Switzerland

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It was our first free weekend to travel anywhere in Europe we wanted. So six of us girls packed our bags and headed off to Switzerland. It was perhaps the best first trip one could ever take because it taught us so many truths about backpacking through Europe. The most important being that the only thing you can really count on is things never going as planned.

Gaming, Austria (where I live) is like no other place in the world. Basically, since the town is so small and there aren’t accessible means of public transportation, hitchhiking is an acceptable thing to do. It’s fast, effective and saves us from having to walk 45 minutes to the train station with our monstrous backpacks on our backs. Four of the six of us hitchhiked down to the train station where we waited for Kristina and Hanna…who really wanted to walk … some things I’ll never understand, lol.

Thus far things were pretty uneventful. We took the train from Gaming for an hour to our first stop in Pochlarn, where we were going to get our Eurail passes activated. Then things got a little rocky. The ticket office in Pochlarn closed at 4 p.m. and we were there at 6 p.m. ... so that presented a problem. Without having our Eurail passes activated we couldn’t travel any where because that’s our ticket across Europe. We happened to run into our RD at the train station and she told us to go to another, larger station to see if their ticket office was opened. We had about an hour until our next train departed so we figured we could make it and off we went.

We did make it and to our relief the ticket office was open so we were able to get our passes activated. Once all six of us had made it through the line we realized we had only 5 minutes left to find the platform where our train would be. The six of us, backpacks and all, broke out into a dead sprint across the train station. As it turned out our platform was right around the corner and took us all of 30 seconds to get there. We did feel kind of stupid showing up at our platform completely winded with 4 minutes to spare, but we had a good laugh anyways.

With all this extra time on our hands we were able to eat our dinner…zimmels with nutella. Zimmels are these fun little Austrian rolls and nutella is probably about the biggest thing in Europe. It is a hazelnut, chocolate spread which the girls here eat by the spoonfuls. There was a time when I thought this was a really good meal but after eating nothing but zimmels and nutella for days and days I must say the thought of it is quite repulsive.

We made it to our next stop where we had enough time to get a real meal of pizza. Then we went back to the train station where I witnessed perhaps one of the funniest things of my entire life.

I was standing around with some of my household brothers and a couple random people we met up with at the station when I looked up and saw this woman body slamming a vending machine. Apparently the machine didn’t give her her candy so, instead of kicking or hitting it like we do in America, she was slamming her entire body against it. And this wasn’t just a little shove; this woman would get a running start and then throw her body at the machine. It was insane. Needless to say, we all found it hilarious and when she was done attacking the machine she befriended some of the people in our group, but I never found out if she got her candy.

Finally by about 10 p.m. we had made it on our overnight train and we were able to go to sleep. This is where we learned another very important lesson: European trains are FREEZING! My Columbia jacket saved my life because I was able to take out the liner and cover up my legs and then I covered my upper half with the outer part of it and put my face in the hood. It was a little hard to breathe, but I was warm. Poor Coreen had on two sweatshirts and scarves wrapped all the way around her head…it was sad…but really funny.

We had been there for about an hour when the other four girls in our group came over to Coreen and me and said they were going to go find another place to sit because we were sitting in a smoking section. Being buried under mountains of clothing, Coreen and I hadn’t realized so we told them we were just going to hang out there.

Well finally we reached a point where we couldn’t stand being in the artic any longer so we set out to find the rest of our group. And of course we found them in a very well heated car so we promptly joined them and fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning I saw a conductor talking to Coreen and Kristina. “Oh, you mean five minutes?” Coreen asked the conductor. He shook his head and stared at her. I had no idea what was going on so I just waited to be told.

As it turned out the conductor was telling them that there was going to be a five-hour detour because of flooding in Zurich. Coreen thought that since the conductor spoke broken English that he meant to say 5 minutes, but no…he meant five hours!

This is always a fun feeling: finding out, after having been on a train for 8 straight hours that you still have an unexpected 5 to go. But we all handled it well. Midterms would be starting as soon as we got back so some of us took the time to study (I personally attempted but ended up falling asleep) and Hanna and Kristina were able to get their daily workout in by doing sit-ups on the floor!

The conductor came back and we found out that if we got off sooner than we had planned, we would be able to catch a connecting train that would get us to Interlaken within 3 hours instead of 5. This was good news so we seized the opportunity to save ourselves 2 hours and got off the train.

We had a little bit of time when we got off the train and since nutella and zimmels were no longer cutting it for us, we went in search of food. We found a little place called Neal’s hamburgers which was basically just like Wendy’s so we stopped to eat.

Switzerland isn’t on the euro and none of us had time to convert any money. We told the lady at the counter about our problem and she said she would accept euros but would have to give us change back in the Swiss franc. We said ok and bought our food. Turns out this was the biggest rip off of my life. After we figured out the conversion and all of that we realized we just paid 15 euros for a double cheeseburger value meal. This would be the equivalent of a $20 value meal at Wendy’s. Thus, we learned another lesson…unexpected costs, although annoying as all-get-out, are inevitable.

Finally, after learning so many valuable lessons we made it to Interlaken and headed up to Lauterbrunnen where we were going to stay. We were all expecting the place where we were staying to be a hotel of sorts, but it was definitely a tiny little cabin. This was exciting to say that we were camping in a cabin in the Swiss Alps…I mean, you really can’t say that everyday.

We hung out in Lauterbrunnen that evening and looked around in the little shops. After shopping for a bit we went to get some dinner. In Europe you find that you can’t eat whenever you want or need to, this is not a place of convenience. Restaurants close early and often at completely random hours. So we found a place with a menu we liked and went in only to find out that the kitchen wouldn’t be open for another hour. Figuring that most places in the town would probably be the same way we decided to sit down and have a coffee while we waited.

The hour passed and we were finally able to eat a real meal. We all found this quite exciting. While in the middle of dinner we heard some bells and looked out the window in time to see a flock of sheep going down the road with the shepherd behind them. Only in Switzerland!

We wandered around Lauterbrunnen that night and went hiking up some local roads. We sat on a bridge for a while and stared up at the night sky and the gorgeous Swiss Alps. Switzerland is beautiful!

The next day Hanna, Tina and Kristina went paragliding. To me this sounded really exciting and a once in a life-time opportunity to go paragliding in the Swiss Alps. But at the same time I just couldn’t justify spending 100 euros to jump off a cliff, so I watched from below : (

After the paragliding experience all six of us went up one of the mountains and had a picnic of baguettes, meat and cheese. It was really exciting because we had to go to three separate little shops that specialized in each particular product to get our food…we felt very European.

After our little picnic we hiked a ways up the mountain until we found a cute, little town. By the time we reached the town it was starting to rain so we stopped at this fun, hopping restaurant and had a snack then took the train back down the mountain.

When we made it to the bottom of the mountain is was time to pack up and get ready to leave. So we gathered our stuff and headed back down to Interlaken to catch our train. We had about an hour and a half before our train was going to arrive so we split up. Tina, Hanna, and Kristina went to get their paragliding pictures developed and Katie, Coreen and I did some shopping and had coffee.

We went in one shop to look at Swiss Army knives and Coreen and I bought one. I paid with my debit card and after the cashier handed me my bag I was going to take it out and look at it. All the Swiss Army knives were locked in a case so I wanted to double check that I had the right one. As I started to walk out of the store I tried to take the knife out of its little box. Then the cashier walked over to me and said “Be careful, Miss. Lennon.” I smiled at him, continued to take out the knife and head toward the door. Then he said seriously, “People laugh and then they cut themselves.” All righty then, I thought to myself, as I put the knife back into my bag without looking at it and picked up my pace to the door…and I still haven’t taken it out of the box.

We made it back to Gaming with little to no problems. Except that they weren’t going to let us on our night train because we didn’t have reservations. Which would have been quite a problem because the next train out wouldn’t have been until the morning and that would have put us back in Gaming really late Sunday night, but also, sleeping in train stations isn’t fun. Finally, they decided to let us on and we paid 10 euros for reservations and thus we learned our last lesson. Reservations will eat up A LOT of your money…but you won’t get anywhere without them.

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Photos

Coreen on the slide on the playground on the train
Our last train, before we reached Interlaken, had a playground on it. It was really exciting!