August 5, 2006 to August 7, 2006
After watching a bit of Groundhog Day at the hostel while waiting for their train to Geneva to arrive, Hiro and I bid farewell to Matt and Bryan. We planned on meeting up with Bryan later in Rome.
My brother and I had become so enamored with Interlaken after our first night there that we crossed out Florence on our itinerary. We planned to stay in the small Swiss town for a few more days in the hopes that the weather would improve and that we would have the chance to go to the railway station near the top of the Jungfrau, which is one of the tallest peaks in Europe (the station itself is the highest on the continent). Unfortunately, all we saw were rain and clouds for the next two days. We spent the days watching TV, movies and we even managed cook a meal of delicious rosti.
Better weather was forecast for our final day in town and our train was scheduled to leave late in the evening. Though it wasn't raining that day, the sky remained covered in clouds.
We decided to visit some of the towns up in the mountains anyway and took a train up to Lauterbrunnen. Though the views were nice, the clouds still obscured much of the probably picturesque scenery (at if the pictures on all the tourist brochures were of any indication).
We took another train up to Wengen, another charming Swiss village on the way up to the Jungfrau. This train trudged up the mountainsides at a fairly steep angle and I felt my ears pop a few times along the way. Once in Wengen we wandered around the town looking for things to do and see. Unfortunately, there's not much to do in charming Swiss villages when the weather is poor. We decided against hiking back down to Lauterbrunnen and instead took a train back to Interlaken where we opted to take a hike along a river to Lake Briez.
After our hike we ate another hearty dinner of rosti (really, we couldn't get enough of the stuff) and watched paragliders land in the park.
We would have loved to stay in Switzerland and enjoy what would undoubtedly be better weather, but it was time to move on. It was time to go to Rome.