Baller Weekend

I had quite the busy weekend. On Friday, a bunch of us from IES took a day trip to the Swiss Alps. We started from this town called Grindelwald, and then hiked up to Männlichen, which is one of the peaks in the Alps. It is 2343 m at the top. Not bad. It was a pretty intense hike though. The hike itself was about four or five hours long. The last three hours were all pretty intense downhill. And going downhill for that long really sucks actually. It's really hard on the knees. So everyone was pretty sore after that hike. And the bus ride was about 3 hours each way. So that was a long day. Oh, and I forgot to mention something. It basically rained the entire hike. That made for a very slippery and somewhat miserable hike. But it was still fun. Here are some pics:

This is in the little village type thing before we really started hiking.

Yep. That's an Alp.

A little rest area on the first part of the hiking trail. This is before the hike starts to get intense.

This is at the top of the peak that we climbed. We basically conquered those Alps.

This is one of the rivers in the valley. The water is gray because of the sediment picked up by the glacial runoff. Or so I'm told.

Continuing the story of my weekend. I stayed up Friday night to watch the Twins game. I was up until almost 5.00. So I was pretty tired. Then on Saturday we had a soccer tournament with most of the people in our program. All the IES people in my building had a team, and we basically dominated. We played two games and won them both. We beat the other IES students team 5-4, and we also beat the staff team 4-2. Baller. I only scored one goal, and I must admit it was a pretty wimpy goal. I was basically shocked that it went in. Just kind of a weak roller that went under the goalie's hands. But that was our 5th goal in the first game, so it was basically the game winner. Oh, and it rained most of the time during the soccer games, too. Lots of rain lately. Oh yeah, and everyone was super sore from hiking, so the soccer games basically just amplified our soreness by about two or three times.

After the soccer tournament, we had a little party at the IES center, where we watched Germany take on Russia. It was kind of a big game, because if Germany won, they guaranteed themselves a spot in the World Cup. And they won 1-0. So that was cool. We had a massive grill-out while watching the game, too. Reminded me of home.

Today I went to one of my roommate's (Marc) soccer games. It was just a short train ride away from the city. They won as well 3-1. It was pretty entertaining actually. It's amazing how intense Germans are about their soccer. Let's just say they are not afraid to see the yellow card. Tonight I'm basically just finishing a term paper outline and packing for our next field study trip. We leave early tomorrow morning for Luxembourg, Brussels, and Paris. So I'll be back in a week.