The Harder they Climb

As a child my parents would read me the popular children's book The Polar Express at Christmas time. While I enjoyed the Christmas message, what I truly loved was the crazy pictures of the train climbing the huge mountains. I would look at those pictures and think "man, I really wanna be on a train that goes through gigantic mountains." Well, I made it. That was my train rides to and from Interlocken, Switzerland.


Interlocken is located in the Swiss Alps. It's mainly a ski town, but they are many other extreme activities there as well. These include sky diving, canyoning (bungie jumping into a canyon), and zorbing, something I think Uncle Ted would love. We arrived in the middle of the day and were greeted with this view of the mountain. We checked into our hostel and went off for a walk. That night was pretty tame, we basically hung out in the town and ate fondue. Now, I would love to say the fondue was incredible, but I can't lie to all of you. I thought it was pretty terrible, maybe I'm not cultured enough to handle European cheese, but I was not a fan. Here is me with the mix.

That morning we headed off with some people from the Syracuse program and explored the city. We walked across a field (which was some farmer's) and some railroad tracks until we reached the western lake. We skipped stones and took in the blue water. Here is the posse.
After a decent lunch at Mr Burger (what do you think we ate) we headed off to explore a mine shaft. Well we didn't know if it was a mine shaft, but there were these tracks heading up a mountain. We decided to investigate. On the way over to the mine shaft I snapped this pic of the group, I like to call it an album cover.
Now, the three girls were not feeling the whole abandoned mine shaft thing so the four adventurers set off on their own. After going about halfway up the mountain we ran into a school group of Swiss children. One of the kids looked like Augustus Gloop, he was huge, eating a lollipop, sprawled out on a bench, and barking orders at kids.
We tried asking the kids for directions but they had no idea what we were saying. We asked them if we should follow the trail sign that said "harder clumb" and they starting shrieking "NO! NO!". So we stopped in the trail and returned to where the children were. It was then that things turned memorable. The kids quickly produced a British kid who spoke perfect English (of course every time he spoke English all the swiss kids laughed) and he told us which way to go. Here we are with the kids. The kid throwing up the peace sign is the translator and probably a future diplomat.

We continued to hike up the peak. While we were hiking we met two Americans studying in Germany. We swapped stories about studying abroad and hiked to the top together. At the top we met two girls who were also American, it turned out we knew a lot of mutual people. Here is the picture of the group.

After not finding the mineshaft, we all agreed to meet up later. We met up a French girl at a bar and one of the American's we met in the morning taught her how to play "bloody knuckles'.
I'm pretty sure she was shocked at the game American kids frequently play in High School.

Here a view of one of the lakes in the town and the alps behind. That morning we awoke and checked out of the Hostel and got on a train to Munich. The ride was full of amazing vistas equal to the Polar Express, and although there was not any free hot chocolate, I finally got to see those awesome mountain vistas.