An Alpine Adventure

Hello everyone!

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*NOTE* This is Jack from the future. We are in Austria now. This blog post took WAAAAAY longer than anticipated. I had to edit so much and Blogger was being a little bitch.

There may still be problems with the font/layout etc., I'm sorry if there are. Blogger is refusing to do what I want at the moment.

The vast majority of this post was written in St. Moritz and the first part in Zermatt. I finished it off on the train to Salzburg (Austria) and in Salzburg.

Please read this blog as if we are still in St. Moritz...LOL.

The next post which WILL bring us up to date is coming later tonight. I fucking promise this time. Thanks and sorry for all the lateness!

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We're in St. Moritz in the east of Switzerland!!

And... I'm actually writing to you from the present! This is where we catch up completely! Thank fuck.

So this blog post covers the events of the past two days...leaving Lausanne for the mountains of Zermatt, and travelling on the Glacier Express to arrive here in St. Moritz.

It's been mental.

Switzerland is FUCKING AMAZING. Ok, it's expensive. But everything else, you can't fault. We're leaving for Austria tomorrow, but the time we've spent here has been incredible and we've had some of our best experiences in Switzerland.

Yesterday and today was the perfect finale. We will leave with fond memories.

So, are you ready to experience this shit too (sort of)?! Let's bounce.

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So, we woke up in Lausanne at like 9 or something (this is basically a guess, I actually have no idea at all), and our first thought was to get our breakfast made and eaten.

We went downstairs and in the kitchen Sam cooked the remaining sausages and fish fingers we had. So for breakfast, we had these with some bread. Pretty high-protein shit going on there.

We had to check out by 11 (ah yes, it must have been about 9 that we woke up then), so we didn't have time to hang around. Sam got in the shower while I got my stuff together.

And then I got in the shower... so this is the part when timekeeping goes out of the window.

Luckily, we were only like 5 minutes late for the check-out time, which they didn't really care about. So after we did that, before heading to the train station to travel to Zermatt, we went round to Migros again to get some more food for the day.

We didn't need as much as yesterday because we still had some stuff left over, but we did get another loaf of bread, two pears, four peaches and a couple of small yoghurts. The price at the end was the best bit though. Migros = happiness.

Our train was at 12.20pm from the train station; we got there at about 11.40am.

So we needed to get to Zermatt. Zermatt, apart from being a village up in the mountains (and the closest village to the Matterhorn, probably the most famous Swiss mountain) is a terminus for the Glacier Express. We needed to stay there overnight so that we could get the Glacier Express the following morning.

To get to Zermatt from Lausanne, it only involves one change at a place called Visp. So when we arrived at Lausanne train station, we were looking for our 12.20pm train to Visp.

We couldn't see it on the departures board...I can't remember but it might have been so early that it wasn't on yet. However, there was an earlier train to Visp leaving about 5 minutes after we saw it on the screen. Why not leave earlier?

So we jumped on the train, which took about an hour and a half.

As we've come to expect, the scenery was stunning. We didn't get any pictures on this part of the journey, but I can tell you that we saw many snow-covered peaks, lots of nice-looking Swiss towns and villages and once again the incredible view over Lake Geneva as we left Lausanne.

When we got into Visp, our first port of call was a departures board to tell us if there were any trains to Zermatt before the one that we would have gotten if we got the 12.20 from Lausanne. Typically, there weren't, so we had about 45 minutes to kill.

We had a short walk up the main high street of Visp. It was strange. It was very very quiet, and yet all the shops were open and there were about 20 cafés in the 400m stretch that we walked up. Each café had like one person eating/drinking there. Odd.

As is normal, even in the remotest parts of Switzerland (including Thun which I described in the last post), there was a fucking McDonald's. We've been good recently; we haven't been in there for ages, since Geneva. It's too fucking expensive, and when you start saying that about McDonald's you realise that the cheapest supermarket is all you will be able to afford. But yeah, McDonald's is fucking everywhere.

We walked back to the train station and then waited on the platform for about 20 minutes, nibbling at the fucking amazing cheap biscuits from Migros. The train came, and we saw that it looked quite similar to the Glacier Express, with the angled windows at the top of carriages to give a panoramic view of the scenery. Nice!

So we made our way to Zermatt.

This was no ordinary journey.

We realised this when we started seeing shit like this:

In case it isn't obvious, we were going UP. Like really far up. The gradient of the track was something ridiculous.

The scenery, as you might be able to gather from these slightly shitty train-window photos, was really impressive. There were carved, rocky mountains, deep gorges, waterfalls, avalanche galleries, rivers... on a different scale to what we'd seen so far. And to think, this was covered by the InterRail!

...Except it wasn't.

A woman up to us to check our tickets, and we showed her the InterRail tickets as we have done in the whole of Switzerland.

Kindly, she said "Oh sorry, InterRail tickets are not valid for this journey because this line is owned by a private train company."

WHAT THE SHIT?! WHAT DID THIS MEAN?

We'd had no indication of this beforehand.

She then said that we'd have to pay for our tickets, and luckily she accepted card otherwise this wouldn't have been possible. She said we didn't have to pay full price too because we're under 26 years old.

She asked us where we were heading to (there were a few stops between Visp and Zermatt), and we said Zermatt, adding afterwards that we were getting the Glacier Express from there tomorrow to St. Moritz.

"Oh" she said. "Well if you want I can print out our Glacier Express tickets for you now too, and then you can pay for everything together."

This was fucking PERFECT.

One of the things we were worried about before getting to Zermatt was getting our actual Glacier Express tickets, because all we had were the email print-out seat reservations. We were told by the internet that we had to take these reservations to a ticket office in Zermatt to get our actual tickets, but we really weren't looking forward to this. We didn't know where it was (obviously), we couldn't be 100% sure we'd done everything right.

So when the ticket lady looked at our seat reservations, added the tickets to our payment and then did everything together (for about 100 Swiss Francs, admittedly, but we'd prepared to spend a lot for the Glacier Express and this little journey was probably worth the extra cost to be honest), everything fitted together really nicely and lifted a weight off our shoulders.

So we enjoyed the rest of the journey to Zermatt. Here are some more photos from the train:

An impressive avalanche gallery, but this isn't the most impressive thing in this photo, because as you can make out...

 

...THERE WAS A FUCKING GLACIER!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!

So to me, this is fucking crazy shit and absolutely amazing. Glaciology is one of my main topics of interest in Geography, which I'll be studying at university from this autumn onwards hopefully, so to actually see one in real life was insane. It was so surreal. Snow...yeah ok it's the summer and it's a bit strange to see it, but a whole glacier?! It takes a large and constant source of snow to form one, so that shows how much it snows here I guess. Incredible.

Moutains + trees + river = good shit.

We arrived in Zermatt about an hour after leaving Visp (the two settlements are actually quite close as the crow flies, but as you can see the train had to handle some difficult terrain), so we got off and looked at the directions to our new hostel.

We had to walk up the main street, which was conveniently situated right next to the train station, turn left at the church, carry on over a bridge, and then walk 300m up a road.

In a more densely populated place, this probably would have taken us a ridiculous amount of time taking into account our previous direction-following exercises, but it's a bit hard to get lost in a village with only one church and very distinctive buildings, so we managed it without any problems.

Here's the hostel:

When we went in, the reception was closed, and we saw a sign that said that check-in was at 4pm. That was the latest check-in time we'd seen on the whole trip. But it was 3.30pm at this point, and we found a computer with internet down some stairs, so we used the time we were waiting to check our internet stuff and have a look around.

When we did the check-in, the guy we checked in with didn't seem very pleasant or helpful, but it all went ok. He had to take Sam's passport as a deposit for the key he gave us, but we were confident we'd get it back ok so that was fine.

We got up to our room, which was an 8-bed dorm (the largest number of people per room that we'd stayed in throughout the whole trip), and found that only one person was in the room with us so far...they weren't there but their stuff was.

So we sorted out our stuff and put it in the lockers provided in the room, which is what the key was for. It turns out that the key we were given wasn't for the room, only for the lockers! Our room was unlocked the whole time! And given that the front door was open most of the time, this was a little bit worrying in terms of security, but as long as our stuff was in the locker we thought it'd be fine.

So we packed our cameras and water bottles to take with us while we explored the village a little bit.

So I'll take you on a little bit of a photo tour of Zermatt now, here goes...

Looking out over the houses across the river from our street.

Yep, that's how high we were!

So we couldn't actually see the full extent of the Matterhorn yesterday because of cloud, which was a bit annoying but at the same time mountains shrouded by clouds can look just as beautiful. Here's what we could see:

If you've never seen the full extent of the Matterhorn before, I've heard of this really good webiste called 'Google' where there's a section called 'Images', and you can type in what you want to see a picture of and it'll show it to you.

It is a lovely mountain.

There was a cross on a hill overlooking the village.

 

The very quaint church. We were unable to go inside, but it could still definitely be appreciated from the outside.



An interesting fountain made from two bits of a tree - one with a face carved into it which dispensed the water, the other working as a kind of bowl.

It seems that the beaver is a very popular symbol in Zermatt - we saw it in quite a few places, but this fountain was the most obvious.

Sam by a very detailed statue of a goat.

At this point we went to a Co-op supermarket (they're almost as cheap as Migros and do some good stuff) and got some food for the evening because it's not like we could afford to eat out, even at McDonald's. We got some bread, fruit and probably some other stuff that I've forgotten, so that was our food for the evening sorted.
Back to the photos...

One of the rivers in Zermatt flowing between the houses.

We decided to try and find a path up towards the cross we saw on the top of the hill. So these were taken on the walk upwards.

The way we went up didn't seem to lead directly to the cross, and it was just beginning to rain at this point, so we didn't go very far up the path.

When we headed back down and into the town, we saw this nice building, which is in fact a library.

We then found another path which actualy looked like it lead straight up to the cross.

Surprise surprise it didn't, it lead to a fucking nearby house. We still got a nice view over the village though.

The path we walked up.

A typical building in Zermatt, especially with the roof it has, and the church behind.

The rain was getting heavier now, and there wasn't much left to see. Also I needed to get started on the last blog post and we had other things to sort out, so we headed back to the hostel.

On the way back, we had a quick look at the graveyard in the church, which houses numerous climbing victims, including plenty of Englishmen. The graves are very aptly designed.

When we got back to the hostel, the person whose stuff we saw in our room was there. His name was Stephen, and he was from South Carolina in the US. He was just visiting like us, before moving on to other places in Europe.

Me, Sam and him chatted for quite a while about lots of stuff, particularly studenty stuff and things about the UK and the US, so that was fun and informative.

Then another guest arrived. I can't remember if she told us her name (we were in a mixed dorm by the way), but her reason for coming up to Zermatt trumped any of ours.

The next day (today) she was going up to a place that is higher in the mountains to work for 3 months at a guest house for hikers and climbers. Her stuff was being taken up there by helicopter!

She was from Germany and she'd done similar work in a motel in southern Switzerland before, and she said she liked working in the mountains because she loves the landscape. She explained to us that you feel very isolated doing this type of work, but she really enjoyed it. She was well-travelled too, having been to many parts of Asia, Ethiopa and across Europe.

I've said it before, I know, but travelling really helps you to meet the most amazing and inspiring people. She told us a lot about her life and her work, and it is such a nice experience being able to see how other people see the world and how they live their lives.

So the four of us in our room (no one else actually checked in to our room, which was good) chatted for quite a while about who we were, travelling and so on, while I carried on working on the blog at the same time.

After everyone else went to bed, I finally finished the blog an hour or two later (talking to these people was too distracting!). I have to admit, it was a bit of a chore yesterday night, especially knowing that I'd have to be up early for the Glacier Express. But I got it done, and in the end the amount of sleep I got wasn't too bad.

 

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So this is where we move on to today's events.

We'd set our alarms for 7.30am, and conveniently the other two people in our dorm were getting up at a similar time.

Our train was leaving Zermatt at 09:59, so we made sure to give ourselves plenty of time to get ready and get to the train station on time.

For once, it wasn't much of a struggle getting out of bed. I felt quite awake.

I went downstairs and showered (the showers were pretty nice for a less-good hostel), and then Sam showered after. We both got our stuff all packed and together and got ready to leave.

We'd already said goodbye to our roommates - Stephen said goodbye to Sam while I was in the shower and the German person said goodbye to me while Sam was in the shower.

So once everything was sorted, we handed back the key and got Sam's passport back. Thankfully, the man at reception this morning was much nicer than the guy yesterday, so that was good.

Before going to the train station, we went back to the Co-op we shopped in yesterday to get a few extra supplies for the 8-hour journey ahead of us. We got another loaf of bread as we'd almost finished the one from yesterday, we got some granola bar things for energy, we got a massive pot of yoghurt for me and Sam got a Red Bull to make sure that he didn't fall asleep on the train!

When we got to the station about 25 minutes before the train was due to leave, it was already in the platform.

Our carriage.

Finding our seats was very easy. We were opposite each other, both with window seats - so the best you can get for two people really.

 

On our desks laid out for us were two Glacier Express programmes, which give loads of information about the train and have a fold-out map at the back which we used to track our progress along the line. There were also sets of headphones, which we could plug in by our seats to get commentary about the places we were passing through.

I devoured my yoghurt pretty much as soon as we got on there (luckily there was a bin in the table), and from that point we were just waiting to see if anyone was going to be sitting next to us.

No one came. YES! We had the whole four-seater to ourselves!

Here we are just before leaving:

And then we were off. A whole 8 hours of the best landscape Switzerland has to offer coming up.

Every time there was audio commentary on an area, a little jingle would play telling us to put our headphones in. So when this happened for the first time, we changed to the English channel and listened.

The English man whose voice it was sounded very upper class (I suppose that if he recorded it in Switzerland, maybe he lived in Switzerland, which would mean he HAD to be super rich). This provided us with A LOT of entertainment. More on that later.

The first hour or so of the journey, travelling between Zermatt and Visp, we'd already done yesterday from the other direction. However, we noticed a lot of different things this time round, and also THE SUN CAME OUT!! Yay!!

It got brighter maybe about 20 minutes after we left Zermatt. Everything looked beautiful, especially the snow-topped mountains and the waterfalls, and I was very very happy.

So I think I'll do a photo tour of this part of the journey now...please ignore the reflections you may see in the glass...

Part of a beautiful waterfall which becomes a small river.

A very original church.

The dramatic mountain landscape after the sun came out.

Snowy mountains in the distance, looking back towards Zermatt.

Two bridges over a very deep gorge.

The confluence of two rivers.

 

This section of the line contained the steepest part of the whole journey, with the train travelling at a gradient of 12.5%. This is VERY high, especially for a train, which is why a rack-and-pinion system is used. This is where a cog is used by the train to climb a 'toothed rail' lying between the two normal rails.

It is a strange feeling to travel at such a large gradient on a train, but the views it gave were spectacular.

When we got to Visp, the train stopped to pick up and drop off passengers. This is the first of around 11 stops that the train makes between Zermatt and St. Moritz.

We were on our way again soon enough, with the next stop being Brig, which is quite close to Visp. According to the headphone man, Brig is and has been a very important placed in this area of Switzerland as it established connections - namely trade routes - to Italy and France. It is also the start of many famous hiking trails, leading to its popularity amongst tourists.

Here's the mountain that overlooks Brig.

The next stop after Brig is Andermatt, but there is quite a large distance between the two places, so there was a long period of unbroken landscape.

Very soon after we left Brig, the weather started diminishing, with a lot of cloud cover and eventually rain. This didn't tarnish our experience, though, because this is what Switzerland is like most of the time, so we were getting the true experience. Not only that, but a lot of things looked better in the rain and cloud, and it also gave a different mood to the places we saw. So we're glad we got to see things in a variety of weather conditions.

Also after we left Brig, people on the train began serving food. Staff members had already asked us if we wanted anything to eat or to drink (which we didn't at their ridiculous prices), but now we saw them serving this exquisite food, and the smell made us feel hungry too. Still, we'd rather not pay like a million francs on a three course meal when we had all the essentials in our bag.

Despite the weather, we still managed to take plenty of photos of this part of the journey.

One of the many isolated villages in the valley. I wonder what it’s like to live there?

Dark mountains sprinkled with snow…very moody.

 

Me enjoying the view, and you can see the rest of the train too.

In this part of the journey, we were travelling alongside/over the Rhone, one of the largest European rivers which ends up in France and enters the Mediterranean at Marseille.

 
It was during this part of the journey where the headphone man REALLY entertained us.

He was telling us about how the Rhone used to flood often and destroyed livelihoods time and time again. So nice and cheerful.

He then went on to say “The first of the so-called Rhone corrections……(cuts out)……(in a more enthusiastic voice) SWISS CHEESE IS MADE….”

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!

Me and Sam could not stop laughing. He was talking so sombrely about these floods and then suddenly started talking cheerfully about how Swiss cheese is made…it was as if the driver had had enough and decided to put something better on.

It was so out of context!

This wasn’t the only funny thing involving headphone man during this part of the journey.

He would use really colloquial terms to describe something, but in his ultra-posh voice it just sounded ridiculous. For example, he was saying about what type of people would be suited to a winter holiday in a place we passed, and he said something like “This is the perfect place for skiers, tobogganists and SNOWBOARD FREAKS.”

Is that the technical term?!?!?!

It was hilarious how suddenly he’d do something like that.

He was also telling us at one point about how natural resources in a certain area were poor, apart from water resources, which were plentiful. Apparently, the area is a “DOWNRIGHT WATER STRONGHOLD”.

 Classic.

Clouds hugging the mountain tops…we saw lots of these types of views, which was great.

Another village with a typical mountain setting behind it.

A waterfall and a forest.

 

A very isolated little house next to a forest.



Yet another picturesque village.

Snowy mountains in the murky distance.

Parts of a sharp and rocky mountain with the summit shrouded by cloud.

We eventually arrived in Andermatt. From what headphone man was saying, this is quite an interesting place. There is a natural bridge called ‘The Devil’s Bridge’, which was said to have been crafted by the Devil himself. If you wanted to pass over it, you had to sell your soul to the Devil. According to a myth, the villagers of Andermatt tricked the Devil by sending a goat over the bridge, and the Devil got so angry that he tried to destroy the bridge by throwing a boulder onto it. This is why today it has a boulder lying in the middle of it.

Cool shit.

 

After stopping briefly in the village, the train began to ascend to the highest point of the journey. To get to this point, the train travels through the Oberalppass, where the train reaches 2,033m above sea level with the help of the cog wheel.

The Oberalppass is like another world. This is where the name ‘Glacier Express’ is truly relevant.

Here we are leaving Andermatt.

Stunning mountains.

We then reached the flat plateau at the top of the Oberalppass, where you can see the summits of many mountains.

Intricate snow patterns.



Thicker snow higher up. So strange to see at this time of year but it shows what the conditions up here are like.

Sam decided to order a very expensive espresso for the experience. He declared it “basic”. I expect the view made up for it though.

The lake at the top of the pass.

There was ice on the lake! It made some beautiful patterns from where it had melted.

Apparently, the conditions up here in winter are extremely challenging for the Glacier Express, and yet it continues to run. There is often snow many metres deep, which you can imagine looking at the level of the snow in summer! The headphone man told us that the trains are fitted with equipment that can move the snow at a rate of 19 tonnes a second. What the fuck? How is that even possible?

The rain continued up on the pass.

Me eating some Swiss chocolate we bought at the Co-op as we travelled through the pass. The chocolate was FUCKING INCREDIBLE, and so was the view.

A village we saw during the descent from the pass.

A short while after descending from the pass, we reached the town of Disentis. Disentis is famous for its monastery and has largest Romansch-speaking community in Switzerland. Romansch is the fourth official language of Switzerland – the other three are French, German and Italian. It has been in decline ever since tourism to the country became popular, however apparently there are schemes in place to protect it.

Disentis also serves as a stop-off point for the Glacier Express. The train stays in the station for about 25 minutes and gives passengers the opportunity to get out and stretch their legs, which I took advantage of. Unfortunately I couldn’t walk around much because it was raining so hard, so I just stayed on the sheltered platform and saw a few things – namely the church and the monastery – from a distance.

We got moving again, and at this point we were travelling through the Rhine Gorge, which is also known as the ‘Swiss Grand Canyon’. It was created due to a landslide during the last ice age.

Here are the pictures from this part of the journey:

The monastery of Disentis.

Looking across at a different Glacier Express train.

As we approached the next stop, Chur, we entered a region which is well-known for having many castles. We saw a couple of them:



So we got to Chur. We actually have to come back here tomorrow as part of our journey to Austria.

Chur is the oldest town in Switzerland – apparently archaeological evidence shows that people have settled there for at least 5000 years, the headphone man said.

Also around this time, he told us that there were originally problems when Switzerland joined the UN in 2001 because it has a square-shaped flag, and the UN Headquarters in New York requires that flags are rectangular. The way they got around this was by exploiting a different rule – one about the required surface area of the flag –so that they could have their flag outside the UN Headquarters. He was full of random facts like that!

What was funniest about headphone man at this point in the journey though was the blatant advertising of the 'Panorama Bar' - the carriage where there is a bar and you can get other shit. It was so obvious, he might as well have just said "GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY BITCH."

For example, he was talking about these specific types of wines that are produced in this part of Switzerland, and then he added 'Why not enjoy some wine for yourself in our Panorama Bar? We'd be happy to serve you."

That was one of the more reasonable ones. A lot of the time he would be talking about something completely unrelated to a bar or food/drink, and still manage to fit in "Why not stretch your legs in the Panorama Bar?"

In the end me and Sam found it so funny that we made ones up for ourselves:

"The ice in some of the glaciers is up to 700m thick. Speaking of ice, why not enjoy an ice-cold drink in our Panorama Bar?"

"The Swiss cheese is matured for up to 5 years. Speaking of being mature, are you over 18? If so, why not come down to our Panorama Bar?"

I wish I'd written them all down; we came up with some hilarious ones.

Moving on, while we were in Chur, the weather brightened up again! The sun came out and the clouds broke a little, giving us some amazing views over the tall mountains of the Graubunden region, which is the region that we were travelling through from Chur onwards.

Here are some photos:

This part of the journey, the final part, is probably the most impressive in terms of engineering. You pass over the Landwasser Viaduct, which is 65m high and 142m long, and also you pass through three spiral tunnels and two helical tunnels, which allow the train to scale the 400m height difference. And this part of the railway is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Not bad!

So at this point we were on the final stretch of the 8-hour journey. It takes 2 hours to travel from Chur to St. Moritz, and the scenery is fucking astounding.

So here is a photo tour for the rest of our journey:

Assorted mental roads and bridges.

Looking at the front carriages of the train.

The inside of our carriage. You can see how the windows give a panoramic view…it’s brilliant. Why aren’t all trains like that?

And finally, FINALLY… we were in St. Moritz at about 6.20pm.

What a journey.

We had little time to ponder though.

To get to our hostel we had to get a number 9 bus from near the station, and the bus dxropped us right outside the hostel. However…we couldn’t see any number 9 buses around.

We couldn’t find any information boards, so we asked someone at the ticket office. They pointed us towards the place where we had to get the bus, but said the next one was in 2 minutes.

Cue MASSIVE rush.

No luck. We found where we had to wait for the bus but it didn’t arrive, so we must have missed it.

Luckily, the bus runs every half an hour. Unluckily, it was FUCKING FREEZING.

Even when I put on a hoody I still felt cold. St. Moritz is at quite a high altitude, so this explains why it was like that.

Eventually, we got on the bus and paid 6 francs for our two tickets (we actually paid for a change!!).

We saw these interesting signs on the bus:

The ones on the left are the most interesting…the top one shows the back person holding a small stick and then a there’s a MASSIVE cloud of smoke over the person in front. Ok…

The one below it shows someone sawing a chair.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

Is that a common thing in Switzerland?

So after some serious doubts about the sanity of the people in this place, we eventually got to the youth hostel.

Now, we looked up this youth hostel last night and saw that there was a 4 COURSE DINNER (HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!) AND BREAKFAST BUFFET INCLUDED IN THE PRICE.

The dinner is not served past 8pm, and we were there at about 7pm.

When we checked in, we asked the receptionist if the dinner was available.

It was.

We ran up to our room (a 4-bed dorm) and put all our stuff in the locker. There was no one else in the room at the time, so this was a good sign.

We then ran downstairs and headed straight for the canteen.

This was the best thing in the whole world.

A whole salad-bar-thing, serving not only salad, but also chicken rice curry and noodles with vegetables. And you could get AS MANY BOWLS AS YOU WANTED.

I got three bowls piled up with food, Sam had 4 (fatty).

We were still a bit dazed at this point. We hadn’t eaten, let alone SEEN, this much food for such a long time, probably since the beginning of the trip.

We then went up to the area where people served you stuff. When we went up, a cheerful man gave us mashed potato, a slice of pork, brussel sprouts and gravy.

Words cannot describe how we felt right then. HOT FOOD! NICE FOOD!

Not only that, but we also got orange mousses for dessert. Could this get any better?

Here’s our food layed out on the table:

We absolutely devoured it. Sam even went up for more.

We probably didn’t look up once in the 20 minutes that we ate our food. We were so concentrated on just getting this AMAZING SHIT into our stomachs as soon as possible.

We fucking conquered this shit. And it was like the tastiest food ever.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED *triumphant face*

We plodded back to our room afterwards and did NOTHING. Well, we used the internet, but that was all. It was difficult to move after eating all that food *first world problems*

No one else was staying in our room too, so that was a bonus.

And that was pretty much it! What an adventure it was.

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Ok, so I said that this would be where we catch up, and I was sort of right…except I’m finishing this post right now on our train to Salzburg.

Today’s post won’t take long though, so we will DEFINITELY be all sorted by tonight. YES!!

The two days described in this blog were fucking awesome. The whole thing was such a good experience, and we certainly won’t forget it in a hurry.

We have seen the best of Switzerland.

And now, to our final destination…Austria. Salzburg to be precise. We’re staying in Salzburg for the rest of the trip, although we’re planning to visit some surrounding areas. If it’s half as good as the last two days have been, we will be very happy.

Looking at the scernery out of this train window right now…I’m guessing there’s a pretty good chance of that.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post! If it has made you think about doing something similar…DO IT. It is so worth it.

So I’ll be posting again shortly from Salzburg. Thank you for reading!



*Jack - 22/6/12 - 01:14 in Salzburg, 00:14 in the UK*