On May 16, we left our hostel to explore Geneva. We took a bus to the botanical gardens.
Then we went by the lake and sat for a while. We walked around Old Town where we walked in the Saint-Pierre Cathedral.
We went to a place with benches overlooking the other side of the city and later went to a restaurant in a town square and sat outside. We walked down along Lake Léman and walked down the pier to the big water fountain.
We continued to walk to a couple of parks and rested on the grass for a while. We then stopped at a sandwich shop, got our bags from the hostel, and went to the train station. The train ride from Geneva to Bern was beautiful! We were able to see the mountains more closely and could see how big the lake was. There were also a lot of vineyards all down the hill next to where we were riding. We could see the architecture change as we went from the French-speaking part of Switzerland to the German-speaking part: the roofs of houses were brown instead of red and definitely looked different than in France.
At the Bern train station, we tried to look for where our train would leave from. Signs were all in German, but it was still easy enough to figure out which board showed departures. The problem was that we couldn’t find a train going to our station and our tickets didn’t have a train number to look for or even a time of departure. After walking up and down throughout the station looking for an information booth only to find that it was closed, we finally looked at signs again and found the one that stopped at Interlaken West on the way. We were so relieved because it was getting late and that was probably the last train of the night going there. We had a little bit of time before the train left, so we sat down and stress-ate a bunch of carbs. On the train, we were told that they were doing construction on the tracks, so we had to switch to a bus in Spietz. The passengers were very helpful at directing us where to go, though.
From the bus stop in Interlaken, we walked to the hostel, crossing over a river. The town was so quaint and peaceful at night and the air felt fresh. We both decided that even though it was dark and we could only see the outline of mountains, it was already our favorite place so far. We felt like the only ones there, which was refreshing after being in cities the previous few days. Inside the hostel, we met two girls in our room, one from England and one from Florida who was studying abroad in Venice.
For our first day in Interlaken, we went to see the Staubbach Falls in a nearby town with the two girls from our hostel. We went to a small grocery store down the street to buy breakfast and lunch foods. It was interesting because most of the food labels were in German, but some were in French and some were in German but translated into French and Italian. I was able to use some French knowledge to read ingredients. We took a train to Wilderswil and saw that we had a half hour until the bus, so we walked around and took pictures.
We took the bus to Lauterbrunnen. We could see the waterfall almost as soon as we got off the bus, but we walked up closer to it. We took pictures in a field and walked along the path to a gazebo where we ate lunch.
We went back to Interlaken. Maddie and I went back to the hostel and took off to hike the Harder Kulm mountain. We walked along the path along the river and then found the path to go up the mountain after a couple of wrong turns. We started walking up and it wasn’t too bad, but then the wider, more gradual path ended and it turned into a narrow, steep path with lots of stairs. It was weird because I was sweating at first and then gradually I could tell that I was working harder, but wasn’t sweating anymore. It took a minute to realize that it was because we were reaching a higher altitude where it was colder. My hands got numb at the top, but we powered through. I was so excited and relieved when we finally reached a flat stretch at the top.
We walked to the lookout point, which had a glass bottom in part of it. After getting pictures, we rushed inside the restrooms to warm up and then took a funicular ride down the mountain.
We raced back along the river to the hostel to warm up. We were so tired and hungry that we tried looking for good Swiss restaurants, but eventually gave up and went to a nearby pizza place. We split a mixed salad and spicy chicken pizza. We went back to the hostel and I slept great.
The next morning, Maddie and I went back to the store for food. We sat on the balcony of the hostel to eat breakfast.
We started walking on a path along Lake Thun toward the St. Beatus Caves. We stopped at a picnic area along the way and then continued on the road along the lake. We saw a tunnel cutting through the mountain and realized we needed to follow the hiking trail winding up the mountain instead of cutting through the tunnel. This path was steep and I was not prepared to hike uphill two days in a row, but we got great views overlooking the lake.
We reached the caves, which were touristy. There was a manmade pathway with stairs to follow through part of the caves and the rest were blocked off. The cave stays around 45 to 50°F no matter what the weather is like outside. The cave had stalactites, stalagmites, and waterfalls inside.
We took the bus back to Interlaken by the hostel. We walked around to chocolate shops and ran into Madison from our hostel in one of the shops. We bought assorted chocolates and shared a cup of strawberries with chocolate fondue, which was delicious! We walked with Madison around a different part of town. We saw a couple of old cathedrals, one of which was protestant and the other Catholic. The churches had been around for centuries and they were right next to each other but kept their peace, which sums up Switzerland pretty well. There is a mixture of languages, cultures, and religions in Switzerland and they all coexist peacefully. We could hear someone practicing the organ in one of the churches. We walked back toward the hostel along the river and Maddie and I walked to a restaurant where we sat outside and shared Swiss cheese fondue with bread. The cheese was very salty and the bread was plain, but I never turn down a carb-heavy meal. We got back to the hostel, ate some of the chocolates, and went downstairs to the bar connected to the hostel where I tried Swiss white wine.
The Voyage Journal 