now you know I know that you know: The milk's gone bad

Went on a hike this Sunday which showed me a few things about the strange Swiss culture. Hiking is a pretty big deal over here and even though it's not my most favorite activities, it's the best way to see the sweet views. Anyways this hike was about 4.5 hours and about 350m up the mountain. Now there are a plethora of hiking trails and most are indicated with these little yellow signs. At first these would appear to be helpful, but not being from around here I didn't know the little things that makes this system work. First of all there are many trails that to a Canadian non-hiker are not technically trails. Walking through a random field on the side of a mountain just doesn't seem right to me. Second, since there is not always a trail you will be dodging the many piles of cow shit on the steep slopes. It just didn't feel quite right to me. But allegedly the GPS we had indicated us to be on a trail (even though it was in the middle of a field). The third thing is that all areas of the mountain (and I mean ALL) are surrounded by electric fences. It's just one little wire or braided rope. There were usually little gates but sometimes the path (or lack there-of) would make it so you had to crawl under or over said fence. This seems ridiculous to me. Why would a mapped out hiking trail lead you to have to navigate electric fences? I guess I will just have to get used to this system.

This is an example of some of the signs. This tree is growing through the fence ha.

As for the cows, I found 99% of them to have full out cowbells. You can tell exactly where they are even though they are pretty much everywhere. It's pretty crazy to see these cows just chillin' out on the side of some pretty steep slopes. I bet the Swiss cows would easily win a balance battle against the sad flatland Saskatchewan cows.

MORE COWBELL!!!

As for the rest of the trip it was not very nice weather until the end of the day so most pictures are kinda sad. But we had a fondue when we got up to Moleson Village. It was a little heavy for my taste but not bad. I am realizing I don't have the palette needed for all these cheeses here.

The end of the day got sunny which was nice because we went to this castle. It's called the Chateau de Gruyeres. We got there to late to go inside but it was a cool little place outside of it. Also found it weird that this was the place I saw my first Harley Davidson in Switzerland.