Despite the fact that we are up to our necks in grad school applications, don't have a lot of extra spending money, and were starting to come down with something, we went to Switzerland anyway. In truth, I really needed the break from Torino and work, but it was also our 6 year anniversary over the weekend, so we decided to do something fun.
I'm so glad that we decided to go because Switzerland was awesome!! It was so beautiful and completely different than anything that we have done (or will do), so I'm very glad that we got to experience it. We stayed in Interlaken for two nights but did quite a bit of exploring outside of Interlaken as well.
The first night in Interlaken we walked around the cute little town and ate dinner with some friends from the program. I'm a little ashamed to say that we ate at Hooters. I thought that I liked their chicken....but that place is just nasty! The poor girls had to wear those hideously ill fitting shorts even in the freezing cold Switzerland night air! They were nice enough to give them a fuzzy vest to wear over their tank tops (rolls eyes). However, we discovered my new favorite cider-Strongbow Gold! Delicious. After dinner we walked around in the shops and bought some pretty good chocolate. However, I must say that Swiss Chocolate has nothing on Torino's Gianduiotti. Don't worry...I plan on bringing some back for everyone to try..... If I don't eat it all on the 14 hour plane ride home.
The next day Dallan and I decided to make the trip to Gimmelwald, a little town with about 100 inhabitants that live in almost complete isolation. We had to take a train and a bus just to get to the point where you take the Gondola up to the village. On our way we stopped in a little town called Lauterbrunnen that had a beautiful waterfall behind its main street. I had some swiss fondue for lunch...not my cup of tea.
Once we finally got to Gimmelwald I saw some of the most amazing sights I have ever seen in my life. I hope our pictures do it some justice, but photographs could never capture the feeling of having mountains that size all around you or the ever present sound of cowbells. This place was not only insanely beautiful, but such a strange experience. These were bonafied log cabins sitting on mountainsides. There were no cars, hardly any people, and plenty of cows, chickens, sheep, goats, and even a few ponies. There isn't even a food store. The only way up or down is on the gondola and it appears that people mostly just work in the gardens growing their own produce. Gimmelwald was apparently a dangerous place as well. Dallan and I were admiring the view when I turned to see a very large rock falling at insanely high speeds from the top of the hill behind us. It was actually coming right at us and we started to move out of the way, but it made a turn for a house and landed with a horrible crash. I would like to say that I ran to the rescue of any people that might be inside the house, but I just started bursting with laughter. It was truly one of the most absurd things I had ever seen. Luckily, when we did go to see if everything was okay, it turned out that nobody was home and the house itself suffered minimal damage. The fence, the pavement and the stone ledge earned some pretty gnarly battle scars though.
After Gimmelwald we went back to Interlaken and had some AMAZING Thai food. You have no idea how delicious noodles taste when they are covered with anything but tomatoe sauce after 2 months of living in Italy. Unfortunately, Dallan wasn't feeling too well. I had a pretty sore throat, but Dal had a horrendous cough and body aches. He said he felt good while we were up in the mountains (I guess cowbells really were the cure for his fever), but wasn't feeling too hot in the evening. We had a relaxing evening and watched a really cute movie called Outsourced which turned out to be pretty relevant to our experiences. I was glad to get to relax for awhile. It was a pretty great weekend. We are leaving on Friday to go to Barcelona for 4 days :). We have about 45 days until we come home, but we have some great trips coming up and I can't wait!
- Ashley
