Loving the Swiss Alps

Trip Start May 01, 2007
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Trip End Apr 29, 2008

Flag of Switzerland  ,
Saturday, August 4, 2007

So Switzerland is bucolic. I know we say this about nearly everywhere, but WE REALLY LOVED INTERLAKEN. It was seriously one of our favourite places. Interlaken is small enough to overlook, in a country that is small enough to overlook, but it was well worth the price of admission. Switzerland is an expensive country, but those Francs were put to good use.

Interlaken is in a valley, between two glacier fed lakes. It actually reminded us a lot of Canmore, for our Alberta-bound friends, but we found it to be a lot better. We stayed at a party hostel called Balmer's Herberge, which was pretty atypical for us, but certainly a nice change. It was actually one of the best hostels we've ever stayed in - there was great fun, with cool people, every single night. It had the largest number of Canadians we've met since we started travelling (it bested the previous number we've seen in one place, two, by quite a lot).

Interlaken is an adventure sports enthusiast's dream, although you pretty much have to be loaded, or willing to max out your credit cards to enjoy everything there. You can go skydiving, para-gliding, hang-gliding, canyoning, white water rafting and a whole bunch of other things too. Terri and I opted for the low-budget (shocking!) approach again, and only did one thing that cost money. We rented a scooter. I've never driven one before, and my one experience on a motorcycle ended in humiliation (if my cousins are reading this, they'll no doubt remember) but this went quite well. Terri and I shared a scooter, and our new buddy Justin from Arizona got his own. 01 Sunset in the Alps
01 Sunset in the Alps
 We rode out to a mountain called Grindelwald, and up a path that was apparently forbidden to motorized vehicles without a permit. We had a picnic near the top, then started back down. Poor, unfortunate Jason's scooter broke down, and he had to coast down the whole mountain with just gravity, his fear of being caught by the cops, and his fear of losing his 140 Swiss Franc deposit for hang-gliding later that day to power his decent. Poor guy. I had to drive him out to a payphone to call the rental place to come pick him up. Good fun.

Terri and I also did some hiking. Somehow, we're apparently out of shape, in comparison to the way we were in Alberta - we could hike for hours with no problem. Now, even though we walk for several hours every single day, hiking was somehow really difficult for us. It was worth the sweat for the views though.

Our last day, we had planned on doing another hike - you can take a gondola halfway up the mountain and hike near the top for some spectacular sights, but it rained, so we just got drunk instead. We sat down at 6pm with Alex, a new buddy of ours from Edmonton, for some fondue, and didn't get up again till 1am. In that time, we had a whole contingent of Canadians, and some assorted foreigners join us for drinks. It was a fun night.

We're serious about this, we'll go back to Interlaken for sure.

Next stop: a visit to our friends Elke and Dieter in Belgium. Stay tuned...
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