Climbing up the Bernese Alps, the precipitous mountain range rising above the city of Montreux, was perhaps my most Swiss experience on this brief stopover. My aunt and I rode a rack and pinion railcar upwards of 5000 feet this morning, lumbering by quaint hilltop villages and over emerald farms surrounded by thick spruce, eventually ending up atop Rochers de Naye, a mountain refuge for alpine plants, yellow-bellied marmots, and humans stumbling around in wonderment.
Thick clouds drifted over the mountain peaks and down the grassy valley below as I walked along the mountainside, a 1000 foot drop on one side and a rocky scree down the other, hearing the occasional bells of Swiss cows going clang-clang far below. Precisely the sort of surroundings I was hoping to find myself in on my last day in Geneva, my first ever trip to Europe.
By no means is one week sufficient enough to take in Switzerlands charming allure, but this was a week filled to the brim with cafe's, walks through medeival squares, endless stimulating conversation, and of course, healthy doses of wine and cheese.
Tomorrow I leave Geneva and arrive in Tel Aviv. A short car ride later and I will enter my homebase for the next four months, the Dheisheh refugee camp just outside of Bethlehem, and the raison d'ètre for this online journal you see before you. I have ideas about what awaits me there, though I have been pushing myself to relinquish them, knowing that whatever it is will be far beyond my expectations and an undoubted turning point in a global travellers life experience. I'll let you know how it goes.
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