Aug. 13, 2001

By Theo Dixon, Senior

After 7 ½ hours in the air, we landed in Milan. We found our bus (with a driver who didn't speak English) and headed north towards the Alps and across the border into Switzerland. After about an hour in the bus, we arrived at the Excelsior Hotel in Lugano, Switzerland. This albergo (hotel) is very different from those at home. First of all, there is no air conditioning in the rooms. The rooms are also very small, their showers are narrow and their beds are very short. We are right across the street from Lake Lugano, which is very large and surrounded by mountains. Around the hotel are many different stores. It is something like our downtown, but there is no giant mall. Everything here is on short narrow streets which aren't arranged around in a particular pattern like our Public Square. The shops are small and offer all kinds of things, sort of like an outdoor mall with clothing, jewelry, shoes and food. There are businesses and apartments on top of the shops at ground level.

Everyone unloaded and got settled, and then the players separated from the coaches to tour the town. We walked over to the lake and rented pedal boats to enjoy the scenery. Percell Coles, however, didn't want to go out. Jamaal Harris retreated after being on his boat for only about 20 seconds. He said he got scared on the lake because he does not know how to swim. After he found his way back to the dock, everyone else went out to enjoy our pedaling and to take some pictures from out on the lake. We all agreed to meet an hour later to check out the sights in town. It was kind of funny walking around in town because everyone we talked to was from different countries in Europe. We met people from Bulgaria, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil and France and they were all speaking different languages. Nobody could understand a word out of our mouths, so we began to feel like, yep, foreigners. After our walk through the city went to shootaround at a middle school.

After we were finished with basketball for the day, we all went out in town to have a bite to eat and have a little fun with a guy named Stasha who had played in the U.S. However, there wasn't much to do because we were like aliens to the people we met. Everyone decided to go to McDonalds or Burger King for dinner. All the prices on the menu seemed too high. For example, the #1 Whopper Combo meal was 12.00 Swiss francs, which is almost $8 in our money. That was almost half of our meal allowance for the day. When we went to exchange our money at the bank, the rate was 28.15 Swiss francs for our $20 traveler's check. It was really supposed to be 33.15 francs, but the bank charged us 5 francs for the transaction. Some things are the same everywhere, I guess.