Bern-fail.

Friday evening we made the just under 2 hour train ride to Bern to meet up with some other people who had gone up earlier. The three of us from Yens finally arrived and tried to reach the others but quite quickly found out that no one had cell reception. This would have been fine as we could have asked directions to the hostel but the problem was, they don't speak French in Bern...just German. Yikes. After deciding to take a walk to see what we could find in the mean time and running into 2 marching bands dressed in the most ridiculous costumes, we stumbled upon what was sure to be the start of Carnival. Bern is a pretty magical city. Take the shopping and scaffolding of New York crossed with the quintessential European charm of, well, anywhere in Europe and add lots of dogs walking around everywhere, and that's Bern-home of the famous bear pits and Albert Einstein. I didn't quite make it to these parts, but more to come on that later...

We finally met up with the others and made it to the hostel. 10x nicer than the one we stayed at in Geneva-sinks in the rooms and comforters with ants on them (the pattern, not the real thing...) We got dinner at this Asian restaurant across the street and could hear the drums and music from the windows. It was going to be a great night. After dinner, we wandered into the streets and I felt like it was halloween but better. The costumes people were wearing were phenomenal, the streets were lined with tents selling food from every part of the world, and every 100 yards there was a stand where bands that were parading down the street through the crowds would stop and play.

And then the night went down hill. We got back to the hostel between 1:30 and 2 am and then I decided to get violently ill for the rest of the night and into the early afternoon of the next day. There has been talk that some virus has been going around our program, but of COURSE it had to happen to me then. Typical. I was exhausted from having nothing to eat or drink, but problem was, when I tried, I couldn't keep anything down. The others were staying until 4 and taking a train home that evening, so I was going to try to rally cause I didn't want to travel by myself (or miss the home of Einstein!) but the second I finally managed to get up and outside, I knew it was most certainly not going to happen. After sitting on a bench outside while the rest of the group went to eat breakfast and being asked something in rapid German that I was at a loss of words to respond to, I informed everyone that I had to leave, got on a train, somehow managed to make the right connection to the other 2 trains, and made it home around 1:30 that afternoon...at which point I passed out and didn't wake up (save for a few interruptions from my host mother trying to shove black tea with honey and chocolate pudding...juuuust what I wanted...down my throat) until about 8:45 the next morning. FAIL.

We're off to Paris tomorrow for the week and from there, a few of us are going to Barcelona. Fingers crossed that everything works out-yesterday I got an email from EasyJet kindly informing us that our Paris-Barcelona flight had been cancelled due to and "all out airline strike in France." We managed to switch to another one, but no guarantees...

Also, Earl Falsity #12: You don't tip in restaurants.

Apparently while the 15-20 % isn't customary, it's appropriate to leave 1 or 2 francs, just to show appreciation for the service. I'm sure this was a big help to the American stereotype for the first few weeks we were here...