Interlaken Day 1

Hey everyone! We got an early start this morning catching a 7:21am train to Interlaken. It a little less than a four hour train ride with only one change in Basel, Germany. We got into town and walked about 15 minutes to our hostel, Balmers. We’ve heard great things about Balmers and I’ve got to say it might be the best hostel we’ve stayed at in Europe. It’s pretty large in size with a game room, and several lounging rooms. I also think the beds are pretty comfortable, which have been hit or miss at the hostels we’ve stayed at. After storing our luggage till our room was ready, about ten of us headed out into the main part of town for lunch. Interlaken is a fairly small city (has one main road connecting train stations) situated between two gorgeous lakes. We quickly found out that Switzerland is very, very expensive. The cheapest food we found on the street was about 17 Francs (about $19). Today, each of us had different activities that we signed up for. Some people went bungee jumping, some went whitewater rafting, and some of us went bike riding. I went bike riding since I had already been whitewater rafting in West Virginia (which is known for world-class rafting). A group of about 8 of us rented bikes and rode through the scenic town. It was a really pretty day, although slightly overcast with the clouds low hiding the peaks of the mountains around us. It was cool to get to see both of the lakes which have amazing blue water. It’s a kind of turquoise blue and looks really, really cool. But we spent about 3 hours on the bikes and came back to get dinner at a local Irish Pub. I did a little better at dinner only spending 17 Francs (I spent 26 at lunch). Tonight, we just hung out at Balmers. I played some ping-pong with Michael which was really fun; we are both about the same skill level and our games got pretty competitive. This weekend is a little different in that it’s more of an outdoorsy town with no sites to see, but plenty of activities to do. They have canyoning (which I’m doing tomorrow), bungee jumping, sky diving, canyon swinging, etc. I’m only doing canyoning because the activities are expensive, but it should be a great rest of the week. Switzerland might have the most beautiful scenery of the countries I’ve visited. Looking around at the Swiss Alps has been amazing. I’ll update everyone tomorrow about our canyoning adventures. We are doing the hardest/most technical canyon recommended for the “athletic and confident” so that should be interesting. Looking forward to it!

Jonathan