I spent last weekend in Interlaken, Switzerland...potentially one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited! We left Paris really early Friday morning, I had to take a cab because the metro wasn't even open yet, that is how early it was! Our first train took us into Basel on the Swiss side of the France/Switzerland border, from there we took a local train right into Interlaken. Interlaken is this great little (really little) valley city, they are surrounded on all sides by the Swiss Alpes. We stayed at the Balmer's Herberage, it is the most famous hostel in Switzerland for sure and possible Europe. Margaret, Laura, and I called it the Balmer's campus. They have a restaurant, a game room, a store, a bar, an outdoor courtyard, tons of rooms, oh and a "relaxation room" full of hammocks! We stayed in the new guesthouse which was so nice. Since it took us about 5 hours by train to get there we were pretty exhausted, so Friday we had some lunch, walked around a bit, took a nap, then went out for the evening. Our friend Sara met up with us that later that night, her train left Paris after us.
We woke up Saturday and decided to go to the Christmas market in town. There were about 200 stalls selling almost anything you would need for Christmas. There was hot chocolate and hot wine galore! Laura bought a really pretty hand blown glass snowflake and I bought homemade caramels for us all to share. Sadly, it rained all day Saturday so that was a big bummer! But, when it rains in the valley it is either beautiful in the mountains or there is snow. Saturday night we went night sledding, so we left the rainy valley and drove up into the mountains for sledding. During the drive we had to stop and put chains on the vans so they would be able to make it up the mountain! Once we got to the base we had to take a gondola up higher into the Alpes, this was just beautiful because you could see the little village of Interlaken with all of the lights in the valley. Once we reached the top the guides gave us glow sticks to put behind us so that other sledders could see. The full sled run took about an hour, there were no lights along the trail so we just relied on each other, there were also no fences so that was a little scary! But it was incredible to sled down the Alpes, and especially at night. When we reached the bottom the company we went sledding with brought us to a traditional Swiss fondue dinner. By the time we had got back into Interlaken we were pretty exhausted, so we ended up staying in that night and talking.
On Sunday we took a train up into the mountains to visit a small mountain town, Grindewald, the people that lived in this town walked out of their houses, put on their skis, and skied down to the chair lift! We had a great lunch, took some pictures, and headed back to Interlaken to go to the chocolate show. The chocolate show was a short demonstration in a nice restaurant downtown Interlaken. By the end we were all sick of chocolate as there were chocolate samples everywhere! On our way back we stopped at Outdoor Interlaken for Sara and Laura to check prices for paragliding. I never was planning on doing it, but when the guy started telling the girls about it, I knew I had to! Sunday we went to the bar at Balmer's, we had a ton of fun dancing to the hilarious 80s music with the 40 year old DJ.
Monday morning we were up early to check out, Laura left at 10am for her jump, mine was at 11:45am. They drove us up the mountain and while we were in the van we had to pick our tandem partner. All of the guys were introducing themselves, they started teasing one guide (Coosie) asking how long he had been doing this. As soon as he said that he had in over 12,000 jumps, my hand shot up...I wanted to make sure he would be my tandem partner! I started getting nervous when we finally reached the top and I saw what I was about to do, Coosie and I went over all the safety rules and how it was going to work, then all of a sudden I was strapped in and we were ready to go. I literally, no joke, ran off a mountain. One second we were running and the next we were up in the air over all the mountains! There are not words for the feeling of being in the air, especially in such a beautiful place as Interlaken. We soared over the mountains, finally landing about 15 minutes after we took off in a field near the train station. I took all of the gear off, thanked Coosie and took off running for the train station! I missed the first train out of Interlaken to Basel, but luckly there was another one 20 minutes later. Once I arrived in Basel I met up with Laura and Margaret and we headed back into Paris.
Interlaken was a great trip to end on, it is so weird to me that I will be going home in just 8 days! The time has gone by so fast! Although, I am lucky I get to come back here, but I will really miss Margaret and Laura, I don't know who I will be traveling with next semester! Can't wait to see everyone soon! Love from Paris...
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