Part Five- Interlaken Switzerland

As I was falling asleep on the train from Koblenz to Interlaken I told myself that when I woke up I would look out the window and see the Swiss Alps towering over us. So when I woke up the next morning I was a little disappointed to see grubby concrete buildings with bad graffiti and a few rolling hills in the distance. But gradually the rolling hills got closer and bigger. It was a rainy, misty morning and the fog rolling over the hills looked so magical. Soon enough we sped into Interlaken. It's hard to even describe how beautiful it was. Huge, rugged snow-capped mountains rose up on either side of a turquoise lake and old, castle-like churches lined either side of the train tracks.

Interlaken is a city technically between two lakes. Understandably it would have been super expensive to stay there, so Lewis found a place on AirBnb in a nearby city called Meringen where we could stay. The lady who we stayed with was an American who moved to Meringen to practice social work with her husband. She was such an amazing host and gave us a warm welcome to her home.

When we got off the train in Meringen we were shocked at how cold it was. As we walked the short ways from the train station to the apartment I felt a little bit panicky as I realized that we absolutely did not pack for this weather. It was about 38 degrees and the heavy, wet mist would intermittently turn to rain. We only had a few short days in Switzerland and we wanted to make the most of it so we tried to be optimistic. We took a quick hot shower and then put on as many clothes as we could. I wore my yoga pants on top of my jeans with three pairs of socks and all of the long sleeved shirts that I had. Then we ran to the grocery store to get some lunch and an umbrella and then walked a few miles to a place called Aareschlucht Gorge.

The gorge was beautiful.. and wet! It kept raining on and off and a lot of that rain was being funneled down into the canyon we were walking through. Because we were trying really hard to keep the camera from getting too wet we didn't get very many good pictures, but many great memories!

When we got to the end we decided to keep with the adventurous spirit and take the train back to Interlaken to take a boat tour across Lake Thun. It was free with our EuroRail pass so why not? We asked some locals where the train station was and I thought they were messing with us when they pointed to this little deer path down a hill that led to a bridge across the gorge. The train was supposed to be coming any minute so we high tailed it down the hill and across the bridge. The path led to kind of a tunnel in the cliff and when we walked through it we saw a door set into the cliff face. There was a sign across the top of the door that let us know that it was apparently a train station! We were to push a button (like you would for an elevator) and that would let the train know to stop at that station. Soon we heard a sound like something from Jurassic Park. It got louder and louder until the whole canyon was rattling and then it stopped and the door swung open. I totally felt like that kid from the Polar Express when the conductor hopped off the train and opened the door for us. We got on and went barreling through this tunnel through the mountain. That experience totally made my whole day!
We made all of our connections to Spiez suspiciously fast and ran down the hill to catch the cruise to Oberhofen Castle. On the boat Lewis got me the best cup of hot chocolate I have ever had. Hands down. In fact, I still have the wrapper and if anyone knows where to find Suchard brand hot chocolate (32% de cacao) let me know!

After looking at the castle Lewis and I wanted to hike up the hill above the city to take some pictures. A few steps in we both realized we just weren't going to be physically able to do so. Thus far we had walked/hiked between 6-7 miles and our feet and ankles were still shot from walking on the cobblestones in Lithuania. We gave up and spent an hour playing on a playground overlooking the lake while we waited for the boat to come back. It's a good thing we didn't wander far, because it started to get dark by the time we climbed on the train to head back to Meiringen.
On the train ride back Lewis said something that I had to write down. He said, "What we are having is an adventure. Anyone can take a vacation, but only a few times in your life do you get to have an adventure." He is a very wise cookie :) We were so tired that we fell asleep leaning on each other and barely woke up to get off at our stop. We figured we would just pick up some noodles and sauce at the grocery store for dinner but when we got there we found it a ghost town. We realized too late that all of the stores close down around 6pm! We managed to find a gas stationesque store open and paid way to much money for some tortellini.
In the morning the lady we were staying with left us the most amazing breakfast! I wish we could eat like that all the time. We had homemade yogurt with museli (uncooked granola), gourmet cheeses and homemade wheat bread and jam.
We really wanted to do a hike in Switzerland, and a couple people told us that the "shelf" above Meiringen was the best place to do it. We took a lift up for a while and were disappointed when we found out that the lift would not go all the way to the stop that we wanted to until the following weekend. So when we got off we decided to ignore the trails and blaze our own path. Strait up the mountain. It was still raining off and on and it was pretty cold. We had bought a couple of sandwiches at the grocery store and would hike as fast as we could to get warm enough to stop and eat for a few minutes without freezing. The view was indescribable. At one point it started to snow great big fluffy flakes! And still we pressed on.

We hiked to the next lift stop and started poking around the town to see if we could find a place to get warm and use the restroom. Not one building was open and we couldn't find another human being in the place! But we did find these Adorable ponies that we played with for a while. :)

 We eventually found one guy working on the lift to get it ready to open who was nice enough to let us into the building and talk with us for a while. He was super nice and spoke like five languages! We were talking about traveling and he told me, "American, German, Spanish, whatever. Everyone laughs at the same jokes!" It struck me at the time as oddly profound. I was still experiencing some culture shock and everything seemed so foreign. But this guy had realized that at a basic level we all are brothers and sisters and laugh at the same things! He offered to drive us to the next town (he couldn't believe we were out in this weather!) but we were refreshed and ready to take on the world!

At one point we stopped in a field of wildflowers overlooking the lake and grassy hills and ate another sandwich, an apple, and some cookies (Petit Beaurre, Midor Tourist in case y'all are ever lucky enough to come across them! I looked into buying some when we got home and found a small box for $40!) 

We met some friendly gnomes...

Badasee

 I caught a tadpole here!

We saw a fox run across the street in front of us

Mossy woods, looked like something out of Lord of the Rings

 By the time we made it to the road we were Exhausted! The train station was just another half-mile away but we couldn't bring ourselves to keep going so we settled down to wait for the bus to take us to the station and I caught up on my journaling!

                                      
Our last day in Meiringen was drawing to a close and we still hadn't gone to see Reichbach falls yet! If you have any experience with Sherlock Holmes it is the waterfall that he fell into (spoilers) and supposedly died in. Fans of Sherlock were so outraged that Arthur Conan Doyle decided to bring him back from the dead. The falls were only (supposed to be) 2 miles away from the station in Meiringen so we decided to speed walk it over there before it got dark. Words can't describe the pain we were in. Wet, exhausted, and with muscles cramping we limped as fast as we could over there. You would think that if you had a major landmark you would clearly mark the path to said landmark, but not so in this instance. There may have been a few tears (on my part) as we wandered aimlessly around looking for the path, choosing poorly and having to backtrack. I was about to chalk it up as a monumental waste of time when we heard the beautiful sound of bells.
Let me explain, before we even got to Switzerland Lewis and I both had the goal to see some of those cows with the big bells around their necks. I know that sounds stupid, but it's true. Thus far all we had was blurry glimpses from the train, so when we heard the bells we unanimously turned and headed in that direction. We had to ward of a couple of territorial sheep dogs, but we found our cows!

Lewis made the mistake once of brushing up against the little yellow string. Turns out it is electrical so he got a little shock!
We got back to the apartment just as it was getting dark. We figured out that we had walked/ hiked about 14 miles miles that day.