Interlaken!

Our second week of adventures began with a typical night at peter pan bar on Thursday for karaoke. Friday, Stephanie, Meredith, Claire and I finished up our midterm in the classroom at USI. After that we went to Migros (the local cheap grocery store) and got two bottles of wine for the weekend. Before that we started pregaming in the double deuce (room 22: Josh, Greg, and Scott). We each finished one bottle before heading to another local bar coyote ugly. Cory knew a one guy from her high school that was in another American group staying in the Montarina. She told them to head to coyote ugly as well. There were approximately 40 Americans at the bar. It was so nice to meet new people and actually hear more English! The next thing I knew the alarm was going off at 8 am for our 9 am train ride. I had yet to pack! We threw everything in a backpack and scurried down to the train station. The Eurail pass was amazing, all you did was flash it to the ticket guy and you were set. We had about a 2 hour train ride to our exchange in Luzern. We still haven’t eaten at this point, but our exchange was only 10 minutes so we didn’t risk it, and got on the next train to Interlaken. After another 2 hour train ride, we all got of the train and explored a little bit. Then walked about 15 minutes to our hostel. This hostel was AMAZING compared to Milan. Everyone spoke English and there were so many rooms, with so many Americans staying there. After settling in to our 10 person dorm, we decided to head out to get some food because we were all famished. The first thing we saw was HOOTERS. Obviously we were all drawn to the wonderful American “home cooking”, if you will. The waitresses costumes were the same. After we ate we headed back to Balmers to get ready for the night sledding. Next door to our hostel was a place to rent gear. So I splurged for some snow pants luckily snow shoes came with our package. We then went upstairs and threw on every layer possible before the van picked us up for the sledding. We drove in a bus for about 30 minutes straight up the hill. Once we got there we were given a little plastic toboggan with one single string. As a group we then waited to go up in groups on the gondola all the way to the top. That was a wee bit terrifying in the pitch black. Once we got up there we got a red flashing light stick to hang on our back (comforting), to that people didn’t CRASH INTO US. Then we got a quick lesson on how to steer by basically stomping on the ground. We were all a little nervous right before we got started, but lightened up once Greg (who was leading the pack) let out a loud “SO LONG GAY BOYS”- from the hangover. Then we were off! Right away we were sledding SO FAST, whipping around corners. Some girls were really bad at it, and I had to abort sled a few times. But other than that it was SO MUCH FUN. It was an amazing adrenaline rush. The sledding itself probably lasted an hour. And I’m pretty sure its safe to say sledding down the board of education hill will never be the same again now that I’ve sledded down the Swiss alps. After reaching the end, we put our sleds away and headed inside for what we thought would be a phenomenal fondue dinner. We headed inside and had 2 pitchers for our table, with a little plate of bread and salad. After a few pieces of bread, the pot of cheese was gone. Luckily they brought out another course, which was hash browns with egg on top (YUMMY). After everyone finished up we headed home. We returned our gear and RAN upstairs to get ready. We got ready very quickly (looking a feeling a little bit rough after sledding). After hanging out a little bit in our room, we headed downstairs to the club. There were so many locals and Americans there; it was packed wall to wall. It was so much fun to dance and hang out with new people. The next morning we had to check out before 10AM. A big group of us spontaneously decided to head up the mountain in Grindelwald. Once we got there we saw a big sign telling us that “world snow festival,” was the day before and there were still the snow sculptures from all around the world. After looking around for a while we hopped on the train back to Interlaken. Then with four minutes till our train to Luzern we got on and rode for 2 hours. Once we got to Luzern we were FAMISHED. So we headed inside burger king (where else?). We had about 10 minutes until the train left for Lugano. The line was kind of long but we decided to stick it out. With 1 minute to spare we got our food and started to run. Next thing we knew we were stuck behind a woman with a cart full of carbonation tanks going at the pace of molasses. We were trying to bob and weave but were unsuccessful. Once we got around her we started sprinting and with my hand almost at the door, the train started to pull out of the station NOOOOOOOOO. It wasn’t too upsetting, because we got to sit and relax and wait for the next train an hour away. We slowly enjoyed our burger king and watched MTV’s “Next” with German subtitles. We finally got home around 6:30PM. I was absolutely exhausted and so we watched “The Hangover” and went to bed around 12pm.