Zürich - Europa-Park - Brussel

After taking the train from Pisa to Milan, we had some problems in the direction towards Zürich. We had reserved seats on a direct train from Milan to Zürich, but due to an accident in the railways somewhere between Italy and Switzerland, we had to take four different trains in order to get to Zürich. It was very chaotic on the train because they only informed us about this in Italian. Not knowing where to go or what to do, we ran out of the train and followed the stream of people. Confused and feeling completely lost, we entered the most crowded train, hoping it was the right one.

On the train we met a Swiss guy also heading towards Zürich. He was really helpful and translated what the Italian guard said, enlightening us about the problems. Knowing that the hostel's last check-in was set as 22:00, we were afraid not to reach it in time because of the delays. The guy tried to call the hostel for us, without success. He then looked up the exact directions and followed us to the hostel's street when we arrived in rainy Zürich at 22:15. The hostel was still open, in fact it was open more or less the whole night. The staff at Langstars hostel was really friendly, telling us that the only reason why the check-in was set at 22:00 was because people will then arrive at 24:00. If they had set it at 24:00, people would arrive at 02:00. In all, they were really flexible and understanding!

The next upcoming days were filled with a lot of new experiences! We had in advance agreed on meeting a good friend of mine from right outside of Zürich. He guided us through the largest city of Switzerland where we i.a saw the exclusive shopping street "Bahnhofstrasse", The Limmat - the beautiful river running through the city with view over the great mountains, ETH - among the top uni's in the world, the Polybahn, churches etc. Later in the evening we went to the cinema to watch Harry Potter! Since the majority of the population speak German or French, the movie was subbed in both languages! However, the biggest difference happened in the middle of the movie, when a random commercial suddenly showed up. Apparently, it's normal to have a break during the movies in the cinemas in Switzerland.

The next day we went to Zürich's zoo! There were lots of animals to see and they all had a great amount of space to move around in, which was great since we're originally not huge fans of animals in a cage. We saw fascinating animals like lions, elephants, red panda, snakes, penguins, seals etc and some ridiculously big sheep, almost the size of a pony! After the zoo we went to my friend's home where we had been invited for dinner! His family was incredibly welcoming and lovely, and we enjoyed wonderful Raclette in a real Swiss way! :) The next day we had plans in going further to Rust, Germany, to visit the Europa-Park, but since we hadn't found any places to stay, we were offered to sleep over at their place! Such a wonderful family! Thank you so much! :)

We had to check out of the hostel the evening before we went to the park, because the check-out started at 07:00, while we had to be up at 06:00. Eager like young kids, we went to the park which is the biggest amusement park in Europe after Disneyland Paris. The park is just a few hours from Zürich, therefore taking a day trip to Rust is very convenient. We had a lot of fun and took the biggest and highest roller coaster in Europe! When we were about to leave back to Zürich in the evening, we heard the terrible news about the bombing and shooting back home. We were completely shocked and almost the rest of the evening resulted in reading and watching the news about the catastrophe.

We have now arrived in Brussels, Hotel Beau Site, and we're going to stay here for two nights. Our original plans were to go to Antwerp instead of Brussels, but since there were no spare beds in any of the hostels there, we decided to take a day-trip to Antwerp or Bruges instead.

We extend our condolences to the families of the victims and everyone touched by the terrible events happening at home