Swiss Trip - Final Day

This was the day after the head-banging and waking up from partying. With heavy heads and heavier hearts that our holiday was ending, we finally managed to roll out of the bed and got out by about noon. Today was going to be about nothing. We just wanted to chill and have a relatively relaxing day before boarding our flight back from Zurich. That is exactly what we did.

We took the bus to Interlaken where the town was getting ready for the evening’s new year party and fireworks. They don’t quite celebrate New Year Eve with the great fireworks etc., rather they save it all for the New Year day. There was going to be a carnival atmosphere, with live bands and fireworks. Too bad we couldn’t stay the 1^st.

The city centre was closed for traffic so as we hiked from the station into the city centre in the search of a restaurant which would help us conquer our hunger. Quite sick of sandwiches, we were looking for some hot, soft food and decided to look for an Indian restaurant (surprise surprise). We looked at a couple of Indian restaurants in the area but both of them were closed. One of them was on holiday. The entire restaurant was on holiday till middle of January.

Anyway, it was cold, we were very tired and since we were looking for soft food, we walked into an Italian restaurant hoping to get some half-decent pasta. Instead we were extremely pleasantly surprised with what we got. Although the service seemed a little cold, the food was really hot and tasted absolutely fantastic. I had the best cannelloni I have ever had. So much so that I had mine and then some of Smita’s.

After lunch, we made our way to the station and started on the return leg of our journey with the Train to Zurich Airport. Check-in was uneventful this time and involved no running frantically to the gate to catch our flight.

With the typical post holiday 'sad-to-leave but itching to get back home' feeling, we occupied our seats and then we had the Mastercard moment of the trip:

• Plane ticket to Switzerland - £100
• Clothes to brave the cold - £80
• Train to the Airport - £30
• Free yummy Swiss chocolate on the plane – PRICELESS!!!

Getting back home was a bitter-sweet moment. Well it was the end of the trip and we all had to get back to work the next day. Smita made us all some great tasting vegetable khichdi and after having our fill, we went off the sleep and that was the end of our holiday.

Swiss Trip - Day 3

Today was just another day where the sleepy heads didn’t wake up on time. I woke up fairly late by my standard, around 9am, and tried to wake the others up but was greeted by groans and complaints. Anusha, who has built up immunity to my wake up screams, totally ignored me and continued to party in the land of nod. Raghav, who doesn’t quite have the same immunity, rolled over and covered his ears and literally turned his back on me. Smita, I am sure was thinking of ways to come up with some potion that would make me disappear.

Eventually, bugged with my failure to wake the gang up, I showered and was ready to head out. This somehow seemed to get people out of their zombie state, especially Raghav. That’s when I found out the easiest way to wake Smita up. She hates the smell of toothpaste in the room. So when Raghav brushed his teeth, she had no choice but to wake up. He he he... I used this to annoy her the next day. Anusha woke up jumping it’s my birthday, it’s my birthday and so it was. She used this line to great effect all day, whether it was to choose where were headed, get the best seat on the train or to get the last bite of the chocolate.

Raghav and I got some coffee downstairs and with the others still waking up and getting ready, I decided to take a walk around Iseltwald for about a half hour or so. It was just fantastic walking around this place and soak up the scenery. Absolutely stunning views. [Picture]

After I came back from my walk, I got back and started hurrying these guys to get ready so that we can make the 11:33am bus to Interlaken. Of course by the time these lazy buggers got ready, we had to run to the bus stop, only to miss the bus by 1 minute. Having missed the bus, we headed back to the hostel to make some Maggi so that we don’t end up losing time getting grub later. Btw, making Maggi does take a lot longer than 2 minutes. As the scent of the food tickled our nostrils, we realized how hungry we all really were since we hadn’t had much of a dinner the night before. I bought some bread from the local shop and we all sat and had a good Maggi & Bread brunch.

After the lunch, we did manage to make the next bus. We had decided on small city of Biel as the prime candidate for our lazy day-trip through a small town in Switzerland. On the Train to Beil, Anusha was taught a lesson in how to play UNO [Picture] while Smita and Raghav were soaking up the Sun.

Biel has a very quaint, Gothic city centre and a very nice waterfront. We got off at the station and walked around the town centre for a bit and took some nice pictures along the way. [Picture]. Then we took the bus to the waterfront, a very nice, calm place with a lot of people walking around in the nice and sunny 4 degrees temperature. This was summer compared to the snow covered mountains the day before. We wanted to take a picture of the four of us on a walk bridge and the guys wouldn’t let me set up the camera on the bridge rails. So, we asked this guy who was walking around to take a picture of us all. He was an old German dude who had probably never seen a digital camera but was very happy to oblige and in the end the picture came out pretty well. Before we left, we snapped a few more pictures of the beautiful evening sun reflecting on the water [Picture]. We headed back into town and stopped by the local grocery store to pick up some food for dinner and then made our way back to our hostel.

All of us got back pretty hungry (as usual) and prepared our dinner. We got chatting to Deniz about New Years Eve celebration and if anything special happens around then. We had just about finished dinner and were ready to turn in early when Deniz stopped by for a picture with the girls. [Picture] She left and very promptly came back, sounding pretty excited and asked us to follow her out to the street. We were all in our PJs but we jumped out to see what she was going on about. It was the traditional Swiss Bell Banging ceremony in arrival of the new year [Picture]. These guys walk about town in a procession on new year’s eve, beating the bells and walking in and out of homes/hotels and the people whose places they walk into are supposed to give them food and drink. We walked for a bit with this procession dancing like it was a Shaadi Barat.

The dancing pretty much got both Smita and Anusha in the mood for some new year eve partying and when Deniz offered us all a ride into town, they jumped on the offer and Anusha played her “It’s my Birthday” line once again to get me and Raghav to join them. Deniz drove us into town a little later and gave us the local Interlaken club tour. We walked into a couple of clubs and finally settled on one playing 90s hip-hop music /bhangra combo. Of course it was run by fellow Desis. We partied into the new year and then took a taxi back home in the early hours of the morning. Thanks to Smita’s enthusiasm, Anusha did get her party/dancing after all!

We continued on chatting for a bit upon our return to the hostel. Tired & weary, we turned in for the night. Sad in some ways that tomorrow would be the last night of our holiday before we land up in reality world again.

Swiss Trip - Day 2

True to form, the second day began in quite an interesting fashion. The night before Raghav had challenged us that he would wake up at 6:30am. He woke up at 6:15am, well at least he thought he woke up at 6:15am ;-). We had asked for breakfast to be served by 8:30am. So Raghav and I got ready and went down for breakfast at 8:30 with the girls still getting ready. We walked down and found the food all cold and laid out on the table. We were both surprised and a little upset that she had put the food out early and that it had gotten cold. Deniz came out and looked at us and said “Did you guys decide to sleep in late?” Raghav and I both looked at our watches and responded with a surprised “We said 8:30 and we are here at 8:30.” Deniz laughed at us and said that we are on Swiss time now and not on London time and that it was 9:30am and not 8:30. That’s when we realized our rookie mistake and had to re-plan our entire day since we had missed our morning train that we had planned for.

We had our breakfast and were deciding where to go when our local Santa helper, Deniz, suggested we go sledding since we had some fresh snow the night before. She offered to take us into the city to get our equipment on rent. Our eyes lit up immediately and we jumped on the offer. We got our equipment and hopped on the train to Kleine Scheidegg. The mountain train was really picturesque and was much better in the morning than in the evening. [Picture]


Once up there, the girls decided they needed to shop for ear muffs. Of course shopping and I don’t really get along. I sat outside the store brooding for about an hour while they tried out 20 different ear muffs. Really, an hour to shop for ear muffs? Women and shopping, I’ll never understand that. Anyway, as soon as Smita purchased her pair of earmuffs, she broke them [Picture] and then she had to buy another pair of course. Anusha's expression in the picture is priceless though.

Once we were done with the shopping and the little snowfight, which Smita won [Picture], it was grub time. We ordered food in the nearby mountain restaurant. The food took about 2 hours to arrive. So finally after about 4 hours of conceptualizing this sledding plan, we finally made it to the slopes.

But, it was all worth it once we got there. We had 3 sleds between the 4 of us. Anusha and I decided to double up on a slide and Smita and Raghav decided to go single for the evening. [Picture] Smita “the fearless” headed down the slopes first paving the way for the rest of us, soon followed by the ungainly couple and then by Raghav “the cautious”. Very soon Smita was off on her own leading the rest of us by a mile with Raghav slowing moving along the track. After going over the initial bum(p)s and hiccups, the ungainly couple figured out how to manage the sled without falling off all the time and started picking up speed and very soon caught up with Raghav only to give his sled a good kick and send him off on his journey of the day. He carried on for quite a bit eventually stopping after banging into Smita.

Somewhere along the way, Smita lost her sled to a slope and Raghav and Smita had to go on a rescue mission in order to recover the sled. This wasn’t exactly the mile hike she was looking forward to but one that she had to go on. She was quite lucky in that someone stopped it when they had, otherwise it would have to be a much longer hike and may have involved a drop. He he heeeee.

It was an amazing experience but by the end of it all of us felt like semi-thawed bags of frozen vegetables. Cold and wet we returned but only after conquering the Eiger slope and promised to come back, only better prepared with the clothing.

While we waited at the station, Raghav had a sudden fixation on buying a sandwich. This wasn’t too irregular for Raghav so we didn’t make much of it until about 2 hours later when he pulled the cake and chocolate box out for Anusha’s birthday. Since we had to skip dinner in our quest to come back to the hostel on time, the cake served as both the birthday celebration cake and the dinner.

With our clothes all hung out to dry on the heater [Picture], we all retired for the day tired, achy and sleepy.

Swiss Trip - Day 1

Waking up at 4 in the morning just isn’t fun, is it. Even when you have a fantastic trip ahead of you !!!

We woke up tired and sleepy, got ready and got the airport just in time for the flight to Zurich, all the time cribbing about how early we had to get up. Little did we know just how much fun was in store for us over the next 4 days.

Upon arriving at the Zurich airport, we had to catch the intercity to Interlaken. We had booked ourselves in a hostel in a village close to Interlaken. The train ride to Interlaken was exactly the wake-up call we needed to get our rear-sides in gear. As we gazed out of our windows in awe, our minds started waking up to the fact that we were in one of the prettiest areas in the world.

Once we got to Interlaken, we had to take a 30 minute bus ride to Iseltwald, a little known village with absolutely stunning views [Picture Attached]. We got there around 11am and woke up the hostel manager, Deniz. Deniz, who we later found to be the best hostess, woke up grumpy and complaining since we had woken her up from her precious slumber which she doesn’t get much of anyway running a pretty busy hostel. In all fairness to her, the check-in time is supposed to be 3pm and not 11am She got nicer as she woke up and showed us to our room, a 4 bunk bed really nice room with ample closet space. Will post the detailed review of the Lake Lodge here later.

Having dumped our backpacks in the room we headed out to Interlaken to explore the local cuisine since we were famished. Of course the first restaurant we run into was an Indian-Punjabi restaurant called Shalimar. We were greeted there by the one man army: manager, cook, seating host and waiter who before we got there was trying to pacify his girlfriend who walked away in a huff as we entered the restaurant. Not to be perturbed by the little tiff with his lady, the one-man-army proceeded to cook us some really nice food, freshly prepared and to our expectations. It hit the spot perfectly. Raghav nicknamed the restaurant Kamadhenu since it gave us exactly what we wanted.

All that food deserved some good exercise and we walked around beautiful Interlaken for a bit. We then took the rail up to snow covered Grindelwald and walked around there for the rest of the evening before coming back. It was dark and icy and thoughout we kept thinking - this is really pretty but its cold man.

It was cold but little did we know that that word would take on a whole different meaning the next day. That will be in the next post.