Don't Tell Paul's Dad

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  Interlaken, Switzerland
Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Our three days spent in Interlaken was some of the most angst-filled of our lives. Interlaken is a place known for high adrenaline sports like canyoning, zorbing, paragliding, bungee jumping and skydiving. We thought if we were to do anything, we might as well go for the gusto, so we signed up for skydiving over the Alps at 13,000 feet. It was tandem skydiving with a 45 second freefall for over two kilometres. We woke up on our first day at Interlaken and signed up for the 12 o'clock pickup. We had three agonizing hours to wait so we sat in our room pumping each other up while trying not to think of all the things that could go wrong. We kept timing the 45 second freefall, thinking to ourselves, "Still falling ... still falling ... still falling ..." Mel then commented that the two kilometre freefall would be the same as falling off Mt. Pilatus. Paul sat down and put his head between his knees.

Unbeknownst to us, skydiving only occurs if there is no cloud cover. It is very dangerous to jump into cloud cover because you don't know what's underneath. Three or four weeks ago in Interlaken, someone had jumped through cloud cover and met an unfortunate end on the blades of a helicopter on the other side of the clouds.

A knock at our door came at 11:50 am. Go time. It was Fritz, the owner of our family-run hotel, who informed us that our jump had been delayed to two o'clock due to cloud cover. We restrengthened our resolve and went out to walk around town to kill the time.

Two o'clock came. Go time--again. Sadly, the clouds had not dissipated and so we were postponed until the next morning at 9 am, our anniversary and the day we were to leave for Bern. By this time, we had been so pumped full of adrenaline from the waiting that our exhausted bodies collapsed and we passed out in our room for four hours.

We regained consciousness, groggy and hungry, since we hadn't eaten all day. The weather had been cold and rainy, so we ventured out to try some Swiss fondue to warm ourselves. Fritz recommended the Baren, a dimly-lit local restaurant, which served meat with rosti (like a potato pancake) and cheese fondue. Paul tried horse meat stew with rosti. The horse meat has the consistency of beef with some extra gaminess. We shared a cheese fondue for one, which is a 1/2 pound of cheese melted with white wine, garlic, pepper and spices, and served with a wooden bucket of cubed bread for dipping. The fondue smells like sweaty socks but once you start eating it, you don't notice the smell. It is quite tasty, though 1/2 a pound of cheese can make your stomach do calisthenics. Luckily, we heeded Alex's advice to drink something hot to help with digestion. If we hadn't, who knows how our Asian stomachs would have fared against the hot bubbling cheese river we had poured down our throats.

At the Baren, we met a friendly couple, Greg and Louise, from outside Seattle who were also staying at our hotel. Before our next appointed skydiving time, we found out two pieces of information that made us question even more the sanity of jumping out of a plane. First, we found out that Greg, a fireman and avid pilot who appeared to be a very sensible and pragmatic person, would never jump out of a plane. Second, Fritz, another sensible person who is a pilot and has had a few decades of being a paragliding guide actually scoffed at us when we asked him if he's gone skydiving, remarking, "No, paragliding is enough."

With these two comforting nuggets, we went off to bed with 1/2 a pound of cheese in our stomachs and thoughts of being flung off a plane strapped to a stranger to lull us to sleep. We slept like babies--who were being poked.

We awoke early next morning with our lawyerly common sense and Paul's Dad's voice screaming in our heads. We had to go. All this angst with no outcome would have sucked. We crammed some breakfast into our stomachs. Our pleasant breakfast chat with Greg and Louise helped keep our minds off our appointment with Gravity. Go time arrived--yet again.

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The clouds had not cleared. For one last time, Fritz told us that it would not be possible to skydive today. Never before had we experienced such an unresolved ball of emotion. We were disappointed, angry, relieved and sad all at once. We needed some type of reward for our tribulations so we signed up for paragliding at 1 pm which, after psyching ourselves up for skydiving, seemed like a walk in the park. Paragliding was also cancelled because of the weather.

We were still determined to do something a little bit dangerous so we drank water straight from the tap. Unfortunately, Interlaken tap water is one of the best drinking waters you can get in the world.

By the way, Interlaken is a resort town sandwiched between two pristine glacier lakes (Lake Brienz and Lake Thun) in the Jungfrau region, one of the most beautiful areas in Switzerland. The area is known for its hiking trails and scenic train rides up the mountain. We'll have to take the guide book's word for it because we spent all our time here waiting to skydive with Godot.