UPDATES & LOTSA PHOTOS

Alright, there was a day gap in my blogging but that is OK, I believe it was worth it. Let me tell you all about the amazing town I visited yesterday, how my life plans were K.O'd by some random Brasilian dude and how it was confirmed that one day I will move out of Canada for good, date still pending.

Our days in Switzerland are pretty planned out, we have a lot in this country and other countries that we would like to see and experience, so we have chosen to do a day trip every other day and then hike, relax, read, spend time in quiet, or just do half day trips the days that we aren't doing day trips. Yesterday was a day trip. We woke up at 7:00 am to drive two hours to a ski/resort village called Zermatt.

Zermatt is very, very different for a few reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that Zermatt is only accessible by train. The other, possibly biggerest (I know, biggerest isn't a word but it's my blog so I'll make up words as I wish & if you think about it, biggerest makes sense in this context haha) reason is that Zermatt has no gas/diesel vehicles in the town - they are prohibited. No cars. None. If you live in Zermatt and own a vehicle you leave it at the train station and train it in to the town. Now, I think this is AMAZING! Why is it amazing you ask? Because it forces the people of Zermatt to get off their asses and pick up a bike, put on a pair of shoes, strap on some rollerblades, or hop on a scooter (so many people ride scooters, you know, the kind where you use your feet to move yourself...) to get to wherever they are going.

There are vehicles within Zermatt BUT they are electric and only used for services, such as taxis, deliveries, etc.

Zermatt is pretty interesting for a few other reasons also, it is the closest town to Matterhorn. What? You don't know what Matterhorn is? I didn't either, I was hoping it was some sort of awesome alcohol but it isn't, it's a 4200 meter mountain (see image below). We took a cogwheel train ( a train that runs on tracks AND has a wheel in the middle of each car that hooks onto a little track in the middle of the regular tracks (think of gears in a watch) that takes tourists/skiers/snowboarders/bikers up 3500 meters I believe. The trainride up the mountain was 40 minutes long and each minute was incredible but did not compare to being at the top. Once you are at the top you can see 29 separate mountain peaks ... take that in for a second. I'll start a new paragraph to drill in how awesome this is.

If you know anything about mountains than you know they are HUGE ... as in you can't climb them unless you are a bit crazy and have tons of experience and days and days to traverse (traverse - good word *highfive*) them. SO, to be able to see 29 (TWENTY-NINE) different mountains peaks means you gotta be really high (altitude wise). It was incredible, some of the mountains were in Switzerland, some were in Italy, some were in France and some were in other countries. It was so amazing. (see video). It was also REALLY bright and for anyone that knows me, you know I wear glasses AND you know that if I take my glasses off I can't see anything except faintly colored blurs, I'm pretty much blind. So, I couldn't wear sunglasses, so I had to resort to pulling my hat SUPER low, putting my hood on and then pulling my hook WAY over my head so that the black from the inside reflected into my eyes so I could keep them open longer than 5 seconds. Apparently, I was the only person on the train who didn't have sunglasses ... Below is a family portrait we had some foreign person take for us. (See below)

BLOG INTERRUPTION --> In my first blog post I talked about how it was pretty funny to watch Slumdog Millionaire in Korean but yesterday I heard something I have never heard before. Asian people, directly from China (I'm not being rascist, I know they were from China cause I talked to them) - attempting to speak French with a Chinese accent ... funny? Yes. A valiant attempt at blending into Swiss society? YUP! I talked to one of the Chinese dudes who was taking some hardcore landscape shots and asked him how hard it was to speak French and he compared it to a Canadian trying to speak Chinese ... owned ...

Let's talk about how I had my life plans Chuck Norris'd into oblivion yesterday too. I believe in having goals in life and then having dreams and using the goals to accomplish your dreams. So, without getting to personal and letting you all into my deepest secrets, I'll tell you my two-year goal I had for my life;

To live at home and save money until I had enough to afford a little room in downtown Toronto. (that was summarized)

Now, onto my life plans getting kicked in the balls --> I met this amazing dude yesterday who is from Brasil, I knew his name yesterday but I don't know it today because I forgot it but that's OK, it's irrelevant. He is 31 years old and has been to 112 countries.

ONE-HUNDRED-AND-FRIGGIN-TWELVE-COUNTRIES. If you do the math - never mind, don't do the math, I love you all, I'll do it for you - he has been to 10 countries a year, for 12 years. He started working on cruise ships as a photographer when he was 19, worked at that for a few years and then has consistently been traveling around the world working as a tourist photographer. Is the money great? Nope, not amazing. Does he have much of a social life? Nope, not really. Has he had experiences in his life that he will NEVER forget? Umm ... YES!!!

At the moment he is working and lives in Zermatt. He works at the top of the mountain, where he takes photos of tourists standing with a St. Bernard dog, which is apparently native to Switzerland ... who knew. Now, it's obviously not the kind of photography that he loves to do but it is a means to and end. Meaning, right now in his life all he wants to do is experience the world ... all of it. So, if he can be a photographer in any country that he travels to, which he can, because EVERY country attracts tourists, than he can earn money and travel. What does he do in his spare time? Oh, you know, nothing too awesome, he only snowboards some of the worlds best runs, bikes down 3200 meters of trails, hikes to some of the most beautiful outlooks he has ever seen and photographs everything he can.

My life plans KO'd...

Regardless to say, I now have WAY more to think about - thanks you awesome, good looking, Brasilian dude who has lived my dreams. He even explained to me all his secrets about how he is able to afford to travel around the world. His next country he is going to go to will be Australia, which he has already traveled to, and he is going to be setting up a booth on the beach and all he will do for a few years is photograph surfers and sell them the prints, then when he is done working for the day, he will surf on his own ... I have his card, guess where I will be traveling in a year or two? hehe.

Well, that's all I have to tell you for today, I hope you enjoy the photos below and the words above.

You can expect a pretty surrrious post coming in the next few days.

Love you all - even those who I don't know,

Jason.


Every single building has a different style of door and window than the next building. These are all shots from Ollons, the small town 5 minutes DOWN the mountain from Huemoz, where I am staying.

This is Solalex, a little ski village, this is one of the mountains that surround the valley.

Shantelle had the hiccups for the longest time, so I got all up in her grill with my camera in an attempt to rid her of the hiccups, it didn't work and she kept trying to stick gummy bears to my lens ...

This is Jason Matos ... OBVIOUSLY, you know, just chillin' out on a cow hill, with mountains behind me

Here is that family photo I talked about earlier ... this is how I walked around for 45 minutes, all the Chinese people must have thought I was F'd...

Here's the photo without my Perez Hilton captions...

MATTERHORN - A freaking huge mountain, as you can see.

This is the view that I have after a 10 minute uphill climb from the chalet that we are staying in.

This is the path to the hill that I have to climb of the picture above this one.

This is an ad for Omega watches (watches that cost thousands of dollars and a body limb) that was at the top of the cogwheel train station.

Here is a watch we saw. 79,100 Swiss Francs, 1 Swiss Franc is equivalent to 1 Canadian dollar, more or less. We saw one watch that was 167,000 Swiss Francs ... let me re-iterate ... 167,000 Swiss Francs...