interlaken holiday...

what a great weekend!

i had friday off and i wasn't planning on leaving until later in the afternoon and i was glad i left at noon...i arrived in interlaken at around 2 and wandered over to the hostel.

this hostel was awesome. electronic locks on the doors much like a hotel..six beds per room with keyed lockers in each room that were color coded with the key! i got purple. very appropriate.

i made my bed and put my things away and just wandered around interlaken enjoying the mountains and old churches.

can we say tourist hell though? good LORD. there's a hooters in interlaken....i could see there being a mickey d's and a starbucks but a hooters? fucking america. either way, i had a good chuckle at that and after a couple hours of walking around i found myself back near the hostel and sat on a bench just enjoying the weather and the scenery...

this fellow came and sat down next to me. his name was sydney. he was from tanzania. he was very friendly and he said 'i am from africa and i came here to share my food with you'. you know that i teach children to not accept things from strangers so i wasn't quite sure what i should do....he didn't seem like a threat so i ate a piece of bread, a chunk of cheese, some banana and orange.

sydney and i talked about god. oh yeah. so he asked if i was religious/believed in god and i told him not really and my whole thing about nature being cool and how i think religion is just a swindle and so forth. he agreed but said he still believed in god, the creator.

then it got interesting. he started to talk to me about the illuminati and how all the popes are evil and how money will be obliterated and only those with the mark of the devil will be able to get goods and food....i mentioned my fascination with the new world order, bar codes, one currency, global domination and other far fetched ideas. he freaked OUT that i knew what the "amero" was...he also enjoyed me telling him about RFID chips....he did say that i was still going to hell because i didn't believe in god. whatever dude.

so we walked to this river which was cool and then parted ways after i got a really shitty take out dinner...at that point i was starving and even though i brought food with me in my luggage to the hostel i though i would enjoy a mexican meal. i should know that if i couldn't find black beans in basel that the mexican food wasn't going to be that great....and it wasn't.

such is life.

i had some coffee at the hostel and wanted to get started early on saturday so went up to my room to change and so forth.

i should note that upon first seeing the actual alps so close was breathtaking. i have been to the rockies, northern california, canada, northern NY state, vermont....but this was just different.

i was in my room and there was a girl lying down on one of the beds so i was very quiet and went to pee and brush the old teeth but when i came back she was up and said 'i noticed that you are wearing hiking boots' and that was the beginning of a nice new friendship with susan from canada....she lives in germany right now...either way we chatted for a good hour and decided to travel the next morning to lauterbrunnen.

she wanted to mostly hike and i did too....however in lauterbrunnen we parted ways because i kind of wanted to go to the top of a mountain and she wanted to hike all day long. we opted to meet in mürren at lunch time and i did see here there but she was not alone and i did call her name but she was very far away and while i went to find her i had no idea where she went!

so i took the cable car and train to mürren from lauterbrunnen. once in mürren i took cable cars to brig and to schilthorn. so amazing. there were so many people there to ski and snowboard i felt almost out of place without goggles!

it was incredible. i was very thankful to have my 1/2 price swiss fare card because the trip without it would have cost close to 150 francs....phew!

i have not seen anything so amazing...maybe the grand canyon does it for the sheer magnitude of beauty....or arches national park in utah....and i haven't been to alaska yet so that's probably pretty sweet too...either way i was just in awe. it was fucking freezing on top of schilthorn....the only thing i forgot were my gloves...but i had pockets.

there was a scientist up there measuring wind and he and his girlfriend were very cool...

james bond was a central theme to the restaurant and observatory up there as the film 'on her majesty's secret service' was filmed there. there were hilarious pictures of him all over the place and of course souvenirs of the 007....this is where i found my tiny alphorn. i got one for susan because we were talking about ricola and horns....

there wasn't much to do there besides ski, freeze on the observation deck or eat overpriced food.....i could have stared at those mountains forever though....it would be cool to go back and watch the sun set from up there.

i will also go ski there....the hill is incredible....just take the cable cars up and that's that. ski back down....there are no 'bunny' hills for beginners....the drop offs look psychotic and i could see that the snowboarders were getting the most bang for their buck doing crazy shit!

from there i went back down to brig and hung out there and got a coffee and just stared at mountains.

after brig i went back down to mürren. after i saw that susan was not alone i hiked down the mountain. it was a little over 1000 meters back down. it was the most fun i have had in a while. i was all alone and it was so quiet and peaceful....some of the trail was super snowy but the most snowy parts were towards the end where the sun had a harder time getting through due to the trees....

it was amazing. i got a nice sunburn...but i got this sunburn in the alps!

about an hour before reaching lauterbrunned i ran into these two spanish dudes who didn't really pack for snow nor were they wearing appropriate shoes so they didn't hike much and they followed me back down the mountain.

i kept smiling and saying 'wow, i am hiking down a mountain in the alps!'

got to lauterbrunnen and took the train back to interlaken. these very annoying american women sat with me and they went to jungfrau and i asked them how the visibility was knowing full well that it sucked because smarty pants meesh checked all the live feed cameras before ascending....they did not and said that it was awful. the trip to jungfrau is about 100 or so francs more than schilthorn too.....

i had to pee so badly on the walk back to the hostel that i didn't see susan sitting there waiting for me!

got some coffee after peeing and we took nice long hot showers and went to have our swiss fondue! a first for us both, though i did say i had a fondue going away party....

we had so much fun. she's hilarious and we laughed and laughed pretty much all night...after dinner we walked the fondue off and took hilarious photos of each other and talked about a new perfume....mostly cause these ladies walked in the restaurant while we were leaving and i offhandedly said 'hey hookers' just cause i do that sometimes.

she asked me to explain and then i said okay maybe they are not really hookers but on the inside they could be hookers. so we came up with a perfume that would bring out one's inner hooker.

it was a blast.

had some delicious hot chocolate when we got back to the hostel and woke up today and went to grindelwald with ed this american fellow i met on friday night.

they took off hiking and i wandered around a bit and then got my suitcase from the hostel and went and got some lunch and caught the 1236 train back to basel.

all this is only two hours away from me.

i will take any and everyone there if you come visit!

susan and i are talking about meeting up in rome in june but i have to talk to the rents about when they want to take their vacations. tamara was talking about early june so...

to change my ticket to DC from august to october isn't very much right now so i might be changing that this week to come for chris and steph's wedding instead of coming during the most humid week of summer in DC!

i think susan will be popping into basel on thursday and i will probably go visit her small town in germany before she leaves back for canada cause her job is up at the end of may!

i think i am a horrible writer so i am sorry if this bores you to tears.

i had a great time and look forward to going to austria because susan said there is a whole museum dedicated to 'the sound of music' and if anyone knows me they know i love that nazi themed movie.

so yeah. happy easter people!