Switzerland

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The next morning, I got up early before the other girls and headed for the train station towards Switzerland. France is another country where you have to make ticket reservations before you board trains, so the day before I had gone to the ticket office to book my trains, and they told me that the trains I wanted were fully booked. They did, helpfully, find me another route with more changes I could get instead though, and I booked myself onto those. My first train was from Nice to Avignon, and then from Avignon to Lyon, then Lyon to Geneva, Switzerland.



I had only really booked Geneva as a place to stay for the night between travelling, but had been told it was a nice place to see on the banks of Lac Leman. As soon as I arrived at the station in Geneva, the heavens opened for a torrential storm. It was hammering it down with rain, and I couldn’t care less! I walked about a mile to my hostel in torrential rain and arrived like a drowned rat…but a COOL drowned rat. Temperature in the 20s? YES!!!



I found my room in the hostel, at this point feeling officially too old and knackered to have to be subjected to the top bunk bed, but ditched TP again and went for a stroll around the city and lake. The rain had subsided, and I found the edge of the lake which has a huge water fountain apparently reaching 140 meters. I walked around the city, and found a restaurant to have the most expensive steak of my life at! Switzerland is so costly!!! After getting hit by another torrential thunder storm on my way back to the hostel, I headed to sleep and was kept awake all night by the sounds of a military tank storming the room. This was apparently just someone snoring, but I’m yet to be convinced that the hostel was being invaded by a Vietnamese workforce with their new and improved extra loud pneumatic drills! I mean - why on earth would you stay in a hostel if you know your snoring is that bad?! You’re just asking to be suffocated!



The next morning, I walked back to the train station and headed for Bern. When I arrived, I had about an hour’s wait before my train to Interlaken. I decided to nip to the Primark shop outside to find some cheap throw away clothes (you get really sick of the same tops after 5 weeks!). I walked into the shopping mall, and was caught by the security guard after him spotting TP. He checked my bag, and asked me where I came from. When I said England, he said “ahhhh so do you like Teresa May or Tony Blair?” …. Me: “Erm….Neither!” I was thinking that he may have meant Jeremy Corbyn, but then he said… “Oh! But I’m friends with Tony Blair!” …At this point two other guys with backpacks came in and he pulled them to one side. I started to creep away when he pulled me back and began to ask the other guys if they thought I was ok to be let into the shopping mall. They actually hmmmmmm’d for a while before saying ‘she looks like a nice girl, we think you can let her in!” After some awkward laughs and thanks, I power walked away from the lunatics!



Finally finding Primark, I walked to the front doors and was immediately stopped by the security guard who wanted to check my bag before I could go in the store. Jesus, how hard is it to get into sodding Primark! The shop was full of shite anyway, absolutely not worth the trip!



When I arrived in Interlaken, I found my hostel, and thankfully it was one of the nicest hostels I had stayed in (and also my last one before home! ☹ ) I immediately took advantage of the free tokens for the washing machines, and got very excited looking at the complimentary snow boot hire for mountain climbing! The hostel had a huge kitchen so I went out to the local supermarket for the next three day’s food. It was no bloody cheaper!



That evening there was a free walking tour of the town. We walked to the river Aare, which feeds the two lakes either side of Interlaken – Brienz and Thun (pronounced Tunn). The water in that river and the lakes either side is the most beautiful colour! It’s like a milky mix of blue and emerald green. The guide said that the unique colour is due to the minerals in the melting glaciers of the surrounding mountain - Jungfraujoch. The river flows all the way to Bern but by that time the water has turned into a murky brown – it’s clearest right there straight from the mountains, so much so that locals apparently drink the water straight from the river. After that, we walked to a sort of tiny outside zoo, where they keep Ibex (like a wild mountain goat with huge horns). The guide explained a long story about how, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, these Ibex were stolen from Italy and kept in Interlaken. At that point, a couple of the Ibex started having a big horn fight (which when their horns hit together was really loud!), and one of the group said – “You can tell they’re Italian!” ?



The next day, I decided to take the cog train up the Jungfraujoch mountain. There is a circular type train route, which goes to the ‘top of Europe’. This is a bit of a misnomer, as it isn’t really the top of Europe – it’s just the highest train station in Europe. The railway has to work on cogs because it’s so steep that the train would slip back down the tracks without them. I visited Grindlewald, Kleine Scheidegg, and Lauterbrunnen, which are nice little towns up the mountain. There are some amazing natural waterfalls to see at Lauterbrunnen too! And even with my jeans and jumper back on, it’s pretty chilly up that mountain! I had to laugh to myself at one point though seeing people walking around the towns in all of their skiing gear, masks, and those sticks to help them walk – I was still in my sandals! I couldn’t believe while looking at the towns in Switzerland, that it actually looks just like it does on an Alpen advert. You’d think the advertisers were playing on stereotypes, but they’re not! Switzerland really does have perfect little wooden chalets and rolling green hillsides!



That night, I cooked myself some dinner, and sat down outside with my bottle of wine (after finding a bottle opener in the kitchen – told you it was a good hostel!). A little while later, a woman came over to me to borrow the bottle opener. We got talking and it turned out she had just arrived after finishing a two week silent Buddhist meditation retreat. She was just having a few days in the hostel to return back to society, and to return back to drinking alcohol again! It was actually quite nice talking to her about it. She explained that the retreat wasn’t a religious thing, it was all about mindfulness and appreciation of the small things in life. She explained that she found it hard sometimes to not get wound up about day to day life, and to appreciate what she has rather than what’s going wrong, and these retreats help her focus on that. She said that it’s very cathartic and you focus on yourself entirely rather than what anyone else does or thinks of you. I asked her if she was lonely after not speaking to anyone for the whole time, but she said that she became very connected to all of the people around her, even though she hadn’t spoken to them at all. When I first arrived in Interlaken, I saw people paragliding above the town, and it looked amazing, and terrifying! I wanted to do it straight away, but after enquiring about it and realising it was quite expensive and only lasted for about 15 minutes, I had pretty much decided against it. I had even asked friends on Facebook for their views on whether it was worthwhile, and decided that at this time, it was just too dear – there’s always another time right? Well after spending the evening speaking to this woman and having a good heart to heart about life, all of its problems, and making the most of it (and finishing the bottle of wine), I’d decided ‘Fuck to the money…. I was going paragliding!!’



The next morning, I woke up, grabbed my phone and booked a paragliding session before I could even look in the mirror and doubt my decision. Best action ever!! ?



I spent the next hour shitting myself, contemplating the idea of being held up purely by a scrap of fabric, before a van came to the hostel to pick me and two fellow quivering wrecks up. The driver got out and said “So who’s ready to risk their life?!”….. nobody laughed. He drove the three of us to the pick up point for the pilots, and we all drove up a mountain to a field with magnificent views. We picked our pilot’s name out of a hat – I got Hayden, who introduced himself by saying “Aww damn, you got the beginner! That sucks for you!”… The bastard!!



Hayden lay out the glider, checked the lines, and clipped me into a harness which felt like a huge nappy. He explained that he would be attached to the back of me, and we needed to run like hell down the hill when he said go so that the wind would pick up in the glider. He said, “even when you think your feet are off the floor, keep running, coz they’ll hit back down again and we’ll fall on our faces”. We waited for a gust of wind, which never arrived, so Hayden said… “Well we’ll just give it a go and see what happens…Ready?!.... Go!!!”



I had seen some other people get airborne after running just a few feet, but I literally ran right to the bottom of the field, and felt the momentum of running down the hill start to trip my feet up, right as the sail yanked us both upwards. I swear a couple more paces running would’ve seen me land flat on my face! I, regrettably, let out a right girly squeal just as the sail yanked us up, thinking that I was about to trip and roll down an almighty steep hill into a hedge. As you might imagine, I was completely breathless from the fright never mind the running! Hayden said “Hey well done, that was a tricky one!... I wouldn’t have been able to get airborne there with most people” … *natural talent see!* ?



I was told to sit back, which is when I realised that the nappy harness actually turned into a bum seat for when you are in the air! The views were amazing!! You could see the lakes and the beautiful blue/green water, the glacier mountains ahead of you, and the town of Interlaken below with the river Aare running through it. I cannot describe how beautiful that sight was! We were literally flying over a forest, and Hayden let me take the handles and steer for a while – also terrifying! While we were in the air, there was an eagle flying right above our sail, just soaring on a thermal! We followed the eagle’s looping movements for a few minutes to get higher up by following the thermals, and thanked it before we took a different path down by the trees. Hayden steered us right to the top of the pine trees covering the mountain so that we were kicking the top of the branches with our feet, and scared the crap out of me by pretending to be running into a particularly large one! We had about ten minutes just hovering over the town looking at the amazing views, before Hayden switched on the camera and said, “So for legal reasons, Emily has consented to some aerobatics today”… before starting to swing the ropes and do crazy flips and swings, spinning us what felt like upside down and round and round! My stomach was doing flips worse than any roller coaster I have ever been on, and you could feel yourself dropping through the sky! I screamed like a big girl’s blouse!! We were lower to the ground then, and Hayden explained that you just need to stand up when you get near the ground and just run a few paces to stop. We actually hit the ground and I nearly broke my ankle thinking I needed to stomp with all my might – it’s actually quite a graceful landing!



When we were safely on the ground and out of the harness, I asked him what the worse type of flight he had done was. He explained that these types of tourist flights are really quite routine, so nothing adverse happens. He just said that the worse thing is when the person doesn’t speak any English, so they can’t tell you that they’re feeling sick! :-S



I left the landing field with the biggest grin on my face ever!! And that grin lasted ALL day! I am so glad I decided to book that trip!! ? I went away singing (to the Eurhythmics ‘Sweet Dreams’ song) – “Credit cards are made for this, who am I to disagreeee!”



Now that I’m writing this blog from home, I can tell you all that during my time in Switzerland, I had been looking for a cuckoo clock for my Sister, El. She is a bugger to buy for, and I knew that she wouldn’t want any of the usual touristy crap bring back, but that she had always wanted a cuckoo clock from Switzerland. I had already searched Geneva and Interlaken for a clock, and found many, but ones which were way out of my budget at about 500 swiss francs. I had looked for clocks while I was up the Jungfrau mountain, to no avail, and as this was my last day in Switzerland, I was determined to find something suitable. I researched where to buy clocks, and was told that they were originally made in Broniger which was a small town on Lake Brienz. So that afternoon, I caught a bus to Lake Brienz. It was the wrong bus of course, so I took another bus to Brienz itself, and then asked at tourist information how I could catch a bus to Broniger. They explained that buses didn’t come this side of the lake, and that I would need to get a train or a boat. Well any excuse to be on the water, boat it was! The boat took about an hour, and when I arrived in Broniger, I walked the entire town, only to find that there were NO sodding cuckoo clocks in the whole place! The original home of cuckoo clock carving had exactly cock all! By this time it was getting near to five pm, and my last hope was to go back to Interlaken and find something in the shops there. I hopped on a train back, power walked to the town centre and searched in the smaller shops on the outskirts of the town. There, in the last place I looked, was the exact type of clock I’d been looking for! I bought it immediately before the shop closed for the day. Knowing what you know about the weight of TP, that I still had Paris and home to travel to, and the state of my poor feet…I hope you appreciate the lengths I went to for that present, Eleanor!!



I had dinner out that night, and had another short walk around the town before heading back to the hostel for my last night. I had a shower and went to bed with an overwhelming sadness to be leaving Interlaken the next day. What a bloody beautiful amazing place!



More photos below!

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