Fondue

10/9/2009

Today is my Aunt Lynn’s birthday, so Happy Birthday Lynn! We woke up this morning to a very foggy Interlaken. On my agenda for the day was to go skydiving, so this inclimate weather concerned me, but I hoped as the day went on it would clear up before 12, which was the time I was supposed to depart from the hostel to go to the air field. By the way there is a hammock room in this hostel. How cool is that?

Balmers was kind enough to provide us with breakfast. We had two options of either granola and fruit or toast, jam and cheese. We both chose the granola that was also served with milk and orange juice. It was delicious and how appropriate now that we are in a hiking capital of Switzerland. With all of the complimentary liquids served in addition to the hot tea and coffee that was provided, I think I drank more liquid this morning than I had in the past week. My very little bladder was not used to that.

While we waited for it to be 12, Katherine and I walked around the town of Interlaken looking into stores and just seeing what was there. The town is precious. We decided to stay in Interlaken for a third night in our private room before we head out towards Italy, our last country in our travels. The weather did start to clear up and the sun started to peak through, which made my hopes rise. We headed back to the hostel to check in and make sure everything was still on. While we were in the main office, there were two extremely weird guys wanting to also go skydiving today. Luckily I took the last spot on the 12 o’clock expedition and they had to go on the 3 o’clock. Whew, akward bullet dodged there. There was an extra seat in the bus to the air field, so the nice people with the skydiving company let Katherine come along to the landing zone so that she could watch and take pictures.

Once in the van to go skydiving, we picked up more people from various parts of time and then headed out to the countryside (which really was the valley in between the mountains outside of Interlaken) to get to the airfield. I noticed that cows are normally tan here and really do wear gigantic cowbells around their necks (wild I know) At the hanger, we got dressed, geared up, and given our instructions pretty quickly. Right as we were about to board the planes for take off, bad weather clouds moved in pretty fast and we were put on stand by. Katherine and I decided to enjoy some candy bars. She had a Snickers and I had a Twix (which if everything went according to plan, the Twix would be the icing on the cake of a good day). After about 45 minutes of waiting and more bad weather moving in, our jumps were canceled. Everything was refunded, so no harm done. I was a little bit bummed out about this, but it seemed to be fate and I am not about to mess with fate when it comes to jumping out of a plane. It wasn’t in the cards, and I am sure sometime later on in my life I will find myself in an equally beautiful place with the opportunity to skydive. Plus I had a Twix, which made me happy. I found it weird that I never really got bad nerves during this whole hooplah. Is that weird or maybe I just was never close enough to realize the reality of the situation? One thing that did make me feel safe about sky diving is that there are two back up plans if the original plan of my tandem jump partner guide guy fails.

The skydiving company dropped us back at the hostel around 3:30 and I had a lot of work to do on the computer. The final dates of our trips have been decided. Katherine is flying home out of Rome on the 23rd. My mom is flying into Rome on the 5th and then we are both flying home after the cooking school on the 14th. Since we booked one way tickets over to Europe, I had to figure out the best deal of getting back to the United States. I find finding the best deal flights to be a stressful process, in addition I had to see if it was reasonably possible to fly back with my mom. This took a while. At first we thought our free wifi vouchers we just for 6 hrs of continuous wifi, but it turns out that if you turn your computer off the wifi connection pauses. This was a great realization for us.

We wanted to do an early dinner because we had just had candy bars for lunch. We had planned to do a fondue dinner because when in Rome and also it goes along nicely with my eating native foods kick (hello Swiss cheese and Swiss chocolate). I was so excited about this dinner all day. The front desk recommended a place that did a good three-course fondue dinner. We walked there around 5:45. This place ended up being a little weird. First off, in addition to having fondue on their menu, they also had Chinese and Thai dishes on it. The dinner was ok. Melting pot does a better job in my opinion. The meat portion was done in oil and I prefer broth, but poTAYtoe, poTOToe. Lastly, the main course was served with French fries, which I thought was a little unusual. We still ate till we were stuffed to the brim (Im doing this for the second night in a row now) then walked home. We did get dressed up for this dinner. I wore my one nice outfit, including my ballerina flats. The walking was not agreeable with these shoes and my bum foot, causing it to swell up a bit. Looks like sneakers will be a solid bet for me the rest of the trip.

When we got back to the hostel we had to lay down for a while and digest. I had received a free beer voucher for the hostel’s bar from my sky dive cancellation. We went to the bar to check it out, cash in my free voucher, and take advantage of the buy one get one free happy hour. The bar ended up being an interesting situation and people watching. The first weird thing we saw was a couple making out at a table, but there was also another guy (probably their friend) sitting at the table with them. I awkwardly didn’t mean to make eye contact with the third party and kinda laughed at the situation and gave him a sympathetic look and he glared back at me like “what?!?” I guess that was a normal situation for him. Second, there was a guy walking around in what looked like a Civil War general uniform. I kid you not. Knee length coat with brass buttons and everything. Third and the straw that broke the camels back on us leaving, this guy, who ended up being a mechanical engineer who was studying abroad in Germany, came over to hit on us. He was terribly awkward and while I do give him props for having the courage to come over and talk to us, he was not getting any of our hints that we did not want to continue the conversation as long as he did. Eventually we bailed and turned in for the night. I don’t think the Metro bar is really our scene.

Tomorrow we have an early wake up call. Hopefully the weather improves because we want to do something extreme, because Interlaken seems like a pretty extreme place, where you can live life on the edge (literally). Unfortunately, it is a colder portion of mid-October and anything involving water does not sound that appealing. We are thinking about doing a high ropes course that has zip lines and such. It is also one of the cheapest adventure activities, so that is a major positive in a budget aspect.