kickin it in the land of the swiss

---

I'm hangin it Switzerland st the moment in the beautiful city of interlaken. Its a bit touristy but surrounded by crazy mountains and lakes, and theres a few chill hostels.
Since I last wrote I went through Belgium, Luxemburg, and France. It took me a long day of hitching to get from Brussels to Nancy, in France. Met a few cool people, most of whom I couldnt really hold a conversation with my miniscule french vocabulary, but it worked out. Got stuck in a three hour traffic jam and ended up changing rides in the middle of stopped cars on the highway.
The city of Nancy wanst too appealing to me, so I caught a train from there to Marseille. It was good to see the ocean from afar on my train journey, but it was impossible to get to for some reason. Spent two nights in Marseille, one in a ghetto room with water leaking out the walls, and one in a nicer pad overlooking the scenic backalleys and piles of garbage. Took a hike to an old fort overlooking the harbor and had the best panini of my life, but decided to head north to escape the crazy heat.
If there's one word I wish I'd know in french before I came here, it'd be "auberg de juenusse" or summit like that, which means 'youth hostel.' No one knows what a hostel is and directs you to the most expensive hotel they know of. After getting a train to Grenoble in the south-east of France, I wandered around for a bit until I felt sufficiently lost. When I foudn the train station again I tried for the hundreth time to find this hostel I knew was in Grenoble, unless there where two Grenobles. Finally got a rough direction and joined forces with another lost sojourner, an English guy named Lee, to find the place. Once found it was the coolest, cheapest hostel and I ended up staying three nights. Went hiking around the mountains the for the days with lee and a german guy, Tourston. Saw some amazing views and jumped in an awesome alpine lake.
Lee the englishman was heading up a little north to Chamonix, near Mt. Blanc, so I decided to tag along and do some more hiking. The town was really cool and we stayed two nights. We did one of the best hikes Ive ever done, ending up right on the edge of the glacier and with a stellar view of everything.
After getting the hiking bug we both decided to head up to Interlaken in Switzerland and see wassup. We tried hitching but had to train it, which was rediculously spendy. Interlaken is awesome though and worth seeing. We did a two day hike and slept in the woods on a small mountain with some more sweet views and awsome stars at night.
Lee took off today and I"m stickin in Interlaken for a bit. Probably going to do some more camping to save some moolah, but the forcast for the next few days isnt good. We shall see...

---