James Bond eat your heart out!

The view from the first cable car
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Switzerland is quite well known for their neutrality (is that even a word??) and their armed forces, and this was evident as we made our through to Mount Pilatus. Most of the countries freeways are divided by a single high tension wire, that when the need arises, they can retract underground and allow planes to land on the roads. There's about 250 ways to enter the country by way of bridges and tunnels, and at the push of a button Mr President can destroy the whole lot, effectively cutting off the country from any invaders. On most of the mountains, Mt Pilatus included, there are funny-shaped rocks that on closer inspection are hiding satellite dishes, among other things! The Swiss army can apparently pop up anywhere, due to their network of underground passageways...

The girls
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We jumped in to a gondola car with Nat and Shannon, and headed halfway up Mt Pilatus, then disembarked and got into a bigger cable car, with about 35 of our group. We had a 25 minute ride up the mountain, with some great scenery, apart from the clouds. At one stage, the car looks like it's about to smash into the cliff, then lifts and does a bit dip and a sway, and you're looking straight down a 500 metre drop. Scary! Once we made it to the top we fought our way through the blizzard and into our hotel.

...Big Mac meal cost the equivalent of fifteen Aussie dollars!

The boys
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The rooms were pretty ordinary, with tiny living quarters and shared bathrooms and showers - one for each floor! Hannah and I got lucky though, and scored a room with a little living room, then a bedroom, with a shower! Needless to say, we charged only our closest friends a few francs for the use of the shower...

Their was not much to do up the top of the 2000m plus mountain, as you can imagine. The food was shocking, but as there was nowhere else to go we all had seconds! That night we had "Swisscotheque", a disco in the foyer of the hotel. The crowd consisted of our group and the other Contiki, that we kept bumping into along our journey. Drinks were bloody expensive (10 euro for a beer or spirit) so we weren't planning on having a massive night. Christine, however, had other plans and after guzzling copius bottles of red wine, spewed bright pink spew all over the floor! After our girls copped some shit from some others because we weren't cleaning up Christine's vomit, we headed back to bed.

The view from the top
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The next morning we headed down into Vaduz, the Swiss town at the bottom of the mountain. Everything was expensive, a Big Mac meal cost the equivalent of fifteen Aussie dollars! Checked out some watch shops - very classy, very expensive, and then headed down to our cruise on Lake Lucerne. Very pictureesque views, lots of mountains, old buildings and castles. Not to mention the Jesus statue!

We headed back up the mountain, for a quiet name of trivia and cards, before heading to St Goar the next day.