Avalanches and Waterfalls : Switzerland

What's crazy about solo travel is the sense of hollowness. Sometimes I've felt like I wake up forgetting for a moment who I am or where I'm from because all the usual indicators of your life are  missing. All the things so dear to you feel so distant... although they are most familiar to you they begin to feel like a memory. 

As humans, we're just a compilation of our memories that make our personality and mold our reactions and choices in life. When you're in a foreign land with no pieces of a familiar home around you, all you have to carry going forward in life is the memories and experiences you've had with the people that you care about. As I use that base to meet more people and gain more experiences traveling, the memories and experiences become more important than the possessions you own or the trivial parts of life.

So when you travel alone, it's easy to feel hollowness, because nothing you're seeing or doing can truly be shared or experienced with the people you love. You're grasping at those identifiers, the things that make you feel like yourself, at the same time as you're trying to throw them to the wind and try out being someone else for just a little while.
This is bewildering, but it's the openness to meeting people that leads to adventure.
So when you travel with a friend, and you sit together or eat together, you don't need to meet the person at the table next to you...but that person at the table next to you could be (and often was for me) the next adventure waiting to happen.

I found the hollowness lead to a kind of 'daring' mentality for me. I felt slightly lonely, yes, but it also left me with a desire to do any adventure available, as there was nothing left to lose by meeting someone new and trying something different.

The other benefit of traveling alone was I was not limited by anyone else. I walked at least 11-12 miles per day, some days reaching a total above 17 miles of walking and hiking/running. I loved exploring relentlessly, and never slept more than 6 hours. I also tried to speak to and meet people in French, which could have made a travel companion feel left out if they don't know the language. 

I had to constantly be resourceful, and it felt so nice. 

Saturday I set out to hike to Klein Scheidegg from below Wengen. It was so lovely to hike again.

The first thing I heard on the trail was incessant cow bells. The people of Switzerland recently had a great debate about their cowbells, as they find the incessant noise annoying and the bells serve little functional purpose anymore for finding cows. 

The next thing I heard on the trail was a large crack, like thunder, and and echoing through the valley. I realized that I had just heard an avalanche across the valley, in my line of sight. 

3,000 feet of elevation change and 3 hours later, I arrived at Klein Scheidegg right about when it started raining (about 45 minutes after thick fog started to form). I rode the train in the storm back to my hostel and made myself dinner. 

If you see Wengen on the map in the lower middle, I hiked from below there and along trail #42 to the Klein Scheidegg (in the middle of the map)

I finally met some people in the hostel who could speak English, several girls from America and a few Australians, who shared hiking tips and ideas for adventures if it rained.

Sunday the 19th it was raining like all hell, so I set out for trümmelbach falls. 

The falls were remarkable. There's 10 falls located within a cave, and I hiked through to see each. I was absolutely soaking wet but loved every minute of it. I headed back to the hostel afterwards to dry off, and made a lovely lunch of 'Mac and cheese' with the cheese I purchased in the mountain town of Gimmelwald (made with Swiss herbs and fresh milk from the cows there).

Gimmelwald cheese 

Corkscrew falls 

soaking wet from the caves

It was still raining (with about 5 minutes of sunshine every hour) so I decided to take a boat tour to Brienz, a small village known for its craftsmen, across one of the lakes that gave interlaken it's name. Somehow I never actually spent time in the place that was my destination in the whole day. 

On the boat, I met Swiss students and students that were studying abroad in Switzerland. They asked me to join them.

We bonded for the hour boat ride; they were going camping on a mountainside across the lake. Each of them spoke at least 4 languages. 

One of the boat stops was at a hotel up at the base of a mountainside with a huge waterfall behind it, called Giessbach, so I said goodbye to my new friends and hopped off the boat to go and discover the waterfall.

I wasn't even sure whether I'd be able to get back by boat to my hostel for the night, but I had a glimpse of the falls and I knew I had to see it.

I rode the tram up to a hotel and hiked to the top of the falls from there. You're even able to walk beneath the falls! It was so powerful of a waterfall that I was soon drenched again just being close to it.

The tram conductor was nice and offered to drive me to Interlaken, where I could catch a train to my hostel, if no more boats were coming. Luckily I caught the last boat, which actually took me the opposite direction from my hostel towards Brienz, where i would have to catch a train home.
By the time I actually reached my destination of Brienz it was 7:00 on a Sunday and everything was closed, so I went ahead home on the trains. 

Back at my hostel, I met a girl from North Carolina named Jamie, who had been traveling alone for weeks as well. She had a bottle of wine and I had pasta to cook so we shared a meal out on the patio in the rain.

We met two Australian brothers, Albie and Ben, who had a laugh with us. We were having such a great time that we decided to all go out to bars. Albie was huge, about 6 feet 6 inches tall, and a pint hardly hit him... I can't say the same for myself.
A couple of hours later they all had 'drank me under the table.' They kept remarking on me being little, and in contrast to the Australians I certainly was. By the end of the night Albie "bench pressed" me because that's really all there is to do in Lauterbrunnen. 

Monday

I woke up the next morning, considerably light sensitive, to begin my journey to Geneva and Marseille.  My seat on the train was across from two guys from Florida who were visiting Switzerland for the week and had just finished 6 weeks of study abroad in Valencia, Spain. They were in a comparable... state... to my own after going to a concert the night before. We shared chocolate while wearing sunglasses and enjoying our views out the window. 

I really only had a two hour stopover in Geneva en route to Marseille, France, but it was enough time to see the lake and the famous fountain. I walked around the lake and watched the swans while I ate a crêpe sucre and treated myself to a lemon sorbet. 

lunch with the swans

I was so excited to return to Marseille, France, as it was one of my favorite places I went to during study abroad. I also was desperate for some warm, sunny weather as this was one of the most rainy Junes in France and Switzerland in awhile and temperatures were unusually cold.