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Published: April 15th 2012
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April 7-9
This weekend seemed almost like a how-much-of-Switzerland-can-you-see-in-three-days whirlwind. Saturday Anna, Julia, Carolyn and I spent the day in Lucerne, wandering the town, climbing the old town wall, crossing the old covered bridges, and exploring the many churches. Since it was the day before Easter every single one of the churches we went into was having rehearsals so we got several amazing free organ and choir concerts. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the acoustics in these old churches are absolutely amazing! In the evening we cooked our own feast of pesto pasta, frizzled spinach with feta, and a strawberry-spinach salad with stroppe waffles to top it off. Then we proceeded to spend the cold rainy night playing all sorts of card games in the hostel lobby.
Sunday morning we attended Easter Mass bright and early at one of the local churches. It was the choral mass so we thought that meant it would involve some of the choirs we had heard practicing the day before. Turns out we were wrong. Those were probably for the main mass service at 11 am. I think we were the only ones in the whole place without a white
head of hair. But we had places to be and more adventures to have! Also, it decided to snow. Happy spring? The whole morning it snowed – big soft fluffy flakes that stuck to the tree branches and really turned everything back into a winter wonderland. It did ruin our views of the Alps however as we rode the train to Grindelwald. We were all a little disappointed that the mountains were not out since that was what we went to Grindelwald to see, but that did not stop us! We spent the afternoon having snowball fights, making unintentional snow angels, and wandering around the villages of Wengen and Lauterbrunnen. We even heard some Easter alphorns! Plus the snow-covered tree branches and lightly falling flakes are their own version of beautiful and magical.
When my family was in Switzerland many years ago we spent several days in Lauterbrunnen so it was fun to find the little apartment where we stayed and relive some of the memories. Plus, that train station was the place where I decided I would one day backpack around Europe. I remember all of us going to see the train station and my mom telling us
about how she had done that in college and me thinking “one day that will be me!” And here I am. Throughout the course of the afternoon the sky began to clear and by the time we left Wengen to take the train back down to Lauterbrunnen we were able to see most of the surrounding mountains! After an absurd amount of photos and some delicious rosti we went back to Grindelwald with a stop in Zweilutschinen (Swiss-German is a mouthful) and an impromptu reenactment of the Sound of Music while we waited for our connecting train.
Monday morning it looked like it was clearing up so we took the Maanlichen gondola up to the top of one of the smaller mountains around Grindelwald to go for a hike. Turned out it wasn’t actually clearing up, instead it was getting windier by the minute. We walked around some but then decided that we might as well get going and make a stopover in Bern on our way back to Geneva to get another town on our list. Our train went through Interlaken so we stopped to have a picnic by a canal. It was clearing up and getting downright
sunny by this point so we were able to see the Eiger and Jungfrau! Mission accomplished! We had perfect timing though because not long after the clouds started moving in and by the time we got to Bern the blue sky was gone. Bern was fun to walk around. We only had a couple of hours, but that was enough to see the main old town section, the Parliament building, and the famous bear pit. All the buildings are made out of the same green stone so they all look very uniform – more like the Geneva old town than some of the other cute colorful towns we have seen. It was good to see and definitely worth a visit, but not one of my favorite places in Switzerland. Our final train ride back to Geneva was gorgeous – it decided to clear up again and we had endless views of the Alps for most of the journey back. I would have loved to spend more time in the mountains (I’m continually being reminded that being in the mountains makes me happier than almost anything else) and definitely want to go back in the summer sometime when there is more
hiking available, but we had a great weekend and got a taste of it all.
Then it was back to Geneva to buckle down and write my 30 page paper… Well, after another day and a half of being a tourist in Geneva with some friends from Puget Sound of course...
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