Switzerland & Canyoning!

5 of us decided to head to Switzerland for the weekend to see Interlaken and go canyoning. We headed out on Friday night taking the slow overnight trains (which are cheaper and we will get there earlier) for our 16 hour journey! We had switch and take 5 different trains…we had over an hour in Milan til the next train so went to get milkshakes at midnight while waiting…then we had a 5 hour gap from 1-6am in a little train station along the border of Italy and Switzerland. I actually slept really well on the floor, clinging to my backpack! We got up at 6 to catch the next trains and were to Interlaken before noon on Saturday!

Once there, we set off to find and checkin to the hostel we booked (called the ‘Funny Farm’ hostel). It didn’t take us too long and the place looked really nice but we couldn’t go to our rooms for a few hours so we stored our stuff in room there and went to look around the downtown area and find the chocolate factory place we heard of to take a tour. The town of Interlaken is very touristy and mainly about the outdoor adventure sport things they offer (hiking, skydiving, white-water rafting, canyoning, etc.) so there are lots of hotels, restaurants, and souvenir-type shops. We looked at some of the shops and found the chocolate place but tours only ran at 5 or 6pm. The other 3 we traveled with went back for the tour while Rachel and I went canyoning. It was such a crazy change in temperature for us when we were there! Cloudy and only in the 60’s compared to temps over 100 and humid in Italy! I really enjoyed the break from heat and seeing all the mountains around in Switzerland. So as we looked around, I bought some Swiss chocolate to bring home and then headed back to find our room and change to go canyoning. We were informed that our rooms were not in the main hotel/hostel building we saw….we had to walk outside, around back through a business/storage place with wetsuits, boats, etc and then got to our place…the ‘barn style hostel rooms’. It was funny! Our room was teeny with 4 bunk beds, the showers were downstairs.

So at 4 Rachel and I went to meet our group for canyoning! I had registered us earlier online so we were ready to go. We met our guides who were both Australian—they rushed us to change and then get into our wetsuit things, boots, life jackets, harnesses, and a helmet (each had a random name on it that they called us…mine was ‘Pee Wee’). They took us on a 5 minute drive to the place, then a 10 minute hike up to the beginning of the canyon place. We then started to crawl through the

raging water on rocks, up a little to big rock cliff things, sometimes they helped us repel down, other times they made us jump straight off the rocks into the water below! (It was super scary and they always gave us all these specific instructions like jump to land on your side in superman pose so you don’t hit the rocky edge, etc.). Other times we got to lay down and slide down the slope-y waterfall rocks! That was fun until I went underwater for a but and swallowed a bunch. Overall I’m glad I did it but it was pretty scary since I just learned how to swim a few months ago. Afterwards we went back and got hot showers (the water was really cold since it came down from the mountains and it was cloudy and 60degrees!), a free drink, and got to see the pictures of the trip. They were super expensive so I didn’t get any. Later all 5 of us went out to eat and got burgers and fries, then went to sleep in our barn hostel.

We got up on Sunday to go hiking by the mountains nearby. We took a train to Lautterbrunnen, a few minutes away where we hear there was a trail we could walk to the mountains and behind a waterfall! It was so pretty there and nice out, even a little sunny. We walked and took tons of pictures…then we found Trumelbachfalles where we paid a couple franc (Swiss money, 1franc=about 1$) to go on a lift up into the mountain (instead of walking over 600 stairs), there we could walk through paths and stairs to see the waterfall that ran through the middle of the mountain. Afterwards, we walked back and caught the train back to Interlaken, got some food at a grocery store, andcaught the train heading back at 3. We had a few issues getting back because we had to switch trains a lot again…one train was

weird because they told us we had to get off at the next stop and walk down below down the tunnel and the street a bit to get to a bus thattakes us to the next station…we were confused but everyone did it so we did too. Once the stupid bus got to the station in the next town, we had missed our next train to Milan! So we had to call our Camp Adventure director and have her help us make a new plan, finding a different train to get home since we missed the last one back to Vicenza! She ended up picking us up in Verona (only about 30min away) with her car at 11. It all worked out but a long trip getting back late and working at 6 the next morning!