Push It

Right before I started this entry, my dad was flipping through the Swiss radio stations. As I came out of the bathroom, he says "Hey! How about this?!" (I think he was happy to find something in English) as I hear Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It." Now he's watching a Hilary Duff movie in German.

Rewind...

So I'm sitting in the Richmond airport waiting for my flight to Philadelphia (en route to Zurich), and there are about five lawyers sitting around me all talking on their phones about trials. One of them says, "Tim Russert died!" and the other four's jaws dropped. So I'm thinking this guy's pretty important so instead of joining the sympathazing, I ignorantly asked, "Who's that?" Bad move. It was almost as if I had insulted them personally. Moving on...

On the flight to Philly, I sat next to a copywriter. How ironic! (For those of you who don't know, I am going to be a copywriter when I finish school) So like all other superstitious people, I believed it was a sign. I don't know what it was a sign for, but it sounded like a good idea. I was going to get her card and then she suddenly got a migraine and almost puked everywhere, so no job prospects there.

After I got off that flight, we had to take a shuttle to another terminal. On the way there, I saw a plane painted up with the Philadelphia Eagles colors and logo. It was a huge deal for me, being an Eagles fan and all.

So we're practically running through the airport in what seems like this endless terminal, because our plane started boarding about fifteen minutes after our first flight landed. We made it just in time for them to call our "zones." I'm thinking, since when are rows now classified into zones? I figured that one out fast - the plane was so big, I couldn't even see the front of the plane.

About ten minutes before takeoff, they announce that one of the lavatories is broken, which I'm glad they fixed because that would have made for an even longer flight. So my dad strikes up a conversation with the guy next to him and I heard him say, "I snore, just so you know." I'm pretty sure the look on this guy's face translated into a "Can I change seats please?" look.

The plane finally takes off an hour late. About an hour later, they started serving dinner. For airline food, I'd have to say it was actually not too bad. Neither was the wine.

Finally, after 80 hours, we land. As I'm getting off the plane, I see a Jake Gyllenhaal look-alike and a French version of my best friend's ex (Steph - it looked like Troy, I did a quadruple take).

After we make it through customs and get all of our luggage, we make our way to the rental car area. They gave us just about the ugliest, most uncomfortable $800 rental car. Mind you, all the cars here look like aliens. We finally make it to our hotel, but since we're early, our room isn't ready. At this point, I haven't had any sleep, so I'm dragging butt to their restaurant area to kill some time.

Our room has a great view of some mountains and the Alps. I apologize for the photos being dark, because the sun was setting when I took them.
So we get a menu, in German. No surprise there, but the waitress (who also checked us in and helped carry our bags) read the menu to us in English. I ate a salami, ham and parmesan cheese sandwich. Hands down, best parmesan I've ever had.

Finally we got to take a nap and shower. It was not fun trying to figure out where the outlet for the hair dryer and straightener were. So when I finally did, I found that my straightener didn't really work. And you know me, my hair always has to look beyond fabulous. I hope it works better in my flat. Or this is going to be a monster of a problem.

Afterwards, we walked around and found an area where a bunch of soccer fans were watching the games on a huge projector screen outdoors. Most of them were kids, but there were all kinds of chairs set everywhere. There was also a hot dog cart, a bar, and another food cart there. You could call it tailgating, with less drunk people.

When we got back our hotel, they had another huge screen and projector set up with the game playing. So we sat down a watched for a while. I ordered a bottled water, no gas (carbonation - yuck!). We decided we were hungry and drove to an Italian restaurant about seven miles from our hotel. Best. Food. Ever. Real Italian food.

So what I learned today:
- Bottled water, no gas, costs more than a gallon of gas at home.
- The sun sets around 9:30
- There's a scary bellhop mannequin in our hotel that scares me every time I walk around that corner. See picture.
- 61 degrees is cold.


Love,
Jessica