Gully and Elise's Travel Blog: Gruezi to all!!

We have definitely fallen behind with the blog, but it has been long couple of weeks and full of hardship (with some moments of fun).

Since Bulgaria, we breezed through Romania, stopping for a few nights to hike in the mountains and stay in a tiny village that probably hasn’t changed in a hundred years. Then we headed back to Slovakia, where we sold the car (more on that from Gully) and suffered in a tent for four nights in single digits temps and lots and lots of rain. We were too miserable and cold to blog. Then we got on the train (sadly, our new method of transportation) and headed to the last place we dreamed we would end up during this trip – Switzerland!! This was definitely a highlight – and we were too stuffed with good food and booze to blog. Then we got on an overnight train to Barcelona, which turned into a bus due to a train-worker strike, then the following night on another overnight train to Madrid. It sucked.

But more on Switzerland, since it was the only fun part. We stayed with our new friends Christian and Bettina, who we met while we were in Croatia. They live in a smallish town on the eastern border of Switzerland, and for 3 days they toured us around Switzerland and Lichtenstein and Austria, fed us Swiss/Austrian specialties, and took us hiking in the Swiss Alps. Specialties like chocolate, cheese, cheese fondue, sausage and horse meat. I probably gained 5 pounds. We also went to see a football match, which, in true Swiss style, was a friendly game between Australia and Switzerland and ended in a 0-0 draw. Talk about neutrality. We spent about 10 hours in Zurich, waiting for a train, and burned through about half the balance of our bank accounts… we ended up sitting all afternoon in the park because we couldn’t even afford McDonald’s coffee!!