This past weekend I traveled to Interlaken, Switzerland and, as cheesy as it sounds, it was the best weekend ever. This was something that my friends and I could not stop saying the entire time and I thought it would be the best way to describe my experience as a whole. My friends and I planned our trip through a program called Bus2Alps. When we arrived at the Geneva airport we were greeted by the Bus2Alps staff and we got on huge busses for our 2.5-hour drive to Interlaken. While en route the staff told us that the weather in Interlaken is completely unpredictable and they warned us to be flexible with our activities. The weather app on my phone said that it was predicted to rain the entire weekend, so I kept my fingers cross and an open mind. When we finally arrived at our hostel, which was called Youth Hostel, it was nearly 3am so we went straight to bed. The next morning we woke up early and quite literally hit the ground running.
The first activity that we chose to do was going up into the mountains. A van took us up to a gondola where we took our snowshoes and skis up. After that, we abandoned our sleds at the sole restaurant up there and began our journey. I did not expect snowshoeing to be easy but I also was totally unprepared for how difficult our climb would be. When I had imagined this activity I thought we would be taken all the way to the top of the mountain to explore, but I was very wrong. What we did was an intense hike (keep in mind that I am indeed out of shape) up the mountain for about an hour. On the way up most of us took off our jackets and gloves because the sun was beating down on our backs. When we finally reached the peak of our hike, I was finally able to take a look around and I was overwhelmed. It was a beautiful sunny day in the middle of January and I felt so lucky and happy. It could have easily been snowing or raining or foggy, but it wasn’t. We lucked out with the best possible conditions to go snowshoeing up in the mountains.
As we began our descent the group was filled with smiles and laughs. Snowshoeing up the mountain was physically difficult, but snowshoeing down was difficult in another way. I found that with each step down the snow was coming up to my knees. It was very easy to slip, and I did, many times. When we reached our starting point where we had left our sleds we abandoned our snowshoes and sat down for a fondue lunch. The lunch consisted of hot tea, cheese fondue, bread and potatoes to dip. The food was amazing and the view made everything taste even better. From here we sledded down to our original starting point, which was the distance that we had taken the gondola up. This, yet again, showed my nonathletic abilities but I still enjoyed every second.
After it was all over we still couldn’t stop smiling. We went from the hostel and walked to Lake Brienz. The mountains looked golden as the afternoon sun beamed on them and the sky turned cotton candy pink. All we kept saying was, “Best day ever!” over and over again. The rest of the weekend followed in this same pattern. It was full of chocolate-covered strawberries, more cheese fondue, kayaking, and endless smiles. This trip is definitely going to be hard to beat and it is an experience that I truly will never forget.
The Yellow Brick Road 