Pictures

• Day 7: Bern
• Day 7: Train Ride
• Day 7: Grindelwald – Part 1
• Day 7: Grindelwald – Part 2

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