To Switzerland

For the last leg of the trip, we rode the train to Interlaken, then up the valley to Lauterbrunnen. Lauterbrunnen is located in one of the most naturally beautiful places I have ever seen. It is a small town nestled in a narrow valley. Immense mountains, so steep that they are basically cliffs, border the town on both sides. The cliffs are lined with hundreds of waterfalls, some gushing torrents, others no larger than a trickle. Even though it was raining for most of the time we were there, the dark clouds and darker shadows only seemed to underline everything with a quiet solemnity. It was simply breathtaking.

During one of our days there we took a bike ride up into the hills. We had to ride a tram from the town up past the cliffs, but once we were beyond the lip of the valley the terrain turned into a beautiful landscape of rolling green hills and crystal clear streams. For most of the ride we saw no one else along the trails, probably because of the wet weather, but our relative isolation only added to the experience. We rode through Murren and Gimmelwald, two tiny hill towns that blended in with the beauty of the landscape. At one point we passed by a bearded man who looked like he had stepped straight out of the pages of some fairly tale, guiding a young cow up the winding mountain roads with his walking stick. The surrealism was only heightend by the thick fog that accompanied us throughout the entire trip, masking everything in a hazy, dreamlike quality.