Beautiful, Fairy Tale Interlaken

Already we are in Florence and this is the first time I’ve had a chance to write about Interlaken, beautiful, fairy tale Interlaken. We had an amazing time. Daniel told me it would be beautiful, but I had no idea how true that was.

We started off to a rocky start first, though. Remember our train ride from Prague wasn’t full of splendor. Then when we were almost to Interlaken, we had to transfer to a bus because the trains were having some kind of maintenance. Finally we made it a little after 11pm, after the town was already shut down for the night. The streets were completely dark, no lights, but we found our hostel with the help of a local guy who walked us for a distance than pointed us in the right direction.

I’ve found the most helpful people are the random people you meet, not the people in service jobs here, although you have to be careful and not naïve giving too much information to strangers, I guess. Anyway, when we got to the hostel, the front desk was nowhere to be found. We wandered around up and down the stairs trying to figure out how to check in. Then we saw a note to us stuck on the wall with our key…high tech security at this place!

We found our room on the 3rd floor and four other people already checked in to our 6 bed tiny room. We were stuck with the last 2 top bunks, not next to each other. After knocking things over and hitting people with our big backpacks because the room was so small, I immediately went to take a shower in the bathroom in our room. It was a tiny bathroom, kind of dirty, and the shower didn’t drain so your shower shoes did no good and the floor was wet in the whole room. Yuck!

Right after I got dressed I went to find D who had escaped our tiny room. We decided to splurge on an actual hotel room. D was a major proponent of getting a nice, clean, private room, so I went along of course! I could not spend another night at the Lazy Falken…even though their signs say “Easy to find….hard to leave.” I read reviews before choosing it. I’m not sure who the crazy people are that rated it so highly. So, we settled on a hotel after searching for about an hour and a half, Hotel Weisses Kreuz.

After a short, uncomfortable sleep on a stained mattress (thank goodness I brought my own bedding!), we quickly packed up, had our free Nutella toast breakfast, and set out for a day of hiking leaving our packs at the hostel since check in time at the hotel wasn’t until the afternoon (apparently everything shuts down from around 11-3 daily).

Regardless of how terrible the hostel was, waking up in the Swiss Alps and walking out into the fresh mountain air was amazing. Clouds still hung wispily around the mountains and the water flowed a beautiful turquoise under the bridge we crossed on the way to the train station. We took deep breaths to clear out the big city air we have been breathing.

We caught the train up to Grindelwald after stopping at the market for our picnic lunch. It was a picturesque train ride up the mountain. From Grindelwald, we took a gondola ride up to First so that we could hike the Flower Trail. The gondola ride was full of camera flashes trying to capture the beauty of the snow covered mountains on one side, the rolling, green, cow sprinkled mountains on the other, and the quaint town in the valley below us. It was a bit warmer in Interlaken than it had been in previous cities. We had a few sprinkles on the way up but when we arrived at the top (7,100 feet up) it was clearing to blue skies that stayed for the rest of the day.

We started the hike with steep uphill climbs pausing to take pictures of the scenery along the way. It was incredible! As I described from the gondola ride, the mountains and valley were beautiful. There were waterfalls that had cut out paths meandering down the hillside. The sounds were just as memorable as the views. All of the cows had varying sizes of bells hanging on their necks. These bells made a beautiful concert of varying tones for our entire time on the mountain with the sound of water flowing in the background.

We stopped for a picnic- salami, bread, Swiss cheese and pinot grigio- and met a couple from North Carolina. We took turns taking pictures of each other with the mountains as the backdrop. Then we continued on to the lake at Buchalpsee. It was a lot smaller than we expected, but a beautiful turquoise color, unlike anything I’ve seen before.

We sat there to finish our bottle of wine then decided to continue down the path. D found another spot off the trail and said this is really pretty. I followed him, but I didn’t know if he just wanted to sit some more or take a picture. Then I saw him fidgeting with something, and I assumed it was his camera, so I turned to start taking pictures myself.

I turned around to see him down on one knee! I just stared dumbstruck for a second not sure if this was really happening or what I should say. I asked him if he was serious and if the ring was real. Haha! Let me explain…in Amsterdam I had been teasing D every where we went when we would see a store advertising diamonds and in one window we had seen some really pretty rings, but they were all CZ. He never let on that he already had a ring! Obviously, he wasn’t joking and I said, “yes!” We are engaged! It doesn’t seem real! So wonderful!

We continued on down the mountain, and it felt like we had the Swiss Alps to ourselves. Before the proposal there had been so many people around, after there were none. It was amazing…then I started to get worried because the gondolas shut down in just a bit and we needed to catch it to get back to Grindelwald. I went with my worst case scenario tendencies and thought we were on the wrong path and would be stuck there all night. We finally came across a meeting point where a bus was picking up our North Carolina friends. They were so excited for us and wished us much luck.

Once we made it to the bottom, we trained back to Interlaken. On the way to check in to our new hotel I went into a Swiss chocolate shop. It was a tiny shop and the guy that was checking out, who I assume was a regular, was trying to help me pick out a flavor. He gave me a taste of the kind he just bought, then the owner of the shop told him he was a client not a salesman and he left. Then the owner pulled out a special sample box from under the counter and gave me a champagne truffle. I said, “Oh perfect! My boyfriend just proposed today.” I had to explain what proposed meant (not a well know term internationally even though they do the same thing here) and then he was so excited for us. After I paid he threw in a whole bag of champagne truffles for our celebration. So nice!

Next we stopped to get a bottle of champagne. They didn’t have cold bottles, so when we got to the hotel we asked if they had a refrigerator we could use because we just got engaged and needed to chill our celebration champagne. “Of course!” When D went back down to get the champagne the concierge had put it on a silver tray with champagne flutes. Everyone is so excited and we don’t even know them!

Our engagement celebration dinner was at a traditional Swiss restaurant, Chalet. We ordered Swiss fondue which was so tasty. D kept calling me fiancé, bride and future wife and reminding me that we are getting married. Every time I couldn’t help but giggle with joy. I can’t believe it!

We thoroughly enjoyed a night in our hotel room not being awakened by strangers, not climbing up a bunk-bed, and not locking up all of our things. However, I woke up at 3:30am too excited to sleep. I read for a while then slept until 8am. Laundry time! Oh how exciting to have clean clothes. D packed up our bags at the hotel while I did laundry. I made friends with a couple in their late 70s that had been married for 54 years. They were incredibly excited about our engagement. The husband asked if anyone had taken my picture to capture how happy I look. I assured him we have taken thousands of pictures!!!

After laundry we grabbed our things and enjoyed a snack by the water with the mountains in the background, savoring our last few minutes in Switzerland, a place I’ll never forget!

Next…Rome…