Blogging is turning into somewhat of a chore, so I'm going to try to make these short and sweet for my sake and yours!! But, well, no promises. Sometimes I just can't stop. Also, I'm breaking my carnival break up into different posts per city!
Day One
We started off our carnival trip traveling to Interlaken, Switzerland. It was a long day of trains, but so worth it once we arrived! Our hostel, Backpacker's Villa, was incredible. It was super cute, clean, there were Bible verses posted and a wonderful little meditation room, we had our own room, and the girls at the desk gave us great recommendations/didn't get fed up with us asking them questions nine times a day. We ate rosti, a traditional Swiss meal for dinner.
Day Two
Paragliding had been discussed all along in planning this trip, but I wasn't sure if it would work out. I'm a total thrill chaser/adrenaline junkie so I was 100% game, but the other girls didn't seem so sure. But we talked to our lovely desk friends, they called Skywings, and before we knew it, we were told to be ready in the lobby in two hours. We decided to kill the time just wandering Interlaken, which is such an easy thing to do. The town is the cutest little thing, and set up in the most perfect bowl in the Swiss Alps. Then we went back put on multiple layers (and still more from the company later) and headed downstairs! The guy who came in to get us, Dan, was super friendly and easy to be around from the start, so that put us all at ease. We loaded into the van with the other "pilots"and headed up the mountain! The van took us almost to the top, and then we had to hike a little ways to get to our take-off spot. We drew
cards to decide which girl would go with which pilot, and I drew Dan, so I felt comfortable with that.
I was the last to take off, so it was nice to see the other girls go, but my turn came quickly and I started to feel butterflies. I told Dan that the wires holding us up looked like dental floss. One of the other instructors said that were, used dental floss, in fact! Ha. Then I was convinced I would eat it trying to run down the mountain, but Dan said it was time to go, so I just had to go! I could feel the weight of our parachute (glider? what the heck suspended me in the air almost a mile off the ground?!) immediately, it was hard to run. And then, suddenly, I was running but in mid-air! I could not stop smiling! I was flying!
We flew a lot closer to the cliffs and trees than I expected, but surprisingly it wasn't that scary. We only hit little patches of air that made my stomach jump a couple of times. Overall, it was really relaxing. Still exciting though. We could see two beautiful blue lakes, two rivers, the whole town, and were surrounded by mountains. What a wonderful Creator we have! I couldn't get that thought out of my mind!
At one point Dan let me fly... I wish I would've taken the opportunity to do some more crazy turns or something but I was just so surprised that he handed the controls over to me! He got this on video, but the video isn't exactly working right so I'll try to get another copy!
I got a little nervous right before the landing, but it was actually really simple. We landed in a field right in the middle of town.
For the rest of the afternoon we took a nice little stroll down the river and took pictures. It doesn't sound too thrilling, but with the scenery and friends it was so great!
It was an adventure-filled day, not to mention Switzerland is ridiculously expensive, so we made dinner at the hostel and did homework/caught up with friends and family/relaxed the rest of the evening.
Day Three
Lainey and Emily went sledding, so Alex and I were determined to find something adventurous and less expensive to do. We wanted to go to Jungfrau, the "Top of Europe," but that turned out to be extremely expensive. So once again, one of our sweet desk girls came through for us and recommended a walk through town, along the river, to a castle, through a nature reserve, and then to hop on a bus back into town. We started off by getting a little lost...a construction worker yelled something at us in German then "hola, senioritas!," then we found ourselves in a RV lot, then in someone's yard looking at the river with no way to get across, and then we got to walk back past our friend on his long smoke break. But we eventually found our way. The walk was beautiful! The castle actually turned out to be ruins, but we had a fun time exploring it.
Short and sweet, huh Liesie? Yeah right. But it was all incredible and I just had to share! And this hardly scratches the surface! I could've said so much more about our castle adventure and hike. Ugh. Lucerne and Salzburg will be next... I promise those ones will be shorter. Maybe.
Here's the link to the rest of my pictures from the whole week... non-Facebook users, this will work for you too!!
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