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.