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Balmers
Our Swiss Hostel On Wednesday night I was at a bar with all of my roommates and the girls in our building. The bar was pretty dead, but we were with a pretty big group so it didn’t really matter, it was fun anyway. Everyone was singing karaoke and dancing around. I was near the stage and I looked to my right to see someone from Uconn who was not on the abroad trip with us. She had just graduated and was backpacking through Europe and just so happened to be in the same bar as all of us. I had never been really close to her at UConn, but we had a couple mutual friends and were always friendly. When we saw each other neither one of us said a word and both of our eyes filled up with tears. It was the weirdest thing ever, being so far away from home but running into a familiar face. We ended up meeting up the next day and me and one of my roommates Jenna walked her and her friend around the city and got lunch. I couldn’t spend the whole day with them because I had to go back to my apartment to
Interlaken
Walking around Interlaken for the first time pack.
This weekend would mark our first trip out of the country. Before coming to Florence I knew that I wanted to do a couple of trips outside of Italy, and Kristen who was here last semester suggested Interlaken, Switzerland. Originally I was unsure if I was going to book the trip because of the time of year, but I decided to anyway. I have never been so happy to have taken a chance before in my life. Being in Switzerland for the weekend may have been one of the most amazing experiences in my life.
We started off in Florence on Thursday night at the train station waiting for our bus. We booked the trip through a company that caters to student travelers. They set up all of the transportation for your group as well as accommodations for once you arrive to your destination. We had been waiting at the train station for the bus for about an hour before we were finally picked up (the bus had a flat tire before it got us). Finally we were on our way to Switzerland. I was exhausted from going out the night before so I passed out as soon
Hinder Kulm
From the top of Hinder Kulm we could see the entire town of Interlaken as I got on the bus and slept for a huge part of the beginning of the ride. When I woke up I expected to be almost there (the ride is only supposed to take about 6 to 7 hours), but found out that our bus was having problems. I still don’t know what was wrong with our bus, but the ride ended up taking 11 hours. As we got off the highway the sun was rising and we were able to see all of the Alps that were surrounding us. The sight of this was incredible and unlike anything I have ever seen before. There mountains were enormous, and the tips were still covered in snow. All of the surrounding land was green and gorgeous.
After the longest bus ride of my life, we finally arrived to our hostel around 6 am. We quickly got to our rooms and decided to take a quick power nap because we didn’t want to waste the day sleeping. We slept until 9, got up and ate breakfast and then started to plan out our stay in Switzerland. Interlaken is a huge sporting place, there are companies that offer every type of outdoor
Hiking
We hiked down about 1350 m, it was absolutely gorgeous activities to tourists and local people as well. I decided to sign up for white water rafting as well as canyoning. White water rafting was Friday at 4 and canyoning was all day on Saturday.
By the time we figured all of our plans out it was about 11, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time before I needed to be back to go white water rafting. Me and two of the girls on the trip decided to go for a hike while we waited. We took at train to the top of Harder Kulm and then hiked down the mountain. From the top the view in breath taking, you are literally able to see the entire town of Interlaken as well as the snow covered mountains which act as a backdrop for the town. We walked around at the top for a little and then began our 1350 meter descend down the mountain. When I reached the bottom I couldn’t believe that I had just been to the top, it seemed unimaginable that we hiked that far down.
When we got back from our hike it was almost time to go rafting, we changed and
Snowy Mountains
It was incredible, while hiking down our trail we would look across and see mountians covered in snow then headed to the rafting base. There were 7 people from our group that did rafting so we were all able to go in one boat with an instructor. Our instructors name was Gezza and he was an insane guy from New Zealand. He kept us entertained the entire time with rude and obnoxious jokes that were really funny. We rafted down the Simme River which was beautiful. Rafting was really fun and the river was gorgeous.
By the time we got back from rafting we were all exhausted. We had a full day of activities and were working on hardly any sleep from the night before. We all went to bed pretty early because we had planned to go canyoning all day on Saturday. We woke up Saturday morning and went back to the base for to meet up for canyoning. None of us really knew was to expect, but we heard from multiple people that this was their favorite activity in Interlaken. We headed out to the canyon which took about an hour to get to, when we got there we suited up in our gear and had to hike 15 minutes into the base of the
canyon which would host the day’s activities. When finally getting to the canyon we started to realize was the day would entail. We were basically in the middle of a canyon with over 90ft of rock wall on each side of us. We were making our way through the canyon and to do that we had to repel, jump off cliffs into water and slide down rocks that were carved out from the water to create natural water slides. I could not wait to do all of this and wasn’t really scared at all. The only time that things got intense was before one jump when our instructors told us that we had to land in a certain part of the water because there was a really sharp rock on the other side of the pool and if we hit it we would get really hurt. The entire adventure took about 4 hours and it was incredible. Not only was the actual jumping, sliding and repelling awesome, but the canyon that we were in was breath taking. The highest jump into the water that we did was about 30 ft and the farthest repel was about 60 ft down. At
Delicious Water
The water was so good everywhere in Switzerland, it ran off the mountains and you could just drink it one point we repelled down a rock wall and then into the inside of a waterfall, it was absolutely beautiful. At the end of the day I was so exhausted and my entire body ached, but it was so worth it.
After canyoning we went back to our Hostel and relaxed. Our hostel was awesome, everyone there was around our age and either studying abroad or backpacking through Europe. Everyone was really friendly and eager to speak of their adventures in traveling. Our hostel was also the place to be in Interlaken at night. We had a club in the basement and two bars, it was really fun and convenient to be able to go out but not leave where we were staying.
The next day we had to leave Interlaken which was so sad. I really, really loved it there. Everyone was so nice and real, the town itself was breathtaking. The way people live there is awesome, everyone loves what they do and are so content doing it. The crime rate is non existent and no one is homeless. There are no slums or bad parts of Interlaken, it is all equally beautiful.
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Donna
non-member comment
Jumping
Dan, Please be careful. I almost @#$% when I saw the jump in the canyon!! See you in three weeks, D.