Hello Interlaken

April 12, 2010

We slept in until 10:45 this morning and took our times getting ready, packing and just hanging out with Roman. Our train to Interlaken wasn't until 2pm so it was a really nice and relaxed morning. Switzerland is the first country we are moving around a lot in. We only stayed a couple nights in Bern, now we are headed to Interlaken for a couple nights and then our last couple of nights will be in Lucerne. It'll be nice to see different parts of the country but I'm sad we couldn't spend more time with Roman and his friend.

Roman was nice enough to walk us to the station and waited until our train came - love him! Everything came on time, trains are great like that, we took one last picture with Roman and now we are currently on the most scenic train ride ever on our way to Interlaken. The mountains and lakes are gorgeous here

We got to Interlaken and our new host Simon picked us up from the train station around 3 and we walked about 10 minutes back to his place. Interlaken is a very small, mostly tourist town. You can walk the whole thing from end to end in about 30 minutes. Simon is in the tourist industry and know just about everyone around here. He was also a great resource for knowing what to do in the area. Ideally we wanted to go Canyoning and then to the top of Jungfrau which is the highest mountain in Switzerland. Once we got here we found out canyoning doesn't start until May 1st and the top of Jungfrau is really expensive to get up to so you only want to go on a perfectly clear day. More to come on that...

Simon was super welcoming. He is from Australia and was exactly how I pictured Australians to be: really laid back. His favorite phrase is "Fuck it." All in all I think he's hilarious and love his way of looking at the world; he makes me want to move to Australia even more. If most Australians are like him, I'm sold. We weren't at his place for more than 20 minutes before he was already telling us about a hike we should go on. Within another 10 we were on our way up to Heimwehfluh. It was only a half hourish hike and when we got to the top we discovered a playground. It was obviously for kids, but there was hardly anyone there so Hilary and I decided to call upon our inner child. We ran in the giant gerbil wheel, played on the merry-go-round, rocked the teeter-totter, swung on the mini zip line and screamed our way down the very long slide. So much fun! Once we got our fill of childish behavior we found a tower to climb and on top were breathtaking views. Interlaken has already lived up to its reputation.

By the time we got back it was dinnertime. We headed to a local Thai place that was "delicious and cheap" by Simon's definition. Delicious, yes. Cheap, no. Well, maybe it was cheap to Simon but to us it was our most expensive meal here coming to a little over $20 each. Switzerland is a really expensive country and this was a major taste of that. I'm not complaining to much since we have hardly spent any other money in Switzerland than goodness; and Simon is a great conversationalist. The stories he has are hilarious, he's lived a very engaging life. He actually knew Hugh Jackman at University and met up with him at one point in London. Awesome.