Archive for category Grindelwald
Day 8: Grindelwald and Paragliding
Posted by kyle in Grindelwald on June 29th, 2009
Pictures
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!
Day 7: Bern and Grindelwald
Posted by kyle in Bern, Grindelwald on June 28th, 2009
Pictures
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