On Saterday morning I took a train to Switzerland for the weekend. It took about 6 hours. Zurich, Bern, Interlaken, then Grindelwald. I arrived at the train station in Interlaken in the early afternoon where I had to switch to local mountain trains with special gears on the bottom that would have to stop and go at the steep hills rollercoaster style. I ended up getting on the wrong part of the train, and little did I know the train split in two half way up and went to different towns. So, I had a a little detour and was slightly late getting to grindelwald. Saterday wasn't a really nice day anyways: you really couldn't see most of the mountains anyways.
I basically just hung out on saterday night on the balcony of the hostel, which looked out at the valley and surrounding mountains, very beautiful. When I woke up on sunday morning it was a beautiful day, great visibility, so I decided to go hiking. I took a gondola to First (pronounced Fear-st), which was 2300m. I only intended to hike for about an hour to bachalpsee (an alpine lake about 2400m) because I really wasn't dressed for hiking and I was concerned my shoes wouldn't hold up on steep slopes.
When I got to Bachalpsee I kept going for another hour an a half up to Frauhorn (about 2600m). It was pretty arduous and I was pretty tired so I rested at the top for quite a while. I left because it was pretty chilly and I was running low on memory anyways. I made my way back to First, rested for a while, then took the gondola back down.
The whole adventure took about 5 hours round trip and I got a nasty sunburn (which I blame on the snow) but it was totally worth it. The view from First as well as Frauhorn were probably the best I've ever seen. I've been up the Empire state building, The Sears tower, and the CN tower, which are all pretty high. All three of these buildings put together would come about 3/4 of the way up the mountain. For those of you who are use to discovery-channel distances, I was 17 football fields above the valley floor.
I headed back to Stuttgart on monday morning. Switzerland was a pretty impressive looking place and the town of Grinelwald was really cute and full of expensive things to look at. I think over half of the stores in the town sell victorianox knives, and I went into some stores which made the prices in novacks (outdoor store in london) look like a Biway.
On Saterday morning I took a train to Switzerland for the weekend. It took about 6 hours. Zurich, Bern, Interlaken, then Grindelwald. I arrived at the train station in Interlaken in the early afternoon where I had to switch to local mountain trains with special gears on the bottom that would have to stop and go at the steep hills rollercoaster style. I ended up getting on the wrong part of the train, and little did I know the train split in two half way up and went to different towns. So, I had a a little detour and was slightly late getting to grindelwald. Saterday wasn't a really nice day anyways: you really couldn't see most of the mountains anyways.
2 comments:
I miss Biways.
And bravo for touring like that alone (if you really are alone). I guess everything is labeled in half-English anyway, but still.
Haha, I would have been scared on the mountain alone, but I asked the lady at the front desk if there is any wildlife that I should watchout for. She laughed at me, So I assumed that there were no bears or anything
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