Interlaken Switzerland aka "inter LAKE in"

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DAY FIR – Friday May 11
Okay so things didn’t exactly go as planned. Actually nothing went as planned. We ordered SIM cards for our phones online but they never got to the hostel. When we called to see what happened they had been “sent” but not received so we had to pick them up which meant we were catching a later train. Long story short we ventured into some suburb in France to get them (took 3 hours) went to the train station and found out that our train was booked solid. So we ended up taking a detour which started with an overnight train to Munich.



Day Fumf – Saturday May 12

We shopped for about an hour and took 4 more trains to get to Interlaken Switzerland. This really sucked because we had to give 40 hours notice to the hostel if we were going to cancel our booking. But I’m a professional and I explained to the lady that I had tried calling to cancel earlier and nobody answered… not 100% true but we got out of paying like $50 each. It also ended up raining the entire day so even if we did make it, it would have been a waste of a day because our planned activities were all outdoor. After the longest day/night of trains we crashed hard arriving at the hostel around 11:30pm.

Day 6 – Sunday May 13

Since we had arrived in Interlaken so late the night before, it was completely dark as we rode the train and had absolutely no idea that we were completely surrounded by mountains – our only clue was the fact that our ears kept popping whilst on the train. So when we woke up in the morning, we looked out our window and got a pretty unexpected view! It was still pretty cloudy in the morning, but was supposed to clear up by the afternoon so we booked our paragliding flights. I took advantage of the crappy weather to catch up on a couple of hours of sleep after breakfast and Robin toured her first Swiss town. The currency is Swiss Francs (which is almost on par with the Canadian dollar), but the prices were absolutely ridiculous! To give you a rough idea, a Big Mac there was about $14 Canadian.. FOR JUST THE SANDWICH. We were actually aware of these ridiculous prices before we left France (thank God) and went grocery shopping in Paris before we left, and thus lived off of fruit, Nutella and tuna sandwiches, banana-apple sauce (which sounds intriguing, but wasn’t really any good haha), and some sort of chocolate special-K cereal. The hostel had a really sweet continental breakfast included though so that helped out too.

By the afternoon, most of the clouds had disappeared and the sun finally came out just in time for our paragliding flight! We got to choose our paragliding partners (I shotgunned the dangerous rollercoaster-loving one right away haha) and began our 15-min drive up the mountain, followed by another 10 min hike to our take-off spot. Because of the change in weather, the winds were really fickle and a lot of the paragliders up there were actually packing up and cancelling their flights! It definitely sketched us out that our group was still planning on flying, but a few of the instructors went first to test out the winds. The first couple hit visible turbulence from the updrafts, but after that they seemed fine and we uploaded our parachutes on a slope approx. 1400 meters above Interlaken. Robin was the first to take off, and I was third. All it took was a short run (about 10 steps) for the parachute to fill with air and lift you up. My take-off was by far the scariest because our parachute didn’t inflate fully right away, and we actually lifted off a bit, fell back down, and had to run a little further on the lowest and steepest part of the hill. But once we were in the air, honestly, no words can describe the experience… just do it if you Ever get the chance. We caught some insane updrafts and a bit of turbulence, but I honestly felt really safe with the guy I was with (Ruben). I was fortunate enough to have the craziest and longest flight of the entire group as we took off only seconds after the first couple of paragliders and was the very last to touch down. I asked Ruben about flying the paraglider and he explained how easy it was, but he would have to be able to react quickly if we ever hit an unexpected updraft (which was apparently pretty common that day). And then literally 30 seconds later, he handed me the controls! I was like “Uhmmmm…. Are you kidding haha I’m going to kill us!!”. But he assured me we’d be alright so I actually got to drive the parachute for like 5 mins (out of the 15ish min flight)! He then took the controls back and took me on the most amazing rollercoaster ride of my life, jolting back and forth and doing pinwheels that literally put us parallel to the ground! It was absolutely amazing and I got lots of pics and videos that I’ll definitely post when we get home! After we touched down it honestly took almost a solid 10 mins for me to fully recover ie. my legs to stop shaking haha. And no, it wasn’t from being scared, it was just from my legs dangling and being swung around so violently! Apparently a Lot of people actually get air sick mid-flight! Our friend from our hostel (whose from Nova Scotia) felt queezy for a while afterwards and had to go lie down until it passed haha. Robin and I were fine though and decided to take advantage of the rest of the daylight and go for a hike. We attempted to reach a restaurant at the top of one of the mountains, be we realized about halfway up that the mountain split and we were climbing the wrong one -- don’t judge lol we’re not That dumb, its just hard keeping your bearings on winding pathways through the forest up the side of a mountain when the only way you are Sure you’re going is up. After about 2 hours our stomachs told us that we needed to return back to our hostel, and we did just that and enjoyed our tuna sandwiches on our little balcony. After an exhausting day, we crashed hard.

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Photos

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view from the sky

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"i work out"