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Sarah J's Fully Sick Travel Page
Hey Everyone!
This postcard is about a month late, but better late than never right? My pictures of Switzerland have been up for a few weeks now, so you can see what i'll be talking about.
Well, Chad and I arrived in Interlarken around 11am (after a four and a half hour train ride from Mannheim), Interlarken is about 650m above sea level and surrounded by mountains on all sides, and situated between two lakes.
First we walked to our hostel "Funny Farm" to check in, although we later discovered that there was nothing funny about the beds or bathrooms for that matter...lets just say i showered with my thongs on. But it was cheap and had a nice view, and we heard later that another hostel was just as bad...so that made me feel better.
Anyway after checking in we went for a stroll around the town and grabbed some lunch. We also went right down to where the river was...it is just the most amazing coloured water i've ever seen, so I decided to test the temperature and much to my dismay, not only was the water cold but I didn't see the stinging nettle until it was too late...so I had red, itchy welts up my arm for a while...not fun!
That night at dinner we met a waiter from England that has spent alot of time in Australia, he was very helpful and told us some cool places to go to.
So the next day, we caught the train up to Grindelwald, which is a cute alpine villiage over 1000m above sea level. The weather was perfect, the sun was shinning and there was a slight breeze in the air and there wasn't too many clouds to start with which made it good for photos.
We had a look around and stopped for lunch...this was definately a restauraunt with a view. I had a cheese platter which I thought was very appropriate considering where I was.
We then caught the train up to Kleine Scheidegg which is over 2000m above sea level, and upon exiting the train my lungs realised there wasn't much oxygen up there...it took some getting used to, by the time Chad and I had climed a further 250 metres or so (stopping to play in the snow of course) I was used to not having much oxygen. Anyway so the picture you see at the top right hand corner is me 2300m above sea level (and i'm proud to say I didn't faint or anything like alot of the Japanese tourists do :-)
This was as high as I got, we then started our hike down, we took the route to Wengen...another small alpine villiage, we didn't actually know where we were walking, we just showed some faith in the little signs on the track and hoped for the best. The trail was mostly deserted, but it was good to spend some quality time with mother nature. Sometimes you could hear the distant clinking of the bells the cows wear around their necks or hear the splashing of a waterfall, it was really beautiful and serene and peaceful.
We then managed to reach Wengen around 6pm...my feet had enough by this stage, and from Wengen caught the train down to the Lauterbrunnen valley which is the steepest in Europe...and while on the train we had a good chat to some guys from England and Finland.
We walked around Lauterbrunnen for a while, although not much was open except places to eat...and since we were both hungry after the hike it suited us fine.
We then made our way back down to Interlarken on the train, passing some beautiful waterfalls.
The next day we went on a lake cruise, it stops at various towns around the lakes and lets you hop on and hop off. We hopped off at Geissbach and met some of Chad's air force friends for lunch. The restaurant was part of a hotel that looks like it used to be a castle, and it had spectacular views of the lake on one side and a large thundering waterfall on the other. Just as we were finishing lunch a storm came over and almost blew us away...literally. But a storm wasn't going to stop us fom getting a closer look at the waterfall.
When we got back to Interlarken we got our stuff and checked out and headed back on the train to Germany.
So hopefully i'll be back in Switzerland when mum comes over to visit, because next time I want to go paragliding!
Ta ta for now
Sarah.
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