Heaven on Earth - Interlaken and the Swiss Alps

I honestly have no idea where to start with this one, but I just had the best weekend of my life. As some of you know, I spent this past weekend in Interlaken, Switzerland and got the chance to snowboard in the Swiss Alps, and now I want to go back and never leave. Switzerland is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Besides being ridiculously expensive, it’s heaven on earth and I want to live there… but then again I guess I could settle for a vacation house ;]

My trip started with Bus2Alps on Thursday night and we got to Interlaken at around 8 in the morning on Friday. From there we checked in, ate breakfast, got our gear, and went straight to the mountain. We left with no guides and no one who was the familiar with the country, language or transportation system. I feel like this could have/should have been disastrous, but it worked out perfectly. The excitement about snowboarding in the alps took away all of the tiredness from lack of sleep and replaced with giddiness (if that’s even a word). Most of you know how I get when I'm really excited... There was a lot of dancing around and a permanent grin was plastered to my face. In retrospect I probably looked a litte crazy, but that's nothing new. Getting to the mountain was a trek, but it was a beautiful trek! We took a bus from our hostel to the train station, then took two more trains to get to the mountain which took a while, but the whole way up I was snapping pictures like a crazy person (once again) and repeating over and over again how beautiful this place was, how lucky we were, and how I couldn't believe that we were about to ski the Alps.

Once we got to the top, we took the chairlift to Jungfrau which is “the top of Europe". Go big or go home right? This place was incredible, insane, amazing, beautiful - literally perfection. The mountain is wide open and covered in lots and lots of snow with a few trees and rocks scattered across the range. We spent the next two days taking the trails laid out for us and venturing off on and creating new ones. It was the most exhilarating experience of my life. I had a mountain covered in snow in front of me, and I could go wherever I wanted – no ropes, no blockades, no limits, just complete freedom. At one point, we decided we wanted to get over to another peak, so we decided to get creative and carve out our own trail over to it. We scoped it out and it looked okay, but as we made our way down we realized we were more or less scaling a cliff covered in snow..  Who knows what the vertical was, but it was the steepest slope I’ve ever gone down. But we did it, and honestly it wasn’t that bad, and I felt like a bad ass when we got down and looked up at what we had just done. it was absolutely unreal & I want to do it every day of my life. I’m finding that not much makes me happier than a good day on the mountain, and those two days definitely cemented that thought. 

View from the Train

Jungfrau

See the steep part in the back? that's what we went down to cross over to the other side

Heaven on earth.

Both days after we got home from snowboarding, it just so happened to be happy hour - talk about perfect timing. There is nothing better than a beer after a long day on the mountain, and two for one made that even better. Right next to our hostel was the Metrobar, which is one of the most popular bars in Interlaken. It felt like the whole town filtered in for the night. The drink prices were way more reasonable than the other bars in town (one of them was charging 19 frank for a cocktail - which is just about $21), and the place was filled with great people and great music, so no complaints - just two nights filled with dancing, singing and drinking.

Sunday morning we did a chocolate tasting at Schoh Chocolatier.. it was cool to learn about how everything is made, and it was even cooler that we got to taste a bunch of different kinds of chocolate, AND I left with a little baggie of truffles (that are already gone). 

Cocoa beans

After the chocolate tasting, we took the opportunity to explore Interlaken. The town was filled with rustic scenery and buildings which was contrasted with ultramodern and simplistic Swiss design. There is also a huge community into extreme sports, so we saw people parasailing everywhere. They would literally land in a giant park in the middle of town and go on with their day... no big deal.

Thanks for the pointers, Balmers!

So now I’m back in Italy, back to classes and preparing for midterms and wishing that I was back on the slopes in the Alps and wandering around Interlaken. This weekend was definitely one that I’ll never forget and hopefully something that I’ll get to do again someday.