Yodelayheehooo (in Interlaken)

I have 3 regrets from my final Switzerland stint to my trip. 1) It wasn't spring and I couldn't see wildflowers. 2) I hadn't mentally prepared myself enough to go paragliding. 3) I never got to try fondue. BUT there were plenty of spectaculars.

Balmer's Hostel
I arrived in Interlaken Saturday night and decided to spend the night in Interlaken before heading up to the mountains the next day. Wow. Balmer's hostel is like a mini college campus. They have everything. A cot room, movies in the lounge at night, a restaurant, a store that sells chocolate bars (and other less important things like swiss army knives. I've never been big on souvenirs and somehow I didn't see what the big deal was about getting a swiss army knife in Switzerland but all these college girls were picking theirs out and getting them engraved), weather reports, scheduled adventurous activities each morning... It's sort of incredible. It was so American! Which is kind of refreshing when you've been away from home for a while. The only complication is that I had to pretend that my studies stopped at BYU and leave everyone under the assumption that I was still under the age of 25 :-)


Then Sunday morning you'd never guess. There's an Interlaken branch. Everyone was SOO friendly. I walked in the door and greated about 15 hands that said hello and welcomed me. And then the ever-helpful missionaires translated the service from German to English for me. And I met a really cool girl named Kate who ditched Relief Society with me to chat.


My purpose in ditching was to take advantage of the sunshine and see Interlaken before heading up to Gimmelwald still in the daylight. Here are some samples.

More swans. This time looking regal. Not sure if you can see but this water is amazingly aqua. It was the same color back in Fussen. It's just like that fake blue mini-golf water, but it's real.

Gimmelwald
Ok, so then I took the train, and the postal bus, and the cable car up to Gimmelwald (4,500 ft. elevation) and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Picture this (because it was dusk and it's a tad hard to see). A town perched atop a hillside with green hills and wood cabins that have green shutters and occasional flowering hanging baskets. All you can hear are lows from cows with their oocasional clanging of bells, some stray goats chiming along with them, and snow dripping off the eaves. And the air is so fresh and clean with just a hint of burning wood. It's like mountain perfume!

That's the town's Cheese hut :-)


Some trophy cowbells. These things were HUGE.

It was just so peaceful and calm up there, and despite the snow, fairly warm. I got off the cable car and the giant digital thermometer signaled a comfy +12 degrees C.

Schilthorn peak
So the next morning I hiked up to Murren (with two dots over the 'u') which is 45 minutes up the hill from Gimmelwald and then caught the cable to the 2nd highest peak in the mountain range (or at least that has a cable car station) - Schilthorn.


I lucked out with it being sunny up top. I can't even begin to choose which pictures to include here. We had a 360 view and it was like this in all directions.


So amazing that I took pity on some guy I met up there who's camera battery had died and told him I'd take a picture for him and email it to him. He just couldn't miss this photo op! As for me, you can probably tell that it was sunny :-)

So then they have this restaurant up there that supposedly served a great breakfast buffet. I went in and took 30 seconds trying to decide where to sit before I did and realized the room rotates and my seat choice made no difference whatsoever. It did make finding the buffet (or going back for seconds and thirds rather) a little disorienting.

Lots of chocolate
I'm still talking about what made this trip spectacular :-) I sort of forgot all the brands I tasted. I tried to get a smattering and avoid what is readily available in America, aka Lindtt and Toblerone. I realized that I prefer chocolate truffles, or whatever you call chocolates filled with things - buttercreams, caramel, nuts, over chocolate bars. So I got some of those too.

To cap things off, I'd like to say that I now might be considered well-read, or at least more well-read. I had 30+ hours of transportation time (albeit through beautiful countrysides) which bought me some reading moments. I finally finished Les Miserables. Spectacular! So much more involved than the musical. And now I won't have to lug around the 900 page brick anymore. Next I tackled Kite Runner. Unbelievably great. I didn't expect to get past this point in reading time so I had to shop around for a book in Germany. I thought the Da Vinci Code would be fitting seeing as how I was catching up with some lost years of hyped up books, but with only a 10 minute train stop all I could find was The World is Flat. I gave it my best shot but really it just held no interest for me whatsoever. However, in Fussen my options were fairly limited and I ended up with How to Talk to A Widower by Jonathan Tropper. Fairly compelling with a few laughs but some pretty trashy parts. Not recommended. Feeling the need for something a bit deeper with more substance I got The Devil and Miss Prym by Paul Coelho. Decent, but a very fast read. Not what I needed. And then Balmer's Hostel came through. They had a book swap! Lo and behold, there in the case was the Da Vinci Code. Miss Prym for Da Vinci and voila! I'm done. I'd classify it as good. Did you count? That's 4 books and the last 200 of Les Mis.

My book shelf is going to explode!

And with that my vacation ends and I am back in Paris ;) Hehe.