It was really cool meet you again! I wish you all the best for your LCP term!


Olli and me from the year of the house of Olli's family

On the third day I was ought to meet Laura who I also know from the TWIN project. Before meeting Laura in the evening onwards, we went with Olli to the Bern art museum. There was an exhibition about death and how people deal with death in different cultures. First of all I have to say that it was kind of disgusting. Some pictures there were quite not so nice ones. However the exhibition really made me to think and to see death from different point of views. It was interesting to realize how different ways there are to deal with death in different cultures. The ways how people are buried and the beliefs of after life are also soooo different.

Personally I don’t believe to after life and I consider myself as an atheist. Therefore I could say that I have a bit of different picture of death. I think that it’s just a natural part of life. I think that one shouldn’t think too much about it but also that one shouldn’t be really afraid of it. From my point of view, the meaning of life raises from how unique it actually is. The time we have is really short and eventually every one of us are really meaningless in the bigger picture. But still when we have just one life, one short existence, we should take everything out of it… Najaa, but let’s go back from the meaning of life to my travel story:) I’m just very interested of this topic and therefore I start easily talking too much about it…

Ok, so after the museum we still met Sabina and Eve from the TWIN-project. We had also dinner together with them and with Eve’s flat mate. It was really nice to meet them too. Cheers to you Sabina and Eve!

From left to right: Sabina, me and Eve

Later in the evening I met Laura. With her we traveled together to the South-Switzerland where her family is originally coming from. There we stayed in a village called Saas Almagell (hopefully I got that right) where Laura’s family had an apartment. From there we did downhill skiing during two days. For me, for a Finn it was an amazing place! The views were just something outstanding! The views up from the mountains were maybe the most beautiful I’ve seen in my life. But I let the pictures speak from themselves…


From around 3500 meters :)


Laura and the highest metro I have ever seen


Laura, "a bit" better skiier as I was


You just got to love those views!

It was also pretty interesting to get a bit to know Laura’s parents too:) I realized that the Swiss-German is impossible to understand:) Luckily Laura’s parents spoke also German-German so I was able to understand a bit. Thank you Laura once more for making this trip possible! Thanks also to your parents for everything! It was really nice to meet you again!

On Sunday wealready traveled back to Bern with Laura as on Monday I had to be in Zurich to catch my flight back to Berlin and Laura had to catch her flight to Oslo where she was going to facilitate in a conference… As a conclusion it was a really cool trip: meeting friends, getting to know new people, seeing Zurich, being in the mountains, doing downhill skiing. Great! Hope to see you guys once more!