My first trip out of Barcelona was to interlocken, Switzerland.
We flew into Geneva and then a bus from our program took us to the hostel. It was a 2 and a half hour bus ride. It wasn’t too bad. The hostel is pretty nice for a hostel. The bathrooms aren’t gross and the beds are clean. It is called Balmers. I am in a 10 person room with all of my friends. My roommates in Barcelona and Amanda’s Barcelona roommates. We all set our alarms for 7:45 to sign up for activities and to get the day going. We ate breakfast. It was free at the hostel. It was pretty good. I went canyon jumping during the day and night sledding that night. I went skiing the next day.
We stayed at a hostel called balmers. It was gross and reminded me of camp but such a great experience. And a lot of people we knew were staying there also. I LOVE Switzerland. It is beautiful. The mountains are incredible. Canyon jumping was amazing. We drove all the way up the Swiss alps and then hiked the rest until we got to a ledge. There were 8 of us and everyone was crying and freaking out. I was surprisingly very chill about the whole thing. I loved every minute of it. It was the most exhilarating thing of my entire life. You are attached to a bungie cord and then you jump off a cliff and there is a 15-20 seconds drop where you just free fall. After that you swing back and forth for a minute or two. That part was so cool. You are just swinging in between 2 huge mountains. One of the mountains was the Igor which is famous for its breathtaking look and for the north side. The north side is called The North Face (like the clothing company). That was very cool. When I got home from canyon jumping we walked around Interlocken for a while. One of the tour guides from our program took us around. He showed us the nicest hotel in Switzerland and a bunch of different landmarks. One of them being the Metropole Hotel. When you go to the top it has a breathtaking view. I took lots of pictures. I kind of drifted and lost my friends and the tour guide. I looked around and no one was there anymore. I was busy talking to the waiters who were really interested in Obama. They wanted to know about the capitols of every state etc. It was really interesting. It was so scary. I had no idea where I was or what to do. I found my way back to the hostel and found Hannah Aaronson thank god. My friends were freaking out and I didn’t bring my phone. They walked around forever to try and find me and never did. I finally found them when I was with Hannah. It was scary but ended up being fine.
Friday night we went night sledding down the Swiss alps. It was scary. It was dark and if you drifted over to the side too much you could tumble down the mountain. It was so fun though. It took us 45 minutes to get down. It was such a great experience but very scary. After that the tour guides took us to cheese fondue. It was Swiss cheese. It was realllllly good.
Saturday morning I woke up early and took ski lessons with Jill and Molly. I was actually pretty good. Our instructor was not very patient with us. She thought we were too old to not know how to ski. Kids here start skiing when they come out of the womb. She was from New Zealand and spending her summer here being a ski instructor. We got good enough to go on one of the bigger mountains at the end. I was exhausted. It was a very eventful weekend and I am so happy I got to do everything that I did. It was such an experience.
I got my Poppy a black Swiss army knife and all of my family swiss chocolate. I hope they all like it!
The flight to and from Switzerland was amazing. We got free sandwiches, chocolate, and unlimited bottles of wine. They treated us amazing. American flights suck. They are so cheap and barely give you a cup of water. I stocked up on the chocolates.
SpanAir went bankrupt while we were in Switzerland so Sloan and Erika’s flights were obviously cancelled. They had to pay for all new flights. Trish booked her flight to go home a month from the day we were actually going. Their apartment had their issues but we all got back to Barcelona in one piece!
Alex´s Barcelona Blog 