A Tour of Switzerland

Well... we know you have been on pins and needles these past few days, but we have some sad news. We were trying to go paragliding off a cliff in Interlaken for TWO DAYS and the weather just wouldn't allow it to happen. We tried hard, though...sorry we couldn't tell you before.

We left Interlaken this morning after another failed attempt at paragliding and traveled to the city of Lucerne. This medieval town sits on the edge of Lake Lucerne and has lots of fun shopping areas and a cool bridge and water tower. (FYI- this water tower is the most photographed monument in Switzerland. We took a picture of it ourselves, but we still don't really know why.)

Our next stop on our train excursion was a little tribute to Donna Hampton. When I was working on planning my trip, the one stop she said I should take was to a little Swiss village called "Einsiedeln." It was her favorite stop on her Euro trip in high school playing the flute around the continent...and that was enough for us! It was quite a cute little town and the town monastery was definitely impressive. We had a good time just walking around for a couple hours as a break from the train.

Finally we rode our last train, planning on staying at a particular hostel on the side of a mountain we had read about; it used to house hermit monks. We traveled by train to the small town of Appenzell (completely deserted by the time of our arrival) and then by bus to Wasserauen (a parking lot for a town) where we planned on taking a cable car to our perched hostel. Well...the cable car had closed and we were somewhat stranded in a land of German-speakers, a closed cable car, and one building...a hostel and paragliding school.

Thankfully, an English-speaking angel was sitting on the porch and saw how confused we looked. Through her thick German dialect she invited us in to help. We learned of hikes up to our hostel, ut with our heavy packs and the fact that it was getting dark, we knew that was not an option. After lots of fussing over the decision, she invited us to stay in her place for the night and we accepted. Sonja (Sonia) runs this guesthouse, paragliding school, restaurant...basically the entirety of Wasserauen. Sonja was quite a character: with a grin she was always willing to help us out and was so hospitable. The best part was how she interacted with all the boys of the paragliding school. You could tell she has learned to play with the boys and through her tough shell, she treats her guests great!

We were so glad at this point for the attic room she gave us that had plenty of soft, down comforters and pads for us to lay on. We got a pretty good night's rest, except for the fact that our open window was practically blown out from a windstorm lasting all night. Gushes of air came down from the mountains till morning. However, we woke up and enjoyed a great breakfast, made of course, by Sonja.

This was quite a day filled with roadbumps and deadends, but all worked out and we got to meet Sonja. Besides...we are getting used to flying by the seat of our pants...in every way, but paragliding!

Love to all,
Tripp and Laura