May 21: Waterfalls and Quaint Little Towns
I woke up late. It was 7.30 and I needed to be at the university parking lot by 8! I dressed and ate some cereal in a real hurry, and Floyan, one of Caroline's housemates, showed me the way to the parking lot. The Symposium people were taking a group of us sight-seeing, to the Rhine Falls and Schaffhausen that day.
I'd picked to go for the Rhine Falls trip over the ones to Zurich, Lichtenstein (a tiny little country sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria) and Mt. Santis (a peak near Zurich) - and it turned out to be a good thing, too, coz we'd already seen Zurich, they said the Lichtenstein trip was plain boring, and the poor kids who went to Santis got snowed on and couldn't see a thing from up there.
The Rhine Falls were splendid. not as high as I thought they'd be (*where* did Professor Moriarty throw Holmes down from, anyway?) but they're really strong. There's this rock thing right in the middle of the falls that a boat takes us right up to, then we take the staircase up to the top of the rock and get a blast and a good view of the falls from above. We got wet that day.
Rheinefalle - The most powerful falls in Europe
From the Rhine falls we went to Schaffhausen, reaching there at about 2 in the afternoon. They didn't give us lunch that day and I was starving by that time. When we started walking around in that quaint little medieval town, my mind was more on food than the cuteness of it all. In the middle of the town square there was this group of schoolgirls selling cakes they'd baked for charity. I bought two slices - a chocolate marble cake and a plain vanilla. The marble was good, the vanilla too sweet. The fun thing was there was a mallu kid there who was trying to get me to speak to her in Malayalam, and weirdly enough, she didn't know english!
Pangs appeased, we took a little time to admire the tiny little town square, about 200 metres across, with two ornate fountains on each end. Our guide caught up with us when we were there, an old lady with a forbidding look and thick German accent. She was awful.. hated us asking questions, she hurried through the whole thing like she had a broomstick to catch. We saw the Schaffhausen fort first. (Literally, Schaffhausen is the House of the Lamb. Apparently each 'canton' in Switzerland is represented by animal.) From the "fhorrr-THResss", as the guide pronounced it, we had a fantastic view of a sea of brown roofs. It was really something. I asked the first question at that point - I wanted to know who the fortress was protecting Schaffhausen from, who the enemy was. She gave me a very firm, one word answer: "Everybody." I didn't ask her anything else.
We took a tour around the city, saw some beautifully painted houses and walls, walked on some more quaint cobblestone streets (I swear I will never tire of them!) and ended up at the town square again within an hour. Left to our own devices for the remaining hour (it was 4 p.m.), we started browsing around in the shops and stuff. After a while I realised it would be the perfect time to call home, so I did.
Beautifully painted house in Schaffhausen
The bus whisked us back to St Gallen for the pre-symposium talk and welcome party. The talk was not too bad, the welcome party was much better than I expected. The food was brilliant - calzone with some tomato sauce thingy and more calzone with an olive oil dressing that looked green.. must have had parsely or some such Italian thing. It was quite tasty. Plus the usual salad and fruits and all. Our hosts were invited to the welcome party as well, so Caroline was there. Thru the dinner I was talking mainly to Caroline and this guy called Christophe; French, if I'm not wrong. He was really funny.. cracked some hilarious jokes all through dinner. Vinay was lost in the sea of people somewhere.. I didn't see him much that night, nor did I see any of the other people from the Singapore contingent.
Before we left the party, we were asked to collect our 'goodie bag': a Symposium bag, with a t-shirt, several pens, writing pads, a couple of bars of Toblerone, miscellaneous sweets, toothbrushes and toothpaste, plaster and a disposable camera. We also collected our "Spot-me", a really cool handheld device the size of a small calculator, that allows the user to exchange messages with the other participants, and be alerted when people they're looking for are in their vicinity. It's just a cool piece of technology.
Went to bed early that night to get a solid 8 hours before the first day of the Symposium.
