OH Switzerland! (Interlaken)

OH Switzerland! The people here are just way too nice! This trip was the fourth weekend in a row traveling and Pablo, Joe, Stu, Paul and I met my friend from Lake Forest, Caroline, in Interlaken! Caroline is studying in Paris, so we decided we needed to do some traveling together! The first day we got to Interlaken, we went to our hostel called “Funny Farm,” and put our huge backpacks in the luggage room. The worst part about taking the overnight train is that you leave at like nine or ten at night, then you get in to the destination at around seven or eight in the morning. Obviously it is not a very comfortable sleep on a raging train, so it is no fun waking up and finally getting to the place you are staying, then you CANT check in!! We have all gotten used to “showering” in the hostel/hotel lobby bathrooms, since we are students traveling in Europe, right? This is what we do. Unfortunately. Anyways, after awkwardly cleaning up and brushing my teeth in the lobby bathroom, we are ready for the day!
Interlaken is a pretty small town surrounded by the Swiss Alps. It is known as the extreme sports capital of the world and is where people from all over come to do crazy things, like Pablo, but we will get to that later. First! Our first day we decided to hike up a HUGE mountain! I cant remember the name and wouldn’t be able to spell it anyway but it was BIG! And I climbed it! It took us close to three hours and we made a few stops along the way, but we finally reached the top where there is this lodge with a restaurant in it. Pab and I ate our first Swiss food there and it was really good- I had toast with hash browns and eggs and then Swiss goat cheese on top. It was all stacked up and I devoured it! I was so happy that it wasn’t pizza or pasta!
After that we took a train all the way down the mountain! The tracks are actually pointed straight down steep enough that the train was built on an angle. It is hard to explain, but the train car looks like it has been chopped off at an angle. In the evening we all went bowling! I had a blast and the boys were blown away by my skills, that Joe and I bet 10 euros on a game. Of course, tall, dorky Joe, who is my favorite guy, whips out his bowling skills and kills me! The score was like 200 to 96 or something! I choked.
Anyways, that night we made a huge bonfire in a place we found while hiking. Caroline was supposed to get in to Interlaken that night but there were massive train strikes in Paris, so she was not able to get there until 2 AM. So Pablo, Joe, Stu, Paul and I made a fire, (I was in charge of finding brush) and it was so much fun! Did I mention that it was 5 degrees in Switzerland! It was so cold, so the fire felt really nice after the long day.
The next day Caroline, Pab, and I went to eat at Hooters! They had one in Interlaken, and it isn’t very usual to find American places like this in Europe so we had to jump at this opportunity and eat nasty greasy chicken. As always when going to Hooters, the food is never good, but we had a great conversation and it was so good to see Caroline again! I hadn’t seen her in five months! After lunch, we walked around and did some shopping! We took tons of pictures as always.
The third day, Pablo decided he wanted me to have an early heart attack; he decided to go skydiving from 14,000 feet out of a helicopter! Caroline and I waited in the big field he was supposed to land in and the woman finally told us that the helicopter was up and they were ready to jump. She showed us where to look and it was the tiniest white dot in the sky! I couldn’t see Pablo jump out but a few hundred feet down, I finally could spot the little black speck falling from the sky!!! He kept falling and falling and falling and falling and I was really freaking out that the parachute was not coming out!! Then it finally did and Pablo came down with a crazy Australian guy named “Wolf” and they glided with a big red parachute all the way to us! Pablo kept talking about how amazing it was and how cold he was and he can tell you more about it at pabbr.blogspot.com if you want to read more about it!
The second night we built another bonfire so Caroline could enjoy it as well and we sat and looked over the entire city of Interlaken.

[The first picture is the mountain we climbed, and it is hard to see but the resturant is way up at the top!]