Outdoor playground

From munich we embarked on a day of riding trains to get to Switzerland. On the first train out of Munich we met a retired german police officer. He didn't speak much english but we had a great conversation regardless. At one station we were about 30 km from Liechtenstein and contemplated taking a bus across the border but the timing to get back and onwards to switzerland didn't work out. We had a 45 min layover in Lucern so we went and checked out the bridge, one of the main postcard sites! There were also tons of swans in the river. We continued on towards Interlaken and arrived just as it was getting dark. Interlaken is quite similar to Jasper or Banff. It is located in a valley between some of Europe's largest mountains. We were surprised that there was no snow in the town. They haven't had a snowfall since December. The main difference from Jasper is that it isn't located in a National park. There are cow pastures in the town located between houses leaving a wonderful manure aroma lingering in the air. This town is basically an outdoor playground. It offers skiing, sledding, skydiving, hiking, bungee, mountain climbing, rafting, fishing, you name it. Unfortunately it comes at a huge price. Switzerland is probably the most expensive place we've encountered. A combo meal at mcdonalds costs at least 10$ cdn, and even grocery shopping is rediculous. One night we took part in night sledding. We took a gondola up a mountain a sledded back down for an hour, it was followed by a traditional cheese fondue and wine. This was fun, but overpriced since there wasn't much snow. The next day we went skiing. We felt we had to go skiing as we were in the Alps. The runs were very long and we were exhausted at the end. It was like skiing in the spring, +12°C, icy but fun. We met a girl from edmonton and three other Canadians in the hostel. We played drinking games with them and a Japanese guy, two Korean guys and an Aussie. It was interesting to see the Japanese and Koreans communicating through english. On our last day I went canyon jumping while Wendy videotaped. This is similar to bungee jumping and hopefully the video works. It was an insane rush. We had to get out of there though because we were spending two hundred dollars a day. Way over our budget. We would love to go back in the summer sometime and try canyoning and some of the other activities.

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Canyon jump

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