Bus2alps – Student Travel Europe

Now, winter season still has a couple more months, but mine came to its tragic end the other day. No I was not injured. I was banished to working the rest of the season on our Greece trip, hanging out on the beach, enjoying life, and checking out Athens. What a miserable life I live. Anyway, I would be remisced to not chronicle the awesomeness that was Interlaken in hopes that all of you who have yet to go will make the last ditch effort to get up before it is too late and you will hate yourself forever.

So I just finished up the greatest Winter season of my life. As cliche as this sounds, if you looked up best Winter Ever in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, there would be my goofy ass  grin, Jewish nose, curly sideburns, and insurmountable pectorals and abdominals staring back at you. Unfortunately, no one reads the Encyclopedia Brittanica anymore, and Wikipedia keeps denying my request for this entry, so more than likely the world will never know in the same way that history burned all records that Christopher Columbus was real a black man that sailed from Nigeria, that Steven Spielberg’s real name is Clement Rutherfurd and has only been pretending to be Jewish in order to win Academy Awards, and the earth is really the shape of a hockey puck.

Thanksgiving was the beginning of my season, and it in no way disappointed. I found the craziest powder I had ever road any part of my body through since zipping down my hill in a plastic toboggan as a wee little one. Never in my life have I cut through such majesty, until the following week. The beauty of those first couple weeks of Interlaken was my re-releasement into the winter wonderland that I have been neglecting the past few years. It seemed as though everytime I went snowboarding, the gods (yes plural because I do not believe in one god, but in all gods, like the one who made my wonderful Mac I am typing this on, i promise Steve Jobs did not pay me for product placement here), seemed to find it funny to have me Iceboard instead of Snowboard through a field of smoke grenades that some would find convenient to call, just fog. Well, this was my year for sure. Of the ten or so weekends I spent in the Swiss Alps, I only spent one riding through a battle from Terminator 4, and maybe one or two sliding my way down the ice highway connecting Alaska to the USSR. Luckily, the gods did not find it funny to provide me with an explosion of my mind, body, and soul into a fit of anger by giving me a day of ice and fog, which would be as bad as being told eternal knock-knock jokes by Lucipher. Instead, the gods gave me an explosion of ecstasy in the natural, non-pill form, jubilee, and kid-like giddiness that no other metaphysical being could reproduce.

Now that you have an idea as to how spectacular snowboarding conditions were I can delve into the other extracurriculars I partook in that made this such a memorable winter. As you might already remember, I had a quite fun and successful end of the fall semester, a surprisingly enjoyable winter break home, paired with a memorable new years, balls out good times with my guys friends, and some great experiences hanging out with others I truly care about, all things tough to find here working abroad. Then came the glorious return the greatest job I will probably ever secure, even greater than being the referee in charge of the K-Ball in professional football games. The greatest part about this season was I got out a quick start. Yes, I probably was that idiot who sprints the first half-mile of the race, gets a 45 second lead, only to collapse 10 feet from the finish line due to asphyxiation and idiocy, but that in no way mattered to me as per my previous statement of how immaculate conditions on the mountain were. Actually, it was better for me that it worked this way because in the end, I quenched my thirst for the physical, and then was able to focus wholly on my spiritual-being, which in this case was enduring the terrible task of twice a week for work experiencing some of the most beautiful days of my life, and most beautiful scenery I have ever witnessed. The phenomenal part of this year was that it seemed everytime I went up to the one peak Schilthorn, which is 10,000 feet above sea level might my bragging ass add, it was the most beautiful day of my life. I was like Peter from Office Space, except the bizarro version of him. It made my rain-filled days of Florence slightly more fulfilling to know that soon enough I would be in the blissful wonderland of perpetual, non-morphine induced happiness.

To keep piling onto this ever growing mound of ice-cream, whipped cream, chocolate and caramel fudge sunday that was my last 4 months, I whipped down an unlit hill on one of those rickety-old wooden sleds twice, jumped off a 150 foot ledge attached only to a tether, and finally attempted the task of skiing, which only was a re-creation of  falling gracefully for about one hour before I remembered my feet aren’t attached, I am facing forward, and I shouldn’t let the skis cross.

Impossible thy say, this can not be life. Well it is and it was for me, and I will forever remember this winter. If my life is a downward slope from this moment it would in no way bother me, unless of course I am representative of the Great Stock Market crash, which could only occur if this upcoming week when I am so pleasantly granted the opportunity to spend three spring break filled weeks in Greece, the Persian army invades by use of those creepy monkey of the Wizard of Oz who then tear apart the scare crow in front of me, followed by pinning me down and making me watch Ben Afleck and Jennifer Lopez movies on repeat.