Interlaken

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Interlaken
Our next stop on Eurotrip 2010 was to a small town in Switzerland called Interlaken. It rests in a valley, surrounded by the Swiss Alps and in between two beautiful lakes. Without doubt, it would have been one of the most beautiful places we'd ever been (and that includes Queanbeyan).
We arrived quite late so it was dark as we walked the short trip to our hostel, but in the morning when we walked out, we were greeted by the snow-capped Swiss Alps all around us and some light snow falling. As you can imagine, it was quite cold, but that didnt stop us going for a walk through th Alps.
We needed to catch a train to get up in the Alps and we actually thought our free transport cards (given to us by the hostel) would be ok - we even tried to ask the driver of our train, but he couldnt speak English (and we cant speak German), so we just held the ticket out and gave him a questioning look - he just grinned at us and gave us the thumbs up. So we jumped on, a little bit worried we'd get fined if a ticket inspector came along. And what do you think happened? A ticket inspector came along. He told us our free passes didnt work, and starting to try and think of a way to get out of the upcoming fine, I told him that we'd asked the driver and he said we could get on (a little exaggerated, but oh well). He told us not to worry, there is no fine, we just had to buy a ticket from him - at no extra price - gotta love the Swiss. So we made it through that little scare no worries and managed to get up into the Alps.
We decided to go for a walk to some really nice waterfalls, which are inside a cave. On the walk there, which was about 1 hours, we decided to utilise the snow around us and make our very first snowman. It took us about half an hour, and we decorated her with sticks for arms (and another part which I wont say here) and Laura put flowers for eyes. I made her a mowhawk out of broken up little sticks to balance out the flowers. We positioned "Fran" on the corner of a small hill which was at the corner of an intersection on the road so that all the people who drove past could see her.
We continued walking to the waterfall, and unfortunately when we got there, it was actually closed as the water that feeds the waterfall was starting to freeze. Oh well the walk through the Alps was well worth it. We got back to our hostel and had some dinner and hit the sack.
The next day we had to leave quite early so we jumped on a train to Mainz (in Germany).
Mainz
Ok... the plan for Mainz was to jump on a ferry and take a cruise up the Rhine to a twon called Koblenz. The plan was flawless - we had checked the website which said that daily ferries leave at 8:45am and that a second ferry leaves at 9:45am. We decided to get up quite early in order to catch the early one before catching a train to Bruges. So we walked down to the dock (we'd checked were it was after the German feast the night before) and were somewhat disturbed when the ferry did not show up at 8:45am - in fact the enitre dock was like a ghost town, except for the occasional jogger. We walked to the tourist information center, with a sense of dread that the boats had finished due to the start of winter - sure enough the lady at the tourist office confirmed this minor detail which we had overlooked in our extensive forward planning. In our defense, there was no information on their website to say that they'd be closing down for the winter, and there was no information in their booth just near the dock (which was also deserted). I think it was just something that everyone who lives there knows, and stupid Aussie tourists dont.
Oh well... in all our planning we had decided to go up somewhere towards either Belgium or the Netherlands over the next few days, and decided we should head to Amsterdam - as we were sitting in the Hungry Jacks (free wifi - Maccas let us down on this occasion), we decided that Amsterdam was too expensive over the weekend, and decided to change course and go to Berlin for five days - w locked in the accommodation and headed off to Berlin.

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