Interlaken

I'm currently hanging in my second Swiss city, and I think it will be my last. I'm possibly heading to Munich in a couple of days, but I don't want to jump the gun for the moment. Any way, Interlaken is a very nice little city, it's quite small, but you can tell it does well on the tourism side. There are tons of hotels, and tons of adventure companies to hire to go river rafting, parasailing, bungee jumping, and just about anything you can think of. While I would love to do some of these activities, they tend to be on the priceyer side, so I decided today that I would head up the mountain to do some hiking instead.

I had been suggested to do an activity called Via Ferrata, and I think I may have found a new outdoors activity mistress. It's a hybrid of hiking and rock climbing, and definitely had my legs shaking at moments. They tend to take you on trails that normally, wouldn't be a good idea to go on because of the steepness and narrow paths. However, there is a steel cable that runs along the whole trail where you clip into with two carabeaners that are attached to a climbing harness you are wearing.

On this particular trail there were two cable tight wire bridges, a suspension bridge that was about 100 yards long, and one terrifying wrap around a rock where there is only steel rebar sticking out of the rock with a 1000 foot fall beneath you. There was no escaping looking down, because I wanted to look and see where I was stepping. Once I had maneuvered my way around, I had sweated so much the ten minutes it took me to get around, for a second I thought I had peed my pants.

It was a fantastic day today, but I think I'll take it easy tomorrow as I'm still getting over a cold and don't want to be too beat for my train ride the next day, wherever it may go.

John

P.S. Go Ducks!