Finally home!

I arrived in Geneva about 11am after climbing some 500meters with my bike. It was definitely a tiring ride, and I am so glad I didn't use my fixie for this trip.

I quickly went to the train office to buy my tickets, but it turns out there is a bunch of extra charges for the trains in Switzerland including a special fee to bring bikes on board and a special fee to cross borders. All in all I paid 70 Euros to get back. When the price for going to Grenoble was double the distance and only 32 Euros. I guess its true what they say everything is more expensive in Geneva.

I should have checked out more sights in Geneva but I was so tired and eager to go home to sleep on my own bed for the time being that I left Geneva at 12:45 and finally now I am writing this post from the comfort of my own home :D

The total distance I traveled with my bike is about 159km according to google maps. But with all the detours and getting lost I estimate it to be about 200km.

Total money spent is about 220 Euros including the train tickets which were 100 Euros. For a total of 4 nights and 5 days of traveling :D Couchsurfing and staying with friends and airbnb definitely cuts down on the cost.

Peace from Guebwiller

ANNECY hike and doge!

Today the weather was perfect for hiking.  Jeremy and Arrien invited their friend Cynthia and her dog which is a hyperactive husky.

We drove over to the mountain just off the lake of Annecy and started our climb.  The mountain went through the color spectrum as we ascended. The green of the foliage turned to yellow and brown as we got towards the middle and finally back to grey and green again as we arrived at the peak and saw the surrounding regions. 

We arrived at the top and had a picnic in typical French fashion with baguettes and cheese :-)

We are finally now back at home after our exhausting 4 hour hike.  Jeremy is cooking some tasty chicken as I write this blog and prepare for my bike ride tomorrow. 

Around 10pm two new couchsurfers arrived for the night. They are from England and are traveling musicians on a world tour right now. It was really interesting hearing about their stories of buskering on the streets and various places they have been to. 

We turn in pretty early for the night as Ariane and Jeremy had work in the morning. 

Crapu the most hyper dog I have ever met in my life. But he was a big help in climbing as he literally pulled you up the mountain haha. And he is so fluffy!!!

Ariane, Cynthia and Jeremy enjoying the view

Peace from Annecy.

ANNECY and Jeromy and Ariane

I arrived in Annecy pretty early in the day.  My couchsurfers Arianne and Jerome were out for the day on their hike so I took the time to try to bike around the lake and explore their historical old Town. 

I arrived just in time for the Saturday market where vendors were hocking their various knick knacks.  To be honest it all looked like stuff you wouldn't want anyways (and at exuberant prices) but I guess one man's trash is another man's treasure. 

The old town is very similar to Colmar with a river cutting through the middle. I wandered around aimlessly and checked out some of the ice cream and crêperies. 

After I took a leisurely bike around the lake but failed to finish because it's quite a big Lake.  Finally at night time I met up with my couchsurfers Arianne and Jeromy who were so nice and I cooked some Chinese stir-fry for them.  By now I have perfected the recipe so it turned out much better than last time.  They invited me to their friends going away party where I met a bunch more people and schmoozed some more.  Finally we headed back on our biked after a long day.

Originally I had planned on staying for just one day but Arianne and Jeromy convinced me to stay for an extra day and we have plans to go hiking today with their friend from out of town. 

The central tower used to be a prison

Peace from Annecy. 

Funicular and Aix les Bains

I said goodbye to Cassandre bright and early today to start my bike trip.  My final stop for the night is Aix les Bain where I booked an airbnb host for $22 a night. 

The road towards Aix les Bains was relatively nice with some small sections covered in gravel. I mostly dismounted on these roads to prevent my tires from popping. 

About 1 hour into my trip I came across the funicular to the alps. This is the largest funicular for these mountains and the steepest in the world with the incline almost going vertical at some points.  The ride up is about 20 minutes and I was able to bring my bike (even though I didn't use it up there). 

The view from the top is spectacular.  But also quite chilly even with the sunshine we are having.  There is a famous event called Icarus every year where people paraglide from the top of this mountain in costumes and wacky outfits.  Unfortunately I missed it by a month.  But the nice weather did bring good out a dozen paraglide who took to the skies.  And I got first row seats watching them take off.  In fact there was a family who was my cable car and they were all doing it together! At first I thought their big backpacks were for hiking,  but it turns out they were carrying parachutes!

Anyways the paragliders lined them out on the launching area which is this big field sloping down towards a mountain with no safety barriers.  They had to wait for the right conditions and then quickly took sail by fanning their chutes.  It seems there is a lot of skill involved in take off as you don't want your chute going before you as you are running towards the cliff.  I saw some paragliders bail at the very last minute and I was holding my breath for them as there was no barriers. One person almost fell off the cliff when he bailed. 

By the time I finished watching and took the cable car down it was already 1:30 and so I got back on my bike and continued on.  I passed my Chambéry and quickly grabbed some food and recharge my cellular before heading out. 

I finally arrived in Aix les Bains around 6pm and quickly found my airbnb host's place.  After a quick meal I recharged for the night and prepared for the next day. 

The launch pad - stitched together a couple of photos for this

Peace from Aix les Bains

Grenoble-the city surrounded by mountains

I woke up bright and early today to explore Grenoble.  After a quick breakfast I checked out the museum Dauphiné halfway on a mountain. 

Getting there proved to be easy as I had my bike and Cassandra lived only about 15 minutes from the city center.  The first impression of Grenoble is that it is really pretty. As I biked along side the river I saw many typical French architecture -  some built halfway on the mountain and with the alps in the backdrop circumscribed by the clouds it is really a sight to be experienced first hand!

The museum Dauphiné turned out to be free and featured exhibits about skiing,  people of the alps and the first world War.  The best part was the lack of visitors and so it was really calm and quiet when I walked around. The museum used to be a covenant for nuns and so still retained it's Chapel which was totally empty except me and the classical music playing in the background. 

 The best part of Grenoble however was still to come.  In the afternoon I met up with Cassandra and Sophie and we checked out Bastille together and did Acrobastille!  So Bastille is the top of a mountain which is accessible by cable car.  We jumped on and saw an amazing view of the city! Acrobastille is a zip line and obstacle course built into the side of the mountain and battlements. This was my first experience zip lining and it was amazing!! The view of the city and the alps in the background really gave you a sense of vertigo.

We ended the night by eating dinner together which I cooked of course to thank them for hosting me. 

Grenoble is fuckin beautiful surrounded by mountains

My friends Sophie and Cassandra

Top of Bastille

about to go down on the zipline

about to jump down from this

Peace from Grenoble. 

Bike trip Grenoble to Annecy

I stared my bike trip yesterday. The plan is to take a train to Grenoble with my bike,  bike up to Annecy then take a train back.  The distance is about 150km and so is not too bad. 

The idea of this trip came when I met a friend on the plane on the way over to Paris.  I had previously wrote about how there were 5 language assistants from Toronto who took the same flight as me.  Well I kept in contact with them and Cassandra - a girl from Ottawa lives in Grenoble which is not too far from me.  So I messaged her and started planning my trip. 

In order to bring my bike onto the train I would have to pay extra if I took the TGV (high speed train). Being cheap I took the slower trains with many interchanges to arrive in Grenoble and in the process saved about 30 euros. 

I took off from Guebwiller in the morning of October 22nd and arrived in Grenoble around 7pm. I arrived just in time to meet Cassandra and her friends for Indian food at a nearby restaurant. There were 3 German assistants, 1 Spanish and 4 English assistants including Cassandra and me.  So it was difficult to get to know many people.  But they were all very nice and surprised about my experiences especially when I told them about the Korean phenomenon known as plastic surgery. 

After dinner we all went back and crashed pretty early.  I sent out some couch surfing requests in Chambéry without any responses.  So in the end I decided to just take an airbnb place but I already have a couchsurfer host lined up on Annecy!

Waiting for the train bright and early at 8am

I had to make like 4 changes and each time there was a rack like this to carry my bike along. I love European trains!

had a 3 hour layover in Besancon so went exploring

Citadel Besancon

Beasancon

Peace from Grenoble.

Adventures in Colmar - broken bicycle and hitchhiking

So continuing on the social gathering idea, I organized another gathering with the language assistants in Colmar yesterday. We invited lots of people and actually had about 12 people show up! Anyways I decided to bike over since it was such a perfect day outside.

I turned on my google maps and was flying down the path. It was literally almost 90% downhill on the way there. But around the 1 hour mark I realized the roads started to become less paved and more gravel. My road bike really wasn't designed to handle the rough road and even though I tried my best to avoid roads like this, there was no helping some of the routes. At one point I tried to avoid the bad road by going on the highway with cars whizzing past me at 100km an hour. But c'est la vie. My bike was holding up pretty well but I can start to feel the strain that this journey was taking on my baby. The nail in the coffin came finally while I was riding on a semi highway after coming out of a really rough patch. My back wheel had been bent and was hitting the frame of my bike. I quickly dismounted and tried to fix it myself with my bare hands. But of course lacking tools none of the remedies worked well.

Finally after about 30 minutes of this, I decided to lock up my bicycle and hitchhike into town, since by this time I was about 6km outside of Colmar. The original journey was about 30km. So I started to walk past the high way with my thumb and luckily after about 20 minutes I got picked up by a really nice lady named Rose. Rose is from Senegal and lives in Ensenheim but she told me people in smaller towns such as this doesn't usually pick up hitchikers. Anyways even though she wasn't going to Colmar she dropped me off and asked me to take her number just in case! What a nice person! I am definitely going to have to find some way to thank her someday.

So finally I arrived in Colmar around 4pm, even though I messaged everyone to meet at 2pm. Anyways I met up with everyone and some people had to leave and so we were 9 going to a resturant in Colmar.

The Colmar region is so touristy compared to Mulhouse! The old town area is really beautiful, I would go as far to say that it is even prettier than Strasbourg and might be even bigger. The old German architechture plus the canals really seems like they are taken straight out of a story book. And that's not just my own opinion, the amount of foot traffic from all nationalities confirm my views. There is even an area called "Le petit Venice!"

We ended up the night pretty early and Loic and I drove back and he picked up my bike off the high way and saved me the trouble of going back again at a later date. All in all a really great day trip and I definitely want to make another trip to Colmar in the coming months.

Scott, me and Loic

Alsacian food - Munster 

This is near me. 

50% of the roads are like this, really nice, the rest are assholes. 

Peace from Colmar.

New room! Come at me sun!

So I got  new room and a new roommate last week.

My original room facing the west side of the house never got any sunshine and was damp and moldy all the time. Even though it is facing west, during the afternoon sunlight was blocked off by the foliage.

Anyways after one of my previous roommates moved out I took over his room facing the east side. Wow what an improvement! I can actually see things in my room without turning on the light! There is still foliage so its not super bright, but its infinitely better than my previous room.

I also have a lot of free wall space that I plan to decorate in the coming weeks with DIY wall murals.

In the process, a new roommate moved into my old room - Loic. Loic is a 23 year old Nuclear engineer working at a nuclear power plant near here. He is quite social and we always speak in French. The best part ,..... he has a car and can drive us sometimes!

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Peace from Guebwiller.

Adventures in Mulhouse

So Mulhouse is the closest relatively big city to us.  And thinking we should get more social Anna and I decided to meet up with some other language assistants in Mulhouse and check out their famous automobile museum.  Or as we like to call it: "whoring ourselves out".

So we arrived in Mulhouse the last Saturday with the train and took our bikes on! How awesome! it only takes about 15 minutes ride.  I am loving the European train network more and more everyday!

We met up with 4 other assistants Fernando, Jade, Ruth and Scott and checked out the automobile museum.  Mulhouse used to be the manufacturing center for automobiles for France so it is kind of like Detroit....... except not broken. So there is actually lots of cars and vintage stuff here you wouldn't find anywhere else.  Maserati, Porches, Mercedes Benz,  Ferrari and of course Bugatti were know display.  The most expensive car is located in this museum.  That honor of course belongs to the French made Bugatti driven by Mr.  Bugatti him self. it's valued at 40 million euros! Kind of like a modern day FIRST! on youtube comments except worth infinitely more in value. 

Everyone was amazing and we made good friends with all of the assistants and we already have plans to explore the other town Colmar this weekend together.  Fernando is an assistant from Mexico who has a PhD and can speak 4 languages.  Jade,  Scott and Ruth are all from England and we had a good laugh about differences in the same language.  I felt quite cornered with the brits encircling me at dinner but they are a lovely bunch and quite cheeky as they would like to say.  I also learned that they call comforter covers duvet covers.  Lols don't ask. 

Today I went back to Mulhouse again to get some tune up on my bike.  Only this time I biked and didn't take the train.  It is about 30km to Mulhouse.  I got lost half way there and so I'll arrived after 2 hours of riding.  But normally it should only take me about 1.5 hours. I met up with Ruth and we did some geocaching together.  The cache we picked is quite well organized and consisted of a mystery we had to solve.  We found 2 out of the 3 cache in the series but finally after 1 hour of looking around and appearing sketchy around the tram tracks of the city center we gave up and called it a day.  The cache was probably lost so we made a log and if other people post hints we have plans to go back to finish up the mystery. 

That's it for Mulhouse as of now! Next up Colmar!

Cool sculpture in Mulhouse

Ruth and I after finding our first geocache

cool tram in Mulhouse

Spinning car! Better than a rollercoaster by 97%

This is a small town I passed by on the way to Mulhouse, it looks very posh

Peace from Guebwiller!