April 12 – 13; Lucerne (Luzern), Interlaken, Schilthorn; Switzerland

April 12, Lucerne

We woke up to rain, shoot. We had decided to try and do a cute Swiss town instead of venturing up high to the alps because we’d heard the weather wasn’t supposed to be ideal and the trip to the top of the Swiss alps is, like everything else in Switzerland, damn expensive. We did not want to get up to the top of an expensive cable car trip only to be caught in the clouds.

We were headed to Luzern, which is 1hr away from Bern via train. We caught the 11 o’clock train arriving at noon. We picked up a map and started walking. It didn’t take long before we stopped for coffee, a nice way to plan the route for the day and to avoid the cold rain.

There is an old city wall, a large church, very typical, very adorable Swiss looking buildings, all on a lake, surrounded by mountains. Keep in mind, however, that as far as I know I’ve just described 90% of all Swiss communities, perhaps replace the lake with rolling hills, or something but it is all adorable. In Luzern there is a LION carved into a huge rock face, this doesn’t sound that majestic, but it was quite enthralling. There is also a wooden bridge that recently burned down and was rebuilt.

To save money we went to the grocery store for lunch, well we only ate out of the grocery store for our entire time in Switzerland except for that one meal previously mentioned. But this meal was somewhat hilarious, we bought a small loaf of bread, an avocado, a yogurt each, and split a pre-made scalloped potato thing. Ha. We didn’t last long because the weather was somewhat miserable but it was still a good day.

We went back to the hostel and did some homework. I have a paper due next Thursday and Tess has an exam next Wednesday. We also had dinner – canned soup – how fancy – planned our next day, and went to bed.

April 13, Interlaken & Schilthorn

Yay! Sunshine! Perhaps our plan to go to the top of some of the Alps could be a reality. We started off early, 9:30 on the train, headed to Interlaken. Located between two major lakes and at the base of lots of mountains. It is a good base area for exploring the area for the day, and there were a number of adorable looking towns all around it. It was also a town that could get you in the right direction of the cable cars that take you high above the clouds.

Interlaken was quite adorable, but it really all is in Switzerland. We went and picked up some tourist information, then stopped for coffee to evaluate the day. This is pretty much how we do it. It was nice and sunny and what few clouds were around were clearing. We’d found 40% off coupons in the hostel for one of the trips up the Schilthorn, which is not the highest you can go, but it was the most “reasonably” priced.

After coffee we stopped in a souvenir shop and finally committed to buying Swiss Army knives, we were very excited about this. From there we walked back to the train which would take us to Laterbrunnen, where we could catch a bus to Schtelberg, which would take us to the base of the series of 4 cable cars.. gondolas (?), that would take us up to the Schilthorn (also known as one of the shooting locations of the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and boy did they milk that connection). With our Eurail passes we got a discount on the train and bus so it was only 19sf, and with the 40% off discount the cable cars up was about 68sf. So it is an expensive activity but it was kind of like, can you really be here and not go up one? There is another one that I think takes you to a higher peak, Jungfrau, but it was way more expensive. This was our compromise.

So we boarded the cable car, then switched at 3 different locations. The first two stops on the way up are little villages, Grimmewald and Murren, then the third stop is a ski chalet or lodge like place, and the last one is Schilthorn, which sits at 10,000ft above sea level. We were really lucky because it was sunny and clear the whole way up and for most of our time when we were outside. It was a chilly -9C, but the sun was really warm so it was really only your fingers and toes that got cold.

After a while a cloud moved in so we went into the (revolving) restaurant for a beer to see if it would pass. It didn’t really pass but when we decided to head back down it had lifted a bit. The view was crazy! It was amazing. There were many times going up towards the mountains that I said it reminded me so much of home; high snowy peaks, tree covered hills, mountain streams, but these mountains are so huge. So wild, and they go forever – forever in a huge sort of way. It was really great.

On the trip down we stopped at the ski lodge place for a few more pictures, then at Murren for a walk around. It was pretty abandoned, but there were lots of skiers on the hills.

We made it all the way down, boarded an over packed bus and headed back to Lauterbrunnen, finally get on a train to Bern with the intention to stop at Thun to take a gander at Thun Lake, but it was getting late 7:30p and we were exhausted.

We basically went back to the hostel, made and ate dinner, did some planning, a bit of packing and went to bed. We’d be leaving beautiful but expensive for Austria in the morning. How thrilling. Breakfast in Zurich, lunch in Innsbruck, but more about that later.