If you had asked me before how I felt about Switzerland, I probably would have said, “Neutral.” However, after visiting it during the first leg of our trip I am now definitely biased. We flew into Geneva by way of Barcelona and headed to the information desk to see whether or not we needed to change our currency. The lady at the desk told us that we did not, gave us a map, told us the places we should see in Geneva, and gave us all passes that said we were there for the World Telecom conference and entitled us to free public transportation for the whole time we were in Geneva. Awesome, right? So what did we do? We jumped on the first train we saw and proceeded to miss the stop for Geneva, therefore rendering our free passes useless. However to be fair, the train was so nice and it was so much fun sitting on the red velvet couches that it would’ve taken me about an hour to figure out that the train had started moving. Whatever, no big deal, we heard Geneva was lame anyway so we just got off in Lausanne, hometown of the talented Swiss douche, wait for it…Swouche, Roger Federer. That meant that in two weeks time I had visited the hometowns of the top two tennis players in the world. Andy Murray, I’m coming for you. We spent the next four hours or so seeing basically everything the city had to offer. We paid homage to Rudy at their Notre Dame Cathedral, saw the first Olympic Museum (Lausanne in the headquarters of the IOC and considered the Olympic Capital), and enjoyed a magnificent panorama of Lake Geneva. After we exhausted all of options in Lausanne we hopped on the train to our main Swiss destination, Interlaken.
We arrived at our hostel just in time for happy hour at the bar in the basement of our hostel, the biggest bar in Interlaken. Now, everyone we had met up to this point in Interlaken had been American, and we figured we were in for more of the same as we headed down into the basement. We walked into the bar and were smacked in the eyeballs with the image of nothing but dudes, and of course they were all hoodie-wearing flat-brimmers. I spent the first hour or so in awe of the fact that, one, there are so many HWFBs in the world, and two, that so many of them and found their way to Switzerland. At this point I decided to open up my ears and I realized that no one in the bar was speaking English. They were all locals, just dressed like scrubby Americans. This made me warm up to the place a little, and girls eventually showed up, but it turned out that the “biggest bar in Interlaken” was really just the place to be for local high schoolers with flat brims and braces.
The next morning we woke up at 6:45 to head to the front desk to sign up for all types of fun activities. However, I can’t get through two days in Europe without rain so of course it was pouring rain. I was crushed. I planned on going skydiving over the Swiss Alps. Really, I was so excited. I was even more crushed when the woman at the front desk slapped us with a “When It’s Raining” flyer and told us to check back after breakfast to see if there were some things that weren’t cancelled. The “When It’s Raining” flyer included hardcore activities such as going to a spa, a chocolate show, and indoor pool, and renting a movie. Extreme.
We lucked out though because it turned out that they would still be taking a group out canyoning. Canyoning is basically when you get dropped off at the top of a mountain, repel down into a canyon, and then continue down the canyon by jumping off rocks into water, sliding down rocks into water, zip-lining over rocks into water, and gingerly walking down rocks into water. It was sooooo much fun. First we repelled down a 150-foot cliff that went straight down in the pouring rain. I have to admit, I was pretty nervous about leaning back over that ledge with nothing but a rope keeping me from plunging to my death. I know a lot of you are saying to yourselves right now, “But Jim, you’re a really tough guy. You can grow a pretty awesome beard except for those spots where your mustache connects to the rest of the beard. Surely you weren’t scared.” Well believe it, and if you don’t believe me, just check out how awkward I look in this picture.
From there we jumped and slid off rocks and just had a general hardcore, super-fun time. I eventually got comfortable enough to take a picture where I look kind of cool.
After we got out of the freezing cold, Swiss Alp water, we all took a quick nap and then went to the chocolate show from the flyer. I know I was complaining before, but I have to admit that the idea of a chocolate show sounds awesome. No I didn’t shower, this is Europe. The show was definitely worth it. We learned the Swisstem of making chocolate and then ate enough free chocolate to make me sick of chocolate for about four whole hours. After the chocolate show (ok I was a little disappointed, I hoped they would do tricks with the chocolate) we went to dinner at the greatest restaurant in the entire world. It is called Bebbi’s and is located on the main drag in Interlaken, amidst gorgeous view of the Alps. The food, whatever, who cares, its fondue, anybody can do that. What makes the place is Bebbi and the atmosphere. I knew we had made the right choice when Bebbi led the five of us plus the two NYU kids we picked up canyoning into a “party room” type table, sat us down, grabbed the row of giant cowbells hanging above the table, rang the hell out of them and started screaming “FREE SALAD!” at the top of his lungs. He would go on to do this about five more times, even after we had already eaten the aforementioned salad. Bebbi is quite the character. He is jacked (said it was because he ate “cheese fondie” everyday) and is obviously on something because he did not stop the entire time we were there. He waited on tables, deejayed, ran around the restaurant waving giant Japanese (half the restaurant was Japanese), Swiss, and American flags, blew on his giant horn, and yelled “free salad” to anyone that would listen.
After our great meal we decided against going back to the swiddle school dance (last one I promise) and just played card games with our new friends. Interlaken turned out to be a phenomenal start to our trip, despite the essy weather. When we went to the train station the next morning the weather had cleared up and we could see how truly beautiful the scenery was. There were snow-capped mountains surrounding gorgeous turquoise lakes. We barely even minded the 14 hour train ride to Prague because we had such spectacular views of all that and then later the tiny German towns.
Switzerland, I’m on your side.
And for those of you who didn't get the title of this post, you need to familiarize yourself with poppin' and lockin' dancing, Ozone, Turbo, and the movie Breakin'.
Besitos,
Jim
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