ITS THE FANS

Thursday night we were supposed to get on the 2305 (1105pm for any of you Americans who have the unfortunate affliction of not being able to do Arithmatic) night train from Innsbruck to Rome. We got to the trainstation on time and went to our platform. Right when we got there it started pouring like crazy. I couldnt believe it. It was like every hurricane I have been in. We were underground, shielded from the rain and wind but a few times I got the courage to go up onto the platform only to run down in fright a few seconds later. About the time the rain let up it was time to board our train. We went on to the platform and waited for it. The train was coming from Munich. Well, we thought it was coming. When the train didnt show up, they delayed it 90 minutes and we waited 90 minutes. When train didnt show up after 90 minutes they delayed it 90 minutes more. When the train didnt show up, and so on... we were there until 345 in the morning and made up our minds that it wasnt worth it any more and took a taxi back to the dorm. At the dorm we made up our minds that we would go to Luzern, Switzerland, which was a place we both somewhat wanted to go if we had the chance. And this was our chance. So we took the train the next morning to Zürich and the regional train from there to Luzern. We spent our first night in Luzern, strolling around Altstadt (old town) looking for a place to eat. Our main goal: find a place with Fondue. Fondue is the national food of Switzerland, so it was imperative that we have some. What we found blew our minds. This is what we found: RESTAURANT FRITSCHI. (I am not able to upload any sort of picture with the computer I am using so do me a favor, open a new window, navigate yourself to google, and do an image search for Restaurant Fritschi.) Here is a history lesson: Restaurant Fritschi opened in 1602. After our Fondue we strolled the city a little more before retiring to our hotel, Hotel Alpha. It was only a two star hotel, so nothing fabulous. We had to take a walk down the hall when ever we wanted to go pee or take a shower, but we did have a sink in our room. It was everything we needed and nothing we didnt at a price we could afford. The next morning we decided we would go to the Verkehrhaus, which is the Swiss Museum of Transport. This may sound nerdy but it is the most visited museum in Switzerland. And thats not just because the Swiss are nerds. It was amazing. It was composed of four differnt builings, each dedicated to one or another form of transportation. The first was air travel. It was probably the largest of the buildings, it had a planetarium, an IMAX theater, about 1000 actual airplanes, a flight simulater, and so on. The other three were dedicated to automobile transportation, locomotive transportation, and nautical transportation. Also there is a video that we made in the Media Exploration part of the museum using a green screen. If anyone wants it I will email it. Just tell me. It was incredible, the best museum experience I have ever had. After spending numerous hours at the Swiss Museum of Transport we decided to visit Löwendenkmal (the Lion Monument aka the dying lion of Luzern). Löwendenkmal is a relief sculpture carved into a small cliff by a pond of a lion with a spear through it. It was made in the honor of Swiss mercenaries who died in a battle some time ago. It is probably disrespectful of me to not remember exactly who it represented but it still had impact on me. It reminded me so much of Aslan, when He is dying in the Chronicles of Narnia. Mark Twain called this monument, THE SADDEST, MOST MOVING PIECE OF ROCK IN THE WORLD. And I would say that I havent seen one sadder.
The next day we went to the trainstation to go back to Innsbruck. We took the regional train to Zürich. In the Zürich trainstation we were chilling on some benches, reading, and waiting for our train when we heard yelling and shouting and singing and chanting coming from the platforms above us. We hurried to see what it was. There was a mob of people, young men most of them, shouting and screaming and singing and waving a flag. I didnt know what was going on. Then the RIOT POLICE with there helmets and shields ran past us in a line and lined up between us and them. The mob was in between two trains, flag waving, shouting. Then they started to rock a train. It was potentially frightening because I didnt know if they were going to charge at us or what. The door to the train opened up, the loud mob got on the train singing and shouting and waving their flag and the tension died down a bit. I had heard that the train workers go on strike every nowandthen, being unionized and all but I didnt think that these young men were unionized train workers. So I asked a police woman, what was that? She didnt speak much English so I asked again and slower, what was going on there? She looked at me and said, OH... FOOTBALL, she rolled her eyes, ITS A PROBLEM, FOOTBALL. That is when I realized that the differnce between American football and European football isnt the fact that they are completely differnt sports, its the fans.
-T