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• Day 11: Interlaken

Started off the day with a good breakfast, after which we checked out. Then with Ben, Gabi and Tali we decided to hike a mountain! Well, I just thought it was a good hiking trail, but it turned out we were climbing to the top of a mountain! The trail started in Interlaken Ost, and we were in Interlaken West, so we walked over there first off. And then we started up the trail. It was crazy steep! The name of the trail is actually Harderklum, which means Harder Climb in German. So yeah, you can imagine!

After a while I took my shirt off because it as too sticky out to wear a shirt. If there was shade and a breeze, it wasn’t too bad. We passed only a handful of people while on the trail. There was a water fountain about half-way up, which was a nice respite! All in all, it took about 2 hours to climb the path. At the top was a restaurant which we just sat around. We did get some great pictures of the lakes that Interlaken sits between as well as the Jungfrau mountain! After taking a bit of a break at the top, we started down. We took another trail which would take us to Interlaken West.

It was probably tougher going down than it was up, because you use a different set of muscles. It did start to rain on the way down but we had tree cover a lot of the way. Some spots were scarily slippery because if you made one wrong footfall, you would tumble all the way down the mountain. There were a few times when we kicked a rock off and it rolled and rolled and rolled. I think the path down was my favorite. It felt ancient and had a lot of broken, moss-covered rocks. I felt like I should have been in the middle ages. That is why Switzerland is so cool! It only took us 1.25 hours to get down from the top, if my timing was correct. We didn’t stop nearly as much on the way down.

The trail actually ended along the path we’d taken along the river to get to the Thunersee only two days before. From there we walked back to the hostel. On examining my back, I found I got a bit sunburned, but only on the part of my back that the shirt normally covers. My neck, ears, arms and face are pretty well tanned already. Gabi and Tali (the brits) ended up leaving then for their next city. We showered again at the hostel and then sort of waited around a bit before we left for Bern. Once we got to Bern we had a 3 hour wait for our train. It was a long 3 hours, but I did make some good progress in Hyperion! Oh yeah, I don’t remember if I mentioned that I finished reading ‘I, Robot’ the other day and then started ‘Hyperion’ but I did!

The night train was interesting. There were 6 small couchettes (tiny beds) stacked 3 in 2 rows. We had some annoying girls who give the stereotype of Asian girls as giggly and annoying credence.  Luckily they shut up and went to sleep without much trouble.  I slept pretty well given the small space.

Pictures

• Day 10: Canyoning
• Day 10: Interlaken

So as I said in the last post, some people told us to do the canyoning with them. Well, we decided to do it! We woke up, at some breakfast and then went canyoning for 3.5 hours! It was awesome! Since it did involve a lot of water and rocks, I did not take my camera, but they, of course, had a photographer there to take some pictures and I did decide to get them. They gave us 47 high res copies of the photos on a CD, so I figured why not.

This was one of the shorter canyoning expeditions, and while I wish we had done the 7 hour one, this was very awesome as well!The wet suits were a really tight fit and sort of restricted breathing. We had a 10 minute hike from the area they parked the van to the area we got in the river, and that was very tough. Going up a mountain in a motion-resistant wet suit in hot sunlight… but we made it! Hurray! And each of our helmets had a name which we were called on the journey. I was Cheesy!

They started off giving directions, and then we jumped right into it!  I believe our guides were Troy and Lukie. We had two repelling spots, three jumps, and lots more area to hike, wake, climb and slide through! Off the very first jump I did a front flip, which was just badass! The second jump was a lot larger, so we didn’t screw around with flips. It was pretty intimidating to jump into a pummeling waterfall like that, but it was great! The third jump we did a superman pose, which was really fun! Hopefully I’ll get to post the pictures in not too long!

We also got to walk into a waterfall, and  slide around a lot of little rock chutes. The water was very cold, but the wet suit helped keep most of the cold away. I only really felt it in my hands. Again, it was so fun! I still can’t believe that I got to do that! Jumping off natural formations and into natural rivers is spectacular! The view was also great!

It ended in too short a time, of course.  Afterward we hopped back in the van, and they had bread, cheese, dessert, water and beer waiting. It was an unexpected surprise! I had some of the bread, cheese, desserts, and carbonated water (which was really odd). Afterward they drove us back to the hostel.

After that we definitely crashed for a few hours. Doing all that activity was exhausting! After waking up we ate some dinner and just hung out. We played some cards, read, looked at the pictures, and talked to the people we’d met there in The Lazy Falken hostel. After chatting we took showers and went to bed. Switzerland, oh how amazing you are!

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• Day 9: Interlaken

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.