Saturday 18 July 2015

Totally British

On the Friday just a week ago my friend John from England arrived here to visit me in Switzerland. Me and my mum went to the airport to pick him up and then I showed him around my school and Baden.

On Saturday morning we woke up early to go on our nicely planned trip. With the bus and train we went to Thun, just John me and my mum because my dad was still working. Thun is a lovely place and we were very lucky because on that day there was a festival with barrel organs, ferris wheel and a lot of people. We just walked around and up the castle where we had a nice overview on the mountains and the lake below us. Since most boats in Switzerland are included in our pass we took one that went from Thun straight to Interlaken. Inter laken means "between the lakes", the Thuner and Brienzer lake. It was a lovely trip where we ate some nice soup on the boat and just enjoyed the view which was outstanding (by the way did I mention that there was not even one single cloud in the sky..) In Interlaken we planned to go on a little swim in the lake but in the end we were just relaxing in the shadow of a tree. Next on our tour we took the train to Grindelwald where we got a room in the youth hostel and got company by my dad.

Since John is living in a very flat part of England and has never actually been in the high mountains we thought it would be great to show him our alps. About a week ago we pre-booked a very steep cog-rail train up the Jungfraujoch. It is one of the highest mountains we have in Switzerland with a lovely view on the Aletsch glacier which is the largest glacier in the Alps! You also see an interesting but very touristic exhibition indoors that shows the making of the crazy train going up the mountain and as I said it attracts a huge amount of asian tourists. After a nice lunch a bit further down the mountainside we walked to the middle station and took a train back down to Brienz where we took a swim in the icy cold lake. Brrr! It is so cold because the water comes streaming straight from the glaciers. Another night in a youth hostel but this time next to the lake :)

Change of plans! The weather on Monday was not as sunny as we expected it to be so we canceled our train up the Brienzer Rothorn which is the home mountain of Brienz and took the train to Luzern after a nice lunch at the Giessbach hotel and a second walk (for me) up the waterfalls that are behind that lovely hotel. I think that we follow the asians because Luzern is actually populated by asians too (secret fact!) But it was nice doing a walk, eating ice cream and showing John around. We went back home a bit earlier since we were all very exhausted by the walking and the spicy hot weather :P

On Tuesday we showed John Zürich. Even I was in places I didn't know existed because my mum showed us around. A while ago she studied Architecture and got her diploma in Zürich so she had some lessons too about the city, its history and the interesting places. After some walking around we took the boat (again) and went swimming at the Mythenquai where we ate dinner and soon took the train back. Johns visit was already over and I was planning to go to Italy for a couple days to visit my friend Ari. You will be able to see all about Milano in the next post on Saturday ;)
































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