il dolce far tutto: February 17-20: Interlaken and the Swiss Alps

Undoubtedly one of the best weekends of my life.

Travel: Normally I pride myself on planning all of my trips on my own, however, Interlaken Switzerland is extremely difficult to reach from Florence, especially when you only have one weekend to spend there. Because of this, I decided to book my trip through a student travel agency called Bus2Alps. This meant that I would travel by bus to Interlaken and my hostel stay would be covered in the trip package. The bus left at 11:30 on Thursday night, and we traveled over night to Interlaken. Thanks to the very necessary dramamine that I have been taking on all bus rides post near-puking experience my first week here, I was able to sleep surprisingly well through the night, and wake up at 8 am Friday morning in Interlaken ready to ski.

Interlaken

Accommodations: we pulled up to our hostel Balmers Herberge, located in a small city called Interlaken, which is nestled in amongst the giant mountains of the Junegnfrau region, a little after 8 am and dropped our stuff off in our room. I went on the trip with my friends Nina and Joey and joining us in our 10 person, very small room were some of the most absurd people I have ever experienced. Let's just say this hostel stay was much more tumultuous than the one in Amsterdam (surprisingly). The guys who decided to get wasted on the 9 hour bus ride to Interlaken, and start screaming their thoughts on the movies playing on the bus to everyone, were, of course in our room. The other people in our room were equally colorful in character but I won't go into detail. The hostel itself was quite quaint. There was a nice eating area, couches and a TV to watch movies on at night, not to mention, the best/only bar in Interlaken happened to be located in its basement.

Our hostel

Food: Interlaken is by far one of the most expensive places I have ever been. It was almost impossible to find any type of meal for under 20 Swiss Francs. Joey and I quickly realized this during our first day on the slopes when we were forced to eat absurdly priced lunches. Similarly, the first night there, we ate Thai food at the restaurant next door to our hostel which was good but not 20 Francs good. When we went skiing the following day, I cheaped out and brought lunch with me (a move which, I'm sure, would make my father proud). Overall I got the idea that the Swiss really love chocolate and cheese.

Fun: Interlaken is all about the adrenaline activities like sky diving, canyon jumping, paragliding ice climbing etc., but I was there to ski. Skiing the Swiss Alps was unlike anything I have ever experienced for many many reasons. First of all, getting to the mountain was half of the experience. I am used to just driving to oh say, Jiminy Peak and hopping on a chair lift to the top of the hill. In Switzerland, our hour and a half long journey to the actual ski mountain started in front of our hostel where we took a bus to a train which took us to another train which took us to a tram which took us up and over the mountain. On the first day, Joey and I skied at Kleine Scheidegg while Nina was skydiving. It's This part of the mountain was more intense than what we skied on the next day. All of the runs were very steep and most were pretty crowded. Luckily everything was in German and we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I actually kind of liked that there was no distinction between black diamond, blue square and green circle because I think I tend to get caught up in the expected difficulty at times. We never had any idea where we were going, where the trail would lead or how challenging it would be but we loved it all.

Taken from the train up the mountain

Dressed in 100% rental gear, note ugly jacket.

The following day, we skied in another area of the Jungenfrau region called Mannlichen. Luckily we had much clearer weather and when we got off the final leg of the trip to the mountain, the tram, we could see for miles. We had an amazing day of skiing. Our first run led us all the way down the mountain, through a town, a farm and across a stream or two. Then we found some great trails where we were the only people in sight after which, we tried to tackle as much of the mountain as we could before breaking for lunch at a small outdoor bar right alongside one of the trails. It is difficult to adequately convey how spectacular the views of the mountains are. I've skied in New England and I've skied out west but there is just nothing to compare the overwhelming beauty of the Swiss Alps to. It's like skiing in Heaven. I'll let the photos speak for themselves and the memories speak to me forever.