Interlaken.
I had only been in Luxembourg for about two days, but upon leaving I already felt a sort of sentimentality towards it. I was sad to leave, but I knew that one day I would come back.
The onward travel had proven a bit of a logistical puzzle; originally I had planned to go to Lucerne for a few days but prices were very high and it seemed that there were not convenient options to Milan afterwards, which was to be my next stop on the journey. Instead, I chose Interlaken, which was a bit more difficult to get to from Luxembourg but also a bit cheaper and closer to the places I wanted to visit. I have never minded long travel journeys, and I actually tend to quite enjoy them. There is certainly something relaxing about having a few hours to switch off, look out the window and listen to music. This journey, however, would be different; there were so many connections that I thought I wouldn’t be able to relax all day.
I started with a bus to Mersch, followed by a train to Luxembourg, a train to Metz, a train to Strasbourg, a train to Basel, a train to Bern, a train to Interlaken, and finally a half hour walk to my hostel. It was a very long day and when I eventually reached my hostel, I wanted nothing more than to go to bed, watch some YouTube and fall asleep. But that is not the nature of hostels, and within literal seconds of walking in my room I already had a friend and was on the way to a nearby restaurant. After a few beers and meeting the first other English guy of the trip so far, I crashed into bed at about 3am.
What followed the next day was my normal routine for a day after drinking; waking up way too early before an inevitable crash at about 3pm. Luckily, I had enough energy in the morning to make my way up to Harder Kulm, which is a mountain on the North side of the city (I got the cable car, I certainly didn’t walk). Sipping a beer I wished I hadn’t ordered, I spent a few hours people watching and trying to decide whether I could manage the hike down or to spend the £30 on the cable car ticket for the way down.
Switzerland has a reputation for being extremely expensive, but I don’t think I was quite prepared for the extent to which the reputation was true. The train ride into Interlaken had given me a taste of what the next few days would cost (the ticket was about £130 for only around 3 hours on the train in Switzerland), but it was still a shock when I saw the menus in restaurants or the tickets for the cable car, for example. Of course, someone who was better prepared than me could plan in advance and buy a Swiss Travel Pass, but these are still extremely expensive and did not suit the budget-friendly itinerary I was trying my best to follow. So in the end I decided to save my money, and it was quite a nice calming walk down through the forest.
The inevitable energy crash came, and by the time I made it back I fell asleep very quickly. The rest of the day I left only to go and get some food, but also planned a day trip for the following day with my friends from the hostel dorm.
The next day, we woke up at 8:30 and headed to the shop for a quick and relatively cheap breakfast before hopping on a train to Lauterbrunnen, which had been recommended to me by a friend from home. From Lauterbrunnen, we hiked up a very steep but smooth path and reached a the small town of Wengen about an hour and a half later. I know that I have complained about the price of travelling to Switzerland, but don’t get me wrong - the scenery is absolutely incredible. Never have I seen water so blue, mountains so beautiful, and the valleys, waterfalls and forests were constructed as if they were a painting. Just as I said the price lives up to the reputation, so does the scenery, and the walk up to Wengen gave some of the most amazing views I have ever seen.
We grabbed some food in Wengen and caught another £30 cable car up to Mannlichen, from which we hiked all the way down to Grindelwald. The views were panoramic, and carried us through the pain in our legs and the cold in the air. The hike was long, but the scenery was a masterpiece of all the best that you could picture of nature.
Eventually, with the sun starting to set, we reached the town and sat down for a much needed beer looking over the mountains that we had just trekked down from. We caught our train back and reached the hostel at about 11pm. It had been a complete day out - 9am - 11pm. I was tired, but once again fulfilled, feeling the kind of satisfaction only a busy day of hiking through the mountains can bring.
Switzerland was one of the first places I added to the route when I was planning this trip. Over time, places had been removed and shortened in favour of budget, but Switzerland always remained, and I’m definitely glad that it did. The scenery is absolutely the best I have ever seen; the photos do not even need a filter - it just actually looks like that. My experience was also certainly elevated by my friends from the hostel - I loved the fact that you could meet people without even really trying and go on adventures like we did. They were so friendly and generous, and it was a real pleasure to meet such nice people. So to Tom & Vanessa if you’re reading this - thank you for everything and I hope to meet you both again one day.
The next day was to be another travel day, not as difficult or tedious as the last one, but still a travel day nonetheless. After a quick goodbye to my friends, I walked to the train station and hopped on to a train to Lucerne. Once again though, FlixBus let me down and cancelled my onward bus journey, so I booked onto a different one and prepared for the three hour wait to catch it. The wait was not all bad - I managed to find a screening of the Switzerland Euros game and watched for a while with the locals, which was a pretty cool experience as opposed to sitting on a bench somewhere on my phone as I would usually do. At long last though, I did reach Milan and after a bit of trouble on the metro I reached my apartment, ate some snacks and tried to settle in to yet another new country.
So Far:
Days: 16
Countries: 7
Stops: 9
Distance Travelled: 1637 miles/ 2634km
