Weekend 9: Interlaken, Switzerland

I would first like to apologize for my delay in posting this but I am proud to say I have finally finished my 2 tests of "hell week" here at GTL and SURVIVED! Nothing welcomes you back from a weekend away like an ECE and MSE test? Now I can finally tell you all about what is quite possibly the best weekend yet: Interlaken, Switzerland!

We caught a series of regional trains and after a couple delays, layovers, etc. we arrived in Interlaken around midnight. We caught a taxi to get to our hostel which is in a town 20 minutes outside Interlaken called Iseltwald. Midnight taxi means roller coaster in this case as we made it there in 15 minutes max. and then we learned just how expensive Switzerland can be -- that 15 minute ride? 45 francs. (swiss franc to dollar conversion? about 1:1) We assumed he was ripping us off as we were 5 college students with backpacks. Turns out we got a deal -- some companies charge 60-80 depending on the number of passengers. WOW! With our late night arrival we did our best not to disrupt our fellow hostel-mates [semi-unsuccessfully as one girl on the top bunk grumpily said, "you don't need to worry about getting your stuff stolen!!" when one of our group members quietly whispered whether she should lock the door or not].

Then we woke up and found this:

Is that not the most beautiful view ever? 

For those of you that don't know, Interlaken is often known as the adventure capital of Europe. Why, you ask? Because you can hang glide, skydive, canyon, raft, hike, and more. Our group opted to make Saturday our adventure day with each of us doing our own thing. Kate and Jeff went on an 8 hour (high-adrenaline) canyoning, Kristen went on a day trip to Lausanne and Bern, Alex went skydiving, and I opted for the slightly less intense 6 hour canyoning trip! Canyoning is like hiking in a river through a canyon while jumping off rocks, repelling, and ziplining to get around the various obstacles in a canyon. For example, how do you get into a canyon? Easy; repel 150 feet into it. Not sure how to get down the 50 foot waterfall? How about a zipline across the canyon dropping you into the pool below? It was without a doubt the most wonderful experience of my entire life. I slid down rock slides, slipped on rocks hiking through the water (and got a pretty sweet bruise to boot), jumped off of waterfalls, and so much more. I only got nervous once when I jumped 30 feet off a cliff and had to clear about 10 feet of rock. Although apparently I had a right to be nervous -- my friends watching said I almost didn't! But I'm still alive to tell the tale! 

Each person has a helmet with a name so they don't have to learn our real names and it makes it easier for them to make the video so they can tell who each person is. Mine was wizard :)

Then we all met back at the hostel and had a great dinner at the restaurant across the street (on the lake) from our hostel. It was delicious -- salad with spring rolls! 

Sunday Kristen, Kate, and I decided to sleep in a bit and spend the day exploring Interlaken. We rode a ferry from Iseltwald to Interlaken and it offered some beautiful views of the lake we were staying on. 

view of the lake from the ferry

 It only takes about 20 minutes to walk from one train station to the other on either end of Interlaken but we had such a relaxing, leisurely day we didn't even make it to the other side! We found a Chinese restaurant (something we haven't eaten in 10 weeks) and it was absolutely delicious. Then we wandered around a went souvenir shopping (swiss army knives and chocolate!), window shopped, and stopped at a park/green space to watch some hang gliders land.

Me and Interlaken! 

Then we decided to go ride a tram up to Harder Kulm for a great view of the town! It was gorgeous from up there but we saw off to our right that rain was approaching. It made for a really cool picture though (see below)

The incline up the mountain for the tram! Hope the breaks are working fine :)

The rain off to the right over the lake-- cool, right?

Me on the suspended platform at the top of Harder Kulm

Then it rained on our tram ride down so we kind of missed the view on the way down. But it made up for it completely when we got to the bottom and found this: 

A rainbow over the river!!! 

Then we had dinner and met back up with Jeff and Alex who had gone hiking for the day! Monday we wanted to take advantage of the kayaks available at our hostel so we woke up early to go kayaking on the lake. Then we came in, caught the ferry into town, grabbed lunch, and took some regional trains back to Metz. It was such an adventurous, relaxing, fantastically beautiful weekend. :)