switzerland

From Kili, I flew to Zurich to meet one of my friends from college, john, in Switzerland.  John was in Europe for a wedding, and I had time before my internship started, so we picked the one country in Europe neither of us had been to – Switzerland.  I had not done a ton of planning for this portion of the trip since I was kinda going on the fly for the rest of my trip and planning week 5 of my adventure seemed a little overwhelming.  

We met in interlakken as we both had the objective of doing adventure sports while we were in Switzerland.  First, we went bungee jumping – I am pretty sure the guy had to push me off the ledge.  I was the first one to go in the group and so I had to stand on the end of the plank waiting for them to finish setting everything up – I had too much time to think about it and looked down one too many times and was starting to psych myself out.  I was thinking who in their right mind would jump into a canyon with water flowing at the bottom not seeing if the rope actually worked (at least everyone behind me got to see that it worked on me!).  the first few seconds were horrifying during the free fall but by the time you came to peace with the free fall portion, the rope caught and you knew you would be safe.  Since the canyon was taller than it was wide, we could not jump the whole length because if there was any wind you could hit the side and die.  So after we were part way down they lowered us the remaining distance to a guy who was standing on a platform at the bottom who unhooked us and put us on solid ground.  

During our time in interlakken (two days in total) we also did canyoning (which is essentially going down water from the mountains  by jumping, floating, and other maneuvers.  The water was freezing but the wet suits definitely helped a good amount.  The bungee and canyoning we originally signed up for were closed because of weather (still had snow! And frozen over water) so we did the alternatives which were not as extreme.  We also went paragliding – which gave an awesome view of the city of interlakken and the surrounding mountains.  We had fondue one night – which was delicious, but then again who can go wrong with cheese.

Given that the weather started to get pretty rainy, we decided our next location based on where the weather would be nice – so we went to lugano, a swiss city near the border of Italy.  Unlike interlakken where the primarly language was german, the primary language in lugano was Italian.  Lugano is a cute lake front town with surrounding mountains.  The train ride there was beautiful through the mountains and the very green and snowy country side (sounds odd I know, but different parts looked different).  In lugano, we walked around the town, took a boat ride in the middle of one of those foot paddle boats (like you are riding a bike) – which was nice until the steering wheel broke off and we were stuck going in circles.  After a failure to fix the boat in the middle of the lake, we finally flagged down little kids on a motorized boat and they went to get us help – thank god.  

They didn’t speak English but I think our hand gestures of broken boat were enough of a clue to them that something was wrong and we needed help.  In lugano, we also took a cable car (which they called something different and I don’t remember anymore) up to the top of one of the hills/mountains so we could walk around at the top – seemed like a popular activity there and provided some amazing views of the countryside.  Saturday afternoon we headed back to Zurich as our flights were out of zurich the next morning.  We had another great meal at some restaurant by the hotel.

The airport experience on the way back was unique.  They claimed they couldn’t find my ticket so I had to buy a new one on the spot – thank you again United/US Airways/Lufthansa.  Great way to finish off an otherwise wonderful 5 week vacation.