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Published: February 7th 2007
We had a long train ride from Geneva to Sarnen, I beat Advanced Wars Dual Strike on my Nintendo (yessss!) and we soaked up some Swiss scenery along the way. It was a long travel day and we were glad to meet Alban at the station in Sarnen, we grabbed some food and he took us back to his place for a few welcome drinks and an action packed game of Risk (which he won, told you the Ukraine is weak!) I met Alban many moons ago when he came to NZ to study english and lived as a homestay with us, and many thanks go out to Alban for having us stay with him at his house for the week and for taking some time off to spend hanging out with us!
Our first day we went to Lucern, the closest big city to Sarnen which I would consider more like a village. The layout in Switzerland it quite interesting because of all the mountains and lakes. There are literally 100's of small 'villages' dotted around the lakes, all linked by train, close enough they could be suburbs but aren't. Lucern is not really even that big but has
an excellent and well known hands on Science Museum, definitely check it out if you're out that way. We walked around the city and lake edge and also caught an IMAX film about bears... in german. We were all still a bit sick, Craig was going down with a second round, so we stayed in and had a quiet night in preparation for a big day.
The mountain is called Melchsee Frutt and even though its one of the smaller snow parks it was still huge by NZ standards. We hired gear for the day and hit the slopes, it was awesome, I hadn't been boarding for a long time so it was good to feel the snow under my edges again. Switzerland still hadnt had much winter snow at this stage, so the lower slopes (while still 20min long) weren't much fun but up at the top it was fantastic, we didnt ride the same run twice all day. We were knackered by the end of it and my lead leg was ready to give way, as we know the only cure for a hard days boarding is pizza, burgers a few drinks and an early night.
On Saturday Craig was much worse for wear so packed up and got an early train back to London for recovery, while Alban took Rich and I to Alpamare, a thermal waterpark. Was great fun with multiple slides my favourite being the Tornado where you shoot out and around into a giant funnel. There was one slide called the Cobra, the fastest, and you werent allowed any mats or rings etc because it would be too fast, well that sounded like a challenge to me! So for our last ride before we left we grabbed mats that you lie on and snuck into the slide when the gaurd wasnt looking. There's a good reason you shouldnt take mats, its seriously FAST but survivable, but the main reason is when you shoot out at the end you have so much speed you skim across the water on the mat straight into the wall at the end of the pool! Good times.
That night Alban had organised a house party for us at his parents house in Sachseln another lakeside village near Sarnen. Samual turned up with a nice Subaru for a pre-party cruise and I also got to meet Albans
brother Julian, sister Selina and other friends before we all got to partying and Tequilla shots. It was a great party and my last day in Sarnen was spent recovering with a nice walk home and some german television. Monday I left Alban and Rich (who was off on his continuing his european holiday) and headed to Zurich, I had seen Swiss village life, it was time to see the city.
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