When we woke up in the wee hours of the morning, Chad and I walked Ashton to the train station and said our goodbyes. We then packed up back at Matthias' and left him a thank you note! He was a great host; it was definitely a good choice to do couch surfing...we saved a bunch of money and lucked out having our own room to use! Chad and I then headed to the main train station, where we swore there was a McDonald's but couldn't find it, so we settled with Burger King, which wasn't too bad. Chad still needed a Germany flag and I needed a mug for my dad, so we waited for a souvenir shop to open and got our things and then got a buttered pretzel for a snack later (it was delicious by the way).

Once we were on our train, we had to switch at the next station; it was a tad bit stressful. We sat by these two older men that didn't speak English and it was hard to understand what the announcer was saying so we got off at what we thought was our correct stop. Turns out we got off too early! We asked a guy who worked at the train station who was very frazzled when we asked him where to go. He told us to run and grab another train, so we did, and it turned out to be more of a city tram than a train. We got off the tram at what seemed to be a somewhat bigger station to figure out our whereabouts. When we went to the information desk, of course the guy spoke very little English, so we just showed him our ticket and where we needed to go so he printed out the itinerary for us. We stocked up on some Dr. Pepper and donuts while waiting for the next tram and wondered what city we were in...no idea still. We rode past these little neighborhoods of tiny huts with yards - still no idea what they are...they looked too small to live in, but we saw people looking like they lived there, it was weird. We had something like 7 minutes to catch the next train at a bigger station so we ran to the train and sat down in some random seats. We thought we had one more train to transfer to but we ended up being on the right train that would take us all the way to Interlaken, as well as the random seats we sat in being diagonal from our reserved seats. Too weird. I've decided I like train rides much better than flying. They are more scenic, tend to seem to go by quickly, more spacious, and easier to get on and off. I wish we had a train system like this in America! The train ride into Interlaken
was gorgeous; we rode into the Alps and along the prettiest lake I have ever seen. Once we got in to Interlaken, we began the long trek to our hostel...we thought about taking the bus but had no idea where the buses were going and our hostel hadn't given us any directions on using the bus. It was quite the trek all the way there. Found out at the hostel that they give you a free pass for the bus, pretty sweet deal! And we get free breakfast, which we weren't expecting. The hostel set-up is pretty awesome. There's atleast 3 different lounge areas with couches and TV's; a Beergarten outside with a bar as well; a full-fledged kitchen where you can use a stove, oven, microwave, and even store your food in the fridge or shelves; two different dining areas; a laundry room; a free computer anyone can use; wifi everywhere; and even a club called the Metro. The downfall is the sleeping situation though...we are in rooms with bunk beds that have two single mattresses on each level, and your neighbor is a stranger. Awkward. Besides that though, this hostel is my favorite. Since Balmers (the hostel) serves dinner and we were starving, we decided to just eat there. They had burgers for a reasonable price and we got a free beer coupon when we checked in; the burgers were pretty good and we got the local beer that was good too. Right when we got out to the Beergarten, we spotted an Aggie ring, and were going to talk to them post dinner, but sadly they disappeared. We were planning on doing our extreme sports the next day so we went next door to Outdoor Interlaken and booked our canyoning trip! Then we did a lot of laundry and showered and Skyped Lala and Leslye. I called the Hangliding Interlaken company and booked us for tomorrow morning at 8am! Eeekkk! The guy specifically told me to not get drunk tonight and miss it...so we went to bed soon after. My neighbor showed up soon enough, and made a huge commotion. We had like 4 Asians in our room that came in and turned on the light while we were all sleeping and left it on for 30 minutes and were SO noisy. Annoying. Eventually they shut up and we passed out.