Interlaken

Interlaken has come and gone!  Everything seems to be flying by so fast here.  It feels like I have been here for months, but it has only been less than 2 weeks!

We left for Interlaken right after class Friday and took a 4 1/2 hour train to our first hostel, Balmer's.  The ride was gorgeous!  Mountains, lakes, and a purple pink orange yellow sunset.  When we first got there we checked into our room and it was pretty much just what I expected...little beds everywhere in all angles and directions.  Our hostel had a club downstairs and that was our next stop.  Great happy hour... buy one get one free!  We met some hilarious Summer Heights High Australians and people from all over.  The night ended with the girls making our way back upstairs to our little German hostel and laughing with the 10 of us in the room and passing out.

Saturday we woke up and spent the day with our new Aussie friends.  We got lunch at a little cafe that had the best looking salad bar, but I couldn't afford it.  I got soup instead.  The Australians were so funny, I loved them so much...I hope I see them again later in life.  I'm going to go visit them in Australia.

After lunch we split off and Ashley, Jillian, and I went paragliding!  We were picked up from our hostel by a van filled with 7 German men.  Interlaken is in the German part of Switzerland so "Swiss-German" was the language spoken by mostly everyone.  We drove up a huge mountain and then got out and walked over to a grassy hill where they set up the parachutes and strapped us in.  Once I was strapped in with my "pilot" Tom, we ran down a hill and just jumped right off...into the air.  The parachute caught the wind and up we went, just floating around town.  The quote in the brochure says it perfectly "the proof of pure life."  Flying 4,400 feet above Interlaken was unreal!

Our day didn't end there.  Right after getting back our entire group decided to go night sledding.  When we got to the slopes I had no idea what to expect, but it was nothing like what I actually experienced.  We literally went soaring down the Alpiglen hills of the Swiss Alps.  It was Mario Kart 64's Flowercup second race, Frappe Snowland.  You could fall off the edges at any moment, into the dark deep unknown woods, but unlike Mario Kart, you would not be rescued right away and placed back on the course by a helicopter.  You were speeding down at star power going through anything that stood in your way, beneath the stars and mountains, down a windy slick narrow raceway.  The race ended at a restaurant and we were served authentic Swiss cheese fondue.  They gave us bread and potatoes to dip in it and it was kind of a disgusting dinner.  I basically ate a basket of bread and 4 potatoes.  Ashley got creative with her potatoes towards the end and started pouring sugar all over them and things got messy, but she ate them all.

Sunday we traveled home all day hopping from one train station to the next delirious and exhausted.  Interlaken was such a cool city.  It's unreal how you can travel just 4 hours north in Switzerland and move from a luxurious, wealthy, flashy, Swiss-Italian city, to a quiant, quiet, Hansel and Gretel, old-fashioned, Swiss-German city.  They are completely different but both part of the same small country of Switzerland.  It felt good when we finally got home and went out to our regular dining spot, Manora.

The wind is currently blowing our green shutters back and forth in room 13, in and out against our glass window...SPOOKY!  I just leaned out and screamed GOODNIGHT LUGANO!

We went to Milan today... I'll have to tell you about it later!

Bedtime now...

Goodnight Moon