Day 13: Interlaken

"Lost" in Olten
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We left Paris last night at 7:00 p.m.  That was interesting.  We realized that we hadn't REALLY looked at our train tickets carefully and went to Paris Gare du Nord (North train station) instead of Paris Gare Est (East station).  Thankfully we went super early in case something went wrong and had plenty of time to make it to the next station to catch our 7 o'clock train.  Our 3-hour train ride to Basel went pretty smoothly and a bit too quickly - we were truly enjoying our nap.  Basel is a bordering city, half of the station is in France, the other half in Switzerland.  We waited at Basel for our next train to Olten that left at around 1 a.m.  We got to Olten about a half hour later and had to wait about an hour or so for our next train to go to Bern, the capital of Switzerland.  So far, everything had gone relatively smoothly.  We got to Bern at around 3 a.m. and realized that we had to wait until 6:00 a.m. to catch a train to Interlaken.  So, we sat on some benches and tried to take a light nap.  We felt safe enough, people milling around, employees all over the place.  We didn't really get a good sleep, however.  As we were kind of dozing off (lightly), TJ heard some footsteps running towards us.  He awoke to some 15-year old Swiss boy running about to run past us.  Melissa was asleep, laying on the bench with her head on TJ's lap as a pillow.  The boy then stopped in front of us, and ran up to TJ, kind of fell on TJ, and grabbed TJ.  Melissa woke up and literally yelped.  The kid was screaming something in German.  TJ looked confused and the boy then started saying "English?"  TJ said .. yes.. English.  The boy then said in broken English: If you see police come, you don't say anything, okay?  The boy then ran off as a police officer came running for him.  The crazy teenager then ran off onto the train tracks and disappeared and the cops disappeared after him.  We're guessing he was probably drunk and graffitied somewhere, or maybe broke some store window.  After that fiasco, things went relatively smooth.  We got to Interlaken this morning at about 7 a.m.  We headed straight onto the hostel, but unfortunately our room was not close to ready.  As we only really have two full days in Interlaken, we couldn't wait to check-in before we got going, so we dropped off our bags at the hostel, grabbed us a croissant from a local bakery and headed off back to the train station.

Interlaken
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At the Interlaken Ost (East) train station, we bought ourselves two roundtrip tickets to Jungfraujoch - our whole reason for coming to Interlaken.  The so-called Top of Europe, it took us about 2.5 to 3 hours to get to the top.  To get to Jungfraujoch, you have to take 3 trains up.  It was a really cloudy day up top, but that didn't take away from the insane beauty awaiting us.  The snow was so blindingly white.  We exited the train and went straight for the Ice Palace.  It's a man-made ice tunnel that has ice sculptures all over the place.  It's really quite cool.  You feel like you're in some weird igloo.  Even the floors were made of ice.  If you're thinking that this could've made for a bad accident - well, you're partially right.  There was no bad accident, but nonetheless, TJ turned around to talk to Melissa and slipped on the ice.  His feet went flying into Melissa's feet.  Melissa came tumbling after.  No big deal, no real bumps.  Just a bunch of other tourists laughing at us.  We then marched on to the Sphinx terrace to climb to the (semi) top of Jungfrau.  Yes, it was filled with snow, but sometimes it wasn't even that cold because the sun was glaring down on us.   We then explored other parts of the mountain top, like the Aletsch glacier.  This is the adventure-sport kind of area.  You can zip-line from this crazy high point down or do what we did - get a snow-disk and sled down the side of the Alps.  This was really really fun!  Melissa had done it once before with her best friend, Michal, and really wanted TJ to experience it also.  It was sort of a non-extreme thrill since you only slid down like 40-50 feet (although, it was a bit scary since you're still on the side of the freakin' Alps and there was very little visibility up there.. so who knew really where the side of the mountain even was?!!)   =)

Halfway to Jungfraujoch @ Kleine Scheidegg
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We headed on down and stopped halfway down to Interlaken at a village called Kleine Scheidegg.  We stopped to have a proper meal since we still hadn't really eaten since the afternoon in Paris.  TJ had sausage in a sort of worcestershire-like sauce with potatoes, and Melissa had a swiss version of macaroni and cheese.  Boy, do them Swiss people know how to eat!  After stuffing ourselves full, we headed on back to the hostel at about 7 p.m.  We were so excited to get back since we hadn't really slept in about 36 hours.... When we're nice and rested, we will head out and explore Interlaken tomorrow!