Sunday, July 25, 2010

Extreme sightseeing

This weekend, I went to Interlaken with a few friends. The plan was to go canyoning on Saturday, stay in town overnight, and drive back after brunch on Sunday. But we all know that when I'm involved, things seldom happen according to plan. We made it in good time to Interlaken, even though most of us were worse for wear from a brutal night out on Friday night. The two hour drive there was filled with hilarity and general silliness. The first thing we did upon reaching Jungfrau, the region within Interlaken where we would be staying, was decide to have lunch. You can imagine how happy this made me feel. I decided to go ahead and have a plateful of rostii with the justification that I was going to be burning a lot of calories canyoning. Little did I know das katastrophes that awaited us...

After lunch, we made our way to the company with whom we organized the canyoning. As usual, there were no adult wetsuits available in my size, so I had to end up wearing a kid size suit, and tragically, even that was a bit too big on me. I was glad that I had that rostii earlier to keep me emotionally happy, otherwise this wetsuit situation would have had me bursting into tears. We got all geared up in our wet suit, jacket, lifevest, helmet, ropes, and everything else that we could humanly carry on us, and got in the van that would drive us to the canyon.

Our driver was an...interesting French guy who had never driven an automatic and thus was causing almost-accidentlike situations every 2.4 seconds. After the first couple of times, we almost got used to it. I hardly ever even prayed for my life after the fifth time that we almost crashed into another car. The general hilarity from the morning continued well into the afternoon. The weather was rainy and cold, but the scenic beauty of the valley and the fun company made it enjoyable. Alas, joy would soon turn into sorrow, and sorrow into despair. As we got closer to entering the canyon, we found out that one of the rocks from the mountain had fallen over a tunnel and we thus had to turn back. Clemount, in this thick French accent, gravely told us, "Je suis desole but I have no Plan B!" We secretly wanted to burst out laughing (remember, we were in our silliness phase of the trip, which is when everything was funny!), but suggested that he ask around and see if we could come back Sunday morning and go then. He thought this was an absolutely brilliant idea and drove to the nearest town to inquire more about the situation.

While we were waiting for Clemount to do this thing, I went all Annie Lebovitz on everyone and whipped out my camera:



Here are some really cool views of the Jungfrau range:



Meanwhile, Clemount came back with the depressing news that we couldn't go canyoning as it was too dangerous and we had to turn back.At this point, we were still in our wetsuit. Standing outside of a van. We were dressed up in extreme sportsgear and were taking pictures of mountains. As my friend C put it, we basically ended up doing "extreme sightseeing". Came across some really nice views on the way back though:





We decided to drown our sorrows in Fondue, which regrettably led to "whoever drops the bread takes a shot" games, and as always, I lost. By midnight, I was falling asleep standing up. The fact that only horses can sleep standing up is a myth, which I successfully managed to dispel on Saturday night.

While we were discussing with Clemount what to do in place of Canyoning on Sunday, one of our friends C then proposed the idea that we could go rafting early Sunday morning, since we were staying in town overnight anyway. Clemount again thought that this was the most brilliant idea ever. We started to wonder if he lived on a Funny farm and had infact only been let out for a couple of hours that day. Our analysis of him continued well into Sunday afternoon. So rafting we did go on Sunday, but to learn more about that little adventure, and the meaning of the term "Kinder ninja", you'll have to check back tomorrow (or a week from now, but I promise, rafting details and the pictures will be uploaded soon!)

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