Open Day in Switzerland

Today was a very calm and relaxing day for the group. After a full day yesterday, professor Ryan gave us an open day minus some time at the Olympic Research Center. Most of the group took the opportunity to catch up on sleep and do laundry despite the absence of Lazybones. Now we don't have to hear about how bad we smell when we come home next week!

After laundry, we made our way to the Research Center to meet with Professor Ryan about our paper topics as well as do some research on the topics. We spent about an hour and a half at the center, which is a beautiful facility filled with documentaries, books, and everything you need to know about the Olympics. They even have the bid books from the cities that did not host the Olympics, but were in the running i.e. New York 2012. There was a really interesting documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, made by German film maker Leni Riefenstahl, who Hitler used as form of German and Nazi propaganda. The way the movie was shot was extremely pro-German. For example, whenever a German athlete was participating, there was no volume during the actual act, but a lot of cheers before and after. It was very interesting to see the way in which it was shot. 

After time at the Research Center, we made our way down to the park for a cocktail hour with hors d'oeuvres. We were going to have a picnic, but it was too windy to cook and we were not sure if it was going to rain. However, we had a great time relaxing and hanging out as a group. We even had some visitors by the names of Swan and Duck. They didn't stay too long and tried to eat our food so we made them leave. After roughly an hour and a half, we made our way back to the hotel and most of us got Chinese food for dinner, which was pretty good.

Today was a calm and much needed day. Everyone recharged their batteries and are ready for the rest of the trip both mentally, physically, and clothes-wise. Tomorrow we are going to make our way down to the Olympic Museum, which should be very interesting. Tomorrow is also the most special day of the trip - Professor Ryan's birthday! He is finally legal to drink!