Bungee Jumping in Ticino, Switzerland

Just got back from our weekend of madness in Ticino, the Southern, Italian speaking part of Switzerland. The weekend almost didn't happen because of some planning problems Friday afternoon. Due to the huge amounts of flooding in Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a lot of trains are shut down or running modified schedules. After a bunch of phone calls to the SBB and lots of emailing, we decided it would be an adventure to try anyways. So Shane, Evan, Travis, Warren and I started Friday night by heading out to Locarno with a little bit of food and no plans of where to stay. We got into the city after midnight, and I took the boys down to one of the places dad and I had walked around earlier in the summer because I could remember some possible camping spots. We checked the vineyard next to the church, but it would have damaged the property, so we stayed away. We eventually settled on a spot off the walking path on the beach next to the lake. We set up our tents and played some cards before crashing. Luckily, we didn't run into any problems with the police, although I'm sure people were wondering what was going on as they walked their dogs in the morning.

Renegade Camping in Locarno

We woke up at 7:00 to head to Ponte Brolla, a place I had heard about from Brian that was supposed to be really cool pools worn out of the rocks by the river. There was also supposed to be some pretty good cliff diving there. We finally managed to find the spot, but because of the rain there was no one there. The water was pretty damn cold, but Shane, Travis and I decided to swim up as far as we had time for. There was lots of jumping in and climbing out of the water, but it was loads of fun. Eventually we ran across Evan, who had hiked up on his own a bit. Right after that we were climbing over a big hump of rocks, and somehow Shane lost his hold on the rocks. He slid down the smoothed incline for about 15 m. Luckily, he stayed aware enough during his fall to use a log to stop himself. Everyone was still pretty shaken up, as it could have been really bad. After the shock subsided and we made sure Shane wasn't badly hurt, we continued on. We found a good cliff to jump off of into a deep pool, probably just over 10 m high. Shane scoped out the pool to make sure it was safe, and we jumped off the cliff. It was a good jump, but we'll have to come back when it's warmer out and we have more time.

Swimming at Ponte Brolla

It was getting about time to head over to the Verzasca dam, so we gathered up our stuff and grabbed the next Post bus. The dam is famous for being the site of James Bond's bungee jump in GoldenEye. The reason we came down to Ticino this weekend was to replicate this stunt, and everyone was getting pretty excited. When the dam first came into view, it was breathtaking, and then we realized we could only see half of it. In the picture below, you can't see the bottom half. I don't know how high the dam is, but the bungee jump is 220 m, and it's debated whether or not it's the highest in the world next to the one in South Africa.

The Verzasca Dam

View from the Dam to Locarno

The group that had decided against renegade camping, Vance, Tommy, Henri and Bernard showed up shortly after us. We watched a bunch of other guys do their jump, because the fog was in pretty heavy and we wanted to jump when it was clear. We walked around and checked out the dam and marvelled in how huge it was. The girl working there was nice, and joined us up to pay with a couple other people so we could get a group discount. Overall, it came to 185 CHF each with the student discount and the group discount. Everyone was getting even more excited about the jump. Evan and I both wanted to go first, but Evan ended up letting me take first. I wasn't nervous while getting my harness on at all. I had been a little more nervous on the way up, but once I saw the dam, that was it, I was ready. I was given a quick safety instruction about what to do after the jump was over, and how I was being protected. After the safety instruction, I headed out to the platform, and they hooked me in. I stepped to the edge, toes over, and the operator counted down; "Three, two, one, go," I hesitated for a split second and then dove out into nothing.

Getting prepped to jump

The Jump (right-click, save as...)

The feeling is entirely indescribable, it was nothing compared to any amusement park ride, or cliff diving, or anything I've ever felt. My stomach didn't move at all, the fall felt pretty natural, but it was so unbelievably fast. It was the fastest feeling I've ever felt. I could see the dam flying past my sight. The freefall was intense, it didn't feel like I was attached to a bungee at all until it tightened. After the rope tightened, I slowed down and then started the rebound. The rebound is huge, I almost came back up high enough to focus on the people up top, but there were other things on my mind. The view was spectacular and over the next few bounces I just took it in slowly. To get back up, you have to pull yourself up onto the rope and attach yourself to a cable being lowered, and then you get cranked up. Once at the top, I watched Evan take the second jump from the platform, then took off all the equipment and stepped back into reality. Greens were greener, I could taste the air, and I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. The rest followed, Warren, Bernard, Victor, Henri, Vance, Tommy and finally Shane, with Travis standing by and filming all of the jumps. Everything went off without a hitch, they even gave us certificates and a piece of bungee cord. The cord was surprisingly simple. The inside is a bunch of regular elastic bands tied in with other elastic bands, but it was still solid. After everyone had taken it all in and relaxed a bit, we headed back down the dam to Locarno, completely satisfied with the experience. The connections on the trains sucked, so it took over five hours to get home.

The Bungee Jump Group

Safety Day at ABB

Today we got to be involved in a fire drill. However, it wasn't like the good old high school fire drills. It was Keegan, Lindsey, Tyler and I involved, and we were volunteered as 'actors' in an emergency situation. The emergency situation revolved around a fire, and apparent good timing of a bunch of other accidents too. The idea was that the emergency workers weren't supposed to know who the actors were and the people going about their business weren't supposed to know about the emergency at all.

Getting prepped

They went full out with make up too. They made a big realistic looking bloody gash on Tyler's head from an accident in the lab. Lindsey has consumed Chlorine gas and was dying, complete with purple lips and pale white skin. Keegan was about to have a stroke, and had pale skin and sweat on his forehead. I got no makeup, I played a 'panicked' person and had to run around acting panicked and cause others to panic.

Tyler with a head gash

Lindsey dying in the basement

The emergency was set off with an explosion and a fog machine to simulate fire. I started by walking through the halls waiting for the emergency to start. Not too many of the workers seemed disturbed by the big plumes of white smoke outside their windows. Not even by the phone alarms that started going off. People did start noticing Tyler lying in the hall with his bloody head, and then the emergency workers showed up and started to evacuate people.

Smoke coming out of the building

Firefighters coming to save us

I wasn't supposed to leave unless dragged out so I just had to run around freaking out and then every time they told me to exit the building I was supposed to go up a floor. Don't know what that simulates but whatever. I ended up on the 2nd floor (3rd in Canada) and it seemed like I had been forgotten. It's hard to act panicked when no one else is around, so eventually I went down to floor one and sat in a corner looking stressed. Then one of the emergency workers came around and asked if I was okay and I started asking him a bunch of questions like 'what's going on' and 'there's a fire' and 'what's going to happen' and 'where did everybody go?' The only answer I got was 'Kein Englisch.' Great. He eventually got the idea and dragged me out of the building. Tyler, Keegan and Lindsey were being treated outside as far as I could see. They had run into their own difficulties.

Lindsey getting dragged out

People thought Tyler's cut was real, and tried to console him in German. Since Lindsey was 'unconscious' the workers took off her glasses and she didn't know where they were. But Keegan gets the first prize. He acted out his epileptic seizure on the lawn in front of the building, and apparently someone freaked out and called an ambulance. Good actor I guess. Pretty strange fire drill though, all in all. One good thing though is they bought us all lunch for volunteering.

Free lunch!

White Water Rafting in Interlaken

Yesterday a few of us hopped on a train and went to Interlaken to do some good old white water rafting. We had decided to go since it has been raining a lot for the last few days, so it didn't matter if we got wet. Ed was supposed to come over for a cuppa before we left, but something went wrong and he didn't show up. So Travis, Richard and I headed out to the train station and made our way to Interlaken. When we got off the train Ed got off a few cars down, turns out he had taken a different starting connection, but had ended up on the same train. The rest of the guys had driven, so we had some lunch and waited for the bus to drive us to the rafting base. When we got there the rain was coming down pretty steady, and they told us the river was really high and fast, which is perfect for good rafting. So we split up into two groups. One boat had Ed and I in the front, and Travis, Anthony, Mike (Anthony's brother), and Rob in the back along with an Australian, a New Zealander and our 'driver' Clayton. The other boat had Liisa, George and Richard.

Boat #1

Boat #2

After getting suited up and driven up to the starting spot, they started going through the safety lesson. It seemed that Alpin Raft catered to English speakers and Korean speakers. One boat was all Korean, and the three others were English. We were doing the Lütschine run, which is supposed to be the hardest one there, a level three. Our boat went in last and within a couple minutes before any major rapids, two of the Koreans were in the water. We paddled up to rescue them, but it turned out more like running them over. Eventually they were both back in their boat, a bit shaken, one of them minus a boot, but other than that okay. Then the real rapids started. There was lots of paddling, lots of sudden drops and getting splashed in the face hard with 5 degree water, and lots of frozen fingers. Being in the front was awesome, we didn't get to anticipate anything, and had to keep the rhythm of the boat and listen to Clayton's commands. The rapids lasted quite a while, but we didn't lose anybody and it was so much fun.

Before the Rapids

Halfway down, we had to stop in an eddy and take the boats out, because the next section was protected for the wildlife. While driving by, we could see it was good we didn't go. It was a level five, and looked almost like a waterfall with huge boulders along the way. The next section was supposed to be one huge drop and then easy riding all the way down to the lake. The drop consisted of a giant boulder, which sucked all the water down into a hole. We had to power into it so we wouldn't get stuck in the hole and lose all our speed. Rob decided to get out and meet us at the next available eddy. Ready for anything, we gave it our all. We hit the rock perfectly. We dropped into the hole, and everyone was expecting that to be it, which was enough of a rush. However, because all of the water was sucked down, it made a huge 'jump' coming out of the hole. The raft tipped way up, and then crashed us down and we got the brunt of it on our faces and chests. As quickly as it started, it was over and the river seemed to mellow out, even though it was by no means calm.

Big Dip

Going In

Getting Wet

The rest of the trip we relaxed, tried to hit some good rocks, and chatted. We came out at the bottom into the Brienzersee, right next to where we had been swimming during the Greenfield festival. The water was a lot colder this time though. After a short swim we headed back to the base and stripped down, dried off and had some beer and sandwiches. Then we headed back to the station and made our way back to Baden. All in all, white water rafting is a great experience and comes recommended by me.

Update: According to BBC, the place where we were rafting is flooding like crazy.

Street Parade 2005

Yesterday was Zurich's Street Parade, where the less than 400,000 inhabitants of Zurich balloon to over 1,000,000 dancing, scandalously dressed people ready to dance. A bunch of us Canadians decided to go all out, and I went and bought some hot pink hair dye, some blue face paint, a pink boa and blue lycra boxer shorts. Friday night I got a surprise call that Kyle had left Corfu earlier that day and was on his way to Baden to meet up for the parade. It ended up taking him 24 solid hours of travel, but he made it. On Saturday morning, we headed over to Kehl to get our costumes together. Kyle had nothing, but made the most of it by using extra hair dye and face paint. Travis had cut his hair in a Mohawk the night before and dyed it silver. Shane dressed up pretty much like a female Oompa Loompa. You get the idea.

Shane and I in costume

The Street Parade Group

We got all our booze together and headed down to the train station to catch the 12:08 train into Zurich. Once there, we grouped together at the main train station, and immediately started getting swarmed by photographers, mostly amateur. It was like the paparazzi were there. We all hung around and let ourselves be the centre of attention for a while, and then started moving towards the lake. One guy asked if I could do a few poses for him on the way, and he looked pretty professional with his camera. Maybe they’ll show up somewhere, who knows. We made our way to the river while Kyle and I slowly put away our bottle of gin and a few Anker beers. Everyone was pretty hammered pretty early, and they all let loose, no inhibitions. We were all dancing like crazy, and the photos never ceased. We danced around the Opernhaus Bühne for quite a while and at one point joined an outdoor foam party, which was actually pretty gross, so I didn’t stay in it for long. We also tried to get on the main stage, because our costumes were better than any of the real dancers, but security wouldn’t let us up.

The Superheroes; Vance, Jacqui, Lindsey and Tommy

Yeahhhhh

Party people; Me, Liisa, Kyle, Adrienn

Handsome young men; Shane, Me, Tommy, Evan

When the parade started everybody moved over to watch and try to get on a float. Quite a few of the floats had a theme of sorts, like ‘white clothes’ or ‘leather.’ Apparently they weren’t letting people on any of them though. Then came the float with the foam. Luckily I left my camera with Travis while Shane and I followed it, and it dumped a huge amount of foam on us. I got knocked on the ground and couldn’t stand up because it was too crowded. I had to crawl around and I couldn’t breathe because of all the foam. I must have been under the foam for at least a minute, and finally got out and gasped for breath. I managed to find Shane, who had lost his flip-flops in the foam. We found them, which is really good because there was glass everywhere. Then we looked at ourselves and saw how sketchy we looked. Our makeup was all running down our faces, and we looked like death. We thought everyone else was ahead of us, so we started walking forwards with the parade. As far as I know nobody else made it on any floats. We ran into Ed and started looking for people with him. We found the float that had four topless painted girls dancing in front of it. We joined them and security pulled us away the first few times. After that they just let us go. We danced with them for a bit, and then left to continue our search for the others. Ed got separated from us somehow, so it was just Shane and I for a while.

Shane making some friends

Vance dancing with Tommy

The last picture before getting separated

We walked the entire length of the parade to the very front where the floats stopped and realised maybe the others had never been in front of us. Shortly into the way back we ran into Tommy and Lindsey, who were dressed like super heroes. Tommy was hammered and kept running off to dance in random groups. A few minutes later I saw my supervisor with his camera and he took a photo of all of us. We kept walking back to the Opernhaus, and Lindsey cut her foot on some glass. Shane started to get her towards a medical station, and I tried to get Tommy, but he was too drunk, so we ended up separated again. Tommy and I made our way back to the Opernhaus, where by fluke I ran into Holger and he showed us where everybody else was. First I found Kyle and Liisa, so happy to have found the group again. Turned out I had been gone for over six hours, so I have no photos in that gap.

We went back to the Opernhaus and danced some more, and it started to get dark really quickly. Kyle and I went off and got a pizza and kebab because we were starved. After that we headed back to and waited for the ‘surprise DJ’ to come on. Kyle left before it started, and a few of us remained behind.

Ferris wheel

Travis looking excited for the 'surprise DJ'

After dark

When the DJ came on, it was Armin Van Buuren, which excited Travis, because he knows the most about DJs. There was a crazy light show and the DJ set was pretty damn good. Apparently he’s the third best DJ in the world, and it sounded pretty awesome. The set went on for about an hour, and after that we made the slow trek home. On the way Ed and I wrestled each other in a fountain, which looking back was probably pretty dirty, but we were drunk. Because of street parade they had special night trains running all night, so there was no problem getting home.

Ky's model face

A nice 'Ja voll' from Holger

Armin Van Buuren

The end

Here are some links of people that made it on the internet:
Me following the parade
Shane and Evan dancing
Ed hanging out with naked girls

Greece with Kyle

This post is in progress....

Saturday, July 30: Had to get up super early in the morning, catch a train to Basel, and fly to Berlin. I landed with a five hour layover, so I decided to head into town. I made my way to the train station, but there seemed to be a strange problem on the track I was waiting at. I talked to some swiss guys that were hanging out there, and we found out that the train was really delayed. Eventually after about 90 minutes a train came and we got on, and we realized it was the wrong train, so we got off again. The swiss guys went and grabbed a cab.

I discovered that there were two track 9's, and I should have been at the S-Bahn track 9, so I made my way there and caught a train into the centre of Berlin. That took another hour or so, so I didn't have much time until I had to turn around and head back out. I got off at Alexanderplatz, where there is a huge television tower. I got my first European Subway, and chilled in the park and ate it. Then I walked around and found a place to grab a beer. I got Erdinger, which I've had in a few places in Germany, and in Switzerland too. This tasted horrible though, it tasted like they hadn't cleaned all of the soap out of the glass. After finishing that, I was done with Berlin, and grabbed my train back out to the airport, and caught my plane to Athens.

After landing in Athens, I had to grab their subway to the stop where I was meeting Kyle. I told him the time I was arriving in Athens, and he thought that was the time I was arriving at the Filoxenia, our meeting place, so to him I was about an hour late. When I finally arrived he had made friends all around and people kept saying 'Ahhhh, you found him' and stuff. It was pretty funny. We went to the hostel and dropped off our bags, and I got to meet the super cool owner, who had a multiple personality disorder. He had been telling Kyle about his brothers, and then later had said 'See! Now I'm my brother.' Everyone in Greece seemed really nice so far. We went out to grab some food and eventually found some excellent Souvlaki, which was also super cheap.

Kyle in Athens

We learned our first Greek words, and headed back to the hostel for some drinking. We had to be back at the Filoxenia at 5:45 for our tour departure, so we decided to just stay up all night. The hostel owner had promised us free ouzo all night, so we started with that. The beer there was super expensive, but you needed some in between all the ouzo, so the night wasn't entirely free. The ouzo was mixed with grenadine or something, so it didn't taste at all like liquor, but it hit you hard. We both got pretty drunk. I decided to head to bed at around 5:00, and ended up crashing for 15 minutes before I had to get up to go to the meeting spot.

At the hostel after lots of ouzo

Sunday, July 31: At the meeting spot we weren't too interested in being social, so we just got on the bus and slept for the trip to the boat. The ferry was packed, so we found a couple chairs on the deck and slept there for a while. I woke up after a bit and talked to the girls next to us, Vanessa and Jodie, who turned out to be on the same island tour as us. We ate sunflower seeds and chatted for a while, then Kyle woke up and we all decided to move inside. We found some seats in first class, and people gave us really strange looks, because we didn't look like we should have been there. We played cards for the rest of the boat ride, which turned out to be about 8 hours in total.

Once we got into Mykonos, a van drove us to our rooms, and I met Anthony, a super cool guy from Australia. Turned out I was staying in a room with him and two other Australian girls, and Kyle was in a room with three New Zealander girls. We put our stuff down in our room and then headed to the beach to catch up on some sleep.

Arrival in Mykonos

We woke up and then moved over to the pool by our place, which turned out to be a salt water pool. At around 19:00 we got ready and met up with the tour group for a walking tour of Mykonos. We walked past the windmills, which are apparently famous in Mykonos. There is also a famous pink pelican there, that just walked around the streets and hangs out.

Windmills

Pink pelican

The town was really neat, it was designed to confuse pirates that were attacking the island, so all of the streets are really narrow and wind around almost randomly. Super easy to get lost. We went for dinner, and I got some local specialty, which was really heavy with meat and pasta, and some peppers. It was really good, but wayyy too much to finish. After dinner everyone headed to a few bars, mainly this one skandinavian bar and another down under bar.

In the harbor

Out at the bar with the tour group

The highlight was this one young boy, around 12, came in and danced like crazy to hip hop and was covered in glowsticks. It was quite strange. The bars weren't really any good, so after a while Kyle and Anthony and I left and walked around the town, which was pretty neat. We were all pretty tired, so we didn't end up going late to a bar, and headed home at around 1:30 to go to bed.

Monday, August 1:

Swimming at Paradise Beach

Paradise Beach

Anthony ready to bungee jump

Here we go!!

The boys

Out on a rock cropping

Tuesday, August 2:

Table where we played Hangman

Waiting for the bus

Still waiting

Wednesday, August 3:

Pool at Punda Beach

Punda Beach

Napping

Party at the pool

Weird face

Thursday, August 4:

Friday, August 5:

Saturday, August 6:

Sunday, August 7: