Day 9: Gimmelwald, Switzerland :)

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Today's highlights:

   -Arriving in Lauterbrunnen

   -Adorable Gimmelwald

   -Switzerland is stinkin amazing.

So needless to say (if you read the previous post), we were a little wasted when we arrived in Switzerland at 10:00am. Exhibit A: 

The fact that I am posting this shows my dedication to this blog and its accuracy. Regardless of how tired we were though, we stepped out of our train and were blown away by the view. This place is UNREAL. The Alps are like, "BAM! Wake up!" It seems like they just go up and up forever. And it's so green! There are bright green fields on the mountains just dotted with dark brown wooden cottages with smoke coming out. And public drinking fountains are just troughs full of water with an old spicket pouring water in (the kind of water you would NEVER drink anywhere else, but because it's Switzerland, all the water is clean and good, no matter what.) And in Lauterbrunnen, you can look up and see waterfalls falling right next to you. It is amazing. 

I probably took 300 photos here and every single time I would get frustrated, because they don't even come close to capturing what we are seeing. The mountains are impossible to describe. But here are a few meager attempts at pictures:

We stayed our first night in a tiny little village called Gimmelwald. So we had to take a cable car from Lauterbrunnen up to the mountain ridge, and then decided to hike the distance from that end to the other end of the mountain ridge where our town was. (You can take a train, but we all of a sudden were inspired to walk...for like two hours...in the heat...with our huge packs....on three hours of sleep...but hey, no regrets, right? I'm so glad we did it, even though we were tired, because it gave us time to just breathe it all in and look around in awe. Although on this hike, I was legitimately ATTACKED by butterflies. I know what you're probably thinking, how scary can a butterfly be? But I'll tell you, when three of them dart right at your face from different directions and stay there, it's kind of alarming. I screamed so loud, that Robbie couldn't stop laughing for like 5 minutes. He doesn't know. You just can't know until it happens to you, you know? 

Anyway, one of the tiny villages we passed has an outdoor movie night. Now THIS is what I call a big screen tv!

We finally arrived in our Gimmelwald, and it was adorable! It really is tiny. There are probably 12 houses and 3 of them are hotels or hostels. There are just goats out and about, ringing their bells around their necks. (I felt like Heidi, of Switzerland). They are also the most honest people in the world. Every shop we entered as we wandered around was just self-service. There was no employee, you just walk in, take what you want, and leave money behind in the box. Every shop was like that! What!?

The longer we were there, the more I fell in love with it. We stayed at the Hotel Mittaghorn. It's run by this cutest old man, Walter, and a middle-aged funny British guy named Tim. It was cool, but kind of an older crowd and really quiet. But they did have something: the MOST COMFORTABLE BEDS OF ALL TIME! I don't know if you can appreciate how rare and important that is. Seriously, when we got there at like 3, we laid down and sank so far in that we couldn't get back up. We figured it was the universe telling us to take a nap. So we did. And it was the best. I even fell asleep, and I don't take naps. So heavenly. Also, this was the view out our window:

When we finally woke up, we ventured around some more and found the Pension Gimmelwald, a hostel nearby that was a tad more expensive but now I kind of wish we would have stayed there. I'd definitely recommend it to people coming. It's got a lot of active, friendly people all around of all ages, either working there or staying there, and super helpful friendly staff. They actually recommended to us the crazy, awesome hike we will do tomorrow! (turns out, they were more helpful and knew more than most of the tourist information offices we went to). Just all around, the atmosphere was more our style. We met some really cool people there traveling like us! We also ate there twice and loved it. All the food they served us was very proud of being Swiss. This is a schnittwich :).

Last funny thing of the day, we were out of clothes so we decided to hand wash things for the first time (last time we washed, we were in Munich with a washer and dryer). So we washed almost everything we have (which despite the size of our backpacks turned out to be a lot) and realized it was a mistake to wait that long. To fit it all on the clothesline, we had to create a spiderweb all around our room to fit them all. 

To make sure they would dry before morning (when we had to check out) we slept all night with the windows open, to create air movement. Well, as you may or may not know, Switzerland is freezing at night, even in the summer. But we bit the bullet, slept in the cold like we were camping and woke up to.......sopping wet clothes still :(. Oh, the wasted sacrifice...Luckily, Tim let us put them up outside the next morning and leave then while we went hiking and in the warm sun, they finally dried. Isn't that husband of mine so adorbs using clothes pins?

That's it for today! Stay tuned for tomorrow's crazy experience!