Archive for June, 2009
Day 9: Interlaken
Posted by kyle in Interlaken on June 30th, 2009
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Today we woke up late in Grindelwald and rode the train to Inerlaken Ost and walked to Interlaken West. Found the hostel but we had to wait for 3.5 hours (until 3:30) to get a key because they shut down for some reason right in the middle of the day. How convenient.
So we wandered around a bit, had some food and just blew some time. We got to the hostel (The Lazy Falken) and put our stuff in the rooms. We also bought some food at the Coop (it’s a grocery store). After that we decided to try to walk to one of the lakes. The closest one to Interlaken West is the Thunersee, so we got a map from the reception area and headed out! It was an hour walk, which surprised us, but it wasn’t too bad.
When we got to the lake, a bunch of younger kids were sitting around drinking and some were smoking pot. Needless to say, we didn’t stay long. It was a really nice walk along the river (which we followed to the lake) tough! We walked back, got a bit turned around, but found the way back to the hostel eventually. We came up to the communal kitchen but everyone decided to eat at 8pm for some reason, so we had to sit around for a while.
We did make some pasta with tomato sauce though, which was pretty good! Then we did our dishes (unlike quite a few other people, even though there are signs telling you to). We played some euchre down in the bar with a few girls, but some local Swiss guy was really creeping around. We’re sitting in the kitchen again now talking to some people from Iowa, Massachusetts, and London!
All in all, we didn’t really do too much. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Hopefully something exciting? Quite a few people are canyoning tomorrow, which sounds fun, but we already did paragliding, so we’re not sure if we should spend the money or not.
Day 8: Grindelwald and Paragliding
Posted by kyle in Grindelwald on June 29th, 2009
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Goal: Check out the stars tonight. Forgot to do that in other countries.
The Jungfrau region we’re currently at is a center for extreme sports. Chuck and I had talked about skydiving, but decided to do some paragliding instead. It wasn’t as expensive, and we’d get to take some awesome aerial photos. So yesterday we made reservations for paragliding at 10:00am. This morning, after a good breakfast, we made our way to First Bahnhof where we were to meet the pilots we’d be paragliding with. The guy I rode with was named Peter.
We took a 25 or so minute ride up to the top of the First gondola and had a short hike to the takeoff area. Chuck and I looked at the scenery (which was spectacular from that height) while the pilots took to getting all the gear ready. They then hooked us up with the harness (which was also a seat) and we took off! I took video of the takeoff, flying around in the air, and then the landing. I’ll try to upload them soon. I also took pictures while in the air, and those you can see from the links above.
We had awesome weather, good visibility and great updrafts to help keep us aloft. We got to sail over quite a bit of Grindelwald. We did come pretty close to a trail in one point, because we were swooping past some hikers! Peter even did some cool maneuvers right before we landed, including one where we were pulling some Gs while spiraling around such that we were actually above the wing! Way better than a roller coaster! It’s sad that all great things have to come to and end, but it really was specatular up there! I wonder if they do frequent flier discounts 
After that we came back to our lodge and read, napped and just generally relaxed. I did develop a blister on one of my left foot’s toes yesterday, but it feels pretty good right now. We ended up napping for quite a while. It was a good day to be lazy because some storms rolled in and there were intermittent showers. It brought the lovely smell of rain, but probably would have ruined our cameras had we been out in it. Guess things worked out! Besides napping I uploaded some photos and read more “I, Robot”.
After the nap, we went to a restaurant where we had some good italian pizza and awesome desert! I was even able to communicate with the waiter a bit in German. It felt good. I really want to get back into speaking German, I’ve decided! Right now we’re sitting in the main lodge because there is, of course, someone sleeping in our room. We’re really tired of people going to bed so freaking early in every place we stay! We were hoping to have the place to ourselves tonight, but alas that will not happen.
For some reason, Grindelwald is a huge tourist area for Japanese. There are even signs all over the town which have Japanese translations. We haven’t seen that before. We’ll have to see if it’s like that in Interlaken as well, when we go there tomorrow. I wonder what brings them to this very particular, small area of Switzerland.
Soon as I post this Chuck and I are off to check out the stars outside! There shouldn’t be too much cloud cover. Let’s hope for a great view!
Trip Photo Albums – Week 1
I’ve uploaded some pictures to Facebook because it was the quickest and easiest way. They might go up on Flickr at some point, but they have a bandwidth cap, which is rather annoying.
Here they are:
Quite a few albums, I know. I’ve taken over a thousand pictures so far. That’s not to say they are all good quality, as quite a few of them are duplicates, blurry, dark, what have you. But at least I’m making an effort!
The original posts should now also have the links at the top.
Day 7: Bern and Grindelwald
Posted by kyle in Bern, Grindelwald on June 28th, 2009
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Goal: Get through Switzerland without spending any cash. We don’t have any Swiss Francs right now, so we’d have to go to the ATM/Bank and get some. Since we’re not here for long, we’d rather not have to carry around this one-off currency. Hopefully we’ll be able to Kreditkarten our way through!
We got into our hostel late, made some noise trying to get situated at midnight with the other two people in the room asleep. In the morning we woke up late, missed breakfast, showered quickly, checked out, and then got went to the train station where we missed the train by literally 10 seconds. We had to wait another hour to get on the train to Interlaken. I slept for part of the trip, because I was still really tired. This seems to be a recurring theme!
I was amazed by the scenery during the part of the ride that I was awake for. From Bern we rode to Interlaken (Ost Bahnhof). Interlaken is named as such because it sits right between two lakes and those lakes look amazing! I can’t wait to go there in a few days and check them out. I hope we can swim there! They were a gorgeous blue-green color.
From Interlaken we got on the train to Grindelwald and we though we were good since it was listed on the Eurorail time tables, but the ticket-taker said we still needed to buy another pass. But since they only check your pass after they start toward the destination, it’s not like you can just get off and buy one. The guy said something about letting us go this time for free, and then he came back later and tried to collect payment, but since we don’t have any Swiss Francs on us, he said something about going to the train station. We waited for him after the train got in to Grindelwald, but he didn’t come over to us, and we weren’t about to go ask him to let us pay for what should be a free trip. Whatever. We’ll see about it when we go back to Interlaken.
We found the hostel we’re staying at – Downtown Lodge – and checked in. The receptionist was very pretty and had the most awesome German accent. [Sidenote: I think I've seen more beautiful women in the last week than I have in my entire life. Well, maybe not, but so many in so short a timespan is mind-boggling!] We asked about good hiking and she said the Pfingstegg area was really good. So we headed over there, and headed up what had to be one of the steepest paths ever known to man. We made it, after several stops, to the top of the path. This is not the top of the mountain, mind you (oh not even close), but the area the gondola lift rides to. We then walked across the mountains for a good while, over a glacier, to a hotel/restaurant, and then back down from there. We ended up hiking for about 5 hours. This area has the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life. It’s fantastic and definitely has Colorado Springs beat for the view right from the city! I guess there is only a population of 4,000 here, but still!
Feels like we’ve been here so long already. It’s been a week since we left the US, but it seems like we’ve been traveling for a long while now. They speak German here, so I know a little bit of the language, but most people speak English anyway. We haven’t not been able to communicate with anyone during this whole trip. I feel sort of dirty for that, but it’s helpful!
Okay, bedtime! Chuck’s been asleep for a while, but I wanted to write these updates and post some pictures to Facebook. I’ll throw up links on here later. We have a very exciting morning planned for tomorrow, but I don’t want to give away what we’re doing until we have some pictures to prove it. So stay tuned! And, by the way, what are you up to in your part of the world
Day 6: Paris
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Goal: To take a picture of a McDonalds in every country. Not sure if it can be done with the cities we’re going to, but I’ll definitely try!
Woke up in the morning to get some of the breakfast, which was decent. Baguette with butter and jam with some cereal and milk. After we checked out, we decided to go to the Palace at Versailles. Went to one of the main train stations and ran into the language barrier. We have a Eurorail pass, but there were really no instructions on how to use it. We had to ask several people where we could get our pass stamped, and then asked how to even get on the trains to Versailles after that! It was quite crazy. We did make it though, and the train ride wasn’t even that long. Maybe 20 minutes.
The Palace was quite impressive. Very large and gilded with gold all over the place! We got some good pictures but didn’t get to go inside because it cost quite a few Euros and we only had a little bit of time there before we needed to head back. We did walk around a little bit though. It was a rather large place for a royal family to live!
We then discovered the train stations there had pay toilets, which was not cool. They also had no water fountains, which meant we were quite thirsty! We headed back both having to potty and quite dry. Came back, checked internet, got our bags, and you would not believe how loud some of these french kids were! I don’t think they were from Paris, because they were staying in the hostel, but they were running all around, blaring music on a boombox, yelling, slamming doors, and just being retarded! I can’t believe they let people like that stay there. Gah! We then went to a corner store for some food. The trains to Gare De Lyon were insanely packed. Combine that with no air conditioning and no deodorant and you’ve got a very hot, cramped, stinky train ride. I’d rather not do that again.
We hopped on and rode our way to Geneve (Geneva), where we switched trains to the one to Bern. I slept a lot of the way. For some reason, whenever I sit down to ride a train, I pass out! We then arrived in Bern, talked to some people who told us where to go for our hostel (and we met a couple of girls going the same way), and walked over. The hostel was actually really nice and it’s a shame our stay there was so short.
Oh yeah, while in France we did go to one nice restaurant. The menu was very cryptic, so I ended up ordering what turned out to basically be a burger with an egg on top along with some fries. And when I tried to order the Creme Brulette (sp?), they ran out… damn!
Day 5: Paris
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Our fifth day in Paris was a good one. We woke up a bit late, but we needed the sleep. We’d been hanging out with three people we met our first day in Paris. Chris is from Chicago whereas Brittany and Chelsea were from Ottowa, Canada. We had been up until something like 4 in the morning hanging out in the streets (they were drinking, but I’m not a fan of wine, so I wasn’t), and then back in the hostel just talking and having fun! That night we also met Travis, who was from Australia. We also met a Spanish man, but I didn’t catch his name. I had a lot of fun discovering the cultural differences. We say “pissed” to mean angry, while Australians use it to mean drunk. Canadians really do say “eh” and “soorry”! Chicagoans really do like the Cubs a lot. Chelsea says we have an accent, but then again, I think that’s all relative!
Chuck and I went with Chris, Brittany, and Chelsea to see more of Paris. We headed out toward the Hopital d’Invalides which was built by Napoleon for injured troops, where we grabbed some breakfast. We then headed across a bridge toward the Louvre. We walked through the gardens there, which were quite impressive! We even went down inside the glass pyramid, but tickets were more than we wanted to pay, and none of us are really artists. I’ve heard from friends/family that the Mona Lisa isn’t really that great anyway. So we left there and headed off to Notre Dame.
For some reason Chuck and I seemed to be the only ones interested in seeing it, so it took us a while to convince the others to continue toward it. Once there, we met another group of Australians who took pictures of us in front of Notre Dame and we took theirs. Chuck and I headed inside to see what it was like, to take some pictures, and to look at the stained glass windows (which really were impressive). The other three just hung out at a cafe across the street. There was a little line to get in, but walking through was free, which was nice.
After that we rode the metro to get to the Catacombs! We had to wait in line for quite a while and then had to pay to get in, but it was worth it. It was something like 127 spiral steps to get down to the tunnels. For a while you just walk through a regular tunnel (just tall enough for a person my height), until you get to a sign saying the next area is consecrated. You walk through a door and boom there it is. Thousands of feet of tunnel with bones for walls. Millions of people were buried there. It’s a bit hard to think it’s even real. I have never seen so many bones in one place before. And what was even more impressive was how they were arranged. What were probably leg/arm bones were stacked several high, then a row of skull bones, then more leg bones, then another row of skulls. This repeated until it reached the ceiling. And it was like this for a long distance. There were some areas where the bones didn’t reach all the way to the ceiling, or the skulls were even in patterns. Some places you could tell where someone had tried to take bones (which they checked bags at the end for this). It was very surreal and humbling. More impressive than I imagined it would be.
Afterward, we headed back toward the hostel. While on the metro, Chris went a different way because he was staying at a different hostel for that night. Shortly after we got back Brittany and Chelsea left for a sleeper train to Barcelona. They will actually be in Rome during one of the days we’re there, so we might be able to meet them at the hostel we’ve got booked. That would be very cool!
Then Chuck and I looked at the information for the train we’d take the next morning to Bern, Switzerland. And what do you know, the train out of Paris needs a reservation, which we did not have. We hustled over to the metro and rode to the Gare De Lyon station. We talked to one of the people there and found that the earliest train we could get would be the 6:10pm train the next day. This also meant the furthest we’d be able to get that night would be Bern. So we booked the reservation and went back to Aloha Hostel to figure stuff out.
We sent an email off to our hostel in Grindelwald because we wouldn’t be able to make it there to stay the night like we had planned. We booked the Bern Youth Hostel instead. Luckily, it had availability and wasn’t too highly priced. We then headed to bed, and admittedly, I was rather frustrated and annoyed because we’d lost a day in Switzerland, which is the place I was looking forward to most. Losing a day was irritating, but I guess it wouldn’t be backpacking if something unexpected didn’t happen.
Day 4: Paris
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Had to wake up at 2:30am today to head to the airport. We got there, had to wait until 4:30 to check our bags, and then we had to wait until 6:10 to board the plane. It was supposed to take off at 6:30 but it didn’t actually leave the ground until 7:30. Ryanair is super cheap, and I don’t know if I really liked it. But they did get our bags over fine, which was nice.
So we landed in France at the BVA airport, got off and had our passports stamped with visas, then bought a bus pass to downtown Paris. It was an hour long ride, but the countryside was nice. Once we got here we had to take the metro to a stop near our hostel, the Aloha hostel. The metro gates ended up rebooting, so we got our fare for free! The metro wasn’t as nice as the NYC metro though. We met some people in the lobby and are actually still hanging out with them right now!
We walked and saw the Eiffel tower, the Arc d’Triumph and loads of other stuff! We’ll try to do some more stuff tomorrow, but there is so much to see, it’ll be impossible. The French people have actually been really helpful in giving directions and helping with food choices. We did eat some good food tonight too! They haven’t been rude like I’ve heard from a lot of people!
After that we walked around, found some places to get some wine and then found a random square and sat down and the other people drank some of the wine. I’m not a big drinker, let alone wine, so I had some water.
We’re sitting in the lobby now talking about how Michael Jackson is dead and where all we’re going to be going in the future. It would be awesome if we could meet up with them again and tour another city!
We’re in a group with Australians, British, Spanish, Canadians all here right now in the lobby! Geting to talk about all the differences in culture and where we’re all going! Alright, need to head off so I can socialize more!
Update: I forgot to mention the Gypsies before! We ran into quite a few Gypsies at the Eiffel Tower, Metro, and other places. They usually came up to us and asked “Speak English?” but they dressed in such stereotypical Gypsie ways that t was easy to avoid them. Needless to say, we did not get pick pocketed by them. Either Brittany or Chelsea said they had someone come up with a 20 Euro bill and want to make change. I suspect that they either try to see how much money you have and then take it, or get you to give them the wrong amount of change some how. It was good to see quite a few Police around the Eiffel Tower who literally ran the gypsies off! And on the cops note, we saw several cops around the Gare De Lyon metro stop walking around with automatic rifles. I wonder if they have ever used them…
Day 3: Dublin
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Okay, quick update on our last day in Dublin!
We went to the history museum, the art museum, St Patrick’s church and finally the Guinness store house. We did take quite a few pictures, so hopefully we’ll have some time to upload them later. The history museum was a bit boring, but there was some pretty cool stuff at the art museum. We also walked around other parts of the city we hadn’t seen before.
We crashed at one point because the jet lag is still messing with us. After that we went and at ate a restaurant called O’Shea’s. Our feet are killing us so much! Luckily we could leave our packs at the hostel so we didn’t have to carry around that 30-40 lbs.
After that we had to go to bed around midnight to wake up at 2:3o to leave for our flight to Paris. So freaking early! There were people sleeping in our room when we got back, which made it hard to pack up and be quiet, but we managed. The hostel was really cool, the showers were clean and they had a great setup!
Day 2: Dublin
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Our flight from NYC to Dublin was pretty uneventful. We were on a 767 which is a 3 aisle plane, so there were a ton of people on it. I slept a lot of the ride, except for when they woke us up for food. They had some movies playing, but I didn’t watch anything other than what I saw on the screen as I ate.
One of the first things I noticed as we were coming over Ireland to land was that the land wasn’t divided into squares like it is in the US. It was more like a quilt with patches of assorted dimensions, sizes and angles. We did see some mountains though, which was very cool! It was a bit foggy as we landed, but the weather was nice.
Once we disembarked, we got our baggage and then and hopped on the bus which would take us into Dublin city center for 6 Euro. We then walked a little bit to Jacob’s Inn, which is the Hostel we’re staying at. They let us check in early, which was nice. We checked out the room, dropped off our packs and then took a little walk around. We then came back to meet up for a free city tour.
The person from the tour company never arrived, so a group of people set out for City Hall, which is where the tour was to begin. We finally made it there (after being unsure of where to go) and we took the tour. It was 3-4 hours long, really comprehensive and we had a great tour guide named Ralph! Got some good pictures too. I love the castles and other old buildings all around!
After that we came back to the hostel and crashed for a few hours. After that we took the first shower we’d had in 2 days, which was nice. Then we headed out into Dublin again to check out the city at night. There were some American restaurants still open (OH THANK GOD) and several bars. We might check out some of them tomorrow.
Now I’m sitting in the lobby, grabbing the free wifi and making sure my camera battery is charged. And now that that’s done, I’m going to head to bed. Need to wake up at a decent time and this whole being 5 hours ahead of Ohio is a bit disorienting. I’ll try to blog again soon!
I’ll also try to upload some pictures if I have time!
Day 1: Columbus and New York
Posted by kyle in Columbus Airport, New York City on June 23rd, 2009
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Our first day started off with us taking a flight from Columbus to JFK in NY. We had a whole issue with the baggage. Somehow the was only marked to go to JFK, but we pointed this oddity out and the Delta people there helped us sort out the baggage and make sure it would go all the way to Dublin with us. We had an 8 hour layover, so we decided to tour the city some. We took the AirTrain to the E train which we rode to 5th Ave and 53rd St. From there we walked to the Rockefeller Center and got to see 30 Rockefeller Center, which is NBC studios.
We took the NBC Studio Tour which lasted for an hour and fifteen minutes or so. After that we sort of walked around. We took some pictures and even randomly found Central Park, which we partly walked through. The weather was pretty good and it only sprinkled a few times. Definitely not hot and muggy like Columbus.
I could not believe how busy and loud NYC was! There were a billion people doing a billion things each. People tried to get us to talk to them or hand us CDs but we evaded them. We didn’t even get mugged!
We ended up eating at a McDonalds because we were running out of time. Things there were twice as expensive as in Columbus, I wasn’t expecting that!
It took us about 1.25 hours to ride the trains one way and the ride back to the airport was during rush hour which meant it was quite packed! There wasn’t much a line at security, so we still had plenty of time before the flight. It was hard to find an outlet and I also found out JFK has no wifi… which was lame.
We finally boarded our flight and took off, just as the sun was going down. It was awesome to be above the clouds again.
Next, I’ll cover the flight and Dublin.