Day 3

Today there was a lot of travelling as we were going to Switzerland to stay in the Alps. Frankly I don’t remember much about the trip as it was most likely past in sleeping or trying to get to sleep with my neck crooked at a funky angle. When we arrived in the little village we were offered the option of sleeping in cabins at ten Swiss francs a night as it was expected to rain – I was keen to just have a tent and save the money, but the three south African blokes that I would share a tent with over the trip Carl, François, and Stags wanted to have a cabin so I obliged to make up the fourth man. The camp ground was set in between a massive overhanging rock cliff with a waterfall and a fast flowing stream. The following morning we had grated potato for breakfast which was fantastic and then headed up to the top of Jung Frau – which was an optional extra that almost everyone took despite the weighty price tag of 120 Swiss Francs (about A$120). It was worthwhile though, the train ride up to the top which was meant to be an engineering feat in its day took almost two hours, and had a couple of us dozing off along the way, only to be woken up by fantastic views of snow capped peaks and Gorge-ess views. At the top of Jung Frau there is a massive tourist centre built where you can hire sliding boards, go to lookouts and visit an ice palace. All this was very entertaining, but what really took us all by surprise was the trouble that we had getting about. Because we were close to 4kms up the air was a lot thinner than we were used to, and although you couldn’t notice it when you breathed it in, you certainly felt less inclined to climb stairs or walk long distances – which explains why we only got half way to the snow cabin which was only 500m from the exit of the centre.
That night I decided to ‘go out’ with the rest of the crew and ended up at he ‘Bomb shelter’ which is a bar made primarily for the large amounts of Contiki tours that come through the campsite. It started off slowly – trying to talk to people over the way to loud music, but after a while I got stuck into some dancing with ten or so of the crew and had a blast – I probably looked like a goose, but I had a good time and doubted that anyone else would remember how I looked, let alone how they got back to their tent or in whose arms.