Its been a while/ MILAN

So last weekend i visited the gorgeous city of Milan with my super duper host family :)  We were only there for like one day, which explains the relative lack of pictures, but it was still wicked awesome :)

 This is a giant red castle in the center of Milan

 A nifty sculpture... maybe he has something to do with the castle?

 This is the super gorgeous cathedral, more pics of which come a tad later

 Just like a pretty store front

 Close up on the Cathedral

 Yup, this is a shopping center

 Inside the cathedral

A wonderful trip to Tessin, Luzern, Bellinzona, and Altdorf

Getting into the cristmas spirit... quite a few chrismas trees an such out and about

Can you believe how pretty this is??  Its definitely apparent that its Italian (speaking) here, very colorful houses, and on the south side of the alps, so warm (there are palm trees here)

In Altdorf, the Wilhelm Tell memorial... hes quite a big deal here

That reddish house on the left is (im pretty sure) the town hall, and just a very nice bell tower happened to make the picture migrate a tad to the right

Here there be giants (or at least chairs for them)

A very pretty closter/churchey doodad... theyve got some nice lookin relics and stuff in there too

A view of the same from under... looks kinda imposing from here... even though its painted yellow and red (not a particularly intimidating color scheme, i find)

The central plaza thingy (lots of towns have a skating rink in the middle, just cuz... temporarily)

Yup... see that disco ball?  They know how to get down here!!  They also had a blues band, which didnt go 100% with the disco/flashy lights theme, but it was still cool

The view out from the house (with the super awesome dude who took me out there, along with his wife... of whom there arent really any pictures... but shes super awesome too!)

Really pretty church thingy (pretty sure)

A view of the castle from underneath

Looking through a crossbow hole in the wall of the castle at the city

Now the big castle behind us... wicked cool actually... the dude who controlled this, and two other, smaller castles, actually had control over most of the trade between italy, and the rest of europe, because the pass that you need to go through is right on the other side

Walkin castle walls

More walls

Looking down on that cool churchey thingy

Photo op... all three of us at the same time taking a picture

This is luzern... a super famous, super old bridge (that actually burned down like 10 years ago... this is a replica)

Really pretty paintings of buildings... old school graffiti

The music hall in luzern... idk why the roof dosnt fall off, but super pretty with mountains and lake and such

Looking out on the town

Oops, back in tessin, a wicked cool house (those heads arent painted on... theyre legit sculptures built into the house)

Here (more tessin) is a picture of one of the aforementioned palms

And once again tessin, just a pretty pink house

And still in tessin, just really pretty i found... they got style for theyre houses in tessin!! watch out world, imma gonna get me a pink house!

Zermott :D

So I was in Zermatt with a bunch of exchange students over the weekend (like 115 of us) we were all there, and it was quite cool- here are some pics

 yup- they have this sign (quite modest right?)

Matterhorn

from little matterhorn nice little swiss chicken

gotta nice ice buddha  :D and a sweet hat

BERLIN!!!! (and roman ruins close to my house in Switzerland)

Soooo- i got back relatively recently from berlin, and here are some pictures of that grand city... a tad out of order, but oh well :p

So, in Berlin, there are bears like this everywhere, with all kinds of different themes and paint jobs etc.  This one was (surprise surprise) in the american embassy 

Bundestag building, wicked cool walkaround, and mirrors and stuff- just really cool... oh, Bundestag is like the congressbuilding of Berlin

 More Bundestag views

And another picture of the same

Me and Raphael (host broski) in front of the Brandenburger Tor

Again the Brandenburg gate

If you want to be super touristy you can rent a Trabant (old car from the communist times) to get around in

The signs to walk or not walk are wicked cool... the little dudes have hats!!!

The roof of the Sony Center, which was wicked cool, and looks like a gynormous circus tent from the air

Holocaust memorial

Eleonora and I in front of Checkpoint Charlie

Its funny cuz in english, russian, and french they say that you cant have weapons and obey traffic laws etc, but then they ran out of space, so in german they just wrote that youre entering the american sector

A very nice church 

The town hall 

A brewry in Berlin 

In the subway looking at a map (a typical occupation)

Old fashioned east german hat... yes!

TV interview (not actually me, just Raphael... my job was standing there and doing nothing)

Both are of Castle Sans Souci, a cool castle, a bit like Versailles, except smaller

Im pretty sure this was also called the Brandenburger tor, which confuzed the heck out of me

Now these are roman ruins, just really cool (not in Berlin)

Amphitheater

Maybe hallway through which animals were lead to fight or something? a bit rundown

Cool old brickwork

Some of those infamous roman arches (although most likely fixed up a bit)