My Second Quarter of Exchange By Benjamen Charles

Over the last couple of weeks that have made up my third month of exchange, I have made again so many knew memories, and seen so many knew and amazing things. It started with the second week of my easter holidays, which I had completely free to travel Switzerland and see so many amazing places. First we went to Geneva to take a guided tour of the CERN institution, which is the home of the LHC (the

worlds largest hadron collider), and although we unfortunately couldn’t actually see the hadron collider due to the fact its 175 metres underground and emits very high amounts of radiation, we still got to see a lot of the controls rooms and walk around the huge building. A couple of the exchange, including myself arranged to meet up earlier in the morning to get the chance to travel around Geneva for a bit and get to do some sight seeing. We went to the Jet d’Eau, which is a huge water fountain out on the river, and we took lots of photos around the parks with all of flags, and drew quite a bit of attention from people who had been to our countries, or people who wanted to know where we were from and what we were doing in Switzerland. We then went and got 5 dollar pizzas from Dominos because they had a special event that was only going for week. And yes you read that right, we got pizza in Switzerland for only five dollars, (before we had this idea we even

considered just crossing the border and getting lunch in France because it’d be so much cheaper). After eating we caught up with all of the other exchange students and took a tram to the CERN institution where we photo bombed some school photos, and photos of other random people, before heading inside to start the tour. I think some people didn’t quite get the idea of where we were actually going, because some of them managed to fall asleep in just the introduction speech, where the man was explaining what CERN was and all about its history.

I then caught with two other exchange students and we went sight seeing in Solothurn where the other exchange students told me how dramatically my diet would change, because I was eating all chocolate and cake, and thy said that I will soon start dramatically putting on weight (as every exchange student does) and then I will very quickly change my eating habits. We got to see some massive and really old buildings, and even a castle, and we had a couple problems with trying to find our way around, considering everything was in French. We then went to Biel, where we had about 10 minutes to run around the Train station and take some photos, and say that we’ve been to Biel, before we caught our next train home again.

One of my knew best friends from Switzerland then asked me if I wanted to spend the afternoon in Lucerne, which is the closest city to where we live, and in my opinion one the most beautiful city’s I’ve ever been too. First we went to the park on the edge of the lucerne lake and I taught Marco how to kick and Australian football, and we had a throw of the frisbee, and had a look around to see if there was any good spots for a swim later on if we had time, before going to watch Black Panther in the lucerne cinemas. After the movie Marco showed a great spot to get a meal in Lucerne, it was an American burger shop which had the best burgers I’ve ever tasted, and my whole meal was under 27 franks, which is ridiculously cheap for a whole meal in Switzerland. After we ate Marco took me on a little tour through a bit of the city, where we had another kick of the footy through the streets, and went to see another one of the millions of fountains in Switzerland. We then started heading back to the Train station to come home for the night because it was now 9:00, but we then had the brilliant idea of going swimming where we’d been earlier that day. And so we walked back to the park, put on our bathers and ran into the freezing cold water of the lucerne lake. This drew a lot of very confused people to ask us why we’d gone swimming, and if we had lost a bet or something, and Marco and I had to explain that, no thats just how we are. After we’d dried off and put some warmer clothes back on, we finally headed backte the train station for the final time that night. Usually I would arrange my own trains and routes to get

back home, and make sure that I get home on time, but I though that considering I was with someone that has lived here all his life, and done this a million times, I could just follow him back home. And so we got on a train in Lucerne, and Marco explained that we could take this train to a town near where we live, and then take another train home. And so when we got to the first town we got of the train, and Marco realised that the train he usually takes wasn’t running on that night, and so we stuck in this town for an hour before the next train home came.When we got back to Willisau we walked home together (because we live on the same street) and because all shops in Switzerland close around 6 or 7 ocklock of course nothing was open. But in the main street theres this little store that has some vending machines in them. And I swear to god the

people that own these vending machines must make 100% of their profits off of Marko, because every time we hang out together we always go there so that he can get a chocolate milk and something to eat.

I got invited to go to a rotary event with my host rotary club, and we went to a quarry and saw how they separated all of the different materials, and how everything was run and all of the different things that they do. I also got the chance to drive some of the machines that they use to excavate the dirt and rocks and transport it around, before I got a chance to practice my German and speak to all of the workers and a lot of the rotarians as we ate dinner.

I then went to my second Rotex weekend, in which we went to the ‘Creux du Van’ which is a huge gorge in the French region of Switzerland, and I was formally initiated as a Peruvian, and fulfilled my life long dream of becoming a Latino (because thats how it works). We all slowly met up on the trains as we started

getting closer to the Creux du Van, and then once we were all there we had a small talk and went over some of the rules, and how the day was going to work with the Rotex coordinators, before starting off up the mountain. I walked most of the way with a group of people, before me and one of the other Australians went of the path and started climbing up through all of the trees and making our own path to the top. At one point we climbed to the top of a pretty big tree and had a

brilliant view off all of our surroundings and the scenery. Once everyone had climbed to the top we had about 2 hours to look around and take heaps of photos, which is exactly what we did (i think we took a couple hundred photos in those two hours) and to everyones surprise there was even still snow at the top. There was this one spot on the top where there was a little natural path out over the edge on the cliff that could only fit about four or five people in a straight line, and we took most of our photos on that little cliff, as well as dangling our legs off of the edge and looking out into the gorge.

After the Rotex weekend I met up with some exchange students again and we went to Interlaken, and then to Lauterbrunnen where we went and saw the waterfall that was flowing very heavily because of all of the snow still melting and flowing off of the mountains. We also found out that we could use our GA’s (which is like a card that give us unlimited free passes on trains, busses, trams, ferries and so on) to take the cable car up to the top of the mountain where took the ‘kleine scheidegg’ (a train) to Mürren, where we did some more sight seeing, took a couple hundred more photos, and a had a snow fight.

Lauterbrunnen/Müren

That’s me in the Peruvian jumper

After Lauterbrunnen we then went to Thun, which was another beautiful city not to far away, and we went and did more sight seeing there, and went to another one of Switzerlands amazing castles. We planned on going for a swim in the river, but we couldn’t find any good enough spots, because the water was flowing to fast, so instead we just went walking along the edge of the river and saw some of the really old wooden bridges that were originally built over the rivers. As we walked through Thun and found meow new amazing places to go and see Nacho and Ariana taught me some Spanish, and throughout the day we spoke

phrases from about 5 or 6 different languages. We then went to McDonalds (because its about the only thing in the budget of a Swiss exchange student, and we played tic tac toe in the kids area.

One of my host brother and mine favourite thing to do is to challenge each other with everything we do, and try and push each other to learn heaps of new things, and try stuff neither of us have done before, and lately we’ve been practicing rollerblading a lot, and so heres a video of me learning how to rollerblade, and some simple tricks that were learning.

May Report

Benjamen Charles

In April My host Father, Host Brother and I started a construction site at our house, as we started to build a garage as requested by my Host Mum. She also said that we had to abide by very strict time constraints, meaning that we were having to work extra hard sometimes to make sure that we were going to have everything done. We first started by put up the main support beams, which actually took almost a hole day because we had to make sure that they were firmly concreted into the ground, and that they were perfectly aligned and straight, and then fill them with

concrete. We even ended up using a laser to measure the posts down to the millimetre to make sure that everything was in exactly the right spot. Once we had the support beams up we were able to start some of the harder labor by cutting out wholes into the wall that would support the other end of the struts running from the support beams. That was very messy work because the walls were in three layers, one layer of plaster, a layer of mesh, and then a layer of insulator. Meaning that we had to use a saw to cut the boundaries of the sections we wanted to remove, and we then had to use a crowbar, a hammer and a chisel to work away at all of the layers. After we were finished we then had to spend almost just as much time cleaning up all of the mess, as the plaster had flown everywhere, and the insulator was like polystyrene, and was very hard to clean up afterwards.

In April I also started a German course in the capitol of Switzerland with a number of other exchange students. We go every Wednesday by train to Bern, and then catch a train to smaller area called Wankdorf where we walk to a large building to take our class. On the first day we had a few troubles because a

number of the students were delayed due to problems on the train tracks, and then a number of us all got lost at the Bern train station, which might sound ridiculous until you see the actual size of the main translations here in Switzerland, and realise how easy it is to get lost in new places. However we all eventually caught up and took a bus to Wankdorf, and by now we were just running on time, and if we ran a little we’d still be able to get to the class on time. However we managed to get lost and go into the wrong building a number of times and ended up showing up at the class about a half hour late, but luckily our teacher wasn’t to mad as it was our first time in Wankdorf and we didn’t know how to get around. The class went on pretty well in the beginning and we told the teacher about ourselves and had some conversations in German until our half time break, in which we get about fifteen minutes to use the bathroom and have something to eat. A number of the students and I wanted to go to Migros (which like a large supermarket company in Switzerland) to bye something to eat, but the closest one was about a five minute walk, so we ran there, had something to eat and ran back. When we returned our teacher could see that we were a little out of breath, and asked what wed been doing, and we said that we ran to Migros to get something to eat, and she told us that we could have just gone across the street and and around a building to the Migrolinos (which is just a smaller Migros) and so that where we’ve eaten each time ever since.

On the 20th of May it was one of my host family’s cousin’s Birthday and so we went to Schwarzenburg (where she lives) to celebrate. However we first went to a church procession

because they were talking about another relative who had recently past away. After that Jael, Nils and I walked from to the church to the cousins house, and on the way we found a river and decided to roll up our jeans and go for a walk in the river to cool off a bit. We also went walking under a tunnel that the river ran through, and climbed on some posts that were lying around, and just had a good time.

We then went to the house and had something to eat and drink with all of the relatives, and then Nils, and two of Nils other cousins and I went and sat in the spa that they have at there house. After dinner we all went up and watched the ice hockey game of Switzerland vs Sweden (i think) which ended up being a very close and intense game.

On the 21 I then got up early to go to Zurich and meet a number of exchange students to go to the Zurich Zoo, and everything went well until I got to Zurich and had to take a tram from the train station to the Zoo, and it was the first time I’d been to Zurich alone and I had no idea where the tram station was. So I put it into google maps to try and find the tram station, but google maps decided to send me on an hour long goose chase, and in the end I gave up and just chased trams around until I found one that’d take me to the zoo. When I got there the line was pretty long, but moving decently fast, and so it wasn’t to long till I was inside. However then

Camila (one of the other exchange students I was meeting there) decided to send me on another hour long goose chase around the zoo trying to find her. But when I eventually caught up with everyone the day went pretty well, and we got to see so many different animals, and I got to see my one of favourite animals, flamingos for the first time, and even saw a number of Australian animals in the section they had dedicated to the crazy wildlife we have in Australia.

On the 31 of may I went to rotary meeting that was being held in a restaurant a top a mountain nearby willisau, and before we sat down for dinner we got to go on a walk across the mountains and see some of the amazing views.

June Report

On the first of June a number of the exchange students and I went on a four hour trip to a little lake called Caumasee, which at first we thought was just going to be a little spot that we could go for a swim, and maybe have a picknick, but this have to have been one of the most beautiful places I’ve been in Switzerland so far. It was a large lake with a small island in the middle that you could swim out to, and a number of little platforms that you could chill out on in the middle of the lake. The water was the most amazing blue color, and the whole thing had the best mountain backdrop. We spent a couple of hours there swimming and playing volleyball before we had to walk back to the bus stop

and start the four hour journey home again, which wasn’t to bad as we’d all gotten up very early in the morning and were all happy just to have a sleep once we were on the train. Occasionally some of the trains will have five to ten minute stop overs at different stops, and at one of our stops we had a couple minutes before our train left again, so I ran into the train station and bought some chocolate (because theres nothing like Swiss chocolate) and then ran back to onto the train to meet the others again. And as we were sitting there talking and eating chocolate, another train pulled up beside us and there was another group of friends sitting in the seats on the train right next to us. At first it was kind of awkward because it was like all of us were sitting

together but there was just two large windows between us, but then we started talking with them in sign language (as in just waving our hands) and we had a good time even taking a selfie with them before our train took off again.

I then had a rotary flag parade in Basel on one of the weekends. All of the exchange students from my district got to wear our rotary blazers to the event, and we split into groups of our country and each got a flag and walked into a room with a large number of rotarians and we got to show off a bit about our country and two students gave a presentation in German on how their exchange has been so far and what things they’ve enjoyed the most. After the parade we got to have something to eat before we were allowed to leave. A couple of us went to McDonalds to get an ice-cream, before taking a tram and walking to ‘dreipunkt’ which basically means three points, and its where France, Germany and Switzerland meet, so we ended up going to three countries in one day.I then had a school night excursion for Biology, where we had to stay up all night in a forrest. We all had different jobs, ranging from studying different types of Flora and Fauna, to checking how abundant certain life species still are, and my group also got to cook a midnight snack for everyone in a wood fire oven. The excursion ran from 6:00 on a Saturday afternoon till 6:00 o’clock the following Monday morning, and I had to ride home as it was about 7 kilometres away, but the problem was that I got back at six thirty on a Monday morning and all my host

family was still in bed, and I didn’t want to wake them up, so I just ended up falling asleep on the doorstep until my host sister left for school at 7:30.

After that on of my exchange friends had an Abschlussfeire which is like a farewell party, as she was leaving soon after, and so I and a couple of other exchange students, as well as a group of her Swiss school friends went to her house and celebrated (that she was finally leaving), and it was also kind of a sad night. I ended up taking the last train home and met us with some friends from school just by coincidence and we sat and spoke on the train ride home.

On the 23rd of June is started my trip around Europe on

the 2018 BeloSwiss Eurotour, the tour went for a duration of 17 days, and we toured a number of countries and major cities all across Europe. However I will write a seperate report on everything we got up to on eurotour soon and get that through to you all very soon as well.