A little catching up

Currently we're working on making all of our connections throughout
Switzerland and Italy to our stop in Venice. The Swiss Alps are
covered in snow but I have yet to see any actually fall from the sky.
For those of you who don't know the story with me and snow, it's
basically the one type of weather that I always want to witness but
invariably miss by days (or sometimes hours) to find it already on the
ground. I joke with friends that the California weather follows me
wherever I go but didn't think it would have long range effects in
Europe. Currently it is sunny with almost no clouds in the sky, which
is a decent contrast to the weather reports I read earlier this week
from Germany (and even a day or two ago from Fribourg) that predicted
a "decent amount of snow" along our route in Switzerland.

Moving back a little bit, our second day in Fribourg was spent
strolling around one of the local malls and much of the old town
(district?). I was always told in my German classes that fashion
varied a great deal between the US and European countries, but I have
to say that I really don't see it. I can't tell if changes in
communication and travel have provided better traversing of the
"material world" from place to place or if its simply that my German
teacher was older and didn't understand either populations style
choices. Before that has a chance to be interpreted as an insult, let
me say that I agree with him (and his confusion) if the latter is
true. I was also able to pickup a charger for my phone that works so
now the remaining challenge will be to find wifi throughout Venice and
Rome. After the mall we took a short walk down to the old part of
Fribourg that offered numerous shops, an older church (with relatively
not so old stained glass), "funikular" (fr/de. sp?) powered by raw
sewage, and a number of roads so vertical that stairs had to be
installed to get up and down them. We met up with Cyrille and Natalie
after we finished touring the town for coffee and hot chocolate in a
semi-trendy lounge that was nice but unfortunately very smokey like
some restaurants we've encountered along the way. Of the things I miss
most from California, sending the damn smokers outside is by far
topping the list these days. It really is a great rule that some
european countries have been enforcing over the last year or so, while
others remain unchanged (or undecided). We finished up the evening by
celebrating epiphany with our hosts. Neither Liz nor myself landed the
piece of cake that had the King/Queen figurine that entitled the
possesor to wear a crown for the rest of the night, but we were happy
to see that both Cyrille and Natalie had found such winnings inside
their dessert.

After a quick ride to the train station this morning we're now back to
where I began. And since I have nearly (and unintentionally) completed
the Tarantino effect, it's probably as good a time as any to close for
now.