La Mia Vita a Firenze: Svizzera!

SWITZERLAND! My new favorite country. This was one of the best weekends I have had this semester, because everything was just perfect. The travelers were myself, Britney, Courtney, Kalin, Kelly, and Grant. Our Swiss adventure began with getting there—on Friday afternoon we left at 3:19. After a succession of various trains and layovers (one train was very fancy and we had a private coach that was very reminiscent of Harry Potter!), we arrived in Interlaken at around 10ish. We got out of the train station and realized we didn’t know how to get to the hostel, which was fine by us. There were various signs leading there, and we were happy to take a long walk to get there. We were just in awe of the giant mountains we could see rising up around us from every side, even in the dark. And there were so many stars! The air was so clean; our lungs were thanking us for the treat away from the city. We arrived at the hostel, Balmers, and were really excited because it looked like a little Swiss building out of a movie, nestled at the base of a mountain. We checked in and got into our rooms (Kelly, Britney, me and Grant in one, Kalin and Courtney in another). We went to sleep at about 11:00 or so after our long day of travelling. At about 11:30 or 12 we heard people come in, and there were two guys staying in the room. They seemed nice, so we just kind of fell asleep and figured we’d meet them in the morning.

Fast forward to 3:00 in the morning, when I’m woken up by a strange noise. There are no locks on the room, and a drunk man has wondered, naked save for whitie-tighties, into our room! He wanders around, hits Britney/Kelly’s bunk bed, then leaves and leaves the door open. I stare at the door for a while, jump up and close it, and then go to sleep. HA! What a hostel experience. The next morning we woke up and formally met our new roommates. Their names were Chris and Chris, and they went to Georgia Tech! What a small world. I spent all weekend naming people I knew at GA Tech trying to see if we had any mutual friends. Anyway. That day they went to Zurich, and it was the day of SKYDIVING ADVENTURE! We got breakfast, and then walked around Interlaken for a little bit because we were getting picked up at 12. It is such a beautiful little place! I love it. So we went back to the hostel to get picked up at 12, and were piled into a scenic air bus that had about 6 other people from Texas Tech. They were all really nice too—we certainly made some new friends in Svizzera!

Isn't Svizzera beautiful?

Our Hostel

Me and Britney are intense skydivers

View from our hike

Bellisima!

We arrive at the skydiving place (after a very scenic drive) and then get hustled into the building to get trained. We lay on the floor and practiced the moves we would do in the air, and met some of the instructors. We paid (which took a HUGE but worthwhile chunk of money out of my account) and then we had to wait. There were four planes, with each ascent, jump, and descent taking about 30 or so minutes. I was in the 3rd plane. So after the first two planes, I get harnessed up, and me and Britney were on the same plane together. Grant was also on our plane, but he didn’t dive—he just went up to watch. Courtney did the same thing on Kalin and Kelly’s plane. So we get up into the sky, and our instructors Danny and Hans were really nice and talkative. We were being taped the whole time for our DVDs, and they turned out awesome. Can’t wait to show you all ☺ About half way up, Danny tells me I have to get up in his lap (to get attached to him), which of course made me feel quite awkward because he was cute and an intense Swiss man. Britney’s instructor looks over and goes “Is she always this frisky?!” which made us all laugh, and me probably blush bright red. Quite an experience!

The time comes to jump. Britney is first—she’s sitting on the edge of the plane. The door flies open, and she puts her legs over the edge of the plane, she’s strapped onto Hans. I see him pitch forward once, twice, and then—SHE’S GONE! I screamed the loudest I think when I saw her get sucked out of the plane. Suddenly I find myself on the edge of the plane. I don’t know how I got there…Danny just lifted me up of the bench and somehow carried me without my knowledge to the edge of the plane. My legs are out over the edge, my head back against his chest, pitch forward once, twice, and GONEEEEEEEE!

I screamed. Intensely. And also had the most amazing experience of my life. I was falling so fast, while smiling for the cameraman falling ahead of me, and seeing amazing views everywhere I looked. I can’t remember if I breathed, but I don’t think I did for 55 seconds of freefall. Suddenly our parachute deployed, and we descended more slowly for 4 or so minutes, all the while Danny spinning me around so I could see the view from everywhere. It was so amazing. All too soon we were landing, on our butts, in a field of daisies. I was deliriously happy—it was such an amazing experience, and we all felt that it was so worth it. It just went by too fast! After the last planeful went, we were back on the bus heading towards Balmers. We arrived and went to Hooters, of all places. My first Hooters experience, internationally! It was actually pretty good. We spent some more time walking around Interlaken, and then headed back to the hostel. Skydiving takes a lot out of you! Some of us watched the Ring 2 in the movie room, and then we met our two Chris-es from drinks and card games in the lounge room. It was a really terrific day.

The next day we woke up and Britney, Grant, Kalin and I went hiking while Courtney and Kelly went ATVing. We walked through Interlaken and started on a trail up one of the mountains. There was an amazing view, though we all felt really out of shape. People were biking intensely up the mountain and we could barely walk, ha! We found a rock sculpture at one point and all added a rock to it. We ended up wussing out and not making it to the top, but it was still really nice. We then found an authentic looking place for lunch and I had an amazing Swiss meal—a huge plate of hash browns covered with onions and swiss cheese. SO good. We went back to the hostel at that point and met up with Courtney and Kelly, and we watched Wedding Crashers to relax after our intense day. Afterwards, Britney and I sat outside the hostel and read our respective books, it was so nice. We went back to the same place for dinner, and Britney and I split an awesome pizza. Then. We had the most AWESOME chocolate fondue ever. All kinds of fruit and marshmallows, which we dove into. I think Grant was really disgusted by us girls, who were diving into the chocolate. When all the fruit was gone, we each took an apricot and put it on the stick. Then we made makeshift lollipops by repeatedly dipping the apricots in the chocolate and licked it off. I think we really got drunk off of chocolate, it was so amazing. Amazing!

On Monday, we ate breakfast and then walked around the town. I got some chocolate (YUM) and then we headed back to get our luggage for the train. After the first train we parted ways with the two Chris-es, and us Eloners continued on our way home. We were actually really sad to leave Switzerland, because we all loved it so much. I would go back there in a heartbeat.