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Sunday 24 February 2013

der Schweiz

(by Peter Hoskin)

Sorry for the delay on this post.. perhaps you have already seen some photos on facebook, but I want to take a few minutes to give you some background stories :)

I went to Switzerland two weekends ago for four days with my four great pals: Jae, Brendan, Chris, and Stefan. Chris is also an engineering student from Waterloo working at Eurocopter and Stefan is his German "twin" and we got to know him during last fall term at school. For this trip, Chris did the planning of what cities we would see and which hostels we would stay at. Here's a map of our adventure:





This was the weekend of February 9th and 10th. I took the Friday and Monday off to make it a four day weekend so that we could see all we wanted to see. So, I left home on Thursday after work and met Jae and Chris in Donauwörth and then we found Stefan and Brendan. That night we didn't do much, and tried to get to sleep early since it was going to be an early morning.

On Friday we were on the road by 5 am in our sweet BMW. The driving was a slow at the start because it had snowed about 15 cm in the night and not all the roads were plowed. We drove south and crossed into Austria and then shortly after, into Switzerland and drove to our first stop: Zurich. At the train station we found a map of the downtown area and some Swiss Franks at the exchange desk. The map included a suggested route to walk around the city which we followed roughly. We saw some old buildings and churches and went up the tower at one of them it had a nice view. We also walked down one of the main streets and did some window shopping, some of the watches were really expensive, in the ball park of 150 grand! We went in some chocolate shops and bought some really expensive macaroons called Luxemburgerli. These are famous treats from the company Confiserie Sprüngli in Zurich. They were pretty good but not maybe worth what Jae and I paid. We walked back to the car and headed to Lucerne for the evening.


We arrived in Lucerne in early evening and dropped our stuff at the Jugendherberge Luzern, our accommodations for the night. We met an Australian named Paul, a journalist staying at the same hostel. He was very friendly so we asked if he wanted to join us for supper. We found an Italian restaurant and had some pizza and pasta.

Aside: Just a bit of background, the reason we went to Switzerland this weekend was because of the carnival/festival that was going on. It is called "Fasching" and it's a Roman Catholic carnival celebrated in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It runs for about a week, and involves everyone dressing in costumes and celebrating in the streets with music and events (usually late into the night). I've been told that something similar is Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

So this is where our trip became a little more of an adventure. While we were at the restaurant, Paul asked the waitress what we should do that night to take in some of the carnival, and somehow we got invited to hang out with her and her friend Tania before going to the old town. So we met up with them, but by the time we went down to the town everything had finished. It was pretty cold, maybe that's why it finished earlier than predicted. It was pretty late so Jae and I decided to head back to the hostel, and the others went to experience some of the Swiss night life. I was out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow, nothing like a 23 hour day. The others didn't get back till 5 ish for a 25 hour day!

We planned to sleep in on Saturday but we had to check out by 10:00 so it wasn't much. Breakfast was included and it was pretty decent, cereal, fresh bread, and juice were good. Then we walked back to downtown Lucerne for some sightseeing. Because of the Fasching festival, many people were in costumes and there were bands walking around playing music. Check out these costumes!


We walked and walked and walked. We even met a girl who had red Canada mittens, but she was Swiss. Then we left Lucerne and took the road to Interlaken for supper, but stopped at Brienz for some pics along the way. This was our attempted timed-photo to have everyone jumping.. it didn't quite work out, but the view is nice!



Then we moved on to the small town of Lauterbrunnen where we found our hostel, the Hotel Jungfrau.  This town is in a valley between two mountain ridges and is a popular destination for skiers, tourists and hikers. Here's a picture of the hotel, the cliff in the background is actually a huge waterfall.



We woke up at 6 on Sunday and started the trek up one of the mountains, but not on foot... There was a gondola, a train, another gondola, and another gondola before we reached the summit of Schilthorn! It. Was. Cold. -20 Celsius plus wind chill at the peak but the weather was fantastic. Not a cloud in the sky and we could see for hundreds of kilometres. We had a buffet breakfast at this rotating restaurant and then took some unparalleled pics from the observation deck.  (btw, the breakfast had waffles with REAL Canadian Maple Syrup!! I was so happy, I hadn't had any in over a month!)


We watched an info video and saw a bit of the James Bond movie that featured the building at the top of the mountain. We stayed up for a few hours of the morning, bought some postcards and then headed back down. The pictures we took can barely describe the view we had from up there at 2970m, you'll have to go to find out :)
This pic to the right is of us showing of our Canadian pride!




In the halfway-up-village of Mürren we did some hiking and then said goodbye to Brendan who had to be back for work on Monday. The four of us remaining continued hiking and hiking and getting sunburned. The weather was fantastic, and by mid afternoon we had worked up a sweat and had to teak a break...


We went to a place called Hotel Bellevue for supper, and I had some authentic cheese fondue. It wasn't really what I expected since there was a strong white wine taste but it was a true Swiss experience. Then we had an hour before the train came so Jae "borrowed" a sled and we took turns sliding down a small hill on it.


This type of sled is quite popular in this area of Europe, and there were a lot of people (even grown-ups without kids!) sledding down the mountain. We caught the train back to the valley and there was talk of some après ski, but were too tired to go to the one bar in Lauterbrunnen.

On Monday morning we took the 100 year old train to the town of Wengen (the other side of the valley) to do some more hiking. The view was stunning, the trails were steep and there was so much snow!


And yes, I did jump off the path and land in a pile of snow... but props to Jae Han for taking this photo, well done. At lunch, I bought a loaf of bread and we went back down the mountain. We got back in the Beamer and headed back home to Germany.

Good trip :)

More than once during this trip we said that "next time" we have to do this and that. So the plan is to come back for the "next time." Actually, we talked about planning two next times, one in the winter and one in the summer. In the winter we want to go skiing or at least go sledging on the mountain. In the summer there is mountain biking and some hiking trails that aren't open in winter. But not this term, we have learned that the Schweiz is very expensive. Overall, I think the trip was worth it and I would recommend each place we went!

P.S. thanks for reading all the way to the end :)

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