Switzerland, the other stuff, nice but not nearly as exciting!

The beautiful town of Thun

Freestyle Kayaking world champs

Swimming in Lake at Meilen

Rauckelete

Dama and Thomas and us after yet another swim... the storm was brewing

Dama, Sharon and Thomas at the Castle

Trummelbach waterfalls

Jungfrau Mountain

English church in Werfen

Evening stroll

We spent our first few days visiting Dama who lived with her husband Thomas in a wee town called Meilen about 20km from Zurich. They lived in a very nice apartment right on the lake. That night Dama cooked us a traditional Swiss meal of Rauckelete. For this you have a wee bbq/grill oven kinda thing on the table with meat cooking on the top and then in a little personal dish you melt a slice of cheese 10cm x 10cm square and 1cm thick which once grilled you pour over a boiled potato and eat with the meat cooking in front of you (there’s a photo don’t worry), very nice.
The first day we borrowed their bikes and rode along the lake stopping and swimming and sun bathing at the parks along the way. The water was really clean and a perfect temperature, very nice. The ride took us to a cute old little town Raperswill. Here we did a little bit of shopping as Andrew had broken his second pair of sunglasses (damn things)! And we needed to find some more. Then in the evening we headed back the 12km we had ridden to Meilen, worn out from a day in the sun and with sore bums unaccustomed to bicycle seats.
The next day we took it easy sorting our life out on the net and going for more swims. We had decided to cook dinner for our hosts, who insisted we not spend a cent of our own and had given us 100 Francs to buy food, so on the way back from our swim we stopped by the supermarket. When we had finished our shopping we went to get our bikes and I realised with a sinking feeling that I had taken the keys for the locks out of my bag. We were stuck in the underground parking lot with locked bikes and no key. And about this time the heavens opened and it rained horses and elephants with thunder and lightning every 20 seconds…. Bummer. As it was my (Andrew) mistake I decided to run back to the apartment which was a long way up a steep hill and get the spare keys and as it was pouring I decided to strip down to board shorts and bare feet and go for it! When I reached the apartment I tried to explain myself to Dama through puffs and went and looked for the keys… hmmm… oh no! I realised that I must have packed them after all and they were in the bag with Sharon sitting beside the locked bikes in the underground car park! So I grabbed a jacket and ran back down in bare feet to Sharon and there they were!!! It was only raining cats and dogs now so we decided to ride home me with our bag and the jacket over top and Sharon in her bikini (sorry I missed the photo opportunity, very amusing for all the people we passed though!), and we finally made it back and cooked a delicious meal which was finished off with chocolate fondue.

On Wednesday we had to meet up with our bus in Bern about an hour and a half away by train, Swiss trains are really expensive and this short trip cost us about $140 kiwi, ouch! But we made it to Bern and I was able to sneak off and make Sharon a ring right under her nose (you watch our bags I am just gonna go and find a supermarket and get some food for dinner) ;-). The bus arrived at 5:30pm and took us to Lauterbrunnen where we were lucky enough to get a whole cabin to ourselves… poof! Its amazing how fast you can make a mess with a couple of packs!
The following day I proposed which you can read about below. And the next day we left our camp to go back the way we had come to Thun were we had been invited to stay with Damas parents. Our train left at 4.30pm but we had to check out at 10am, luckily we were able to leave our packs at the camp so we only took our day bags and a load of washing. We stashed all this in a locker at the train station and wandered around the town. In the quest for a nice quiet shady spot we found a trail heading up the mountain to another village so decided to head up. It was a very steep track and a very hot day but the village was very pretty and I got a sweet engraved Swiss Army knife (they are way cheaper here! Who would have thought) (and we needed a corkscrew) (and a saw) (and tweezers and a toothpick, a can opener…. You get it) and Sharon got a little cow bell.

We arrived in Thun at 6:30pm and were picked up by one of Damas brothers who took us to his parents house where we were looked after by a very bewildered younger brother who had no idea what was going on and thought for some reason that we were competitors in the freestyle kayaking world champs which was about to start in the middle of town. But we finally corrected him and it was all worked out when Dama arrived too. Dama and Thomas showed us around Thun the next day and we saw a castle, watched the kayaking which wasn’t really started yet so people were just practising and also a demonstration by a group of anti-fascists, a bunch of about 200 rugged men dressed all in black some in masks yelling that they wanted a revolution etc etc, they looked pretty angry so we stayed out of their way. That night we were treated to a Swiss desert made from some nutty thing only found in Switzerland that they never told us the name of but which tasted awful, I ate mine and felt ill and Sharon gave up after a few bites. On the Sunday we went back to Lauterbrunnen and headed to the Trummelbach waterfalls consisting of 10 falls which are the only waterfalls in Europe inside a cave that are still accessible. It was so amazing and we were stunned anew at each different turn. After heading back to the camp and organising our stuff again we headed into town and took a train up to Wengen for the church service. It was a traditional Anglican service with about 10 people in the church including the minister so the hymns sounded great, even if a little off key ;-p but it was a really nice service all the same and a beautiful evening stroll back to Lauterbrunnen for our last night.