Hiking in the Alps

On Friday, I went out on rounds with Tanya in the morning, then said goodbye to Laura (the student, not the real vet) because she left to go finish her studies in Bern. It was sad because she was one of the few people in the clinic who knew English and she was always really helpful in explaining what was wrong with an animal and what we were going to do to treat it. She has her final exams in October, and I hope she does awesome because she deserves it.

Lookin' official :)

Laura (#2) and I

I was having a hard time topping a ride on a helicopter to a remote house in the middle of the Alps. Well, turns out I did. On Saturday, Marie-Helen and Nevio and I went hiking in the Alps. We started at Valle Verzasca which is an absolutely gorgeous place where the water is the purest of blue and the houses in little clusters of villages are older than the United States. Pretty humbling, really.

This is a really cool bridge we had to cross to get to our hike.

A picnic by the river!

All along the hike there were these random sculptures or pieces or art or what-have-you and this was one of my favorites

Three hours and eight miles later we made it to this amazing little village somewhere in the middle of nowhere

We hiked from Lavertezzo

The last 45 minutes we were really booking it because we had to make a bus that left this town at a certain time, but luckily, we had time to spare. They have this really cool community oven in the middle of town that they light in the mornings then everyone brings their bread or pizza to be cooked. Isn't that cool?
I didn't caption a lot of these photos because it seemed rather unnecessary- the beauty rather speaks for itself, and it doesn't need my explanations.

On Monday I went on rounds with Laura (#1) and stayed in the clinic in the afternoon, but there was one farmer in the morning who really caught my attention. He was stooped over and had a shuffling walk, and the love between him and his cows was almost palpable. Also, he had a cool hat. What is it with Swiss famers and their cool hats? I need to do a survey or make an album of their hats.

That's all for now! Took me a while to update because the internet was not working. Byee!