Entered on 2001-10-05 at 3:46 p.m..

In Cranfield talking about Switzerland

So much to say, so little time to say it. Currently I am at Cranfield please refer to the previous entry for an explanation a quaint little campus and village just north of London. But since I have not had internet access in a while, I need to back up and talk about my recent adventures in Switzerland with Becca.

Oh, by the way any hardy souls who wish to call me here can contact my room phone and my voice mail by dialing

(from the US)

011-44-1234-75-8792

(from the UK)

01234-75-8792

all calls are greatly appreciated. So is email [email protected]

Switzerland

My adventure to Switzerland began by a short trip by foot to Kings' Cross Thameslink train station Once there I met up with a girl from Spain who is in London studying English. Between the two of us we made quite a pair trying to get to Luton Airport. We watched 3 trains go by before we figured out that the train was not going to say Luton on the front of it. Once in the train we stood for the 30 minute journey with all the regular London commuters. Luton is a nice little airport from which EasyJet makes its home. My flight was an hour late, but other than that un-remarkable.

Once in Zurich I met up with Becca who was eagerly devouring a book. We took the train to the Zurich main station and then ran like hell to make our connection to Baden in the 2 minute window.

Baden is this quaint little Swiss town, which feels like something out of the idlic 1950's America. Becca's housing is right next to the train station. It is the model of swiss efficiency. Becca has her own rectangular room which I am convinced looks exactly like all the other rooms in the house with her own bathroom/shower. There is one kitchen one the floor where she has her own cubby for dry food and a cubby in the refridgerator (each with its own lock a lock). I don't really know what she has to complain about. Mostly I guess because she has to do dishes (and immediately at that). She has become a regular recycling machine as nothing goes to waste, not even old bread.

On Saturday we packed up and headed for Interlocken. We strolled around the over-touristy town enjoying the fine weather and the view of the mountains in the distance. We found a nice cafe and had a cup of hot chocolate and some french fries some habits die hard.

Having seen all there was to see in Interlocken we headed up to Grindlewald. Grindlewald is a valley town high in the mountains. We stayed at the most modern youth hostel they make. We were issued bar-code keys which opened our door. I was impressed. That night we decided to head down into town to eat dinner. Now to get into town we had two choices, 1: head down the steep (though mostly paved) path through back yards and alley ways or 2: take the longer, less steep path on the road. Of course we chose option 1 with the idea that we would catch the buss back. The highlight of the trip was when we saw 4-5 belled sheep. I tried communicating with them, but they insisted in staring blindly at Becca, go figure.

After a few wrong turns we made it to Grindlewald, had dinner where becca introduced me to this interesting soft drink called Rivella, and desert. Can everybody guess what happened when we went to pick up the bus? That's right it wasn't running. So in the dark we headed back up the really steep path to our youth hostel. At this time I'd just like to thank Becca for always carrying a flashlight with her. So between the flashlight and the two of us we made it back up the path to the hostel.

The next morning we made a mad dash out of bed at the crack of 9. Had a sound breakfast and headed off in search of a glacier. We found it or the steps to it 800 of them about an hour later.

Becca was rather pleased with herself, because she had now outdone Sarah in the greatest number of steps attempted department, and steps they were. I would just like to take the time to say that the Swiss know stepps . These were not just a bunch of stairs but picture if you will an inverted railroad track set up the side of a large boulder. Yep those were the kind of stepps we are talking about. They don't necessarily stay perpendictular with respect to either gravity or the rock on which they are bolted either. Well it was a harrowing experience for me going up and for Becca coming down. Once up top we danced around, looked for billy goats, and generally enjoyed reading the danger signs.

I have pictures, some of which Becca has put up on her diary artemis1979.diaryland.com but since I am without a personal computer I cannot download them from my camera (soon though).

We then broke for lunch before heading up to the First Station in a gondola. Now all of the maps I had seen did not portray the height of what we were about to do well. Needless to say Becca led me up to the top of some cloud covered mountain with only 4 hours of sunlight left and no way in hell to get down in less than 6 hours with out the use of a pack animal or rapelling rope. As I am fond of saying we don't build USAF bases in mountains (except colorado). So anything over about a 30 degree decline is considered steep in my book. Well we managed to find our way to a path we thought would take us down (gradualy) which turnned out to be the goat path. Thank god the Swiss have an excess of red and white paint and that they paint random paths across their country and tell the tourists to follow them and they'll get to a town safely. We followed these random paintings down the side of a mountain un-aware that we were not on the main path. Looking back though, if that was the main path, I'd have hated to see a small path. Eventually we came to a spectacular waterfall, which was not on our map.

It was then that I knew we were going to camp out on the mountain, and only one of us was going to walk out the next day...

Luckily we did eventually find Spitzwald (a guest house where the goat path and road meet). We begged a ride from this nice old Swiss couple and managed to get a ride most of the way down the mountain in the back of their old jeep-like-vehicle with the cow bells. It was the highlight of Becca's trip. When they let us out we started to follow these yellow signs that the Swiss have posted all over their country. This was pretty good until we reached a decision point where a sign simply reading 'wanderweg' (wander way) pointed down a steep path leading to the woods and a bike sign pointed down a road. We took the road, and eventually got back to our youth hostel in time to beg for dinner.

The rest was rather un-eventful, but I made Becca go horse back riding the next day, so we were completely sore from head to foot. My toes are still recovering.

More tomorrow...

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