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The bus journey from Paris to Lauterbrunnen was 10.5 hours, including rest breaks. It's still fairly early in the season so our bus only had a handful of people on it, mostly Aussies and a couple of Americans and Pommies. I'm not usually a road trip fan, I get too fidgety, but the time flew and I didn't get my iPad out once. The scenery was spectacular!
As we left Paris we ventured into flat green pastures, which became rolling hills, and toward the French-Swiss border we travelled a road saddled by emerald green pine trees and a winding creek.The hills turned into majestic mountains, there were beautiful old chateaus perched on cliff tops, and little villages tucked into valleys of lush green grass dotted with wild flowers.
We crossed the border and made a quick passenger pick up stop in Bern which has a beautiful old town section surrounded by crystal rivers..I wish I'd had time to see more.
On crossing the border, our guide shared a few interesting facts about neutral Switzerland. This is a country that has not gone to war in over 500 years, but is beyond well prepared for it. It has the most soldiers per capita in the world, with all Swiss men required to undergo 15 weeks mandatory army training at the age of 20, then 3 week refresher training every year following that until they have accumulated 1000 days training. Every home must have access to a bomb shelter so these are dotted across the countryside, there is dynamite inside many of their bridges ready to detonate if threatened, and there are military bases hidden INSIDE the mountains.
So don't mess with Switzerland, eh?
After travelling another hour or so, we reached the alps. Wow! It's beautiful Queenstown on steroids. Massive lakes of aqua green glacier water and huge snow capped alps surrounded us, an incredibly humbling sight that had me glued to the bus window, wide eyed and feeling terribly/wonderfully insignificant. Just awesome!
A little after 6:30pm, we rolled into gorgeous Lauterbrunnen, which is set in a valley on just one main road. It is like a little doll-house town with bright flower boxes lining the sidewalks and red loovered windows of the wooden chalets, restaurants, pubs and storefronts. All around us are mountains and snow capped alps. To our right, the free falling Staubbach waterfall. To our left, a pretty little church and the most beautiful, peaceful and cared for cemetery I have ever seen. We see fields full of wildflowers of every colour and cows and sheep grazing in the green green grass. The bells around their necks tinker a happy little tune, adding to our peaceful Swiss soundtrack of water rumbling over the mountains and rushing through the creeks, and the church bells chiming each hour. The air is crisp and smells of log fires. It's so serene and we are instantly relaxed after the hustle and bustle of Paris.
We checked in to our wooden cabins at Camping Jungfrau, then had a bit of a wander to buy some groceries and peer into the stores. The Swiss already have my heart simply for their chocolate - we picked up a large block of Toblerone for only 3.50 Swiss franks (the conversion is very similar). Yum! After that it was early to bed, ready for a big day of exploration.
Our first full day in Lauterbrunnen was a gorgeous one - perfect blue skies - which was lucky as we were planning to go up the mountain. You can take the train up to Jungfrau, which is the highest point in Europe, however this cost a little more than we had anticipated (130-170 franks per person) so we chose instead to go to Schilthorn for about half the price.
The journey involved 3 cable cars and a train that stopped in a couple of mountain villages, including pretty Muuren where we had a little wander around. The cable cars were crazily steep and good fun, Mark and Gem both seemed a little nervous but we made it up all 2970 meters safely to enjoy an amazing view and an okay buffet meal at the world highest revolving restaurant - Piz Gloria. They also like to spruik that a Bond movie (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) was filmed here.
That evening we cooked up a hearty meal in the shared kitchen - we have so far been managing to eat well and cheaply, vegies even! We cracked some beers and got chatting to a couple of nice Aussie boys, Lee and Toby Remember the sneaky Frenchman at the train station? Exact same happened to Toby. So be warned!). Together we hatched our own sneaky plan to infiltrate the Contiki party being held at the back of the camp grounds in a building dubbed the 'bomb shelter'.
At 22:00 we slithered in unnoticed, ordered some drinks, and after about 5 minutes Ben whispered that we were successfully deep undercover in enemy territory. However about 2 minutes later, we are being pointed at by a familiar face (hey, we gave you directions earlier man, where is the love?!) and then a bubbly Contiki staffer skips across to us and asks "hi guys, so what tour are you from?". "Top-bus-ki," declare the boys. Snicker snicker. "Busabout," say Gem and I. The boys shake their heads at us. Contiki girl smiles and says "cool, have fun!".
Deep, deep undercover.
Anyway, pretty lame party, as the Contiki kids are all in bed. Apparently the following night is the big one - the imaginatively themed "Swiss" party. We had a big one anyway, and Ben in particular suffered for it later.
The next morning we woke up a little foggy headed but also quite literally in the clouds. It was cold and raining but just as beautiful. It did away with our bike riding plans, instead we chilled out in a cafe for the morning. When it cleared a little in the afternoon, we walked 3kms to Trumellbach falls, stopping occasionally to chat with cows and their calves and look at all the wildflowers. Trumellbach consists of 10 glacier waterfalls accessible via a lift,stairways and walkways dug through the mountain. As the lone drainage falls for Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau, they carry up to 20,000L of water per second and corkscrew through the mountain - so a pretty amazing sight as we shivered through the slippery caves.
Arriving back at the campsite, we went to the onsite restaurant to sample a couple more of the Swiss claims to fame - fondue of swiss cheese and potato rosti - while watching the pride of Switzerland, my Roger (Federer), play in the French Open semis. Roger wasn't doing so well and the channel was changed, so Mark and I kicked on to the little pub up the road while Ben and Gem had an arvo nap. The bargirl kindly put the telly on for us and although Roger lost, we had a lovely chilled afternoon drinking a beer and making friends with 2 beautiful doggies that sat at our feet in the pub.
Later that evening, Mark and I went to check out the red and white themed Swiss party, and Gem popped in for a little too. It pretty much matched our expectations - a room full of young screaming girls trying a little too hard to look sexy while dancing on tabletops and just generally failing to handle their alcohol, amped up guys salivating all over them anyway, someone dressed up as a dairy cow, a guy walking around in a g-string that looked like a mouse etc etc. It looked a bit entertaining anyway and we spotted Lee and Toby, so we grabbed a beer and sat against the wall with them to chat and observe.
Mark and I only had enough change for a beer each so it was never going to be a big night and maybe I just wasn't in the mood...but the appeal died completely somewhere in between the whole room screaming to One Direction and then witnessing two guys guffawing as they wedgied another guy until his pants were up over his head and ripped (not a happy chappy, and I don't blame him). Poor fella left in a hurry, and we weren't far behind him.
Our bus left at 8am the next morning, goodbye beautiful Lauterbrunnen. If we ever make it back I definitely want to try the white water rafting. It's also a popular area for skydiving and base jumping...err maybe next time (no friggen way), and obviously also for climbing/hiking. 3 nights were enough but you could definitely fill more time here quite happily.
We hopped off Busabout at Lucerne and then successfully managed to transfer across 3 trains to reach Venice at 8:15pm. It was a long day, and when I say successfully I am excluding the incident where I nearly left our connecting train tickets on a counter (thank god for good samaritans), and the booking fail which saw us do a massive loop up to Bern and down through a little town just a stones throw from Lauterbrunnen - basically making our trip 3 to 4 hours longer than it needed to be. Point is, we made it to Venice. Successfully.
Wonderful, wonderful Venice!! We arrived last night (here for four nights) and love it already! We are in a gorgeous little hostel close to the Rialto bridge and markets with a canal running under our window, a jazz bar opposite, and a balcony overlooking all the rooftops. So much exploring to do and alleyways to get lost in! I'd better get to it :-)
The Swiss speak a mix of French and German..so, Au Revoir, and..
So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight! (I do hope you sang that!)
Liss xox
- comments
Julie Cooper Sounds like your having a ball been watching it on Hamish and Andy Euro Adventure on go ch 129. Love the pics aamazing.